Below you will find a map of where we went - hopefully this will help put things into perspective for you. The border to the left is Libya and the border at the bottom is Sudan.
We had an awesome trip - and have so much to tell - I will divide our 10 days away into day by day accounts, and try and squeeze in the observations we made, along the way.
Day 1 - Good Friday
At 3 am our alarm clock went off, indicating that we had half an hour before our taxi was going to arrive to take us to the airport. Twenty minutes later our taxi rang to say when it was five minutes away, so we quickly did some last minute packing and rushed out the door (we had to get a taxi as the only means of public transport running at that time of morning are night buses - more trouble than it was worth).
We then went to the airport via Mark and Dee's so the four of us travelled together. We met Geraint and Steffy (our other travelling buddies - a relation of Bev's and Dee's) at Heathrow.
We arrived to chaos at Heathrow - any Brits reading this will laugh knowingly at this, as Heathrow is know for this very chaos! What we found out was that the check in staff didn't start until 4.30am, even though our tickets stated we should be at the airport at 4am - British systems I tell you!! Anyway long story short, we ended up jumping the very long queue, as we would never have made our flight in time. You can soon see how Heathrow at Easter or Christmas gets back logged/delays, as they had problems from the word go ie 4.30am Good Friday!!
We left a drizzly London morning, flew via Zurich (Switzerland) landing as the snow fell (extremely pretty I must say - and the Swiss have to be the most efficient people I have ever come across! The Brits could do with some lessons from the Swiss!). It was so nice leaving behind big crowds of people at Heathrow, arriving to an empty airport of very few people. We then transferred to our Cairo flight, arriving in 38 degree Celcius heat! Talk about a day of four seasons!(well three at least). We were met at the airport by a rep from our tour company, and transferred to our hotel by mini bus.
We were immediately immersed in a bustling, loud city full of cars, beeping horns (Egyptians don't use indicators, they just toot to say they are coming up on the inside lane), near car crashes - on a two lane road they have three lanes of cars - and every now and then one breaks down, donkey drawn carts you name it, it's going on! It is just like those email jokes that people send around! They use a lot of run down old vehicles - we saw about one broken down old car for every half an hour we spent on the motorway! All of the buses were jammed packed with locals, and driving round with the doors wide open - naturally air conditioned. It wasn't unusual to see a whole family - mum dad and the kids on a motorbike, wearing jandals and no helmets flying down the motorway - suck that Otara! Petrol is really cheap in Egypt - about 1/10th of the price we pay, therefore making driving more affordable to the average egyptian (everyone is called muhammed or some shortening of it). The motorway is a prime example of the lack of Health and safety Egpyt has - of which we saw plent more of!
The buildings and traffic in Cairo
OSH Health and Safety at its finest - spot the guy on the motorbike with no helmet and jandals, also spot the broken down taxi being pushed - a typical day on the Cairo motorway!
There were quite a few parks in the area that our hotel was in, which were quite nice - check out all of the satelite dishes on the buildings!
Bev and I at the Citadel Mosque with Cairo behind us - the sky is a mixture of smog and sand in the air from the desert.Within about two minutes of Egypt I realised I was something of an excitement to the egyptian men - it sucks to be blonde and white in egypt.
Along the course of our trip I was "x-ray scanned" by so many egyptian men's eyes - ugh they are so disgusting! However I have to say I did find it amusing that the souvenir sellers came up with all sorts of terms of endearments to try and get my attention to come into their shop - such as hebebe (arabic for "my love"), spicey girl - (which I think they meant saucy girl rather than the spice girls), sweet heart etc and Bev got told he was a lucky man about a million times (haha). But it is really demeaning that they stare at you all of the time, and it is certainly not flattering or appreciated. It really degrades you, and you lose a lot of confidence as you are just an object.
At one of the temples were went to, there was a group of local 12-13 year old girls. They were standing in front of Bev, Mark and I, and were pointing and laughing at our legs (I'm guessing my lily whites and Marks hairy whites or our funny western shoes), so Mark got them back, by pointing at their feet and made me crack up - it was so mean but funny, because the girl's faces just immediately dropped when they realised we thought they were also strange, suddenly we weren't so interesting any more and they walked away :o)
Another difficult thing with Egypt is that everyone is always in your face, if they are not oggling you they are trying to take your money off you somehow! We were buying water at a market, when one shop guy tried to take my money out of my wallet for me, and I got angry with him and told him to bugger off and wait. He then very quickly told us all that the price of the water had gone up in price - so we said nah, we don't want it anyway, and walked away! How rude! However on a lighter note, in the same vain as the terms of endearment, to get you into their stalls at the market they call out to you. One guy called out to us - "I don't know what you want, but I have it" and another clever clogs yelled out "I have 75 ways to take you money" and "how can I take your money" - with some of them you wondered if they actually understood what they were saying in English - but I think they did to be funny and get your attention, haha you have to give them full points for honesty!
