Middle East - Anthony Ham [164]
Soft Beach Camp ( 364 7586, 012 634 4756; www.softbeachcamp.com; s without bathroom E£40-60, d without bathroom E£60-80; ) With one of the best beach settings in Nuweiba, Soft Beach manages to draw in the punters and avoid the graveyard emptiness of most other Nuweiba establishments. Their beach huts are pretty run-down and nothing special, but the friendly welcome and neat restaurant with hammocks, offering plenty of lazing space, go some way to making up for that. All rooms share bathrooms, and meals are available for E£25 to E£40.
Nakhi ( 350 0879; www.nakhil-inn.com; s/d US$30/44; ) Easily winning the Nuweiba ‘best value’ plaudit, Nakhi boasts several wonderfully designed rooms at the far northern end of the beach. The abodes here have room enough to swing several cats in and are lovingly finished and maintained. Some even have floor-to-ceiling windows for unbeatable panoramic vistas. There’s a private beach here to relax on, satellite TV in the rooms, wi-fi all round and a modern restaurant serving meals. To top it off, the gregarious and welcoming owner has a small dive shop on site and organises desert safaris. Nice one.
Swisscare Nuweiba Village ( 350 0401; www.swisscare-hotels.com; s/d from US$60/70; ) This low-key, midrange resort offers a nod to chain-hotel design, with solid rooms decked out with the essential mod cons. On the beach out front there’s a stocked bar, a pool, an area for beach volleyball and a kiddie playground. The abodes lie scattered around a pretty garden, and there’s even a tiny organic vegie patch with vegetables for sale.
Dolphin Camp ( 345 0401-3; s/d E£40/50) Next door to Swisscare Nuweiba Village, this place provides simpler digs for the budget conscious in colourful and breezy hexagonal, huts – though be sure to ask for a mozzie net. A popular dive camp is based here.
NORTH OF NUWEIBA
Basata ( 350 0480; www.basata.com; 20km north of Nuweiba; campsites per person €10, huts per person €14, chalets €60) This German-run, commune-esque ecolodge is a self-styled beach oasis for ecominded folk and their families. Offering very basic huts as well as more robust, curvy walled chalets, the owners sell organic produce and provide the use of their well-stocked kitchen for guests to prepare their own meals. The beach chill-out space here is a great place to laze and meet fellow, like-minded wanderers. Basata lives up to their eco-promise by recycling waste, doing beach clean-ups, desalinating their own water and actively supporting the local community.
Ayyash Camp ( 010 444 2147; 10km north of Nuweiba; s/d E£30/40) This friendly and laid-back camp, near the breezy Ras Shaitan headland, sits on its own bay and maintains accommodation in austere huts. Ayyash has gained some notoriety among travelling Israeli and international musicians, who come here to jam and record music in the small onsite recording studio. Meals are E£30 to E£40, but be warned: if talk of chakras and the smell of petunia oil scares you, you may want to give this place a wide berth.
Eating
Eating options in Nuweiba are limited.
Dr Sheesh Kebab ( 350 0273; 7am-11pm) The friendly Dr Sheesh has a remedy to cure all: yummy kebabs (E£25) and kofta (E£22), with a prescription of ta’amiyya, salad and bread (E£8) if pain persists. It’s in Nuweiba City.
Cleopatra Restaurant ( 350 0503; 8am-midnight) Opposite the Nuweiba Domina Resort, Cleopatra serves staples such as grilled chicken (E£22) and mezze (E£5 to E£20) in a small courtyard and serves Stella (E£10) to wash it all down.
There are a couple of supermarkets and a sprinkling of open-air eateries among the camps on Tarabin’s promenade.
Getting There & Away
Boat
For information on ferries to Aqaba in Jordan, Click here.
Bus
Buses going to or from Taba stop at both the port and its nearby bus station. You can also request that they stop outside the hospital in Nuweiba City, but this is on the whim of the driver. Buses don’t stop at Tarabin. A seat in a service taxi from the bus station to Tarabin costs E£5; the whole taxi