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Back to Ras Sidr

Before leaving we made one last trip out to the Red Sea. I mentioned earlier that this was my our other experience that rivals for best memory out of the whole trip.

One morning Donia and I were swimming in the ocean and a entire pod of wild Dolphins swam right by us! We quickly caught up with them and when they took notice of this they began to circle us. There were at least a dozen of them and they swam in close circle completely surrounding us twice. We were a little nervous but could see that they were curious about what we were. They were checking us out. When we demonstrated to them that we could dive and race and play some of them got so excited!!! They would swim up alongside us playing! When we would slap our hands down in the water to make a splash a few of them would slap their tales down in response. IT WAS SOOOO SOOOO SOOOO AMAZINGLY WICKED AND COOL!

Then they began to move on to continue their fishing, leaving Donia and I completely blown away. We would have followed them around all day long if a couple of idiot workers at the resort didn’t swim up to us pretending to be life guards only to have their pathetic pick-up attempt completely backfire in their face and result in us getting them both fired. But in case you can’t tell I’m still a little furious about all of that so I will try to restrain myself from seething too much and using up all the memory on my blog ranting!

It was a strange day a the beach to say the very least. The tide was behaving oddly and so uncommon sea creatures seemed to be popping up all over the beach. When we were in the water later that day Donia stepped right on top of a bright blue balloon… or was it a ball? Or maybe a plastic bag? No wait I think it’s coming up, maybe it’s a… OH MY GOD IT’S A JELLY!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Thankfully Donia had stepped directly on the top of the strange Jellyfish and so had not been stung. We have seen many many jellyfish on this trip but none of them anywhere near as big and with such fantastic colouring. Even though it left Donia shaken and scanning the water every 30 seconds for anything blue it was still a pretty cool encounter.

There was also a very odd minow that insisted upon running into the two of us and would not go away. It was so persistent that I eventually picked it up in my hand and placed it back in the water facing another direction.

Donia and I went for a tour of the horse barn that night and were introduced to all the handsome ponies that lived there. The owner of the resort’s son is a competitive jumper and his world-champion horses come to the resort in the summer for some time to relax!

The handlers who worked in the barn were so happy to have people there who were interested in the ponies and couldn’t help themselves gushing about them and telling stories.

Like the stallion Sphynx who has such a sugar tooth he broke out of the container he was in on an airplane and ate an entire shipment of grapes. Or the time he put a hole in the side of the transport trailer truck that he was being moved in because he was in a bad mood.

All of the horses we saw there were beautifully cared for with wonderful temperaments toward us and their handlers.

The next morning when the horses were coming out for their morning cool-off swim in the ocean the handlers waved me over and let me ride around in the Ocean on a beautiful grey stallion. It was so wonderful!

This was the perfect way to say goodbye to the Ocean. And, as promised Mom, here are a bunch of photos of the gorgeous animals for you!

Kahn El Khaleeli Market & Bazaar

Who ever created Aladdin has been to the Kahn El Khaleeli market.

Kahn El Khaleeli is one of the only places in old Cairo where it is relatively safe for tourists. Most of the rest of old Cairo is quite impoverished and not really open to outsiders. Which was a real disappointment because it was in the few brief glances we would get of old Cairo when driving by and rare opportunities to visit, like this, that I really felt I was in an ancient city. Sun bleached houses and shacks piled one on top of the other, housing generation upon generation, the dirt streets teeming with people and merchants.

It was so like the movie Aladdin is was hilarious – people yelling at you from every direction trying to sell you things –

“Dates, sugar dates! Sugar dates and pistachios!”

“Fresh fish, get your fish!”

“A pretty necklace for a pretty lady!”

There were even people selling Tupperware! And every time you tried to walk away they’d do anything to try to call you back.

Suffice to say I no longer have room in my suitcases for any clothes at all. Donia and I took our shopping very seriously!

Belly Dancing on the Nile

We spent the week after Sharm recuperating in Cairo, visiting with family and bidding farewell to Donia’s sister Dahlia and her family as they headed back to Canada. We kept ourselves busy – I got sick, Donia got migraines, Donia’s mom had to have dental surgery and bandage her toe after stubbing it really badly.

After all this merry-making we decided to take a night off and went for dinner on a cruise ship on the Nile. As we floated along the Nile peacefully enjoying our meal a belly dancer came out to perform entertainment. She was beautiful and a very good dancer. Then she came wondering though the audience and decided out of the blue to yank me up on stage with her! It was HILAROUS! I thought Donia was going to DIE from laughter but I held my own and danced my little toosh off up there! It was great!!

