The Overdue Egypt Post: Part Two

Day Five: Luxor, not hating it yet. We took it easy, and spent a good part of the day trying to book a balloon ride for the next day, which took way longer than it should have. We ate some good food, though, and took a short boat trip down the Nile to Banana Island, where Mom and I were surprisingly the only tourists. We took a stroll outside of Luxor Temple at night, then things took a rather nasty turn when we went to a small greasy-spoon Egyptian eatery for dinner and the proprietor tried to charge us a whopping 88 pounds for what was probably a 15 pound meal. Not even a subtle rip-off. He refused to back down when we confronted him, even after I started using the smattering of Arabic words I’d learned by this point. So being the cheeky little foreign chick I am, I went and got change from a nearby store, gave him 25 pounds, and walked away. The people at out hotel later confirmed this was more than fair, but—let the Luxor loathing commence.

Day Six: Balloon Day! We had an early boat ride over to the other river bank. Our balloon company thoughtfully provided us with breakfast—one Twinkie each. If this breakfast on the Nile wasn’t the first time I’ve had a Twinkie, then it was my second. Huh. Anyway, I spent the whole ride over staring at the multicolored balloons floating over the Luxor smog and Theban mountains, and after a short safety demo by our very competent (Driver? Captain? Balloon Master?), we were up up and away in our green balloon, floating over the smog-covered monuments of the West Bank—Hapshetsut’s Temple, Valleys of the Kings, Queens, and Nobles, the Rammesseum, Medinet Habu, and so on. And the Nile in the near distance, of course. I think we were up over 3000 feet? Very fun. After we landed in a gravel pit with the help of about 20 random guys who had run after the balloon to jump on the basket, we headed back to the hotel for a (delightful, and I’m not being sarcastic) breakfast of Corn Flakes (oooh, I miss cereal). Later that day we went to Karnak Temple, where the ticket seller practically threw my (oops!) expired student card in my face and called me a liar when I protested the absurdly high entrance fee, which had (I think) doubled in the past three months. Entrance for one person was higher than our hotel room for the night, including breakfast. Karnak Temple itself was awe-inspiring, with well-preserved columns and statues, but I was almost too grumpy to enjoy it. Let the Luxor loathing continue. (Please note, as mentioned in my little intro, people in Luxor have pretty good reasons to be bitter with the tourism that inundates them, but it was still really hard to enjoy the monuments when people were being so unfailingly rude).

Day Seven: In Which We Leave Luxor, Good Riddance. We spent a good chunk of the day on the quieter West Bank, where we had unfortunately been unable to get a hotel room. We ran into another incredibly rude ticket seller who had me in tears, but cheered up when we decided to avoid the overpriced and crowded Valley of the Kings (twice the price of a hotel room to enter Tut’s tomb) and Hapshetsut Temple in favor of some less-visited monuments and memorials at the Ramesseum, the Valley of the Nobles, and Medinet Habu. Good decision. Nice places, but I’m sure descriptions are both boring and inadequate, so I will just say hieroglyphs rock and check out the pictures if you want to see more. We had a nice chat with some restaurant owners (finally, some civil people), and headed back to the East Bank for a quick trip to the market before we hopped on the sleeper train, and after that, a commuter train to Alexandria.

Day Eight: Alexandria’s kind of a hard town to find your way around unless you’re on the waterfront, but we eventually ended up at a “budget” hotel near the famous and lovely Corniche. We dug up same fantastic budget (no sarcasm that time) fast food joint, Egyptian style, which was basically a tableful of deliciousness for three bucks. We walked along the Corniche one way to the ultra-modern Alexandria Library and then the other way to Fort Qaitbey (13^th century ruler made it with the rubble of the Wonder of the World Lighthouse of Alexandria). We hung outside for awhile, watching people fish and a little leery of monuments after Luxor. But we decided to go in eventually and it was interesting—reminded me a bit of the Chateau D’If in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Day Nine: After some wandering and getting lost, we finally found our way to the Catacombs, which is where the Romans buried their families during the period they took over Egypt. Pretty cool: a spiral staircase takes you down into the underground tombs which feature carving that are a mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art. We sat around in the park awhile, soaking up the sun and quiet, then went to find the famous Pompey’s Pillar, which we took one look at through the gate and decided nope, not worth the entrance fee. So we went to eat instead. That night we took a freezing night bus to Siwa Oasis, where we arrived, teeth chattering, at 5 am and had to wake up the hotel manager to let us in.

Day Ten: After the approximately 17 hours it took us to get warmed up, and having to switch rooms to one where the water came out of the faucets instead of heating it and running it into the toilet, we waited for breakfast awhile. And waited some more. And it didn’t matter because after about three hours in Siwa, you suddenly decide that time is the most irrelevant thing in the world and the food can take its dear sweet time. (Incidentally, for me that’s saying a lot, since I’m compulsively early and Lord help the person who gets between me and a meal.) Siwa itself is pretty small and dusty, and dominated by a collapsed fort that withstood hundred of years of invasions only to be destroyed by a few days of unaccustomed rains. We took a wander through the palm groves to the Oracle, which Alexander the Great consulted—I wasn’t expecting much, but it was pretty and interesting, with sweeping views and a deserted complex. Also, we had the advantage of a non-annoying volunteer guide, who strolled around with us and taught me a few words in Arabic. (Most unrequested guides: “That’s a goat. That’s a camel. See the camel? You want a camel ride? That’s a hieroglyph. Very interesting. That’s a camel.”) After giving some baksheesh we were for once actually happy to part with, we wandered past another temple that had been destroyed by dynamite in Victorian times by a mayor who decided he needed some rocks, and then on to Cleopatra’s Bath, a big cold spring that we didn’t go in because hey, it was cold. That night we took a taxi way out to a fancy campsite with deliciously hot hot springs and decent meals. Some of the campers gave us a ride back into town, and we stopped by a restaurant for dessert and got a brief taste of Siwa’s crazy but completely chill expat community.

