Tony Horwitz
From the airport at Sharm we decided to head towards Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula (via a super expensive taxi - 200 pounds!). It's meant to be more chilled and backpacker friendly. We checked into a room at the 'Alaska Camp'. Dahab (meaning 'gold' in Arabic) is nice, although impossible to walk down the sea front without being hassled to spend money. Little did we know at the time, but this was nothing to what we would experience later...
On our second day we took an overnight trip to Mount Sinai (or 'Mt. Moses' as they call it when trying to sell you the trip), at 2285 metres this is supposedly where the big G delivered the 10 commandments to Moses, who apparently spent 14 days on the summit and then descended and smashed up a golden calf.
What Moses would have seen, if he got up in time
We set off in a minibus at 11pm and after the climb watched the sun rise from the summit. We were back in Dahab by noon the next day, completely shattered. At the top there was singing, people wielding bibles and all sorts. As we were huddled in our sleeping bags we watched as a Japanese bloke started laying his hands on some of the women in his party, who immediately burst into tears. We are here in the Egyptian mid-winter and it was pretty cold at the top. We had to avoid the icy rocks on the way back down.
At the bottom (after descending some 3740 rock steps chiseled by some poor monk as a form of repentance) we checked out the Saint Catherine Monastery (the oldest in the world - tick) to see a descendant of the biblical 'burning bush', as well as excited pilgrims frantically trying to touch it and snap bits off to take home. This is a place of pilgrimage for lots of different faiths - their is even a mosque in the monastery grounds, and a Greek orthodox church on the summit.
Back in Dahab we spent 2 days diving off the coast at 3 of the red sea's best sites - 'The Lighthouse', 'The Canyon' and 'Eel Gardens' (amazing to watch synchronised waving of hundreds of garden eels standing vertically from the white sand on the sea floor). Saw loads of fish and an 'Arabian electric torpedo ray' (a first for us). I'm still having trouble with the exchange rate and find it very hard to part with 7 pounds for a cup of turkish coffee. It's very quiet here, partly due to the fact that they keep blowing the place up - a tad worrying but at least it means we get cheap breakfasts (around 1 UK pound). On the 10th we took a ferry (possibly the most expensive ferry in the world) over the Gulf of Suez to Hurghada and then headed to the bus station to find transport to Luxor, in the Nile valley. We waited 4 hours in the cold, only to find the arriving bus from Suez full to capacity. At this point we decided to abort the mission, and took a hotel tout up on his offer of a room for the night. After a fun night with mosquitoes we tried again for a bus and at last arrived in Luxor in time for lunch.
After checking out a few nasty looking backpackers places in Luxor we checked into the 'Princess Hotel' at 35pounds/night. We spent a few days visiting some museums on the East bank of the Nile (at the mummification museum we attended a lecture about the preservation of the Colossi of Memnon, which was pretty interesting. Amazing that they are still making major discoveries and uncovering new relics.We visited 'Karnak', another ancient temple complex that had been almost completely destroyed over the centuries, but would have been incredible in it's heyday, and the Luxor temple at night - all the cool lighting made it far more interesting.
To get over to the west bank we took (were roped into) an organised tour with our hotel, an experience I would not repeat. Although Kerry enjoyed her time here, I wasn't impressed with the Valley of the Kings - the tombs of these Pharaohs have been reduced to the level of a ride at Alton Towers (except without the adrenalin rush after all the queuing). All the incredible treasures they once contained have been plundered over the centuries and all that remains are hot stone rooms full of hundreds of tourists flashing away with their cameras. Photography in the tombs is banned, and occasionally a cross looking Egyptian would confiscate a camera, which I found highly amusing. To be honest, I am amazed anything at all has survived. The tomb and temple walls, which were once covered in hieroglyphs are generally unprotected from all the tourists who seem compelled to touch and brush against them. I am looking forward to visiting the Egyptian museum in Cairo where a lot of the 'officially' plundered treasures have ended up.
Big Toes
On the 13th, Kerry bought 'Stanley' her new pet scarab beetle. We went for a drink at the Sheraton Hotel at a beautiful location on the Nile with the Valley of the Kings visible over the river.. We took a felluca ride back, at sunset. On the trip, our skipper 'Captain Alligator' tried to sell us 1) a meal at his friends place 2) some cannabis 3) a trip to 'banana island' 4) train tickets to Aswan 5) a room for the night and 6) a camel ride (twice). Then he had the cheek to ask us for a tip.
We took a 4 hour train ride to Aswan where we checked into the Hathor Hotel (550/night) with breakfast (a few ropey bits of bread and a boiled egg served by a one eyed man in a gold dress). On our first day we watched a 'sound and light' show on the island of Philae (we turned up an hour early, just in time to catch the French show - great). We waited around for an hour and a half and watched the show in English. Our taxi driver seemed to be under the impression that we could grant him a UK visa, something he babbled on about for most of the journey. For the rest of it all he did was try to extract things from us. He was particularly interested in getting our sunglasses for himself. I even found myself haggling over the tip that is had decided he deserved - amazing!
We took a day trip to Abu Simbel to see another hot, stuffy old temple filled with hundreds of Japanese tourists. Sorry, I'm getting cynical. It's just we were up at 3am this morning in order to catch the 3 hour minibus drive there through the desert. I think i'm getting to old for this shi... no, Kerry is right, I must stop that kind of talk. I'm sure the Egyptians are really nice people if you meet them under the right circumstances - like maybe a library. The temples here were build in 1274BC (silly old) by Ramses the 2nd. Until the 1820's they were lost under sand and then in the 60's the powers that be decided to damn the Nile, resulting in the formation of Lake Nasser (largest man-made lake in the world - tick). However, this meant that they had to MOVE the entire temple complex higher to avoid flooding it. This took them 4 years.
Back at the hotel I managed to mash up my toe on the bottom of the lift door. We covered it in iodine but I am a little worried about infection. Stupid Egyptian doors.
Our last few days in Egypt were spent taking an uncomfortable overnight (14 hour) train ride back to Cairo, checking out the Egyptian museum (King Tut's death mask is pretty special, and the ancient Egyptians invented the boomerang, not the Australians..) and the Pyramids at Giza.
Independent travel around mainland Egypt is not easy. Most tourists don't venture outside their cruise ship/hotel grounds by themselves - hardly surprising as the locals just don't leave you alone. We receive constant cries of 'Yes, something?' from all sides, cigarettes rammed in our faces and hassle from touts selling taxi/felluca/chariot rides, tours, food etc every 3 minutes... I'm sick of kebabs. If I hear one more indignant cry of 'Yes, something?' I might punch someone. We now feel we fully understand the phrase 'you cheeky Arab'.....
On our last day in the country we visited the pyramids at Giza before our flight in the afternoon. It was well worth it, although we feel the ancient Egyptians are probably turning in their tombs at the sight of their greatest accomplishment (and the last of the 7 wonders of the world) now being eroded away by the smog and pollution of urban Cairo.
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