Egypt, El Gouna: Home. Although I haven’t been living in Egypt for the past 3 years full time going back is just like going home, this time it was just for 10 days before continuing of to the Philippines to rejoin World Class.
Tom Seager also came along, only just making the connection in Istanbul we flew on to Hurghada and then to El Gouna where Anna Hashem was waiting for us as well as Victor and Louis, two other World Class students, and of course all of the Gouna crew, setting the stage for plenty of shredding.
We were in time to be the first ‘guests’ in the new Kitepower centre on the north side of El Gouna, the centre is really well laid out with plenty of storage space, a good range of rental equipment, great bar and restaurant, plenty of space to chill out between sessions and best of all it is full of familiar faces, with plenty of the old team from he original kitepower reunited, both kite centre staff and bar/ kitchen staff, anyone who used to love haging at mangroovy should definitely check it out. The station is the furthest north, with a huge lagoon in front and loads of space for everyone, you can also explore further up and downwind from the spot or even ride out to the offshore reefs.
We managed to score a few great kite sessions with some freestyle training and a couple of big looping sessions at the end of the day, it was awesome to be back on the water with Omar and Moody Modrek, my original school and kite buddies and even Jeremy Burlando was back to Egypt for a visit.
A few hundred meters from Kitepower there is another new station, Makani beach, it’s also a great place to hang out and is the home station of one of my Duotone teammates Nathalie Lambrecht, so we also managed to score a few sessions together.
One of the other cool things about El Gouna has to be the cable park ‘Sliders’, one of the best ways to spend a no-wind day and also fun to ride with my old classmate Karim Adlhy who is making his was into the world cable rankings, it’s great to see so much young talent coming out of my hometown!
The 10 days in Gouna passed far too quickly and it was soon time to pack up and head to the Philippines, there is no doubt I will be back to Egypt before too long!
A special thanks to El Gouna TV for this cool clip!
