This year I had a very special advent calendar: each day Julia gave me one small hint to my gift each day. At Christmas Eve a whole story developed and I found out that we’d be going on a quad biking tour on the Sinai peninsula!

Short, russian introduction and off we go on the quad biking tour

 Today’s our second day and with a short, collective transfer we reach the quad bike base close to the mountains. As it will be sandy and dusty we have the chance to buy a scarf that would be wrapped around mouth and nose. I admit the USD 2 were worth every penny. With the only yellow quad in a group of all-reds I shine out. The introduction was kept short and in Russian, it must have been something like “Break here, gas pedal there”, and off we go! In Indian file we drive towards the mountains, flanked by a sand buggy and a motocross bike. And here lies the problem: these drivers watch us rigorously and we can’t even overtake slow and anxious drivers. Not very adventurous… Nonetheless we bust out a couple of times, drifting and overtaking, rewarded by “the look” of our two fellows in sand buggy and on the crossbike.

Not really an adventure, if you were expecting that

To all of you who expect a real adventure, like we did, you’re probably disappointed. We met several other groups, so it was not about choosing the “right” tour operator. Despite this small bummer I was excited because this was the first time on a quad for me. For families with smaller children, this may just be the right activity for an afternoon.

We come to a halt on a small elevation and enjoy the fascinating panorama. What is more, the acoustic of this place was remarkable, so our whole group of 15-20 riders were shouting – mostly Russian – curses and swearwords towards the mountains. Off to the next stop…

Similarly, we reach a group of bedouin tents for the next rest. The tea offered is free, but of course there are a bunch of other things on offer: smoke shisha, buy kitsch and ride on a camel. We fancied none of it and so we are slowly taking off to go back.

The sun decided to also leave us for the day and we witness a beautiful sunset before returning to the base, which takes us about 40 minutes. We’re so happy to relax our thumbs now! Looking at each other we realize we need to beat the dust off our clothes first, before we can get back to the hotel with the transfer. After about three hours in total we are happy to have done that together. Thank you!

// Quadtour: via getyourguide