Tim Lobb reports on this week’s travels to Cairo – 23 October 2009

This week Andrew Goosen and Tim Lobb had a busy week in Cairo.

Monday

30 minutes after touchdown at the new terminal 3, Cairo airport we were en-route to Katameya Dunes golf course for a quick tour with site representatives. It is an ongoing development in New Cairo with 27 holes designed by Schmidt Curley / Nick Faldo. The course was in grow-in phase and looked fantastic. Definitely the best course we have seen in Egypt – so far anyway!!!

We went for a superb dinner at a great local restaurant with our clients of New Giza then the night at Marriott Zamalek, a fantastic hotel with character and charm.

Tuesday

The morning was spent presenting our final detail design plans for New Giza in Cairo. We have spent alot of time fine tuning the design in recent months and are very excited to see this course come alive on the ground. Staking and bulk earthworks are to start immediately onsite which is great news.

We drove to El Ein Bay at Ain Soukhna (on Red Sea – 100km East of Cairo) in the afternoon to meet up with Tad King (onsite construction supervisor/ shaper) for a drive around and review of the works completed since our last visit. Our 15 acre Paspalum Platinum turfgrass nursery is coming on really well and will be in good health for when we start to harvest for the grassing of the course.

Tad, Tim and Andrew at the El Ein Bay - Paspalum Platinum turf nursery

Wednesday

We woke to a cloudy and almost stormy morning. The day was spent reviewing the earthworks/ irrigation completed on holes 1-10 + 18. The shaping is pretty bold for the bunkering but quite generous for the fairways and greens. We don’t want to make this the hardest golf course in the world but a fun and enjoyable course for all golfers.

The detailed bunker shaping at El Ein Bay

Afternoon meetings regarding the weir structures, stream re-circulation systems and landscaping strategy between Tad, Andrew, Client’s engineer and Tim were productive with some solid solutions arrived upon.

Fish dinner in the evening for Tad, Tim and Andrew at Porto Soukhna was a fantastic way to end a day.

Thursday

We left the hotel (Stella Di Mare) in Ain Soukhna at 9am to drive back to Cairo. A lunchtime meeting about a new project in Sharm el Sheik was competed in Cairo prior to our flight back at 16.30hr.

A very busy but productive week in Egypt.  A fair bit of time spent in the back of our car in traffic jams. But starting construction of New Giza and seeing how well El Ein Bay is coming out made it all worthwhile. We look forward to coming back in early December to review the construction of our two 18 hole projects here.

WRITTEN ON October 23rd, 2009 BY Tim AND STORED IN Andrew Goosen, Our projects, Tim Lobb, Travels