Ain Sokhna

Ain Sokhna means the hot spring, and springs at the foot of the Galala escarpment gave the place its name long before it became Cairo's nearest beach. The Red Sea here is warm through most of the year and the drive is under two hours on good road, which has produced a long line of resorts, compounds and second homes along the shore, busy every weekend and quiet during the week. The Galala mountains rise steeply behind, and new development on the plateau above has added roads and towns where there was empty desert a decade ago. The snorkelling is modest compared with further south, but for a Cairo weekend the point is warm water within reach rather than reef quality. Monastery trips into the Eastern Desert start from here.

History

The name means "the hot spring". Excavations have shown that an ancient Egyptian port and settlement stood here, first noticed in 1999 by Professor Mahmud Abd el-Raziq and studied since by French and Egyptian archaeologists; it linked the mines of Sinai, important for turquoise and copper, with Memphis some 120 km across the Eastern Desert. Seafaring expeditions on the Red Sea set out from here as early as the Old Kingdom, and in the Middle Kingdom the activity went on: an expedition of 3,000 men was sent in the first year of Mentuhotep IV and some 4,000 under Amenemhat I, and rock-cut storage galleries have yielded wooden boat planks, pottery of the 12th Dynasty and a gold pendant (Wikipedia, Ain Sokhna).

Highlights

• Warm water two hours from Cairo - the nearest Red Sea coast to the capital.
• The Galala escarpment - mountains rising directly behind the shore.
• Hot springs - the source of the name at the foot of the cliffs.
• Weekend compounds - the Cairo escape built along the coast road.

When to go

October to May, though the water is warm nearly year round and summer weekends are busy despite the heat. Midweek is very quiet. A weekend is the standard stay. Friday traffic out of Cairo is heavy in both directions.

Things to know

Reefs here are thin and damaged compared with Hurghada or Sinai. Most of the coast is private compounds with restricted public access. Construction is constant and much of the shore is a building site. There is no town to speak of and no independent restaurants outside the resorts.

Nearby

The monasteries of St Anthony and St Paul lie inland and south; Suez is north.