SOMA BAY, Egypt (AP) – Egyptian authorities say they are fighting a war on terror at home and abroad, but that hasn’t stopped the Miss Germany beauty pageant from organizing a flashy preliminary contest near the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
Egypt’s Red Sea resorts have taken a big hit financially since the country’s 2011 uprising, but they still seem a world away from the budding insurgency in the northern Sinai Peninsula, where militants have killed scores of security forces, and the lingering political tensions in Cairo and other cities, which still see occasional demonstrations and small-scale attacks.
There was little talk of the unrest at the luxury Kempinski Hotel in Soma Bay, a walled-off colony where mostly Western Europeans and wealthy Egyptians come for sea, sand and sun. On Tuesday night, house music boomed, wine flowed, and lights danced off the smoke machine haze as 24 German women wearing bikinis made their way down the catwalk.
“Everything is safe and good and we’re all sealed off from everything,” said Olga Hoffmann, who won the trial run.
Soma Bay is part of a string of resorts billed as Egypt’s “Red Sea Riviera,” known for world-class diving and sandy beaches that are open year-round. The resorts lie across the Red Sea from Sinai, and have been spared the violence gripping the northern part of the peninsula – an area heavily guarded by Egyptian security forces and local tribes.