Quick update. Here are the places I’ve been to in the last two weeks: Cairo, Saqqara, Dashur, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Edfu, Esna, Luxor and now I’m getting a chance to relax in Dahab in the Sinai.
Here are some of the things I’ve seen: The pyramids at Saqqara, Dashur and Saqqara, Islamic Cairo, the Northern Cemetary, Sufi dancing at the Citidel in Cairo, Temple of Horus, Luxor Temple, Nubian Museum in Aswan, Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple (Hatshepsut), Great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, Tombs of Amunherkhepshef, Khaemwaset and Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens, Karnak Temple, Tombs of Ramses IV, v + VI, and IX in the Valley of the Kings, the Unfinished Obelisk and Fatimid Cemetary in Aswan, the Luxor Museum, Philae Temple, and the Colossi of Memnon.
Sandrine
Highlights: I met a Kiwi named Craig at the hotel in Cairo. He had been travelling for the last several months - from Korea across Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Turkey, Israel, Syria, Jordan and finally Egypt. I decided to latch onto him like a deer tick and use his experience to learn the ropes in this country. Amazingly he found this the second most frustrating country to travel behind Vietnam, (his best experiences were Syria, Jordan and Cambodia). We hired a cab to take us and a French Girl, Sandrine, (I called her Sandy, which, as an American, she knew I was going to do anyway) to the Saqqara, Dashur and Giza pyramids. That was a good deal because the cab driver spared a lot of hassle for us. Actually, the first thing he did was take us to the Cairo office of the International Student ID Card office, which runs very much like the black market offices in other countries, and got us all our ISIC cards - official ones - for $10 each. So far the card has saved me 10 times that much in entrance fees across Egypt. All the tourist workers seem to be in on the deal becuase real students with real student ID cards are being rejected at sites because they dont have the ISIC card while us old farts are waltzing in for half price with our bogus ones.
Craig (bloody tourists!)
So we saw the big pointy things around Cairo that day. The next day the hotel arranged a 7 day trip to southern (or "upper") Egypt beginning a couple days later for Craig and I. We took a 13 hour train down to Aswan and saw some temples and museums there over two days. Got some great photos and sunsets - Craig is big into photography so I learned a bit from him about taking decent pictures instead of the generic touristy ones. The second day we took a 3am military escorted bus convoy south to Abu Simbel to see the Great Temple of Ramses II. It’s an amazing huge structure that is made even more impressive by the fact that the Egyptian government, with help from UNESCO, actually moved that somebitch from the old bank of the Nile up to a new island in the new Lake Nasser, (look it up on the internet - it’s worth it). The military escort is the remnant of the conflict between Islamists and the military from about 7 years ago when they killed a bunch of German tourists at Luxor. It’s over now, but with tourism Egypt’s number one industry they don’t take any chances anymore and there are regions of Upper Egypt that you can only go into with a military escort. Security is seriously thick all over the country. It’s not intrusive really, except when the Klashnikov-toting guard wants to give you an unofficial tour of something in order to ask you for baksheesh (a tip), you generally pay him whether you wanted his tour or not. The guard at the Unfinished Obelisk actually took us through the ropes and laid his gun down on the thing to show us where Nero cut his own obelisks out of the granite quarry. That was worth the 3 Egyptian Pounds we paid him, (about 45 cents).
From Aswan we took a falucca, (sailboat), for two nights up the Nile to Edfu. The sleeping was cold and shitty on that thing but the food the salty old Captain Muhammad cooked for us every day was the best I’ve had in Egypt so far. Got some great pictures on the Nile, which I could prove if I could get any computers in this country to cooperate with my camera. More temples in Edfu and Esna before busing up to Luxor for three days. Luxor had some great temples and tombs. I stood over Tutankhamun’s tomb, just a hole in the ground, really, but it was closed for repairs - he’s getting a giant waterbed shaped like himself and a big disco ball in the rec room.
Falucca on the Nile
After all the temples and tombs and haggling with the Egyptian tourist hasslers I needed a serious rest, so I hopped on a 17-hour bus to Dahab in the Sinai - a little scuba diving town where everyone just scuba dives all day and smokes pot all night. I do neither so I’ve just been recovering and reading the last two days. If this doesn’t turn out to be a good place for me to isolate myself and start learning Arabic writing I think I’ll walk about an hour into the desert where there’s a small Bedouin village and do it there. Apparently for about $5 a day they’ll cook for me and give me a hut and leave me alone the rest of the time to study. My Bedouin posse. We’ll see.
The plan after that is to go to Jordan - to Petra for a couple days and to spend a couple nights in the desert with Bedouin at Wadi Rum, then cut back across Egpyt to Lybia, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. I still need to do some research on those places to find out how to make that work but I think I can make it happen. If not I might take a flight over the Middle East to Asia and do Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. I’m sort of making this up as I go.
(There’s a photo gallery for more of my Egypt pictures on the right hand side of the page, or bang your mouse on this spot on your monitor to see it. I’ll be adding photos regularly and should have galleries for Jordan, and Djibouti, Uganda and Rwanda soon. Or not.)
