Habibi Beach Blog

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2010-06-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

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Major Progress!

2009-10-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

I went up to the hotel at sunset last night to see how its moved on since our last wave day up there. The progress has been huge compared to the rest of the year!

6 of the rooms (there is 24 total) are now fully tiled, bathroom floors and walls and the bedroom floors and edging. They are clearly working their way round the whole place to do this, there are loads of boxes of tiles all over the place waiting to be used.

In the main reception/ restaurant building they have dug out foundations and put cages in, to make the walls inside the shell that is already built.

Outside the buildings they have now laid concrete both sides of the bedrooms to create the pathways between rooms and the beach or reception, and there is a small wall built between the path and what will be the gardens down the middle of all the rooms. Out the front of the hotel they have flattened a lot of the land, and also between the back of the hotel and the beach they have flattened all the dunes which already makes access to the beach much better for us.

This movement has been rapid, and its the most people i have ever seen up there working on the hotel. They have now given us the date of completion as Feb 1st 2010. If they keep this level of improvement up it looks like it may finally come true!

2009-09-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid to report that progress on the hotel is still slow if any. However this doesn't stop the action, here's some pictures from yesterday, 3.3m - 4.2m were clung on to as the waves built and jumps just got bigger and better. It was a fantastic day leaving everyone exhausted, especially after the downwinder back to the bay. Todays wind is the same and the point is going off, and forecast for tomorrow is also great so maybe get back to Habibi for some more big wave action.

2009-06-24T04:24:00.000-07:00

A little amount of progress has been made on the hotel, there are some nice steps out both sides of the bedrooms now, and some brickwork has been put around the buildings, but sadly no change has occurred in the main reception buildings or inside the bedrooms. However we did recently have the pleasure of meeting one of the local camels who had come to check the place out himself, and we have been having some great sailing sessions up there too.

2009-04-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

2009-04-15T02:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I updated the Habibi Beach Blog so let's bring everything up to date. First, some nice water shots taken a week or so ago when Jem Hall was out on a coaching week. The shots were actually taken on his 'day off'. We went up not really expecting much as the forecast was for quite light winds, but it kicked in for a couple of hours and gave some excellent waves for jumping and even for riding. It's actually much easier for swimming about and taking pictures than I'd imagined and I managed to get a load of nice shots and not destroy the camera, which makes a nice change! I've also heard that we've managed to sneak one of them into the contents page of the next Boards mag, so watch out for that.

More importantly, what's happening on the building site? There are no dramatic advances in hotel building to report, but there are signs of life. The rooms have received another coat or two of whitewash and some fancy decorative brickwork around the doors and windows so that they finally look a bit more like a hotel and less like a prison! The main reception area is about twice the height of the pictures below, and they've now remembered to put some windows in that as well. We has some clients sailing at Habibi who worked in the building trade in the UK, and while they had a bit of a chuckle at some of the workmanship they generally gave it a thumbs up.

I would have taken some pictures, but faced with a dilemma of whether to go for a sail or set up the camera for land shots the waves called me. On the plus side I got a sweet back loop!

I'm back out to Egypt in a week's time and will do a proper Habibi report with shots of the hotel once I get there, and hopefully be able to report an updated estimated date of opening...

Update Jan 2009

2009-01-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a little while since I updated this blog, and that's because it's been a little while since much building work happened up at Habibi Beach!

We don't know exactly what the delay is, but we have been told that there's now no real chance of the hotel being finished by March this year, but the intention is still to get it finished around early summer time. Unfortunately that's a sign of these credit crunch times!

On the plus side, there's still been plenty of windsurfing action up at Habibi, and I'll get Danielle to post up some photos. Just to make you jealous if you're stuck in the UK's coldest winter since records began (well it feels like it anyway!)

happy new year to everyone...