For dinner that first night we decided to ask the Hotel check in guy what he recommended, and he said - "We have a restaurant here" and then we said "but we want to go out", so he reluctantly recommended us a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. This would be the last time that most of us ate meat on the trip, as after that both Bevan and Mark had stomach aches! Hmmmm! It was interesting to note that the Egyptian standards of cleanliness were a lot different to that of our own - for example we had to keep shuffling through the plates at the restaurants to find a clean plate!
Day 2 - Saturday
This day was an extremely full-on day, and quite hard on our bodies since they were not used to the extreme heat (esp Bev and I after a year of winters - however I found it heaven - overdosing on Vitamin D!!).
We were met early by our guide, who was with us for the rest of the trip. Emad (or Ed for our purposes) was a well educated black african egyptian man(of the nubian tribe), in his 30's. He was extremely punctual, patient and easy going - exactly what we needed in a tour guide - I don't think we would have enjoyed the trip as much as we did if we had had another guide. He was happy to answer any questions we had, and was very open to cultural and religious questions we had about the egyptian way of life - and his own life for that matter.
We started by going to Sakkara - the first pyramid, and the world's oldest stone structure.
We then went to Memphis - the capital of the ancient kingdom
The Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.
Two of the Giza Pyramids - See the comparison between the size of the people and the pyramid - they were pretty huge.
Bev's shadow on the Camel
Giza pyramids and the Sphinx
At the Pyramids we went for a camel ride which was really fun! They are certainly amazing animals putting up with that heat.
Bev on a camel
There are quite a few off shoots of the nile, many of which can probably termed canals - but the water is really disgusting, as it is stagnant - people just drop their rubbish/household waste in it, a few dead cows float in it, further down we saw some people doing their washing in it etc - a little like the River Ganges! And everywhere we traveled, there were wild cats and dogs roaaming around.
We were supposed to have transferred from Cairo that night to Aswan by sleeper train, however for some reason the tour company left it too late to book our trip, so there were no spaces left.They therefore had to upgrade us to a flight from Cairo to Aswan the following morning (Day 3), and pay for us to stay an extra night at our Cairo hotel - because this cost was now on them, we were suddenly all down graded to sleeping in the same room (an apartment style room with three beds in one room and a king in the other). With a lot of fuss we were able to get a fourth mattress for our room, so that everyone had a bed!
Day 3 -Easter Sunday
Another 3am start - we left the hotel and travelled back to the airport, and flew to Aswan. Unfortunately our tour company was too cheap to upgrade our tour guide to fly with us, so we had to wait for him (a 12 hour journey) to arrive in Aswan! However we didn't complain, as we got to lounge around by the pool and have a swim whilst we waited for our rooms to be ready - this was especially nice as the temperature was now soaring around 42 degrees celcius!!
We found Aswan and Luxor to be quite different from Cairo, as they were much smaller, more back-water cities.
Check out the hand coloured in/handwritten Mobil sign, and the extremely flash Vodafone shop!
Once our guide arrived, we travelled to the Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan Dam and Philae Temple - Philae temple was probably the highlight of our trip for me or at least on par with the Pyramids.
Philae TempleAnother 3am morning - yep you can gather we were a little over 3am starts by this time! We had to travel in convoy (about 100 tourist buses) lead by the police- we asked how come, but never really got a straight answer about this....! However the convoy turned out to be bit of a farce, as everyone went hell for leather, and travelled around 140 km/hr through the desert!
But I must say it was all worth it, as we arrived at our destination - Abu Simbel at around 6.30am, still in the cool of the morning, and it was an extremely beautiful location, on the edge of the dam.
Abu Simbel
On arriving back at the hotel, we all arranged our bags ready for the Felucca (sail boat) trip. We then boarded our felucca just outside our hotel(the hotel overlooked the nile - an extremely gorgeous location - it was so pretty it almost seemed like the landscape had been painted), and lazily sailed down the Nile (sailing with the current means you head North - towards Cairo - which is what we did). We really enjoyed lazying on the Felucca, it was nice to escape the information overload and pyramid/temple overload that we had started to become overwhelmed by. And it was nice to get away from the plain sandy desert colour to the lively green surrounding the Nile. However, there were a few less comfortable bits to the Felucca - firstly, there was no toilet - so if you really needed to go, then you had to pull over to land and find a tree! Also combine this with our dodgy Egyptian-food tummies....go figure!
Us on the Felucca
However, to ease us into this, on the first night, we stopped at a place that was hired by our tour company to provide toilets and showers (of reasonable cleanliness - something you couldn't take for granted!). The two options of sailing on the Nile consist of the Felucca - as we did, or travelling by big ocean liners - as all the rich ponsy people did (or those that value their toiletting in private!)