Ode to Egyptian Food

You guys would be so impressed with how much weird stuff I have eaten this holiday, and most of it I’ve liked! (I’m not saying at ate it fast mind you, I was still always the last person at the table, as usual, but I ate it!)

Mangos & Mango Juice

Yeah, ok, Mangos are just gross. They’re really stringy and mushy and you have to scoop them out of the skin with a spoon. And Mango juice isn’t really juice it’s more like purée Mango. The ‘juice’ is so thick and stringy that you almost have to chew it. Mangos did not get the thumbs up.

Fayrouz!!!!!

Fayrouz was WICKED! The best tasting beer on the planet!! It’s a non-alcoholic beer made from apples and it tasted like carbonated apple cider. It was SO GOOD!!!! Big thumbs up!

Borio

Just like Oreos but brown instead of black. Thumbs up, of course!

Cactus Fruit or Prickly Pears

Like their name implies, these grew on Cactuses. The people would sell them on the street from the back of wagons would have cut away the spiky peel with their calloused hands that had become accustomed to the sharp brown spikes on them. Inside was this yellowy fruit. It was pretty good, quite sweet actually, but throughout the inside of the fruit were tonnes of very hard little seeds and I didn’t really like always biting into them and having to swallow them whole. With more practise I think I could have grown to like these a lot. But in my limited exposure to them this trip I would have to just give them a noncommittal ‘meh’.

So SO many GLORIOUS chocolates, cakes and pastries!!!!!

One of the nice things about constantly being invaded and occupied is that sometimes the invaders bring with them cultural traits that you like and decide to keep after the invaders have gone or disappeared into the population. In Egypt’s case, one of the things they kept with them after being invaded by France is the knowledge of how to make some of the most wonderful pastries on the planet. I imagine a symphony playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 when I look at these pictures!

Koshari

Koshari is like the equivalent of Toronto street meat. It’s what locals will often grab to eat when they’re on the run. I tried it while in a traditional Egyptian restaurant and my companions said that it was the fanciest Koshari they had ever seen. It’s a mix of caramelized onions, chickpeas, noodles, wheat seeds, tomato sauce, rice and it is usually wrapped up in a piece of flatbread but here it was served on a plate. I thought it was really good (of course, it’s hard to go wrong with me if you’re putting tomato sauce on something) so I give it thumbs up.

Uh, I don’t have any pictures of these but another kind of traditional food that you could grab on the run were shawermas. Shawermas can be made with chicken or beef and are cooked on those weird looking vertical grills like the one you see at Jimmy the Greek’s. Before the meat is cooked it is ground up, seasoned and then mushed back together in to a solid cone of meat (that resembles no part of a chicken or cow) and thin slices are cut off as they cook on the grill and served on flat bread with veggies and dressing. I have always been wary of this odd looking meat when I’ve seen it in Canada but they were great! So they get a thumbs up!

Molokhiya

Green soup. Basically the leaves of a presently unknown plant cooked in water and a lot of oil. Can be served with rice and Tomato sauce (whoo hoo!) At first I really liked Molokhiya but by the end of the trip I was pretty sick of it because we had it a lot. Still, I will give it thumbs up!

Veal bones and Mahhshi

This is baby cow bone and Mahhshi. The cow bone and baby cow meat is considered a delicacy. The bone is so soft that you can eat it, which we did. It’s hard to describe, it’s a very odd texture and it tastes like you would imagine bone to taste like – kind of chalky? Well I wasn’t a huge fan but Donia, as you can see, ate it ravenously.

The other thing on the plate is called Mahhshi. Mahhshi is rice, beef, seasoning and onions rolled up and cooked in cabbage or grape leaves. They were great and we had them all the time, thumbs up!

Pigeon

This is a whole pigeon on a bed of wheat. You eat the whole thing. You eat the skin, it’s stuffed inside and the spine. You eat the spine! You eat everything but the wing, rib and hip bones and even those the more expert of eaters (like Donia) could eat parts of. There was actually very little meat on it except for on it’s small breast. It tasted pretty alright but I never really got over the whole spine-eating thing. Everyone eats pigeon here, I guess it’s almost as common as chicken. You would see pretty pigeon coops all over the place where the pigeons could come and go to freely until they were caught for dinner that night. Donia said that they still use carrier pigeons for delivering messages sometimes too.

We often also had a bean paste called Foul on flat bread (kind of like Texas style beans) which was really good. And for breakfast in Ras Sidr we almost always had Taamias which are pretty much the same thing as Felafels. Also very good!

So all in all I thought I did quiet well for myself with the foreign foods on this trip. And when we were desperately needing a hit from home we could always order Pizza Hut!

