So how come no one you know has taken a vacation there yet?
Until recently, fear was a good reason. War zones don’t lure tourists. And along the Gulf of Aqaba at this northern tip of the Red Sea, the decades-old battle lines and borders between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all converge. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war began at the gulf’s entrance. Bomb craters and rusting barbed wire still mark the site. It wasn’t until the peace process took hold that tourism companies had the confidence to break ground here. But now the momentum looks unstoppable. Arab generals are shedding their uniforms and speculating in beachfront properties. Groves of construction cranes have sprung up along the desert coast. And even as it signed a treaty with Jordan in October, Israel was promoting “The Free Tourism Zone of the Red Sea Riviera.” The idea is to market a climate of peace – as well as the sun. Already the region’s political troubles are out of sight, out of mind and out of the advertising. The brochures suggest you’ll be visiting not Jordan or Israel but this newfound republic of fun. Farther down the coast, you’re relaxing in “South Sinai,” not braving terrorism-tainted Egypt.
There were only five hotels in 1988 in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, but developers are so confident of its potential that there will be 40 by the end of 1995, In Jordan, the biggest projects are a few miles farther inland, where the ancient ruins of Petra are carved out of sandstone cliffs. At least five major new hotels are under construction there and an abandoned Ottoman village has been turned into a mountaintop resort. But the greatest growth is scheduled for the Israeli port of Elat: expected to double or even triple in size, with as many as 20,000 hotel rooms by the end of the decade.
The irony, of course, is that war is what kept most Bed Sea reefs and beaches pristine all these years. These virgin splendors may now be overwhelmed. Close to overcrowded Elat much of the coral already is dead. Egypt and Jordan have dismal environmental records, and garbage is a persistent problem. The ubiquitous plastic bags that blow across the desert can settle on a reef and destroy it. Other Egyptian beach resorts have turned into badly planned agglomerations of sleaze and slime.
But with rare foresight Cairo has designated more than 50 percent of its Gulf of Aqaba shore as “protected area,” including a national park managed with help from the European Union. Cleanup efforts are underway, and strict controls have been put on sewage disposal, desalination plants and other potential blights. A $100 million resort built by Italian investors even has a specially designed floating pier with pools and decks suspended beyond the edge of the reef so people can get from the beach into the water without injuring the coral. Hotel manager Gabriel MRs Vera says there was resistance to the plan at first, but now “the floating pool, this is our big star.” After benefiting from the blessings of war, the Red Sea Riviera may even survive the ravages of peace.
