"He who has not seen Cairo has not seen the world, it's dust is gold, it's Nile is a wonder...She is the mother of the world" - according to a tale in the 1001 Nights anyway.
Personally I've seen some of the world and none of it looks like Cairo. It's totally different to what I was expecting, I was braced for a big Delhi-like shock, and was completely wrong. Leaving the airport was very civilised, the taxi drivers didn't really hassle and showed me where the bus I wanted left from. I'm staying in the Midan Tihrir part of town, opposite the Egyptian museum, managed to find where I wanted to stay, a hotel on the rooftop of a 6 story building, no views but only a few minutes walk to a load of shops and the Nile. I had a wander along it last night and it doesn't look too healthy so I went up the 187m Cairo Tower and had my first proper look at the city. It's big. Very big. It just stretches on and on into the desert through a shimmering haze of smog, and just about visible 10km away I could just about see the Pyramids, still looking pretty impressive even from that far away.
I spent today out at Giza, I don't think any thing I could say could really describe the Pyramids, they're just so 'wow' that words don't really describe them properly. The first sight of them was from the bus as we went round a building, and there was the Pyramid of Chephren, just sitting there. Cairo goes right up to them, all the pictures show them with the desert stretching off behind them, but turn around and there's the city. The Sphinx was the first thing I saw going into the site, it looks a lot smaller than I'd always imagined it, but still very impressive. It's impossible to take your eyes off the Pyramids though, whatever I was doing I found myself staring at them. It was really hard to decide how big they were, sometimes they seemed to be just 'big', and then I'd look again and they'd be towering over me, these huge buildings and little me. I went inside the Great Pyramid, which was really amazing, I spent ages in the Kings Chamber, just sitting there and feeling 6 million tons of 4600 year old stone all around me. Apparently Napoleon spent a night alone here and came out the next day terrified, but would never say why. I can kind of understand it, even with my eyes closed I could feel it around me, a huge presence kind of thing pressing down. Quite bizarre. Maybe it was just the sun getting to me... I got on a horse for a bit and went into the desert for an hour or so, It was pretty cool to be out there with the sound of the minarets calling prayer echoing over from the city. It's a bit ruined by the hawkers, camel men and various other people coming up every couple of minutes trying to get money out of you, but even they pale into insignificance when you're standing with the only remaining wonder of the ancient world in front of you.
Tomorrow I should be going to the Egyptian Museum, which is meant to be excellent, and also organising the bus down to Luxor, where I should be spending a couple of days around the Valley of the Kings. This is all subject to my usual changes of mind though.
So far then it's all been well worth coming for, I'm really looking forward to getting down to the Red Sea to go diving, and I'm still planning to go over to Jordan to see Petra, so the next time I write I should have something else to tell you all…
******************************************************************************************************
Hi everyone, sorry that my last e-mail was so short, I've found an PC facing
East now and Praise Allah it seems to have done the trick. Anyway, here I am in Hurghada, on the western coast of the Red Sea. It could well be the ugliest town I've ever been in, it’s just one big building site as they add to the 3000 hotels here already.
The only purpose of the town is to cater for tourists so it has absolutely no character or soul, plus all the beaches are owned by the hotels so I had to blatantly lie this morning to get to by the water for a couple of hours. The downside was that I was surrounded by fat middle aged French and Germans wobbling around in their swim suits. Yesterday I saw a Bavarian guy walking around on full national costume, lederhosen and all...there are some weird people around...
So anyway, I got here from Luxor on Saturday, and as I tried to say in my last e-mail I really liked it there, overlooking the Nile over to the mountains where the Valley's of the Kings and Queens are. We went around the Temple of Hatshepsut, and the tombs of Ramses IV, III, Amenhatep II and Amunherkhepshep, which were all pretty good for 3500 year old holes in the ground, but I think that the highlight was the Luxor Temple, built and added to by Hatshepsut, Tutankhamun, Ramses II and Alexander the Great. After the sun has set over the Nile it's all lit up and is absolutely stunning.