Saturday 8th November

2008-11-09T23:27:00.000-08:00

Having been up to Habibi to take a look at what progress has been made and we are pleased to tell you the reception and restaurant areas have doubled in height, with some interesting looking archways at the entrance ad back door. A lot of the rooms have been given the external white wash ready for painting, and most of the rooms now have the steps outside them leading from the room to the 'gardens' which are still to be created.

The team of builders seemed a little smaller than last time we visited, but i'm hoping this was just me picking a bad moment to go up there and that they still have a large team working away at other times!!

We should be getting up to Habibi more this week with the Boards test team and Jim Collis' clinic, so we'll keep you posted to more progress as it happens.

2008-10-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Bricklaying Egyptian style.

This space will form the entrance hall, with the restaurant on the left and the reception offices on the right. The beach is in the background of the shot.

No, not an incorrectly placed wall but a large pile of bricks.

The rooms, freshly plastered (with one coat) and one with the PVC coating ready for a second coat.

There’s been quite a lot of progress on the Berrylands Hotel up at Habibi beach, as these photos from late October show. The 24 rooms have now all received a coat of plaster inside and out, and are beginning to look something like the hotel rooms they will become in the new year. A huge area of land between the rooms and the beach has been flattened and raised up, ready for the planting of the gardens, construction of the windsurf centre and beach bar, and the sinking of the swimming pool. But most significantly, the walls of the hotel reception and restaurant are now going up.

There’s now a team of builders living and working at the site and progress is, finally, actually pretty rapid. The estimated completion date of the build is still end of January 2009 – but as anyone who’s watched the program ‘Grand Designs’ will know, even in Europe these dates really are just estimates. In Egypt we’re beginning to suspect they’re more like figures plucked hopefully from the air! However, if progress does continue at the pace that work is currently happening – well, an opening date of early 2009 is certainly possible. We’ll keep you posted here on the Habibi blog!

2008-10-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

We went up to Habibi this weeked for a quick look around at the building work and two days of solid wavesailing. With 4.7s and really nice waves it was good for jumping and also very rideable with nice waves coming in a little further upwind than normal where the wind is quite sideshore, allowing for some easy down the line. Some big stalled forwards from OS's Jack (see above, far above) and forwards on the way in from one of our clients Jules as well as solid perfomances from Dom and Dan and Micheal from the Poles. Great fun blasting downwind at the end of the session as well.

On the building front I'm just back from a meeting with the owner of Berrylands hotel (the official name of the hotel at Habibi Beach, named after the daughter of the owner, Hassan), and he assured us that we're still on for a January 2009 opening of the hotel, although in my opinion there is still a lot to do to meet that deadline.

There's not really been a huge amount of progress since the start of this entire blog, but we're promised that the next few days will see work start in earnest. During Ramadan and the feast which follows it there's only been two or three guys working there, and it would take years to finish the project at that pace, but once you get an army of builders on site things will start to happen very quickly.

They have finished the shells of 4 or 5 of the rooms now, and they're looking quite nice, with wooden roofs that remind you of an alpine lodge. We got our first idea of how the gardens will be too, apparently they're going for an English garden look with small hills of grass and cast iron benches to sit on, as well as a nice large swimming pool next to a big bar area, which isn't very English frankly but all the better for that. It should be very nice and it will make windsurfing at Habibi such a nice experience. To date we only reguarly go to Habibi when the wind is very strong, at least 5.2 weather, but just occasionally we've sailed there in 5.7/6.2 wind as well and it's great. It has a totally different character, much less full on and hectic, but still good coastal sailing, with swells to jump off and gybe on, and frankly perfect in just a pair of boardies. Moses bay has the backdrop of the town of El Tur, which is interesting, but not the prettiest view. At Habibi you get a fantastic view of the mountains.

Rendering and Plastering

2008-10-03T01:00:00.000-07:00

Helen here with a update on Friday 3rd October.

