A trip to Shamoussa

by Yusuf Kocaman 9:30 PM - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 0 comments

I’ve been in Cairo for the last 7 months. When I first came I had some troubles getting used to Egypt and the culture. Thankfully, now I’m pretty much used to Egypt except for one thing: the trash. Ever since I came to Cairo the one thing that always bothered me is the dirtiness. Cairo is trash, some places have less trash some places have more. There are literally empty lots full of trash; Behind my house! I haven’t seen the Egyptian countryside however, based on Cairo one might think all of Egypt to be like this. Well, this is how I though until I went to Shamoussa.

Trash Everywhere

I was very excited, there was going to be a trip to a vacation spot with my friends. We were going to have so much fun there. I couldn’t stop thinking about how great this vacation was going to be. But then, another though came to me: “what if that place s trash too, what if the sea is full of trash?” I was already concerned even though my friends that had went before said it was clean. Nevertheless I went; the trip was 3 hours long on a bus, and during that time we did small cultural shows where one would sing a song from their country and so on.

Shamoussa is a village in  Ismailia “The city of beauty and Enchantment” It is right on the bitter lake. Bitter lake is a lake on Suez Canal. We got there at about 10 o’clock and we went in through the entrance. I was finally going to see what kind of place Shamoussa was. After I got in I was greeted with this: 

It was beautiful! Probably the best place I’ve went to in Egypt. The red sea looked awesome and the grass; I had never seen green grass like that before in Egypt. The pool water also looked very nice.

My friends and I got ready to go into the water. So we decided to go to the sea first, and spoiler alert: BIG MISTAKE. Every couple seconds something would prick our feet, and after the painful adventure we were greeted by holes and wounds. After realising our big mistake we decided to stick to the pools. We were having a blast diving, cannonballing, and trying to drown each other; we had so much fun.  I probably swam 6 hours that whole day. At lunch we ate delicious sandwiches. After that some of us went back to swim and some stayed out. After a whole day of fun we went home at 6 pm with great amounts of pain.

I guess I had thought wrong about Egypt, not everywhere is dirty. And when you fid that perfect spot it really turns out to be worth it for the trash. I look forward to going back to Shamoussa...