It was illegal to sail your Felucca at night, as on these big ocean liners would quite easily run you down. So on this first night we docked at the place with the showers/toilets, and slept on the boat - quite soothing, however there were a few too many hungry mosquitos ready to nibble ones hot, exposed feet, even though we had a mosquito net over the boat!
Day 5 - Tuesday
Our Felucca trip got all the more exciting(or less pleasant depending on how you view it) on this second day, as we found out we wouldn't be docking at a toilet/shower overnight - just farmland with a few trees.......I was gutted to find out that I have lost my ability to hold on as I did when I was little........! However, we were pleased that the temperature significantly dropped this second night, making sleep a little easier, and there were no mosquitos. However, sleeping on the Felucca seemed significantly harder the second night!Day 6 - Wednesday
We docked early, and were met by a mini bus, ready to take us to four temples. We were pleased to arrive at the first location to use their toilet! It is funny how suddenly your trip becomes more about when your next clean toilet stop is, and not what sites you are visiting.
On that note, toiletting was an interesting experience in Egypt. It is hard to find clean toilets, you don't flush your toilet paper - it goes in a rubbish bin beside the toilet, and they don't have toilet paper in the toilets - there is an attendant that gives you toilet paper (not enough to wipe anything mind you), and on your way out, you tip the attendant! It is quite a wealthy occupation!
We firstly went to Kom-Ombu temple, and then to Edfu - the most well-preserved temple in all of Egypt.
We then transferred to Luxor, checked into our hotel and had some lunch. We then carried on to see Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple. Karnak Temple was especially pretty as it was just on dusk as we saw it, so the lights were all turned on, lighting up the big pillars.
Day 7 - Thursday
We were so tired by this point, we were able to convince our guide that we didn't want to start until 9am so that we could have a decent sleep. We awoke quite refreshed, and visited the valley of the Kings, and the temple of Queen Hatshepsut (said hat-cheap-suit or hot chicken soup for the comics). We also took a couple of minutes to take photos of Colossi of Memnon and stop at an alabaster shop - where they had heaps of beautiful vases and bowls made from the local stone. I tried my hand at bargining for one really pretty bowl, but was disappointingly unsuccessful - normally they don't let you out of the door without renegotiating the price, but this one let me go - I had obviously gone too far below what they were prepared to accept - bugger! I probably should have buckled.
That afternoon we arrived back at our hotel, had a swim and dinner and then sat in the hotel lobby waiting to go to the train station to be transferred to the train station to catch the sleeper train back to Cairo at 11.30pm. The sleeper train was an interesting experience. And waiting for the 1st class train we got to see what 2nd class and cattle class looked like - Otara and OSH eat your heart out!
Day 8 - Friday
This was probably the least exciting day of our whole trip - as we were so tired! (However, pretty to cool to have been to a church that Jesus himself is said to have been to!
However, we did enjoy looking out of the train window as we came into Cairo, as there were heaps of crops - such as sugar cane and other veges being grown, quite nice and green.
For the first time in our trip, we were able to check into our rooms immediately on arrival in Cairo, so we all quickly rushed off to have a shower, before our days sightseeing. We were then mini-bused Christian Old Cairo, where the Romans constructed the fortress of Babylon. Built over the fuins of the two towers of this fortress, the Church of St Mary known as the Hanging Church. We then had lunch at a Egyptian restaurant - they eat a lot of naan bread (called something different though), and hummus, kebabs, filafels etc however by this stage we were over eating anything with meat, so went vegetarian.
Day 9 - Saturday
This was a really great day of absolutely unashamedly nothing. We woke late, went to breakfast, lay around in our rooms, had a two hour afternoon nap, played cards, read etc. A great day just to blobby. We were so tired that we didn't get woken up by the prayers that morning - every sunset and sunrise, prayers are belted out through loud speakers at the top of the mosques, which sound like air-raid sirens!
Day 10 - Sunday
Yesterday, we awoke at 9am, had breakfast - our last Egyptian breakfast, of which we were not mourning. They mainly consisted of egg (omelette, scrambled or hard boiled)- which is fine, and one type of cereal (their attempt at keeping us westerners happy), but also cold meats, salad, (both of which we were avoiding, meat for obvious reasons, and salad because they use local tap water to wash the veges) and lots of sweet bread, and cheese. We found that breakfast conversations would always start with someone asking who had the runs today!
We then piddled around for the morning, and checked out of our rooms at 12noon. We were then transferred to the airport to catch our plane at 3pm. We did a quick squizz of souvenir shopping (I bought a smaller replica of the bowl I should have bought at the alabaster shop), and then we flew back to Zurich, and then from Zurich to London - arriving in London at 9.30pm.
And that was our Egypt trip :o) - I definitely recommend everyone put Egypt on their "must see before I die list".
