Aswan

This is a short one, lots of relaxing not much doing!

We are in Aswan. It is a nice change from Cairo, smaller and quieter and very beautiful nestled along the Nile and surrounded by trees and gardens. We took a night train last night out of Cairo. It was actually really nice for a sleeper train. Both of us got a goodnight sleep...our schedule has been so "go to bed early, get up early" lately, especially from the desert safari, that we are exhausted by 6:30pm so we slept well. Our train arrived at 9am in Aswan and our hotel here is the Isis Corniche Pyramisa. We are staying right by downtown on the banks of the Nile..you can see the river and all the feluccas sailing by from our room and the pool overhangs the river. We checked out the Bazaar, foraged for food and water and sun tanned by the pool all afternoon(very relaxing)..it is really hot here, probably high twenties at least. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Abu Simbel Temple. We have to take a 4 hour bus at leaves at 8am, we're crossing our fingers for air conditioning! I will hopefully write more tomorrow night when we get home, or else the next morning before we leave for our Nile cruise!

We are off to find dinner! :)

Buried in sand...

We survived the desert! It was amazing...I took a million pictures but they just can't capture the vastness or the scale of it. You will have to all go and see for yourselves one day...It was like being droppped on the moon, I felt as though I was on another planet.

We did a 3 day/2 night Desert safari through the black and white deserts...It was about 5 hours west of Cairo between The Baharia Oasis and the Frafara Oasis towards the Libyan border. We went through a company called Khalifa Expeditions which is run by Rose-Maria and Khaled Khalifa(she is Swiss and he is Egyptian). I read a great article praising one of their trips on the internet from a travel magazine and contacted them. They arranged a personalized tour for us so we could see everything we wanted.

The first day we were picked up in Cairo and driven 5 hours to their home in Baharia where we had an amazing lunch and met our travel companions, Paulo and his daughter Elena from Boston, our driver and cook Mohammed and Saban, and Rose-maria, our guide. The Desert used to be Sea and volcanoes 25 million years ago and as they dried up over time it left us with a variety of unique landscapes. We would drive for 2 minutes and be in a completely different landscape. We went from the white desert witch looked like an Arctic snowstorm passed over it(everything is white because it is chalk), to miles of massive bizarre shaped limestone and sandstone mountains, some looked like mushrooms, some had huge funny-shaped designs balancing on a thin 5 foot pillars...all eroded from the wind and rain. There was a mountain we climbed covered in crystal, large stretches of land covered in salt, the black desert which is jet black from volcanic eruptions. We visited small oasis's in the middle of nowhere where palm trees grew and water still flowed...one of them was surrounded by the remains of a Roman city (2500years old) and there were archaeological finds everywhere...the rocks we were walking on were actually broken pottery! There were remnants of houses, fossilized plants and wood. All I had to do was dig a foot into the sand and I'd find larger pottery pieces, I even found an almost intact mug. In the valleys of the white desert I found 2 arrowheads, and Paulo found some old tools including a stone knife that fit perfectly in your hand. There were fossilised seashells everywhere and at one place in the limestone cliffs we found a bunch of non-fossilised sea shells embedded in the rock, yet, it is so dry and sandy it is hard to believe water ever covered it.

We camped at night in the desert under the stars..which were so bright you could see the whole milky way  We ate amazing Egyptian food! On the second day we rode Camels for 4 hours. Rose-Maria breeds her own camels and they are so sweet and gentle. They even had a bunch of baby camels along with their mother's following us on the trek. The babies were so cute..very curious and sociable. They kept nussling our necks and loved to be petted. There was one Male camel along, the father to all the babies, who was in heat...he did the strangest thing with this howling/grunting noise and his tongue would puff up, they had to tie his legs so he couldn't stand up when we stopped for lunch or else he would mount the ladies....I guess camel turn-on's are a little different. There was even a pregnant Camel with us(she was big!)

Another thing about the desert is that it is dead quiet...no insects, no birds, no rustling leaves or water running...no traffic or the sounds of your house...just deafening silence, and pitch black at night until the moon rises. We even climbed the cliffs and watch the sunset.

We got back to Rose-maria's house at 4pm yesterday and stayed there last night...

Best. Shower. Ever.

We took a taxi back to Cairo this morning and just arrived an hour ago...I keep thinking I'll get used to the scary traffic but am still white-knuckling it...it is truly frightening driving on these roads. They drive so reckless and there are no seatbelts...I keep picturing myself flying through the windshield  Our driver Mohammed was very nice though, he even took us to help us buy oranges on the way back to the Hotel. We left our bags with the Hilton today for a few hours and are going to take a night sleeper train to Aswan tonight at 8pm. Paulo and Elena will be on the same train so we have plans to meet up for dinner. But for now, we plan to sun tan by the pool and relax to recover from all the relaxing.

