“Returning from Paradise…Nweiba, once more…and always!”

Cairo, the 24th May,2009

“Returning from Paradise…Nweiba, once more…and always!”

*** Whenever I feel like retreating from the real world and reset my brain, clean all the garbage and recharge my body with newer, more powerful energies, I know where I am headed.

*** There is a special place in Nweiba – Red Sea zone, between Taba and Dahab – where I literally feel in heaven. Quite like it happened when I visited the Mexican area of Tulum five years ago and I could feel the power of fire and earth ready to explode under my feet at anygiven moment. Such an earthy, sensual energy as I never felt anywhere else in the world…this time around, it´s Nweiba which takes me and a dear friend who was also needing a recharging to higher levels of pleasure, peace and re-energizing.

*** What can I say?! I had three days of pure delight and loose pleasures, just as I needed and so much deserved. The hotel gardens were lavishly kept and there were birds everywhere. If I can apply theword “perfection” to a place, this would be it!I may look like a chicken in the early grilling stages (nice red tone,though) but it was worth it!

*** Food: great.Beach: Amazing.Company: it couldn´t be better.State of mind: totally zen and pleasure oriented.

*** I am a nature person and being able to enjoy three full days onthe beach – meaning, by the water all the time! – was just pure bliss for me. I made my diving, I swam as if I was preparing for the OlympicGames and I even joined swimming pool gymnastics (we soon discovered that was meant exclusively for grannies or “Dumb and Dumbers”) and“belly dance class” (total mess with no taste taught by a shy egyptian girl who stared at the floor with an expression of deep pain, regret and repentance, all at the same time) by the beach bar.Me, balancing a Pepsi glass in one hand trying to see what the heckwas the girl trying to do (“Dumb and Dumbers” class too) and my friend with his beer watching the show in delight… We didn´t care all of it was so shallow and (s)low entertainment oriented. We didn´t ask for much and we had so much fun. My compulsive joking genes popped out – oh, boy…this can be really irritating, I cantell you that – in the middle of the gymnastic class and I madeeverybody laugh with the strangest, most stupid funny (???) remarks anyone would say out loud.

Me and my friend hadn´t laugh so hard since George W. Bush got hit by that famous, brave shoe during a press conference!I did deserve this much fun and that warm, smooth sun on my skin, allthe joking and just “being” with no agenda, pressures, problems to solve and difficult decisions to make. Just being…every time I travel to Nweiba, I seriously consider delivering myself into a monastery and becoming a monk! This radical thought always crosses my mind as theidea of attacking the doughnuts goes back and forth on people with strict diets. It´s the temptation. The possibility of eternal evasion and total peace of mind…a mirage…just like the view of my hotel. The peace and the no-agenda time is soooo damned great that I hardly miss the world I always have to return to and yet, here I am back toCairo. Duty calls.

*** Tonight, I will be dreaming about my own personal paradise that Ipray to God will never change into one more of those tourist commercial factories spread all over Egypt. Keep your fingers crossed.