Sharm El Sheikh

And now I have the extreme pleasure to introduce to you a fantastic group of companions who forged friendships and sought adventure together for four fabulous days in Sharm El Sheikh. As you can see we became real comfortable with each other, real quick.

Missing from this picture is Morgan. (He was taking the photo but there will be lots of other shots of him to come!) Here is how the associations work…

• I am Donia’s friend from University, we were in the Theatre program together.
• Donia knows Hilali and Omi from elementary and high school in England and they are in a band together along with Hilali’s brother Ahmed who came to see the Pyramids with Donia and I, but did not come along on this trip to Sharm.
• Morgan is Hilali’s friend from here in Egypt, they are studying at to become Doctors.
• Dhruve, Erik and Moe are friends of Omi’s who are studying in England with him to become Engineers.

We met early in the morning, many of us strangers, and piled into Omi’s van for the 6 hour through the desert to Sharm El Sheikh. We were quite the mix and we got more then a few strange looks while we paraded across the country.

• Donia is Egyptian but has lived most of her life in England and Canada. Her pail complexion, bright green eyes and foreign manner would often cause a few strange looks when perfectly fluent Egyptian would came out of her mouth.
• Omi is half Egyptian and half Philippinno so people practically fell over with surprised when Egyptian would come out of his mouth.
• Drhuve is from India, holding down the brown fort for our group.
• And the rest of the beiges were Hilali and Morgan (both full Egyptians) and Moe who is Pakistani.
• Then there were whities, Erik and I. I of course am a mongecake Canadian and Erik was our Jewish boy from Greece.

The poor border guards had a rainbow of passports to deal with whenever our van would drive up.

Sharm El Sheikh is one of the most popular destinations in the world for the rich and famous. It’s beautiful coral reefs grow right up to the shore and the water is incredibly clear and warm.

We arrived in the afternoon and spent the remainder of the day settling into our rooms, lounging around the beach and pummelling each other with viscous games of chicken fight. (Chicken Fight: everyone gets into partners, one person sits on the others’ shoulders then all the pairs face off against each other and try to knock the others off their partner’s shoulders via kicking, biting, scratching, pushing, pulling and hitting. The last pair with someone remaining on their shoulders wins.) Suffice to say that Donia and I more then held our own in these face offs.

SNORKELLING

The next day we set off for snorkelling along the reef. We saw so many beautiful and exotic looking fish and coral, it was so fun. Not to mention the exotic creatures that roamed around above deck…

One of the most amazing things we saw on this trip was not actually while we were snorkelling but while the boat was heading to another snorkelling location. Our group had taken over the very front of the ship and as we were dangling over railings and acting stupid we saw a group of small fish cross the path of the boat. Then, like magic, a whole fleet of them actually jumped out of the water and flew the length of basketball court above the water before dropping back in!!! It was so amazing!!!!! We were so excited we all started cheering! I had no idea that flying fish could actually fly that far, I had always thought it was more like really long jumps but this was totally real FLYING!

MOUNT SINAI

At 11 pm that evening, with tired muscles and the two whities with very burnt backs from snorkelling and swimming all day we piled onto a bus that would take us the 2.5 hour drive to Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai is the mountain where the Prophet Moses was said to have seen the burning bush and given the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments from God. It is a Jewish pilgrimage and there were a vast number of people who were climbing the mountain that night.

We were told that it would be cool on the top of the mountain so before we started our climb I bought a small red shawl from a bedawinn who had a small stall at the base of the mountain. Then at 2 am we began our climb!

Moe seemed to be part mountain goat and basically sprung up the mountain right from the start so Omi gloriously decreed that we shalt follow ‘Moe’s-Ass’ up the mountain. And so we did…

It was a long, hard trek. We walked for hours led by 5 flashlight shared between us. Although the path was well worn it seemed to go on forever and the thinning oxygen and constant uphill climb did not go unnoticed. But we brave adventurers forged onward!

At times we would come around a curve in the path and get a good view of the winding route that lay ahead and it would be magical. A small stream of little lights wound all the way up the mountain from flashlights of other people making the trek that evening and it looked like something out of a fable. It was so beautiful against the mountains’ dark backdrop. Of course, not all of us found it so captivating when they realized that it showed just how far we still had to go!

There were camels everywhere for people who couldn’t climb any more and wanted a ride up the rest of the way. None of our group were quitters though… very loud complainers, yes, some of us… but not quitters! We all made it the full way up on foot.

The camels soon became very annoying because, while the path was easily wide enough to allow people on foot to pass each other, we were practically ran over every time a camel would come and pass us from behind.