Hopefully all is well in Calgary! Stay Warm!!!! Below is video of Sue mounting her camel...

Shovelling snow...er, I mean sun tanning in Cairo...

Hey all....How's the weather there...just kidding, I heard the news! If it makes you feel better, I have a tan...

Today we went to the Egyptian Museum...it was pretty cool...kind of a disorganised jumble of antiquities, but amazing stuff...the Kig Tut tomb exhibit was awesome and the mummy room was pretty cool too. We followed that up with 2 hours basking in the sun by the pool...weather is nice here, not too hot...maybe low 20's but it was nice to relax by the pool and turn less white. The Hilton is very nice with a prime location for tourists, we are glad we stayed here..some of the other neighbourhoods are a bit sketchy!

Also today Aunt Afaf and Uncle Hussan picked us up at 2pm and took us to an Egyptian restaurant and ordered us the typical Egyptian dinner(they eat dinner here at 2-3pm) Falafal, shishkabobs, hummous, veggies...some unspellable items which were all very good...Unfortunately, I am feeling a bit unwell today...woke up with nausea and it won't go away...so I couldn't eat too much, but I tried everything! We took a cab ride after to the Judge club..Hassan is a supreme court judge here and they have clubs they meet at for tea and conversation...we actually went to 2 different clubs, one in downtown(which while enroute our cabbie hit our first pedestrian...a poor crippled girl in a wheelchair!...she was fine though..at least I think, he barely slowed down to check her out in his rear-view mirror...Aunt Afaf yelled at him) and another one on the Nile with a great view. Sue ordered this Turkish coffee which was as thick as syrup...she drank it though...and had to chew it al ittle..Funny. They told us all about Egyptian culture, Islam, name it we talked about it...an awesome experience. Thay are so nice..Hassan was always stopping to give money to the poor as we walked ...they wouldn't even let us pay for a thing.

It is late and we still have to pack, we are leaving tomorrow at 8am for Bahariya Oasis...where we will go on a 3 day desert Safari...sorry, no internet in the western desert so I will Blog again on the 21st when we arrive back in Cairo. We are having a great time and I look forward to telling you about the safari!

Till then enjoy the snow...oh, that was mean....

Trapped in a pitch black pyramid...

We survived our first full day in Egypt, barely! You take you life in your hands here crossing the road, or driving on it for that matter!!! The traffic here is indescribable! 5 cars are jammed in a road designed for 3, no one stops or even slows for pedestrians. We had to cross 2 lanes of traffic to buy some water and find a money exchange place(the Hilton was charging 15 LE for a bottle of water we paid 2LE for across the street) It was literally like playing a game of frogger for your life..you had to run through one lane at a time stopping in the middle of each lane while cars whizzed past with no regard for your welfare! I felt a kind of exhilaration when I finished crossing the road which I usually reserve for extreme sports, like bungee jumping. Our current strategy for survival is to cross with other Egyptians and use them as human shields.

We also took our first real cab ride to the pyramids...SCARY....very scary. I swear we almost got into 10 accidents...it was hard to look forward, you had to look away or freak out. Sue pretended she was watching a video game.The cars weave in and out just about grazing each other(and pedestrians in the process)...I would have felt better if there were seatbelts....

The pyramids were amazing...hard to capture the scale in a picture. We were hardly harassed at all...which we were worried about due to warnings in books...the worst of it was by a mob of ill-mannered 12 year old girls believe it or not! We went inside the large pyramid...the steps in were very steep, narrow and short(you had to bend over the whole way up...and they weren't steps so much as wooden planks with foot holds along them, like a ladder...when we were half way up, maybe 50 meters, the lights went out with a power outage and it was pitch black for about 10 minutes...kinda cool...you couldn't move because it was too steep and dangerous to climb down and you couldn't see where you were going to climb up, but a once in a lifetime experience!

Look how tall each block in the pyramids are!

Yep....eating at Pizza Hut across the street from the pyramids! haha

Tonight Sue's friend Hanan's Aunt Afaf and Uncle Hassan met us and took us out for fresh mango juice and dessert..they were sooo nice!! He is a supreme court judge and she is a university professor...they grew up in Cairo and had lots to tell us about life here. They are picking us up tomorrow at 2pm and taking us for falafel, sightseeing and for dinner at a "judges only" club...so that should be cool. They also offered for us to stay with them on our last day in Cario and take us shopping and to the airport. Very nice people so we are excited!

Tomorrow we will go to the Egyptian museum in the morning and Aunt Afaf will pick us up at 2pm. Will write more afterwards! Enjoy the snow:)