Ain Sokhna and Galala

Cairo's beach

Cairenes simply call it "Sukhna". Its Arabic name means "the hot spring". The town lies on the western shore of the Gulf of Suez, about 55 km south of Suez and 120 km east of Cairo, at the foot of golden mountains. From eastern Cairo it is less than an hour by road; from the west of the city, allow longer.

It is the capital's weekend beach. Along some 60 km of coast, a few hotels sit mainly among holiday homes that Egyptian families rent or own, which gives Sokhna the feel of a residential neighbourhood more than an international resort. Galala, a new seaside town built between Ain Sokhna and Suez, extends the coast to the north.

For a European traveller, Sokhna adds two or three days by the sea at the end of a Cairo stay, without flying. People come for the quiet, swimming, fishing from a private boat, with the catch then cooked in the seafood restaurants, and for the dolphins, watched at sunset from the shore or by boat. On the beach, vendors sell freska, a wafer filled with honey, nuts or coconut, and clams with lemon.

The gulf wind

The Gulf of Suez is windy: the same wind turns the turbines of the Zafarana wind farms, further south. Sokhna has become a kitesurfing spot, with centres for beginners and experienced riders.

The climate is desert: summer highs are around 34 °C, winter lows drop to about 7 °C, and about 22 mm of rain falls a year. Sabaro recommends spring and autumn for the beach; in winter the days are mild but the evenings are cool.

The monasteries of the Eastern Desert

About 10 km south of Zafarana, on the slopes of Gebel el-Qalaa el-Qibliya, two Coptic monasteries are on the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Tentative List, the step before a possible inscription. They are about 230 km south-east of Cairo.

St Anthony's is the oldest monastery in Egypt. Anthony, born in 251, gave up his property towards the end of the 3rd century to live as a hermit in a mountain cave, where he died in 356; he is one of the founders of Christian monasticism. His disciples founded the monastery around his cave. Behind a wall more than 10 m high stands a true village: church, chapels, bread oven, mills, cells and gardens. The church, built over the saint's tomb, holds 13th-century frescoes: saints on horseback, archangels and the first patriarchs of Alexandria. In the past, the only way in was by pulley, as in a fortress.

St Paul's, slightly further west on the same mountain, is smaller and less altered. Paul, born in the Thebaid around 225, fled the persecutions of Emperor Decius from 249 and, according to tradition, lived as a hermit for sixty years. The monastery grew up over his tomb, within a medieval enclosure; its church is covered with 18th-century paintings, including St George, St Theodore and the Archangel Michael.

Sabaro advises clothing that covers arms and legs for the visit, and allowing a full day from Sokhna. Travelling at night outside towns should be ruled out: leave early and be back before dark.

A pharaonic port

Long before the holiday homes, Ain Sokhna was a port. A French-Egyptian mission, led since 2001 by the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO), Suez Canal University and the Sorbonne, has uncovered a harbour used periodically in the Old Kingdom and again in the early Middle Kingdom. Expeditions left from here for the turquoise and copper mines of Sinai. In galleries cut at the foot of the mountain, a few hundred metres from the shore, archaeologists found in 2005 and 2007 two boats dismantled and stored between expeditions, surviving as charred planks.