Organised day trips by FletteMette
The traffic in Egypt is pretty crazy, and for most tourists it's really not advisable to rent a car - so organised day trips are often a good, cheap option when you want to see a bit of southern Sinai.There's a huge number of travel agents and tour operators in Sharm, most offering seemingly identical day trips by car and boat. There are many different trips available, the most popular seem to be the ones to Ras Mohamed (by car or boat), the Coloured Canyon, St. Catherine's monastery, Mount Sinai - as well as the quad trips in the desert, the camel rides and the bedouin dinners... We went to Ras Mohamed by car and by boat, and to St. Catherine's monastery.
The cost of the trips varies quite a bit, and it is always a good idea to check with several tour operators before booking a trip.
Checklist: questions you might want to ask the tour operator:
* Approx. how many tourists will be on the trip - many of the tours seemed to be *very* crowded.
* What kind of car / minibus do you use, and how long does it take to reach the destination - some of the minibuses were pretty uncomfortable & crowded
* For how long will we actually be snorkelling / riding the camel / whatever the trip is about;o) - this seemed to vary *a lot* with the different companies
* Is snorkelling gear / entrance fees included - some tour operators will quote you a price that includes everything, others won't.
Be aware that schedules & such usually seem to change a bit after you've booked your trip - take what your tour operator tells you, and assume that things will be ...perhaps 25% worse than what he says... ;o) (Snorkelling for a shorter time, the Russian guide you were promised might not be all that fluent in the language after all, more people in the bus etc...;o)
We are usually not the "group tour"-kind of tourists, but the trips we went on were quite ok and well worth it.