Monday I went out to Karnak Temple, which is huge. It was built and added to over
1500 years by pretty much every Pharaoh and is too much to go into detail about, although the Great Hypostyle Hall, made from 134 huge papyrus shaped pillars, is well worth mentioning, not even the hordes of French tourists could ruin it.
Well, in Hurghada the only thing to do apart from roast slowly in the sun (or in my case not so slowly, I've managed to get burnt again :-( ) is to go diving, which is basically why I'm here. I went out yesterday with Erwin, my Dutch dive buddy, the first dive was ok but there was a lot of dead coral around, apparently from natural causes. Saw a couple of reef sharks and a big moray eel though. On the way out to the second dive site we were followed by about 10 dolphins playing in our bow wave, and the second dive was a lot better, healthier coral with some great overhangs, more fish and about 30m visibility. Tomorrow me and the Diving Dutchman are going out for another couple of dives, before I catch the ferry over to Sharm el-sheiks to do some more diving, money permitting. Sharm's a very expensive place to stay 'tho, so I'm basically heading up through Dahab to Nuweiba, where I catch the ferry over to Jordan.
For the next few days 'tho it's just more lounging around in the sun on beaches and boats, swimming on warm clear water, and other such stressful activities.
Hi everyone, I'm now in Sharm el-sheikh, the package holiday destination nightmare, full of fat white pasty people out here for 1 week, wearing as little as possible and offending all the Muslims who live here.
I came over here on the ferry from Hurghada on Thursday with a couple of German girls I met diving, they've gone on to Dahab where I'll be meeting them in a day or two. The last couple of dives I did in Hurghada were good, unfortunately Erwin was struck by the curse of King Tutankhamon (the shits) and had to stay in bed, so I was buddied up with another German girl called Nele. The second dive we did at a site called the Aquarium was one of the best I've done, not quite up to Exmouth in Oz but close. Good coral and schools of fish surrounding us.
I went out for a dive in Sharm yesterday, annoyingly they wanted to check me out with a local dive before they let me loose in the National Parks, understandable I suppose but it means an extra day in sharm which I can't really afford. The diving today was much better, went out to the Straits of Tiran, had the mountains of the Sinai desert on one side of the boat, the Island of Tiran which is covered in land mines from the Egyptian/Israeli war on the other, and in the distance we could just see the coast of Saudia Arabia. The diving was all drift diving along the walls of the reef, starting off at about 25m and then up to about 12m. Didn't really see anything big but lots of healthy coral, some huge Gorgonia fans and 1000's of fish, not that I know what any of them are.
Tomorrow’s the big one though, up at 4.45 am, a three and a half hour boat trip out to the wreck of the Thistlegorm, sunk during the Second world war and meant to be THE wreck dive to do in the world, and then one dive in Ras Mohammed National Park, again reckoned by many to be one of the best diving locations in the world. Truly I am spoilt. I'll let you know how it goes in a few days.
*******************************************************************
Hi everyone, Well yesterday was the big one, 2 fantastic dives on The Thistlegorm. To be honest after the disaster diving the HMAS Swan last year in Oz I was abit nervous, the dive is rated quite difficult because of the strong current and sometimes poor visibility. Actually a few of us weren't looking too happy in the boat, although the 4.45 pick-up time might have had something to do with it! It's a 3.5 hour boat trip to the wreck, during which most of us had breakfast and slept. We were lucky when we got there, as we were the 4th boat to arrive, there has been up to 24 before - that's a lot of divers in the water.
The Thistlegorm was a English supply ship carrying supplies to North Africa when it was spotted by a couple of German planes coming back from a failed bombing mission in Egypt. Having nothing better to do they dropped their bombs on the ship, not expecting to do alot of damage as the Thistlegorm was so large. Unfortunately they hit the ammunition hold which
exploded, killing 9 people and sinking the ship in 32 meters of water. Bet they were quite pleased with this unexpected result.
