Egypt!
WARNING! This is a damn long post, I’ve had no internet for the entire time I was in Egypt, short of data roaming, and I wasn’t posting via that! So apologies to start off with. Photos will go up when I'm back in OZ as most of them are like 10mb each!....
So we have survived our 25 days on our Winter Wanderer, and our 5 days of pretty much nothing in London. Our London time was pretty uneventful and we didn’t really try to see anything much, we went up in the London eye on one day, but other than that, we slept and just relaxed.
Currently we are in Egypt, OH Sandy Sandy Egypt! Haha So far everything has been pretty good! Coming to Egypt, I had absolutely no expectations at all, apart from Disney’s Aladdin, I had no idea what to expect…. Blue Genie…. Talking Monkeys….. Flying carpets!
Our departure from Heathrow was as always, uneventful….As London seems to be at the moment, and we got our plane to Cairo, a BMI flight, at 9.15 or something like that. It was a lovely flight, loads of room, the food was pretty good, and time just seemed to fly past! Looking out of the window when we finally made land was definitely not what I had originally expected. When you are coming from London, you enter Egypt from the North-West. I was expecting to see sand and loooooots of it, but I was greeted by lush greenery basically everywhere. Not exactly what I had expected! Lol about 20 minutes of Lush greenery, and you see a very distinct line where the greenery stops and a hell of a lot of sand starts. This was definitely more of the Egypt that I had expected!
Sooner than both Manda and I had expected, we started our decent into Cairo Airport and were met with a Contiki sign and a guy called Mohammed . We bought our visas, passed through customs, collected our bags and were whisked away into an awaiting minivan.
Driving through Cairo is absolute insanity, some form of organised chaos, with more emphasis on the chaos. There are donkeys, and minivans, taxi’s and trucks literally everywhere. There are no street signs and no lines on the road…. NONE! We did pass the occasional traffic light (Stop, Wait, Go type) but most of them were cracked beyond recognition. Throughout this chaos, you see the Egyptian people wandering calmly across the street. Blank expressions on their faces, no fear for their lives at the bus hurtling towards them at 50km/h. Very occasionally you would see a tourist, mostly Caucasian or Asian, darting out into traffic, and then backing up as quickly as they had started. (I’m writing this a few days in, so I’ve now been the tourist, and my god do I understand the sudden back up!!)
It took about half an hour to get from the airport to our hotel for the night, the Hotel Victoria! In its day the Hotel Victoria would have been a very grand place to stay. Nowadays, it has a little bit more character, and a lot more dust. The all male hotel staff, were quick to show us to our rooms, and carry our bags for a tip of course…. Be good to your mother didn’t go down so well! Lol
That evening we had our Orientation for the tour starting the next day downstairs in the drawing room. Sherif our tour guide did the run down of all things Egypt and then told us where we could go that night to find dinner and essentials like baby wipes and hand sanitiser.
Dinner that night was at a restaurant called Gad. A ten minute walk through the sand swept streets of Cairo. The buildings in cairo are all very simple, and symmetrical, and are made from concrete and numerous other random materials. Since the revolution in January/February last year there has been a lot of devastation especially around Cairo. There is a lot of anti-government graffiti, broken and burnt out buildings and a hell of a lot of rubbish everywhere. Apparently since the government disbanded in January/February, there are a lot of people that have stopped working and basically stopped doing a lot of the things that they would normally do…ie. working etc.
I am not sure if this includes rubbish collection, but damn do they have a serious rubbish problem. There is literally stuff everywhere. The pavers on the streets are broken and filled in with sand and other items. A lot of the street lights don’t work, and there are broken cars sitting in the streets all over the place.
Okay… sorry off on a rubbishy tangent there… back to dinner! So Sherif our lovely tour guide lead us through the streets to the restaurant Gad. He told us that the night that we had arrived was actually Egyptian Christmas. Alongside Egyptian Christmas there was also a Germany v. Egypt soccer game on the television that night and hundreds of people were crowded around a single TV out in the streets to see if Egypt was to be victorious!