Despite Ramadan an impressive amount of work has been done in the 2 weeks since I last visited. However there were no workers on site while I was there.
All the rooms now have their interior walls plastered, and the big news is that four rooms have been rendered! That’s covered with a layer of cement on the outside to you and me! Some of them have a decorative pattern imprinted into the cement around the doors and down the corners of the walls, which is a nice touch.
Most of the rooms now also have brick steps up to their main doorway.
And there was plenty of evidence of the intention of work what with piles of sand, bags of cement, water and even a colour chart.

And finally… one thing we can all look forward to is enjoying a nice cold drink in the new beach bar, after a good days wave sailing, and watching the sunset over the Gulf of Suez. It’s stunning!

A basic plan of Oceansource Habibi

2008-10-01T05:26:00.000-07:00

There's been a bit of a delay in consturction up at Habibi due to Ramadan. For religious reasons many muslims do not eat or drink during the hours of sunlight, meaning it's very difficult to do certain jobs as everyone is too hungry and thirsty!. However, Ramadan ended yesterday and, following three days of holiday and eating lots, we're hoping work will get started again in earnest. In the meantime, here's a basic plan of how Oceansource Habibi will look, with the Red Sea and those all important waves lapping at the shore just a few metres away!

The centre will be located in lush gardens, and eventually have a swimming pool right next door, and a beach bar, so you can wash the salt out of your eyes with a refreshing swim, and then grab a beer!

2009 kit hits the water at Habibi

2008-09-19T09:18:00.001-07:00

And since I'm not currently out in Egypt, I'm rather jealous.

Flat Surfaces, Plastered Walls and a Labrador!

2008-09-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

(Monday 8th September 2008 - update from Helen)

I haven’t visited Habibi for a week and was amazed by the progress, especially considering it is Ramadan. I arrived there in the afternoon a good 10 hours since the workers will have last consumed water or food and there were five men onsite all awake and working!

The big news it that they have plastered the walls inside 10 of the rooms, so they are actually starting to look a bit more like hotel rooms. The workers were busy slapping plaster on the walls of the 11th room while I was there. So 13 to go after that.

The flat surface between the last hotel rooms and the beach has been expanded and is clearly ready for the beach bar, swimming pool and landscaped gardens. There’s no sign of the Oceansource centre as yet but hopefully that’s next on their list.

More to come soon….

Plus, new Twin Fin boards coming soon...

2008-08-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention, we're also trying to get our hands on some of these new fangled twin fins boards so that Oceansource El Tur guests can try them up at Habibi as soon as possible. The RRD twin fin is rumoured to be the best of the bunch - Jem Hall is raving about his and John Skye (newly sponsored by RRD so hardly impartial, but speaking off the record in this case) also really highly rates it. The RRD importer has told us 'they're like rocking horse sh*t' right now but we're hoping to get at least one out to El Tur by mid to late September. We may also be bringing out a Starboard Evil Twin at the same time. I've tested one of these already and suspect they might go rather nicely at Habibi...

Habibi Update

2008-08-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

We've just sent out a newsletter telling the world about this Habibi Beach Blog so I ought to update it with the latest news - that being the point of it. So here goes: Helen (Oceansource El Tur Manager) took some guests up to Habibi yesterday and gave me a nice report of the conditions (nice 5.0 weather and small waves). However there wasn't a great deal of action going on with the building work, unless you count the security guard fast asleep in his little hut!

We're getting the hang of Egyptian building techniques now though and this is pretty normal. Things either happen incredibly quickly and chaotically one day, or they don't happen at all. When the beach bar in Moses Bay was built it was exactly the same. Nothing would be done all day and then half an hour before dark, 50 builders would turn up, dig foundations, lay cement, build a bar and then disappear again because they'd run out of rawl plugs. It's no real surprise it took hundreds of years - and the help of aliens - to build the pyramids. (And even then they looked nothing like the plans)

Anyway, hopefully Helen can go up again this weekend and see if anything exciting is going on. (The weekend in Egypt is Friday Saturday, so they should be getting on with it on Sunday). Of course 1st September is also the beginning of Ramadan, when all muslims don't eat or drink during the hours that the sun is in the sky. We suspect this might have a slight effect on enthusiasm for a few weeks! The latest date we have for completion of the whole project is now the 1st January 2009 - but we could well have the Oceansource centre up and running a little before that. We'll see...

