Background to this blog

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…