In Australia I blend in pretty well, my blonde hair and blue eyes generally go unnoticed. In Egypt, I stick out like crazy. Actually it’s not just me, it’s tourists in general. They all call out to us, welcoming us to Egypt or Alaska sometimes - I think they think it's funny. The children stare in amazement that people could be so white, and stare even further at my practically white hair and blue eyes. All the locals want to shake your hand or give you a kiss (enter baby wipes and hand sanitiser!!!! I may need shares in Kleenex and Dettol by the time I’m done!) and ask you where you are from and how old you are. The kissing I manage to tactfully avoid, but the hand shaking, well, not so easy to avoid, that and I feel guilty about not saying hello. The Egyptians certainly like white skin and blonde hair. So far, I’ve had about 15 offers of husbandry, as apparently I need a good Egyptian husband…. And I’ve been told that I’m worth two hundred million camels! Damn Straight I am! Hahaha
Okay back to dinner again…. Gad is a two storey building, with a take away area downstairs, and a cramped sit down style restaurant (I use the term restaurant loosely) upstairs. The downstairs area was absolutely packed, we had to wade through a billion (slight exaggeration) and one people to get through tot the stairs that take you upstairs to the restaurant. There were 9 of us this particular evening, but with a little shuffling we were seated and given our menu’s, thankfully with an English translation underneath the Egyptian, and we ordered our dinners.
I had a quick scan of the restaurant to see what everyone else was eating and settled for some Kebab and Kofta (probably dog but hey, when in Egypt!). There were a tonne of people in the restaurant, and of course they were all staring inquisitively at us.
The Kebab and Kofta was pretty damn good and all our food was very quick to be served. After we had all finished, we started back to the hotel via a service station that we had been given directions to.
The walk back was very similar to the walk to the restaurant, people yelled out to us, and tried to get us into their shops (all open til about 10 or 11 at night… my kind of shopping) and told all the ladies that they were beautiful, and that once again we needed Egyptian husbands.
After a quick shop in the service station for supplies, we headed back to our hotel.
So on arrival at our hotel in the afternoon, I had swatted and killed three of the largest mosquitos that I have ever EVER seen! I am pretty sure I could have saddled up and gone for a ride on one in pardicular. Coming back to the hotel in the evening, we were greeted by more mosquitos. After a quick swatting campaign around the room, we went to bed.
About 1 am I woke up to a very high pitched buzzing somewhere near my ear. I had missed one! By the time I had actually woken up from the buzzing, this little blood sucking bastard had managed to bite me twice on the chin, once on the forehead and once on my freaking eyelid! My EYELID for godsakes!! I propped myself up on my elbows quietly to listen for the little shit, breathed in through my nose, and promptly sucked the little thing into my left nostril. Quite uncomfortable to say the least. I don’t know if he survived the journey into my nose, and out again, but I didn’t hear from him again for the rest of the night.
The next morning we had what I would call an early start for someone that’s on holidays. We received a wakeup call at about 6.45am. The guy on reception actually wanted to say good morning, so my normal pick up and slam down the phone in the dark didn’t work, as he just phoned back...
Breakfast at the Victoria is rather scarce, toast, jam, cheese and what I think was pomegranate juice. I went with bread and jam as it seemed a safe option, and at this stage I wasn’t entirely sure how my body was going to react to anything Egypt!
First up on the tour of things to do this day, was the Egyptian Museum. We headed in by bus, and were given our tickets to the museum. Our guide Sherif took us on a tour around the museum and showed us all the major pieces of art etc. For a museum that houses some of the oldest relics in the world, it was a little bit disappointing. There are a lot of sculptures, statues, paintings and so on that are behind cloudy glass, and there was a lot of stuff that was covered in clear plastic etc. However, the lack of display, certainly was made up by the absolute mass and size of some of the relics that this museum houses. Stones from temples that are the size of large trucks, Statues and Greek inspired columns, that stand almost two storeys tall. Everything in Egypt that has been made of stone seems to be absolutely enormous.