By the last stretch Donia and I were certain that Omi was going to puke because he had consumed 3 cans of Mango juice and 5 Snickers bars to keep his energy up. Miraculously we were spared and seemed to have underestimated his digestive system!

Finally, we made it up to the top just in time to see sunrise on the mountain range. It was a magnificent sight. Well all of us who saw it thought so, Donia and Omi slept through it completely. I was very glad to have my bedawinn blanket, it was very cold at the top and I thought of mom while it kept me warm.

With the sun up we could see the winding path we’d taken in the dark of the night.

And then after about 45 minutes of resting, napping and listening to a church choir that had gathered to sing on top of the mountain it was time for our decent.

We practically skipped down the mountain in daylight, ravenously hungry for our breakfast at the bottom. (After which Dhruve promptly fell asleep right at the table.)

We had then planned to tour the Monastery that stood at the base of mountain but instead spent our last hour on Mount Sinai searching for Omi’s camera that had gone missing. Miraculously (and this is no small miracle in a country where pick pocketing can practically be claimed legally as a profession) it had been found by security and we were able to retrieve it safely, drive back to our hotel and happily to collapse into bed and sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

Our time in Sharm ended much too quickly and after one last morning on the beach we headed back to Cairo. We parted with Dhruve, Moe, Erik and Omi back where our adventure together had first begun, in front of Donia’s apartment, and from Cairo they went on to Alexandria and Luxor. Even though our time together had been very short we had become friends very fast. They were some of the funnest people I have ever met and we will be sure to keep in touch.

ALEXANDRIA

The next day I was much better!!! I HAD to be as we caught a train for Alexandrian early in the morning to go to Donia’s cousin’s wedding. Some of the stomach pains remained but I was no longer barfing up every piece of food I dared to even look at, never mind eat!

Alexandria was so hot. Way hotter then Cairo at the time and really humid. We were dying but Donia’s mom is a slave driver and forced us to go sight seeing all over the place and even though by the end we thought it would not be possible to drink enough water in a month to make up for how much we sweated out that day we saw some really cool stuff. So thanks Donia’s mom!

The heat might have not been so bad if our hotel room hadn’t been so very, very, well… special. They had jammed three beds into a room that looked like it had been built for a single so that we had to climb over one of the beds just to get to the bathroom which you wanted to go in as seldom as possible because it was completely covered in a layer of dust as if someone had left a window open for a year and had not cleaned up since but I suppose we were lucky enough to just to have a private bathroom to ourselves instead of being like the people down the hall who had to share a bathroom with people from other rooms and I guess it was perfectly understandable WHY someone would have to leave a window open constantly there because our room had no air conditioning, other rooms in the hotel had air conditioning but, oh no, not ours! Whew. So yeah, that’s my rant about that. But really, Donia and I didn’t have to much of a problem with it, we thought it was kind of funny and just tried to think of it as camping. But Donia’s poor mom couldn’t deal. She made the lives of every person who worked in that hotel miserable for the full 3 days we were there. There was a never ending stream of bus boys and servers running back and forth from the room, fixing this and moving that. We thought it was pretty funny.

But now, on to the sight seeing…

THE ROMAN PILLAR

hahaha Note the oh-so-pleased faces in this picture!

The Roman Pillar was built by, well obviously, the Romans. One of the really cool things about it was that this ancient building was constructed in order to be able to withstand earthquakes. Under it’s base was a hollowed out area in the rock which acted as a sort of shock absorbers for the huge pillar.

In the area all around the Pillar they have unearthed all kinds of ancient statues and objects, even bathtubs!!

CLEOPATRA’S LIBRARY

Not to be confused with the Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra’s Library was thought to have sunk into the ocean until it was discovered in a series of Catacombs directly below the Roman Pillar.

Book shelves were carved right out from the rock and chambers were dug deep into the earth so they would be cool while they read by torchlight. There were also small holes throughout the caverns about the width of snake holes. These had been secret compartments for very special scrolls that would have been covered over with a perfectly fitted rock and hidden amongst the decorations so that thieves or spies would not be able to get hold of important information.

AQUATIC MUSEUM

Not much to say. The aquatic museum was just about as terrible and upsetting as this table of death that was set up right out side selling souvenirs to tourists.

It made me very sad.

QUIT BEK FORT & CASTLE

Right in the lands’ edge this Fort & Castle over looked the beautiful port of Alexandria.

It had beautiful, intricate stone work inside and employed another form of protection against earthquakes. Like many of the churches we saw while driving through Cairo, this castle had been built by stone masons. It was many stories tall and each floor was supported by arches in all the walls but on every other floor the arches were staggered so that no arch was ever directly above the weak points of another arch. This strengthened the walls and offered protection from earthquakes which is probably why it still stands today.

