A beach on the moon

By Salama Ahmed Salama

Alexandria's beaches, for example, remind you of one of these grand old villas that have seen better days and now reek of decayed grandeur, while those of the North Coast remind me of the nouveau filthy riche, as though sea water mixed with desert sand could be immoral in some cases.

The eastern beaches of Sinai, from Sharm Al-Sheikh and Ras Mohamed to Taba and Al-Arish, remind me of European beaches, ruined only by the neighbours.

But when one discovers the long beach extending across Sinai's western coast, overlooking the Gulf of Suez opposite Ain Sokhna, one finds with relief that there are still beaches in Egypt which take the visitor far away from Marina and all its habitués. This is virgin territory with a special taste of its own, like a dance in the moonlight.

It seems that all the mistakes made in tourist development in the past few years have given birth to a serious attempt to create a new kind of beach resort, which will take the future into consideration with an open mind and which will preserve the environment and uphold the true principles of development.

The biggest mistake made on the North Coast, which will probably take generations to put right, is turning most of its fabulous beaches into luxury or medium-level tourist housing projects on which thousands of millions of pounds have been spent to ensure the supply of everything from drinking water to mobile telephones. These projects, as I noted last week, are used for one or two months each year and remain closed the rest of the year.

This is what those responsible for tourist development are trying to avoid in Ras Sidr, by creating integrated projects and centres to receive tourists coming in from abroad. An airport is currently being built in Ras Sidr to receive charter flights. There is also a reasonable amount of tourist housing to meet the demands of domestic and foreign tourism. It would be wonderful if the Tourist Development Board were to encourage investors to market tourist housing units along with hotel rooms, or to create companies for that purpose while bearing in mind that the problem of marketing remains a basic impediment to tourist activity in general.

There are other services to be offered which cannot be left to the investors alone. These include improving public transport and the telephone network as well as ensuring adequate TV reception which remains poor. These would make of this beautiful beach resort a wonderful place to relax, only two hours away from Cairo. It has all the trappings of the more famous resorts, including fine sand and beautiful weather, which would make it viable both in winter and summer.