Day Eleven: After a lazy morning (I don’t know if anyone or anything in that town gets going before 9), we had an adventurous little jaunt in the afternoon with a few other tourists in a hotel 4x4. Our driver took us on a ride through the dunes at the edge of the Great Sand Sea, aka The Real Sahara. In between plunging over “dune cliffs”—fun stuff—we stopped for tea at a lake, stopped for a toe dip at some hot springs, and halfheartedly glanced at some shell fossils (the Sahara used to be the ocean floor). Then we watched the sun set over the sands and hightailed it back into the oasis before it got too cold.

Day Twelve: We decided to break our usual waste-no-time-or-money habit by taking a day bus back to Alexandria, thereby spending a day in a vehicle and not saving hotel room money. And it was totally worth not having to take another night bus. And we saw camel road kill, how ‘bout that.

Day Thirteen: We spent some time before the next night bus wandering around the city and peeking in at the ethnic cemeteries (that’s a weird description, but Alexandria has a cemeteries district where each lot has a different ethnicity and art style—Greek, Lebanese, etc.) It was kind of quiet, and we saw police in riot gear on one corner. Hmm, that’s weird, maybe we’d better head back to the hotel before yet another night bus ride.

Day Fourteen: On arrival in Dahab via Sharm and innumerable Sinai Peninsula police checkpoints, we learned from our helpful hotel people what the unhelpful hotel people in Alexandria failed to tell us—there had been a religiously-motivated church bombing in Alexandria during midnight services which had left 20 dead and 80 wounded. Oh. Well that explains the riot police. We wander around Dahab for awhile—it’s incredibly touristy and a bit overpriced. So much for backpacker’s paradise. It does, however, have a decent used bookstore, which I happily raided. And then we had a nice dinner.

Day Fifteen: We headed up to St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments, and WOW THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE LET’S GET OUT OF HERE. We left the monastery after peeking into the church and then being jostled for 10 minutes, and opt instead to camel watch and sit on the mountainside. All in all, not a big fan of the Sinai Peninsula.

Day Sixteen: We take a day bus back to Cairo.

Day Seventeen: Also not really a happening day. We walk around downtown, eat, plan our desert trip, and take a break from traveling.

Day Eighteen: We took an early morning bus to Bahariyya Oasis in the Western Desert and were picked up by our driver/guide, Nasser, and his slightly annoying nephew Muhammed. We were supposed to share the cost of the trip with two other tourists, but it ended up just being us for the same price—very nice. We drive through the Black Desert, which looked vaguely volcanic and is mostly famous because it makes a nice contrast to its neighbor, the White Desert, which is legitimately awesome. The White Desert is blindingly, uh, WHITE, filled with hoodoos, crystals, and windblown rock formations that the guides have helpfully named after animals they vaguely look like. “Look, there’s a chicken. It has an egg. Look, it’s a rabbit. And there’s a camel.” Predictably, this drives my mother crazy. Nasser and Muhammed set up camp neat the camel (ha) while we watch the sunset turn the rocks and sand colors. Then, of course, it gets really cold, and we retreat under authentic-smelling camel hair blankets which apparently take pity on us and donate half their hair to our polar fleeces. We eat a delicious meal (thank you, Nasser) and watch the stars come out. We eventually snuggle up under the blankets and listen to far-off drums presumably played by a slightly annoying trustafarian getting in touch with his inner desert—MOUSE!! Yup, that was a desert mouse that just ran across my blanket, two inches from my nose. Not cool. I wrap my head in a scarf and try not to think about that story I head about a PCV waking up to a rat chewing on his hair. And I notice how deafeningly quiet the desert gets when the trustafarian shuts up. And I snap my fingers experimentally just to make sure it is, in fact, that quiet, it’s not a sudden hearing problem on my part. The desert it is.

Day Nineteen: We get a slow and lazy desert start (well, OK, Mom and I are up early and hiking but it takes the other two awhile to get going). We wander through the desert some more and go on a short mountain climb before ending up in the Oasis, where we get a free night in a camping hut because we’ve been staying at the lodge’s sister hostel in Cairo. Also, they have no other customers. But that’s OK, because it means we get all the hot water to ourselves, all five minutes of it! Nasser takes us on a little loop of the oasis, nothing too exciting—palm groves and little dunes. After dinner, we have a relaxing evening by the bonfire and have Bedouin-style tea (a lot of the oasis people are descended from Bedouin nomads).

Day Twenty: We take a bus back to Cairo, eat kusherie, watch a movie, and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. In our hotel. Where are they coming from?

Day Twenty-One: Museum Day! We set out for one of the famous smaller museums by metro and find it—closed to construction. Bummer! So we head over to another small sculpture museum, which was—closed for repairs. Hey… Then we seek out a third, which has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth because we walk in circles around the area it’s supposed to be in and don’t see it. Really? Well, not meant to be. So we load up on snacks and go watch The Tourist at the movie theatre, because there are no movie theatres in Mad. And even though the movie’s not great, at least I get to watch it on the big screen.

Day Twenty-Two: Mom heads to the airport early and I spend the entire day eating—spending the remainder of our money on a variety of food I won’t see in awhile. Sigh. And then it’s back to Madland for me, where there’s no kusherie, but where you don’t need to bury yourself in camel hair to stay warm.

And there you go.