The 1^st Adventure of the Desert Sharks

        What do you do when you are on vacation? Do you stay at home, on the couch all day watching T.V? Or maybe you stay up all night and sleeping all day or you keep drinking and flirting around all the time. But did you ever think of doing something big, a real big adventure that you will never forget. We did that’s, me and my friends. One day we had the idea of walking from Hurghada to Marsa Alam and we made it come true. You would call us crazy but the planning of this trip took over a month to organize.

        First I will begin by telling you how the idea came to us, we were sitting one day bored with nothing to do and we started looking for something to do something different that we had never done before, I started suggesting taking a walk in the desert away from every thing to, my friend Ahmed he took my suggestion and modified it, "yes, lets go to Marsa Alam on foot" he said, my third friend Walid and I looked at him in shock for a second and the next second we all agreed that it was a great idea, and there was the birth of the Desert Sharks Hazem, Ahmed, and Walid.

    At first we didn't want to tell any one about it until we arrange ourselves, and knew what we were going to do, what would we need? How much time would it take?  And how much it will cost us?  After a few days Ahmed told his twin brother Mustafa and the group expanded to four.

     We started doing our plan and the first main thing we changed was the starting point, we changed it from Hurghada to after Safaga in the middle of no where and that's because we wanted most of the trip to be away of civilization, we started asking about the legal paper work needed to do something like that because we didn't want any one to stop us and turn us back halfway through the trip. After that we made our time plan, decided how much food and water we were going to need. We started searching for the safari backpacks and the sleeping bags we will take with us and finding how much it would cost us because we didn't want to take any money from our parents and we wanted to relay on our selves from the beginning to the end. After we told our parents we started telling our friends many of them got excited and wanted to come but many backed out when they felt that we were serious only one had the heart to come with us and his name was Mahmoud. So there were now five of us.  

The Trip

Our journey was planned for the end of December 2004 and would take four days and three nights. When we all met up at Ahmed's house and began our adventure we all felt scared and we thought of turning back, we really couldn't believe that we were doing this after a month of preparation, but then we remembered the people who had mocked us and said that we would not do it, we decided that there was no turning back and we would stay together to the end, and that was one of our motivations to challenge everyone including ourselves and our fears.

We took a taxi heading to Al Quseir because we had decided to start 30 km after Safaga. The driver was shocked when we asked him to drop us in the middle of no where we told him what we were up to and he asked for our phone numbers to check on us from time to time. After he left us we moved towards the coast line and found a got spot to settle and after having breakfast we started walking.  On the first day we walked only about 5 to 6 kilometers until we reached an ambulance point on the road where we rested for some time and we talked with the people working there and until now we are still in contact with them.   We have even met them two times since this trip.  We found a spot to settle a few kilometers after the ambulance point to have lunch, Ahmed went fishing and got us a few fish that we barbequed fresh. As Ahmed was getting the fish the rest started looking for wood to make our fire.  As soon as the sun went down and it was totally dark we couldn't even see our hand the only light we had was from the camp fire, we didn't stay up for long after the sun set. The one thing I noticed before closing my eyes was the beauty of the sky it was full of stars in a way that I had not seen before, it was a moonless night and the stars were very bright. We were really afraid that something might attack us whilst we slept but this feeling didn't last for long as we didn't stir again until the sun rose the following morning and the gentle sound of the sea aroused us from our slumber. When we woke up it was freezing cold we all started running around looking for wood to make a new fire to get warm, we had our breakfast and started our walk, on this day we walked about 20 km straight, then we found a good place to rest and have lunch.  After lunch some of us wanted to keep on going on foot and some of us couldn't walk a meter more, so we stopped a car on the road that was going to Al Quseir we got stuck there and we couldn't get out before sunset and we didn't find a safe place to spend the night, after a few hours we found someone who reluctantly agreed to take us with him on the bus he was driving. I knew a hotel manager on the road to Marsa Alam that would help us to find a place to spend the night because it was difficult to find a safe place as it was already dark, so I asked the driver to drop us near the hotel and I went in alone to meet the GM, at first he didn't remember me but I told him what we were doing and  he offered us dinner, I told him that we need a place to spend the night so he told me that we could spend the night on the beach on condition that we woke up and had left before the hotel guests would come to use the beach I thanked him and went out to get the rest of the group, that night was the first time for us to realize how important bathrooms were we use the beach bathroom for the first time in two days. I couldn't sleep that night as it was very cold because I had given my sleeping bag to Mahmoud because he couldn't buy one before we start the journey.

Before sunrise we were all awake, it was still freezing but this time we couldn't make a fire because we were inside the hotel so we started running and doing push ups to get warm and we left right away, we had left a message in the reception to thank the General Manager for his hospitality. We walked for about 3 km until we found a good place to sit and have breakfast, and we stayed most of the day on this beautiful beach where we decided to enjoy scenery and tranquility of the area, we slept for about an hour and then some of us went for a swim I was one of them, as this place was still untouched it was very beautiful the brightly coloured corals and the fish were really great.  Later in the afternoon we went out to the road and stopped a pick up truck that was going to Marsa Alam and then we discovered that we were riding with a drunk driver travelling from Alexandria to Marsa Alam. He dropped us before the police check point because he was scared to take us through. We went into the check point and we made Mahmoud go in and meet the officer with our papers so that we could get his permeation to go through, the officer was very confused after he saw the papers and he couldn't understand why we were doing this, Mahmoud told him that we wanted to do something useful during our vacation, and to undertake a trip that we first thought no one had ever done before us, and to start to learn how to depend on ourselves as we did it all from the beginning without any help from any one.

We left the check point and walked the rest of the way to our destination which was a camp that Ahmed and Moustafa had worked at the previous summer and they knew some people there and got permission for us to spend the night we arrived before sunset we told our story to the people working there and that day we used the wash facilities, we ate real food, and we slept on real beds. From this journey that didn't last long we learned that we were living a very easy life that we should be thankful for it and there are some people that we had met on the road that were living life like that, we learned how to depend on ourselves in hard situations and we saw the greatness of God's creations, this made us make anther two trips they were not the same but had a similar purpose.