We started the first dive on the stern section which broke off from the rest of the ship and is laying on it's side in 29m, we swam around the propellers and the 2 anti-aircraft guns over to Hold 4, where the bombs hit. There are hundreds of boxes of shells all over the sand towards a railway engine that was thrown clear, unfortunatly it's quite a way from the main ship and is in 35m, so we didn't get to see it. We then went up to about 20m over the open Holds 3& 4 to the top of the ship, along with a school of huge Barracuda and several Lion Fish swimming against the current. We ended the dive holding on the line against the current to do our decompression stop.
The second dive was spent inside the wreck and was really quite amazing; although there is alot of marine growth everywhere everything is really well preserved, although of stuff has already been taken by divers. We entered where the ship broke and headed into Hold 2 at about 22m, it's full of Bedford trucks each carrying 6 BSA motorcycles, all lined up neatly and many with all their windows still intact. There were also 100's of rubber boots and shoes everywhere.
Going into Hold 1 we passed over boxes and boxes each containing 6 rifles, more bikes and a Morris car, still neatly parked. Coming out of the hold towards the line we saw a huge grouper, schools of Glass fish and a cute Box fish. Apparently the strong currents make for bigger fish than near Sharm. There was so much to see though that I've already forgotten alot of it. On the way back to Sharm I decided not to do the 3rd dive in Ras Mohammed, I don't really like the idea of doing 3 dives in a day and I think we pushed the limits of the deco tables abit on the first two dives. The Thistlegorm was so good though that I wasn't really disappointed anyway.
Anyway, I left Sharm this morning and am now in Dahab, a totally laid back, tie-die everywhere, palm trees along the beach and Bob Marley on the stereo kind of place. The main activity is the learning the Art of Loafing, and the hardest thinking anyone seems to do here is trying to decide which beach-front, bean-bag seated restaurant to do it in. I think I'll be here for a couple of days (or my life, those bean bags look VERY comfortable) before going north to Nuweiba to catch the ferry over to Jordan. As usual I'm spending far too much money so as warning to everyone back home I might be back a week early... Although from what I hear the weather over there isn't too good, I might stay here in the 35c sun for abit longer...
***************************************************************************************************
Hello from my beach-side internet cafe. From where I'm sitting to type this it's about 2m to the sand, then to the clear blue, warm Gulf of Aquaba sea, and in the distance about 10km away I can just see the mountains of Saudi Arabia. So far today’s itinerary has been - get up, have banana pancakes lying on some bean bags under the shade of a palm tree, wander down to the main 'town' to sit in the sun on some more bean bags and quietly sip a Coke, while listening to the sea gently lapping at the shore. I then moved to another restaurant for another coke, and that’s about it. It's now 2pm and I'm trying to decide whether to go for a swim or to sit in the sun for abit longer.
Unfortunately all this idyllic bliss has to end, as I'm spending way too much money on doing nothing but drink coke and eat I've just had to change my flight to return a week early, back to the real world. So maybe tomorrow or the day after it's off to Nuiwaba to get over to Jordan for a few days to see Petra and maybe do some more diving, and then back to Cairo. For the moment 'tho I'm going back onto the beach to improve my tan.
Hope you're all getting the same amount of joy from your lives as I am from mine.
*****************************************************************************************************
Hi everyone, well I finally managed to drag myself away from the state of loafing in to which I had settled in Dahab, I left on Thurs morning for Nuweiba and straight onto the catamaran for Jordan. When it finally left the port (everyone there works on Egyptian time, where specified hours and times have no meaning) it was about an hour and a half to Aqaba. I got talking to a Canadian girl and a Danish man ( I think he was a man anyway, I wasn't too sure at first) and we decided to share a taxi to Wadi Rum, strange desert with huge Jebbels (mountains) rising out of the sand, home to TE Lawrence and where many scenes in Lawrence of Arabia were shot. It did look abit like where I was in Australia last year 'tho…
Once we got there after dark, tired, hungry and fed up, we met a Bedouin guy who bought us dinner and took us out into the desert to stay with his family. The Bedouin are pretty famous for their hospitality - it developed as a survival measure in the desert- so we spent a few hours sitting around the fire in their goatskin tent drinking tea, before wandering in the desert to find somewhere to sleep under the stars. All sounds very romantic, apart from the thought of sleeping on a scorpion in the sand and the fact I forgotten from sleeping in the outback in Oz - no matter how hot it is during the day, from about 2am it gets bloody freezing. The stars were pretty impressive 'tho, and apart from the noises from the Bedouins goats and dogs it was so quiet, a welcome change from all the bustle of Egypt over the past few weeks.