Bricks and sand. Lots of them!

2008-08-23T05:05:00.001-07:00

We've just been up for a quick look at the progress at Habibi and at the entrance to the site we were greeted by two huge towers of bricks, a sure sign that work is continuing.
The 24 rooms now all have wooden door and window frames and inside all have plastic tubing ready for the electric cables to go in. Inside the bathrooms the baths are in! Not looking particularly pretty at this stage because the internal plastering hasn't happened yet. There will be showers over the baths as well.
Behind the rooms the water pipes have been extended and are ready to be joined together to the main pipe, which will be buried alongside the site wall.
The major development to note was the large trucks of sand being brought in to level the area between the hotel and the beach. Two arrived and emptied their loads while we were there. This is particularly exciting for Oceansource as once the ground has been levelled, work will begin on building the centre. The levelling work is due to be complete by the end of August and so we are expecting to see some progress on the centre itself in September. The plan is to have the Oceansource centre set in a luxurious tropical garden of palm trees with the beach bar and pool within easy access. The latest date we have for completion of the whole site is Jan 1st 2009 - but we could easily have the centre up and running a bit before then...
Fingers crossed everyone and I’ll keep you posted!
Helen.

Update coming very soon...

2008-08-09T03:37:00.000-07:00

We're just waiting for an update on building works at Habibi but while we wait, I thought I'd stick up a few photos of Habibi that show what this is all about... Great winds, great waves, warm and clear water and amazingly consistent!

2008-07-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

So what are the exact plans for Berrylands Hotel and surrounding area?

As I might have mentioned already, the entire piece of land stretching from the site of Berrylands hotel in the north, down to the mysterious Centre for Human Research in the south

has had its status changed from military land (and therefore off limits) to land available for development. As a result, and somewhat surprisingly to me at least, it’s all been bought by various development companies. (see map here:)

Now this doesn’t mean various companies have bought it in the vague hope of developing at some unspecified time in the future. As we understand it, these companies now have a year to begin construction on this land, or they lose the rights to do so at all. This is quite common in Egypt, and it means when things start to happen, they happen quickly.
So what are we going to see arrive in El Tur? We only have vague details, but it sounds as though there will be 2 or 3 hotels aside from the Berrylands Hotel (which you can see by the pictures on here is well on the way), restaurants, a shopping mall and a seafront promenade similar to that at Dahab. For anyone that’s been to Habibi beach this is all a bit hard to imagine, since it’s currently just a large expanse of scrubby desert!

I recently walked along this whole stretch of beach trying to imagine it as a bustling tourist centre, and to be honest I can see the appeal. Once cleaned up it’s a nice beach, the wind keeps you cool and there’s a coral reef running most of the length, which means the water inshore is very calm, even though there are large breaking waves 30-40 metres offshore.

From a windsurfing point of view, the only really sailable spot is Habibi itself. You ‘could’ sail where the reef is. Get it right and you might be able to hit the first wave with good speed and do a massive jump over the shallow part but you’d need a small fin a lot of luck to avoid impaling yourself on coral heads. Any takers?

From a tourist point of view there’s not much there, it’s just a beach. But add landscaped gardens, swimming pools, bars and everything else and it could be quite nice. It’s not that different to Dahab really, but you don’t have the diving. We’re still slightly dubious as to whether people will come in the numbers required to make it all work. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The good news is that whatever work is undertaken here won’t adversely affect the wind. Since the wind blows cross on at Habibi and sideshore further round the coast there’s no danger of big wind shadows. We’re also quite comfortable that there won’t be a big issue of noise and nuisance when the building work going on. The area is quite large and well enough away from both the Moses Bay Hotel and sailing in Moses Bay, and from the new Berrylands Hotel and Habibi beach so that people staying at either site won’t be affected.

