Jungle Aqua Park

In September we had a week-long break in a random, small hotel between Al Gouna and Hurghada. It was a great break to get away from everything and totally relax as there wasn't much to do at the hotel. But one day we decided to go on a "day trip" to what sounded like it could be brilliant, or just plain terrible....The Jungle Aqua Park.

It turned out to be just brilliant and so we decided as a last weekend away of the year, we'd go back and actually stay at the Jungle Aqua Park Hotel and slide our hearts away for a few days. So, 2.50pm comes and we're grabbing our bags and heading out to the front of work to pick up our bus and for the weekend fun to begin.

We'd decided to get the bus down as the flights weren't at good times (a 4.15pm flight would have been tight to get after work and then the 8.30pm flight seemed very late). The bus would take us 6 hours we knew, but we had books and food and innane chatter to fill the time with!

A few hours in to the bus journey and we stop at a service station. These are always mines of random-ness so we scower the shelves for something interesting (we bought a great dive log in one before and there's always some random sweets on sale). This time we find some interesting looking CDs. They have the Egyptian flag on them and the dates of the revolution, so we assume they must be revolutionary songs etc. They guy overcharges everyone (as ironically the cash machine stops working when we arrive, so he has to manually note the code and tell us the price rather than scan the bar code....dodgy!) so we put back the chocolate bars we were going to buy too (he wanted 10LE and they are normally 2.5LE) and keep the CDs (30LE each). Later when we get home and play these they are a good buy - 100 mp3 tracks on one of them and a dozen videos on the other - all great tracks that we like the sound of.

7pm and the sun sets, so no more reading for us. 9pm and we're close. I've checked it out on a map and so we know some rough directions and landmarks to look out for, but who would have known there were so many russian-themed hotels in one area?! With only one wrong turn we manage to find it (and discover that you can't just ask for directions to "water park" as there are so many, and that you pronounce "jungle" as "jun-ge" if you want to get to the right place!).

We get ourselves checked in, grab some food and collapse into bed. No need to make a big night of it tonight when we've got sliding to do tomorrow!

So we wake up on Friday morning and wander out for some breakfast and to take a look around, and this is what we find:

 

Our room was huge - we had a queen bed in the main bit of the room and then a small curtain divides it in half to another section with a sofa bed, bunk beds and small table. In this section there are huge sliding doors that opened up onto our own pool area. Brilliant!

Our massive room

Area outside our rooms

We didn't hang out by the rooms much longer though, because there was sliding to do!

This is what excitement looks like!!!

The Slides.

Slide time!

Slides!

Kiddie Slide Area

Sliding reviews (note that slides are either on a single inner tube, a double ring which is a figure of eight, or a mat that you sit on):

The tsunami (big blue one): Best to do on a double ring to get maximum momentum. You drop off a near vertical slope and then head straight up the other side. After a few back and forth in the open and spinning you generally fall into the pool at an angle. Generally considered to be the scariest but the most fun.
The yellow one: Again best to do in a double and you drop straight down this slope. At the bottom you find yourself going up the other side and you continue to yo-yo until coming to a rest at the bottom.
The blue/white toilet bowl: Can be done in a single or double ring and starts with a sharp turning tunnel to gain speed and spin. You then enter a "toilet bowl" and spin round and round until you go into another tube at the bottom and are finally deposited in the pool below. Something was a little off with this ride as nearly everyone said they were getting stuck in the bowl and missing the turn off so were having to scott themselves along to the second slide (only adds to the excitment when you can see the next person bearing down on you!)
The red/white toilet bowl: This one is donw on a mat and you enter a kinked tube that gives you speed and spin before descending into the toilet bowl. At the bottom of the toilet bowl is an open hole into the pool below. This ride saw a number of casualties this holiday with two friends claiming bruises and Scotty scraping skin off his knee from the side of the slide and getting a huge bruise on his hip from when he landed into the toilet bowl from the first tube. Possibly one to be avoided in the future.
The family slide - two different sized rings to choose from (3 or 4 persons) that are wide and open for you all to sit in. The best is with four people to get a bit of moment going and at times we manage to get the ring to almost fold in half as it goes around the corners!
The white up/down one - you have to do this in a double ring (a figure of eight with me in the front and scotty in the back) as with just a single you don't have the momentum to finish the ride. You shoot down the white slide and then shoot back up a steep slope, but as you crest the slide you are squirted in the face by water jets!
The blue and white mat racers - you do these on mats and have to hold on to the bar above you while you get set up on the mat. If you shout loud enough the person in the slide next to you can hear and then you try to let go at the same time and see who splashes down first!
The yellow spin-y one: One for the mat again. You have to lie as flat as possible on this one to get the speed up, but can be a good ride.
The green spin-y one: For a single or double this ride. In a single it is very sedate, but done properly in a double (i.e. with Scotty calling to lean right/left/back) then you get some good speed and go high on the sides.
The back hole: A double or a single and you head down in pitch black. A few nice spins but hard to get up momentum when you don't know which way to lean.
The orange one: A double or a single. Not as steep a fall as the other "big ones" but after descending you go up the other side and are then taken backwards over a hump, have water squirted in your face and then fall out into a small pool. Good fun.


To the evening and we shower and get ready for our big night out (well, you've got to have one when it's all inclusive!) Flossie's plan is that we all dress up with a "jungle theme" so Scotty is doning his Indie gear and I've converted an old pair of socks into a snake costume! It's a riot seeing what everyone else has dressed as (we have a few jungle-prints, a GI Joe, George of the Jungle and a Mowgli!!!) and we head onto a bar for pre-dinner drinks (and a quiz written by Frenchie with the two teams being the Brits and the Yanks).

RHS gets behind the decks to sort out some half-decent music

The Snake!

Overall a brilliant weekend that proves the equation: water + gravity = fun! and we will now forever be chanting under our breath "jun-ge, jun-ge, jun-ge"

The world is a jungle.....but if only it were also an aqua park!