I booked a private day tour for 3 ppl from Sharm El Sheikh to Mount Sinai, altering their day plan from their regular schedule, and Egypt Tours was very accompanying. The guide they gave us a great guide Omar, and he was great in explaining the Sinai Peninsula and the history of Moses and St Catherine. He also ensured we had a good guide to the top of Mt Sinai. Unfortunately while the tour guide was great Egypt Tours Club executed a few things very poorly: 1. they told our guide the wrong hotel (there are two resorts of similar name, and I had worked hard to give the full name of the correct resort) resulting in us waiting around from 6:00-6:50 in the morning without breakfast and pushing our lunch back a subsequent hour making it a long hangry morning. Accidents happen and this was just a bit unfortunate 2. I paid the deposit and was to pay the remaining amount in cash to the guide. The amount was $250 USD, but as we are in Egypt and all atms only disperse EGP we only had pounds. In converting the tour operator quoted us 28 pounds to the dollar which was 12% more than the official rate as well as the rate we had been told at the dive shop, coffee shop, resort, all over Cairo the week before. When I pushed back the rate had switched to 32 pounds to 1 dollar, and he explained that I just didn’t understand that there was an official rate and a market rate. What I did understand was that at no time in the past two years was the official exchange rate over 25.7 pounds to the dollar, nor had it ever risen 5 pounds in one day even back in October when it jumped from 19 to 22, and finally as noted before we had been given price in dollars at coffee shops/restaurants/resorts and more over the previous 10 days which all converted at the given rate of 25 to 1. I felt scammed and fleeced from the tour operator, and it really did not sit well with me. If working with them I would only pay in USD over paypal, or confirm price way in advance, as being given an arbitrary exchange rate 12%- 28% more expensive than the official and local market actions is a scam.

I was visiting friends in Cairo and decided I wanted to do the Mt Sinai hike as this was my first visit to Egypt. I had a difficult time finding a tour company that could secure this trip on such short notice and also because I was hesitant doing this on my own (female traveler). I finally found Egypt Tours Club and contacted them with my requests. They were very understanding and accommodating and helped set up an itinerary within a few hours. The tour included pick up at my friends’ place in Maadi, flights through EgyptAir, pick up at Sharm El-Sheik and the transportation and tour up to Mt. Sinai, including return transportation to Sharm El-Sheik. They even helped me set up a tour in Sharm as I had a long wait between my arrival to the airport and the start of the tour (sunrise hike). They contacted me along the way with details about the driver, type of car, and even just to see how I was doing! I highly recommend this company and will definitely use them for my next trip to Egypt (yes- already planning my return).