So how about Berrylands Hotel itself? You can see the building work is already well underway, what exactly is being built. Well take a look at this image taken from Google earth and allow me to talk you through it:

Yellow Blocks – these are the twin lines of hotel rooms that you can see are already more or less built. Each will have a small balcony and there will be a small pool area between them, and landscaped gardens.

Purple Block – this is the reception and lobby of the Berrylands Hotel, and the photos below show the new foundations for this.

Green Blocks – these are new rooms scheduled to be built immediately after the main construction of the hotel is finished. These will add about 60 rooms to the hotel. There will be a very large pool area in the middle of these rooms.

Red pentagon – This is where we think the hotel dining room will end up. Hopefully it should have good views of the action. There will also be a beach bar opposite the Oceansource Habibi Centre.

Red rectangle – This is the location of the new Oceansource Habibi Centre. We’ve set it about 20 metres away from the edge of the water so there’s plenty of room on the beach. We’ll have a centre very similar to the current one at Moses Bay, wooden built with running water, electricity, wireless internet and all the latest toys! The beach bar will be right next door and the area will all be landscaped so you’re walking through beautiful gardens on your way to the centre. We’ll also have a wall just upwind, so you won’t get sandblasted on the beach, but obviously the wind on the water won’t be affected.

The limits of the Berrylands hotel are shown by the red perimeter line. Inside this all the land will be landscaped.

We can’t wait!

And talking about this, the date we have for completion of phase 1 of this project (that’s the yellow rooms, hotel lobby/reception, pool, beach bar, Oceansource Habibi Centre and hotel dining room) is end of November 2008. We’ll keep you informed!

And this just in from Helen (Oceansource Centre Manager)

2008-07-24T03:45:00.000-07:00

Progress MASSIVE (by Egyptian Standards)!!
Foundations for the reception, restaurant and kitchen building are in, at road end of the site. No gaps left for doorways so presume the building will be on top of the 1 meter high stone wall they have built. With steps up?
There were six men working up there this morning, 3 drinking tea but still more than we've seen for months and clear evidence that some are living on site.
All rooms have the electric box things in them. Whole site photo shows potential of views from dining room which will be higher than position photo was taken from.

(She'll get the hang of posting for herself very soon!)

July 24th Update - Building works re-commence

2008-07-24T03:40:00.000-07:00

In the foreground here you can see the foundations for the hotel lobby and receptions, the rooms then stretch away and the beach is at the far end.

The rooms get their roofs...

Again, these are just the foundations for the reception. It's not a hotel for very short people only.

2008-07-23T00:33:00.000-07:00

Before we tell you any more about the Habibi Beach story, you might like to know where it is.

For those of you who have visited El Tur and the Moses Bay Hotel, the normal sailing area is shown below by the black arrow. This is Moses Bay. Habibi Beach is a five minute drive up the road, and nicely out of town.

And moving to a close up of Habibi... There's not that much to see, but then we are looking at it from space here. You can see the lines of waves coming in - although this isn't a very windy day. The new hotel and Oceansource centre is being built at the North end of the beach (towards the top of this picture).

Gregg testing the RRD 85 FSW

2008-07-18T07:46:00.001-07:00

Here's a photo from one of those Boards tests in 2006. Shot at Habibi wave beach and proving that front side wave riding is very much a possibility.

Background to this blog

2008-07-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

A short history of Habibi Beach and Berrylands hotel…

Egypt has been famous for its year round strong winds for almost as long as windsurfers have been scouring the globe searching for the perfect destination. But while most wrote Egypt off as a freeride only location, waves have been quietly pushing into the beautiful Habibi Beach since time immemorial.

And what waves. Habibi is special because its almost the only piece of coastline where the coral reef is broken. There is a gap in the reef of nearly a kilometre where the swell rolling down the Red Sea breaks onto a gently shelving sandy beach. The beach is curved so that the launch area is sheltered with waves only every getting to around waist height. Further out and down the beach they build in size, until you get to the point where they’re often logo to mast high and for experts only. Most people don’t believe us on this, but they do when they see them for themselves!