After a quick coffee or two (good coffee in Egypt is like hens teeth it would seem) at the museum café, we headed to the Pyramids of Giza. I spoke earlier about the traffic in Cairo… well peak hour…. is like normal traffic (which is crazy enough) on steroids!!@!$# Holy Crap! It took us about 45 “suburbia” per say. Once minute you’re looking out the window at dusty apartment buildings, the next you see this absolutely huge pyramid poking out from behind an apartment block. I couldn’t get over how close they are in proximity to Cairo city. For some reason, in my head, I had this image of having to travel into the desert to get to see pyramids, but no, they’re literally like the house next door!
The three Pyramids of Giza are really an incredible sight. The sheer mass of these three pyramids is overwhelming at best. Each block, hand cut, moved by hand up a steep ramp, and placed in to this massive structure, to house the body of one person. It really is testament to a civilisation that were well beyond their years when it came to engineering.
Our guide Sherif had organised Camel rides for us around the pyramids, so that we could get to a place where we could take better photographs of the three pyramids in alignment. My Camel’s name – Mickey Mouse, my camel driver - Ali, like Ali-G I was told. Ali-G was 17 years old, plenty old enough to be my husband he informed me. Lol too cute! Haha We trekked around the pyramids, and then he let me drive my camel back to the finishing point. I think I’m a fully licenced Camel driver now. Truthfully, I think my camel knew it’s way back, and it just wanted food cause the minute Ali-G was gone, he definitely made a bee line to where the food was at! Lol My kind of camel!
After our camel ride, we headed from the Pyramids down to the Sphinx for a quick look around the embalming temple, and so that everyone could get photos kissing the nose-less statue. At each temple or sight that we stop at, out of nowhere come 40 children, each selling bracelets, bookmarks, postcards, each competing with one another for our attention, and money. These kids are usually followed by adults, mainly men, selling everything from pashmina’s to cartons of cigarettes and literally everything in between.
At the Sphinx, they will very strategically pose you and then take your photos for you in a multitude of poses with the Sphinx herself, for FREE…. Now the Egyptians haven’t quite mastered the concept of FREE yet…. They sucker you in with the promise of just being friendly, then expect you to tip them for services rendered like taking a photo. Fair enough I say, they have to make a living somehow!
After we finished at the Sphinx, we were bussed to a restaurant for some traditional Egyptian Falafel and char grilled chicken before heading to our lodgings for the evening <insert scary music here> the overnight train to Aswan.
We arrived at the train station, and Sherif told us that we would be waiting on the bus for about half an hour (ish time) as it was safer for us to wait here, and he didn’t want us to be harassed on the platform. After half an hour, we othe porters with our bags into the train station and down to our departure platform. Again, all eyes were on us. Sherif says that this is normally the high season, but since January 2011 and the revolution, things have been quite slow. Our tour of 28 people is the largest tour he has had since this time last year.
After a little while, and some serious snack purchasing from the little stalls on the platform, our train arrived and we each found our overnight berths. I had heard a few things from people that had previously caught the train out of Cairo down to Southern Egypt, and all reports I had heard had really lowered my expectations probably to underground levels, and I thought we were in for a really rough night. To my surprise, we each had double berth cabins, with a little sink and a completely lockable door. Amanda took the bottom bunk, and I took the top (thankfully with rails so I wouldn’t fall out!). The train ride went relatively quickly (all 12 hours) and thankfully I managed to get what I think was a few hours of sleep, even though I wasn’t really sure as I had decided not to clock watch! Just before arriving into Aswan, I decided a trip to the bathroom was in order…… Holy crap…. Not literally…. But close enough! Lol
I’ve decided on this trip that women really did get the rough end of the stick when it comes to matters of the bathroom. Ladies, if you’ve ever had to hover, you know exactly what I’m taking about! So on top of hovering, trying desperately not to touch the toilet seat, one hand on the wall handle to steady myself from falling into the toilet bowl, I realise there is no toilet paper. No worries, there’s a brand new packet of tissues tucked into my bra! Well, fuck me! Trying to hover over the bowl, hold on to the handle, not get your pants in the wee on the floor, reach for tissues in your bra one handed, open the tissues one handed, remove a tissue one handed is not an easy task, and I’m pretty sure I pee’d on my leg. L Not happy Jan! lol
I’ve since been stealing rolls of TP randomly around Egypt as it’s much easier to use than the tissues.
