Marsa Alam in October

I travel with FON & GO, at the TULIP BEACH resort in Marsa Alam, a resort owned by the Flash International group. We leave from Orio al Serio at 8.10 with an hour's delay on the scheduled time due to problems in Greek airspace; we fly with Meridiana Fly, very courteous hostesses and stewards, a trouble-free journey. Arriving over Egyptian skies after flying over Crete and a bit of desert, we see below us that magnificent spectacle of the long dark green serpent of the Nile making its way through the ochre sands of the desert. We land at Marsa Alam airport at 12.10. There is no need to reset your watch; here, after Mubarak's fall, they forgot to adopt daylight saving time as they had been doing for some years. No problems at the airport; for those of us using a passport it is enough to fill in the entry card.

We immediately find the FON & GO staff and the bus that will take us to the Tulip, which lies along the coast about 17 km south-east of Marsa Alam airport. This airport is actually close to Port Ghalib, while 85 kilometres further north is the town of El Quseir and to the south, about halfway towards Berenice, is Marsa Alam. To reach Berenice from the airport takes about two and a half hours, according to other tourists who had stayed in Berenice. At 13.20 we are at the Tulip, the usual welcome drink with a warm towel for the hands, and in no time at all we are given the room key, the wristband to wear and the tokens to collect the beach towels. Before 14.00 we can have lunch after putting our luggage in the room.

It is the 9th time we have come to Egypt: the first time to Hurghada, then two Nile cruises with Abu Simbel, Abydos, Cairo and the pyramids of Giza and Saqqara, twice to Taba with trips to Jerusalem and Petra, three times to Sharm — so we are by now experts on Egyptian resorts. The resort consists of numerous building blocks; the oldest are two storeys with 5 rooms per floor, while the more recent ones are larger and have three floors. Our room was on the ground floor, with a small terrace opening onto the back. Hot water always, excellent air conditioning, the safe and the minibar. Beautiful were the swans, the elephant and the crocodile that every day Ibrahim left for us on the bed made from the towels. The only negative note, which we reported to reception, was the lack of drying racks.

There are 2 restaurants with separate kitchens where we can go equally for meals, which for us were more than satisfactory; you can also draw water, to take to the room, from the dispensers. The soft all-inclusive was more than enough for us. As the advertising poster says, the Tulip Beach Resort is located directly on the sea, close to a long sandy beach, with the Egyptian desert behind it. As experts know, here the coral reef is very wide; from a beautiful fine beach you enter the sea, in the morning with low tide the water reaches at most to the waist, but for those of us who cannot swim it is a real stroke of luck, we can splash about in splendid water of 23/24°. We can go into the water for at least 300/350 m, up to about halfway along the 750 m jetty; beyond that is the coral reef, which it is forbidden to tread on.

In the morning we take long walks along the shoreline where it is all a chasing of little crabs, ready to slip into their burrows. Then we rest on the sun loungers and every now and then we go to the end of the jetty to admire beautiful colourful fish and die of envy seeing all those people snorkelling, not to mention the divers. The fish are seen better in the afternoon; two days in a row under the jetty we were joined by a small blacktip shark and one afternoon even a large turtle. What a lovely place! We will do our best to come back again. Bye Tulip Beach, see you soon!