So just as I'd fallen asleep wearing all my clothes, socks on my hands and a towel wrapped around my head the sun rose and instantly frazzled me. It was a stunning place to wake up 'tho, what had been dark shapes in the night were huge cliffs, eroded into bizarre twisted shapes by the wind. We decided that we'd had enough of deserts, so we caught a taxi to Wadi Musa, the town at the entrance to Petra.
Although the town is just another ugly mess of concrete buildings and hotels it's in a pretty good location overlooking the hills where Petra is, and as I wandered around town I received what I hope isn't a traditional Jordanian welcome - a fat little kid about 15 yrs old wanted a magazine he'd decided I had, and the fact that I haven't read a magazine since I left home a month ago didn't stop him from threatening to slit my throat if I didn't give it to him. It's just a knack I have for making friends with the locals...apart from the fat freak everyone is very friendly, just walking down the street gets alot of 'welcome's' and offers to drink tea.
So, Petra - the main, and for some only, reason for coming to Jordan. Built out of sandstone cliffs on the edge of Wadi Araba by Nabateaen traders who settled here, it's pretty bloody impressive. Most people know it from 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' where they ride out of the Khaznel (Treasury) in to the narrow Siq.
The whole site would be spectacular even without the city carved into it, the cliffs and gorges are stunning and the colours in the rocks change through the day. The Siq is the main entrance; a 500m long crack in the rock that at times is only a few meters wide. Just as you think that it's never going to end suddenly the Khaznel appears, carved out of the rock and in really good condition for a 2000yr old building. We did wonder how gutted you'd be if you were nearly finished carving it and accidentally chipped the wrong bit off...
Everywhere you look there are houses, tombs and shops carved into the rock, the best part 'tho is the hour long climb up through some amazing rock formations to the Monastery, high up in the hills and with an amazing view over the desert mountains of Wadi Araba into Israel.
By about lunchtime it gets too hot to really do much so I'm going back tomorrow afternoon the see how the colours change through the day (unless I get mobbed by a gang of fat freak kids for magazines,) but as Jordan is so expensive I'm planning to go back to Aqaba on Monday. If I'm lucky I'll be able to get the boat back to Egypt the same day, and then spend the last few days heading up to Cairo for my flight, stopping off on the way to climb Mt. Sinai, allegedly where Moses received the Ten Commandments. From what I hear from people who've done it he was probably hallucinating from the pain of the 4 hour climb to the top…
************************************************************************************************
Hi everyone, well I'm back in Cairo for the last 2 days before I fly home, and after the peace of Dahab it's a bit of a shock to the system. I still love it here 'tho.
Anyway, I got back into Egypt on Mon, I didn't think I was going to make it out of Jordan - leaving Petra and getting onto the boat was an exercise in patience, not something I'm well known for having. I'd arranged to catch the 7am minibus to Aqaba from Petra, I got there nice and early and I was impressed when it pulled away at 7.05. Until it went the wrong way, around a couple of hotels and back to where we started. Driver gets out and wanders
off.
7.20 - Driver comes back with some friends and breakfast. Eats breakfast. I talk to the Danish guy I met a few days ago, he was meant to be catching the 6am bus to Kerak, but the driver can't be bothered to go as the Danish guy is the only passenger. Danish/Jordanian relations at new low.