From the train station in Aswan, we headed to our home for the next few days, The Giselle, one of many floating hotels that travels up and down the Nile.
The Giselle, looks like nothing particularly special from the outside, but is actually quite nice once you are actually inside. Most of the décor is very 20’s style, leather, dark woods, and I feel like I should be wearing flappers every time I go into the bar area. There is a restaurant and jeweller on one of the lower levels of the boat, and then a bar, pool and outdoor lounge on the top floor, where in the summer I am sure many people sit and sun themselves and drink in the wonder that is the Nile.
Once we were all settled into our rooms, showered and clean, we headed to the dining room for our first of many buffet lunches! Soo much better than the lack of food at the Victoria Hotel. That afternoon we were taken by Felucca (traditional Egyptian sailing boat) a little further down the Nile, where we swapped onto another little boat that took us bird and wildlife watching (a whole lot of bird, very little anything else) then eventually over to a Nubian Village for a wander around to see what life is like in a little village. The village apparently operates like a family, and male members of these Nubian tribes must marry their first wife (you can have up to 4 wives here) from within the village that they come from. Kind of weird, and you’d think that there would be a fair bit of inbreeding going on. At the time that we walked through the village, it was nanna nap time and there weren’t a lot of people around at all. After the village we then went over to a Nubian Farm, where I drank coffee that tasted like tree, patted a baby camel and climbed a sand dune…. When in Egypt!
That night was fairly quite, we were treated to a belly dancing show, and a guy that spins and spins in circles until he passes out. Kind of weird, but it is supposed to expel evil spirits, and then we headed to bed to try to catch up on some sleep that we had missed the night before.
The following day we were up early to take a plane to Abu Simbel. For some strange reason, I felt like this particular day something was off…. Understatement! Lol by the time we hit the airport, I had already split my favourite jeans! Within half an hour of sitting at the airport, I had managed to pour hot coffee over my arm, and then the trifecta was hot coffee coming out of my nose after I laughed at one of the girls who had made a joke about the coffee on my arm. L
The flight to Abu Simbel is only half an hour. You are barely up before you start your decent, the air hosties didn’t even get a third of the way down the plane with water before they had to return to their seats to prepare for landing. After landing, a quick bus drive and we had arrived at Abu Simbel.
Abu Simbel is two HUGE temples, built in the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, the first and largest temple was built in dedication to Horus, and the second in dedication to Nefetari, Ramesees II’s wifey. These two templates are absolutely amazing. Even more amazing, in 1968 they picked up the both of them and moved them higher and further away from the water of Lake Nasser (one of the world’s largest man made lakes – it’s huge!!! See: Lake Nasser ) when they dammed the Nile between 1958-1971.
We headed back to catch our plane, and arrived back at the boat for lunch at about 2.30-ish. The afternoon was spent sailing up the Nile (yes it’s a tough life) to with a quick evening stop before dinner to visit the Kom Ombo temple. Out of everything I have seen so far, the Kom Ombo temple has been the prettiest. I think it had something to do with the fact that it was evening when we visited and the whole structure was lit up by lights and we had a full moon as well. The temple is post Alexander the Great, so it has a slightly Greek influence, and the language in the hieroglyphics on the walls had advanced in comparison to what we had seen in some of the earlier temples.