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

We don’t know who first discovered Habibi Beach, but when windsurfers first started coming to El Tur the land was owned by the Military. They didn’t do much there except build a water pumping station – the only building you can currently see on Google Earth. Windsurfers were allowed to access the beach but there were no facilities, not even a road. The taxi pick-up trucks drove as far as they could get, and they you had to walk the rest of the way (and often walk back to help push the trucks back to the main road as their wheels got stuck in the soft earth).

In the first few years of windsurfing at El Tur, no one used the wave beach that much. It was a hassle to get there and the sailing in Moses Bay and the Point was so good, that you didn’t need to go. One group that did buck that trend were the Boards test team, when they came to test equipment in 2005. Having been to Egypt many times before they were distinctly bored with flat water windsurfing and loved the waves, where you could jump and ride waves, and the photos they took back from the wave beach really began to put it on the international map. They even tested waveboards there in 2006, a decision that caused them no end of hassle from the manufactures who simply refused to believe that Egypt could have good enough waves for a wave test – even when they had the photos in front of them! As a part of that test, Oceansource’s Gregg Dunnett remembers trying to build a road to allow the trucks to get closer to the water:

“We were so fed up with walking backwards and forwards with 30 waveboards that we dug out a bogged piece of land and built a section of proper road through it. First some huge boulders, then smaller rocks, then pebbles and finally tiny stones on top. It meant the taxis could get to within 20 metres of the water, rather than having to stop 80 metres away. It was great because it meant more time in the water – but I don’t want to build any more roads in the Egyptian sun!”

One thing they mentioned to the hotel owner was how nice it would be if there were a simple shelter from the sun, and somewhere to store a bit of water and food at the wavebeach – but it wasn’t possible, because it was military land.

The idea must have stuck in the hotel owners mind however, because he set about buying a section of the land from the local military, in order to build a shelter. But he didn’t want to stop there. He put forward plans to build a shelter, a new centre, plus a complete hotel – with restaurant, beach bar, pool and beautiful landscaped gardens. Amazingly the plans were accepted, and building got underway on the new hotel, named Berrylands after the daughter of the Moses Bay hotel owner.

Soon after this El Tur Windsurfing, who had run the centre at Moses Bay, was sold to Oceansource – consisting of Gregg Dunnett (from those Boards magazine tests) and Ed Texier. They would also operate the new centre at the wave beach. One of their first actions was to give the wave beach a name. And over a meal at the Golden Fish Restaurant it was officially named Habibi – an Arabic word which technically means ‘my beloved’ but is used all the time to refer to anything that is really good. The locals seemed to approve of the name and it’s swiftly caught on.

And for a while it all seemed tremendously exciting. The sailing at Habibi was as good as ever and the Oceansource team gave the beach it’s first proper clean in centuries. And construction continued apace. A perimeter wall was put up and the outside shell of 36 rooms were built, complete with plumbing and lighting. A small army of construction workers were there day and night working to an unusually high standard.

And then it all stopped. We don’t really know why, but for six months or so nothing much happened. These were slightly worrying times. We at Oceansource had no influence over the timescale of building the Berrylands hotel, and each time we sailed at Habibi we’d look over the half built rooms hoping for some signs of progress.

Finally, in mid 2008 we found out what was really going on. There had been some money issues with the Berrylands project which had now been sorted out, but more importantly the entire piece of land stretching from Habibi Wave Beach almost back to the Moses Bay Hotel had been re-designated by the El Tur council. It was no longer military land but land available for development. This has opened up the possibility for Sharm El Shiek or Dahab style tourism in El Tur. We don’t know if it will happen, but it’s possible.

So the future is bright for Habibi Beach and the Berrylands Hotel. The aim of this blog is to keep people up to date with developments there as they happen. We’ll also be explaining in more detail what is being built and where, and how it will all work, and most importantly when it will open. Stay tuned for more…