7.30 - Driver starts engine, drives up to the junction where the road out of Petra is, drives round the roundabout and back to where we started, but on the other side of the road. Obviously a cunning plan to attract more customers.
7.40 - Plan works. Geoff from Australia gets on the bus thinking that he's early for the 8am service. Driver gets off to have a smoke with friends. I think about walking to Aqaba.
7.55 - We drive up the hill. Neither me or Geoff are breathing as the anticipation mounts. We actually are now leaving. Driver attempts to make it up to us by playing Egyptian pop at deafening volume and driving like a suicidal maniac to get us to Aqaba in record time.
Unlike other towns in Egypt and Jordan, Aqaba does nearly look like they've finished building it. It's set at the base of the mountains and looks over to Eilat in Isreal and over to Egypt, and is quite a civilised place as it's another town built mainly for tourists. After hunting down some chocolate Geoff and I went to the port for the next trial, buying a ticket for the boat.
To buy a ticket you -
1 - Find way around unsignposted building to find ticket office on 1st floor. Buy ticket.
2 - Move to booth next to ticket office to have ticket signed.
3 - Return to ticket office to have ticket stamped.
4 - Cross hall to booking office. Buying a ticket doesn't mean you're on
the boat, it's the job of 2 more people to put your name on the passenger
list.
5 - Find departure tax office (handily headed 'customs') on ground floor to pay departure tax.
6 - Return to 1st floor to go through immigration. Leaving the country means filling in an arrival form.
7 - Find waiting room (carpark) It's a good thing that it's only 40c, if it was hot I'd be getting abit annoyed by now.
Anyway, finally the boat left and we got back to Nuweiba, I stayed the night there but it was abit of a dump so I went back to Dahab. I did the Mt Sinai climb on Tues night, started the climb at 1.30am along with about 1000 other people and assorted camel hawkers. Bet Moses didn't have to put up with all that when he climbed it. We did the assent up the camel path, I ended up with 3 Spanish people who couldn't speak English, and with my poor Spanish it was a very quiet climb. I was the only one with a torch so I felt abit guilty leaving them in the dark. We reached the summit at about 3.30am, and had to spend the next 2 hours under a rock to try and keep warm, I hired a blanket that I think it was probably made around the same time as the Bible. The sun rose, everybody ohhed and ahhed and took their photos, and then bundled back down the mountain. Not really the most spiritual of moments. I took the 3000 steps of repentance down, I have much to repent and also it meant no camel hawkers. The view over St.Katherines monastery was pretty good 'tho, surrounded by the mountains.
I caught the overnight bus to Cairo and arrived this morning, spent the day around the Islamic Quarter, no more or less Islamic than anywhere else in Cairo but some beautiful Mosques. After Dahab the traffic and the pollution is abit of shock, by the time I got back I was covered in black filth.
Tomorrow I hope to get out to the Pyramids at Saqqara and Dashsur, watch the Sound and Light show at the Pyramids at Giza, and then it's back to England. While I'm quite looking forward to a clean bed and proper food, I'm going to quite miss the sounds of the Mosques calling to prayer and the smell of the waterpipes everyone smoke in coffee houses, I was going to buy one but I don't think that I'd get it through customs...
So, Goodbye from Egypt, I'll write when I'm home...
Edit 06/08/2007 –
I recall going out to the pyramids at Saqqara and Dashsur, the highlight of the day being made to pick up a policeman at the entrance to the site with him promising to be my guide. “Look” he said, guiding my gaze towards 10,000 tons of rock shaped like a pyramid, “it be pyramid” he explained. For this he wanted money.
I said no
He asked for money
I said no
He pointed AK47 assault rifle at me.
I said no.
He got out of the taxi and walked off
The taxi driver beckoned me out of the taxi, I get out
The taxi driver starts smacking me round the head whilst yelling “when policeman ask you for money, YOU GIVE HIM MONEY”
We went back to Cairo, taxi driver vows charges me extra for nearly getting shot in the back of his taxi.
|