Walking back from Kom Ombo we were literally attacked by market sales people, trying to sell us every possible thing under the sun! Up until these markets, I hadn’t felt overly harassed. The vendors were grabbing at us, putting scarves and other things over us, then telling us to pay for them, and when you tried to hand them back they were refusing to take them etc. I’ve never been so happy to see our boat and the security guards that man the entrance at night. Even after we had actually reboarded the boat there were kids that were still yelling trying to sell us things. Absolute insanity!
This particular evening we had our Egyptian Feast, with traditional Falafel, Lamb, Turkey and a whoooole lot of baklava. This was followed at 9pm with some belly dancing, and our first night of drinking, which sounds weird for a Contiki. I think I hit my bed about 1am, and I was totally belly danced and jingled out (by jingles I mean the belly dancing scarves – yes we bought them, Yes we wore them, YES they were all shades of awesome!).
The next morning was definitely an early one! We left the boat at 7am, in the freezing cold, by horse and buggy to go to the Edfu temple. Another post Alexander the Great temple, this one is also enormous, as I am learning everything in Egypt is! The temple was started by Ptolemy III in 237 BCE and completed in 57 BCE by Ptolemy XII as a dedication to Horus and Hathor of Dendera. Sherif took us through the temple and explained who the gods on the walls were, and told us about some of the stories that were depicted on the walls. We took our horse and buggies back to the boat, once again while being harassed by all angles to buy this that and the other. The rest of the day was pretty cruisy as we set sail for Luxor.
Earlier in the day we were informed that our boat would be heading into loch at around 12.30 and that there would be people on the lock trying to sell us scarves and towels amongst other things. Our boat the Giselle, is at least 5 levels from the hull up. We were told that if we wanted to see these people selling stuff, head up to the top deck where the pool was. When I finally arrived up stairs, there were boat people throwing towels and scarves up to the top deck of the boat to be perused by tourists and then either purchased or thrown back down. Tourists were haggling with the people in boats down below them, and on the dock further.Absolute craziness! This went on for about an hour and then we passed through the loch and out the other side. A few hours later, after lying in the sun for a little bit, then having a delightful lunch from the buffet restaurant onboard, there was a slight thud, and we were told that we had hit a sand bank.
Apparently the Nile isn’t as deep as it has previously been, and at this time of the year it is a common occurrence for boats to get stuck around this particular area of the Nile. It took about an hour and a half for us to be set free from our sandy embankment! During this time, we decided some storey time was in order. Our poison..... Cosmo.... the article.... 25 Kinky things to do with your undies..... oh god! Absolutely EPIC! lol This was followed by something along the lines of "What he's really thinking about in the bedroom" another EPIC fail on behalf of Cosmo!
About two hours of storey time later, I was walking up the stairs to our room, and was thrown forward up the stairs…. Yep wouldn’t you know it, we’d hit another Sand Bank. Luckily with some quick manoeuvring, we managed to get free from this sand bank in about ten minutes.
Finally after arriving in Luxor, we set out to see the Luxor Temple, and then the Sound and Light show at Egypts largest temple, the Karnak temple. I thought that the sound and light show at Karnak was very cool. It was definitely a little OTT (over the top) but it was nice to see that there was something in Egypt that was very touristy, someone had actually put a lot of thought into. ß I just re-read that sentence, and I think I need to clarify I am talking about presentation… I’m sure someone put thought into all the pyramids/temples etc…. you get what I mean! Lol
The next morning we had a 5.45am wakeup call for a 7am departure. This time we had to pack our bags as we weren’t going back to the boat. The first thing we saw in the morning was the Valley of the Kings. We went into a few of the tombs and the last tomb that we visited in the Valley of the Kings was King Tut’s tomb, where his mummy is still lying, as is one of his sarcophagi. This was incredibly cool! To think that I was standing in the tomb of King Tut, and lying just centimetres away was the body of a 3000 year old Pharoh. Throughout all of the tombs, it was amazing to see how many of the paintings on the walls were still intact and still with an enormous amount of colour. Truly something special. The detail in their drawings and paintings is just incredible.
