zen by the red sea

In what seemed like an official start to summer, I spent this past weekend at Basata, a relaxing, chilled-out, eco-friendly camp between Nuweiba and Taba on the Red Sea. We could see the lights on Aqaba (Jordan) and Eilat (Israel) at night, and the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the sea during the day. In fact, all our phones automatically went on the Saudi Arabia network; given my desire to actually visit that country (minimal), that's probably the closest I will come to going there.

Basata is a cool idea -- basically, there are all these huts on the beach (literally, on the beach, with the Red Sea like 5 feet away), all of which have no electricity or running water. They have "beds" (mats) with carpets/rugs/more mats, a few low tables, a few pillows, etc. Ours was a double-decker with a small loft area, the whole hut sleeping a total of eight people (though we were 10, which was fine as two people opted to drag their mats outside and sleep on the porch). At either end of the camp is a bathroom hut with showers and toilets etc., and there's also one big communal hut. This one features a bakery (freshly baked good every day...yum!), kitchen and cooking area, as well as huge spaces to chill on oversized cushions and the floor, long tables and etc. Oh! And a library, a "take one, leave one" kind of situation. English books are quite expensive, so my friends and I usually trade around what we have, plus I get a new one each month to review for the magazine I write for. Anyway, they had a lot in German, but I did read Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (I love Toni Morrison -- Song of Solomon is one of my favorite books of all time) and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, a fictionalization/reimagining of the life of Laura Bush. Both were excellent.

For food, you are on your own for breakfast and lunch. You can take raw ingredients and make your own, or eat some prepared stuff (i.e. from the bakery, or some corn flakes or whatever). For lunch they usually had out mini-pizzas. And then for dinner you could sign up for prepared food (everything vegetarian!) or make your own. In both cases, you just write down what you took and then pay for everything at the end. We were there three nights and four days, so we did some of our cooking the last night, but ate their food the first two (and it was so amazing). Also, in a very un-Egyptian manner, they recycled! Very exciting stuff.

There was also some beautiful snorkling right off the beach with some great stuff -- saw loads of fish, crabs, sea urchins, etc. And also some lionfish, which apparently are poisonous, so we did not get too close. All in all, an excellent and extremely relaxing vacation. Could not ask for a better start to the summer.

Below, please enjoy some photos of the sea and beach to make you jealous.