After VOTK we left and went to Queen HotChickenSoup’s temple… AKA Djeser-Djeseru the Mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Again, the temple was intricately detailed, and painted in an array of colours, which even after thousands of years are still actually on the walls. Quite incredible.
After Queens Hatshepsut’s temple we headed back to Karnak to see the temple during the day time. Sherif again guided us around the temple and explained the writings on the walls. From Karnak, we went to a papyrus museum, to see how they make the papyrus paper. I may or may not have bought a painting which hopefully will end up above my bed at some point in time, in a house I may or may not have. Haha
From here we headed to the Hurghada and the Red Sea. I had Egyptian McDonalds for a very late lunch. Take Away of course so all 28 of us could stink up the bus! Lol and then we travelled the 4 hours to Hurghada! A lot of the driving this night was through the desert. Fortunately for us there aren’t many lights around the Sahara Desert, so when you looked out of the bus window and up into the sky, you were greeted by billions of stars. The only other times I have seen stars like that is when I’ve been out in the bush, or camping on an island. No matter how many times I am lucky enough to see stars like this, I always have that ridiculous smile on my face, and I feel very humbled and small.
Our hotel in Hurghada was much much nicer than I had expected. However….. why is there always a however…. In all my life, I have never seen so much mould in a bathroom ever! EVER!! I could have literally had a conversation with the shower curtain and the mould that was in between the grout in the shower/bath! Just crazy! I managed to avoid all contact with the shower curtain and the mould….. but I may have flooded the bathroom at the same time! Oh well! Fair trade I say! Lol it was about 9pm by the time we actually checked in to the hotel, and then we had 45 minutes to change and get ready for our night out. As this was technically the last night we would all be spending together, there were definitely a lot of people that were going to make it a big one!
We headed out in two little mini busses to the Hurghada Marina where there are a heap of clubs, bars and restaurants. From here we left a large group at the bar and Sherif took a few of us to dinner at a local seafood restaurant! The food was amazing and just kept coming, we had two different types of fish, breads, calamari, rice, prawns and all sorts of things. By the time we finished dinner I couldn’t’ have fitted another piece of food in my belly if I tried! From the seafood restaurant we went back to the bar where we had left the rest of the group. Lets just say they were all a little on the happy side! Haha I think there had been plenty of alcohol flowing from around the time we left, and it was definitely still flowing on our arrival back.
We had a couple of drinks at the bar, and then headed back to our hotel to continue drinking, I decided it was definitely bed time at about 3am. From what I heard the next morning, there were definitely a few people that continued on well into the earlier hours of the morning!
The next day we were up early to check out of our hotel, and get onto our cruise boat to go snorkelling around the Red Sea. The day was absolutely magnificent! It was truly one of the best days I have had on this entire trip, even if I did sustain some injuries from slipping on the steel ladder climbing back onto the boat! Lol Whoops! Luckily I didn’t get overly sunburnt, just a little bit of colour here and there, but nothing that wasn’t gone by the next morning! The waters of the Red Sea were absolutely crystal clear and so blue! Definitely somewhere I will be coming back to! We arrived back at the hotel around 2.30, with enough time for everyone to shower and change before our 6 hour drive all the way back to Cairo!
The drive to Cairo was beautiful. The first half of our drive with views of the Red Sea and the mountains in the distance, the second half, sunset, sand and stars. We arrived back into Cairo and traffic at about 9pm –ish, with enough time for dinner and our goodbyes.
The eight days in Egypt were definitely not enough, but as corny as it sounds, I’ve met some people that I know I will be friends with for a very long time! Everybody say AWWWWW! Lol that did sound pretty damn corny! Lol
We spent the night in our room Mozzie free and then headed to the airport the next day after a sleep in!
Currently we are in Abu Dhabi in the most beautiful hotel I think I have ever stayed in! Very happy indeedy! Mani’s and Pedi’s this afternoon as well! YAY!
So that’s it for now!
I will have to back track and tell you all about the rest of Europe and London, but I’ll leave that for a bit, as it will be something I will need to think about!
Love to you all!
SJ x