In this castle we also got to see the sleeping chambers of the king’s harem. There were enough rooms for 21 women in all.

From the windows of the castle you could also see a view of where an ancient city had sunk into the ground. They believe that this city must have been a great centre for art and science in its’ time because of all the incredible pieces they have found down there. Our guide at the castled said that they are constructing a huge underwater museum of the city because much of the treasures down there cannot be moved with out risk of severe damage. They have pulled some things up though and here are some pictures – statues, and yes, more bathtubs!

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

Remember how angry Donia’s mother was about our hotel? She was so upset that the only thing I think she really enjoyed doing that day was taking a tour of the brand-new-not-yet-open Four Seasons Hotel. It was so cute, it was like she had found her very own castle. She refused to leave and go back to our dismal hotel room until after the host had shown us both ball rooms, the outdoor patios and 4 out of the 6 in hotel restaurants.

EGYPTIAN WEDDING

The following day was Donia’s cousin’s wedding. We did very little that day other than recover from the previous day, whine about no air conditioning and get ourselves ready for the wedding.

The wedding itself was very much like the reception at North American weddings – You rent a hall, serve a fancy dinner, there’s lots of dancing, they cut the wedding cake. The most striking difference was to start the evening off it is traditional to hire a special type of band who play traditional Egyptian wedding songs on drums and flute like things while singing with the bride and groom in the centre and guests circling around them. Here is me, Safa (Donia’s niece), Donia, Ronda (Donia’s cousin) and little Zelia all looking gorgeous at the wedding.

ROMAN AMPHETHEATRE

The Roman Amphitheatre was really cool. They had discovered it while digging out the foundation for a new sports centre.

It was so neat. We’ve talked about these legendary theatres so much in my Theatre courses that it was so amazing to see one in real life. Although this theatre was relatively small compared to many that still exist in Rome and Greece today it still employed the same principals of construction and still worked the same way. In the centre of the stage was a round keystone. When you stood directly on this keystone your normal speaking voice was amplified by the acoustics of the stone seating ten fold!!! It was SO COOL!!!!!

And next to the Amphitheatre there were more, you guessed it, more bath tubs and bathhouses!!

LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

This Library was basically built as a tribute to the great ancient library of Alexandria that had been a storehouse for books, scrolls, art and information from across the world until it was burned down by invaders. It’s got a spacey design and a lot of books and artwork but unfortunately did not make that huge of an impression on us at the end of a long, hot day.

And so, before we knew it, we found ourselves back on the train and heading to Cairo.

THE PHARAOH’S CURSE

Sick. SO SICK. I spent the entire day after the pyramids so unbelievably sick. I am certain it was the Pharoh’s curse for dancing on his grave. (Although Donia’s mom is pretty sure it a stomach cold from the air conditioning that I fell asleep directly under while it was turned up to full blast) BUT I SWEAR IT WAS THE PHAROH’S CURSE!!!!

Puking, diarrhoea, headaches, stomach cramps, you name it, I had it, I had A LOT of it.

Not fun.

THE PYRAMIDS!!!!

The Pyramids The Pyramids The Pyramids!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Donia’s alarm didn’t go off. Donia’s alarm didn’t go off so we began our adventurous day with a phone call:

6.00 am. Donia’s ringtone ‘Attack’ by 30 Seconds to Mars is not the most serene thing to wake up to…

Groggy Donia: “mmm… hello?”

Ahmed: “Donia?”

Groggy Donia: “Yeah?”

Ahmed: “Uh, Where are you?”

Suddenly awake and alarmed Donia: “Where are you?”

Ahmed: “Uh, here? Like I said I would be?”

Donia: “Shit! Sorry! I’ll come let you in!'

Donia uses the intercom to ask the porter to open the gate...

Donia: “Hello?? Hello?? Can you let my friend in?”

… No response

Donia: “Hello!! Let him in. Please let him in!”

Frantic Porter: “Hello?!? Hello? Who is there? Who are you talking to? No one is here! The door is open! No one is here! Who are you talking about?"

30 Seconds to Mars reprise...

Donia: ”Dude where are you?”

Ahmed: ”I’m right here!"

Ahmed's voice can be heard on the other side of the front door. Donia, grinning sheepishly, opens the door...

Donia: “Hi”

Ahmed: “Hi. I thought you were going to call me at 5:30

am to make sure I got up?”

Donia (coolly searching for an excuse): “Oh well, yeah, you know…”

Kat: “YOU SAVED THE DAY AHMED!!!!!”

Kat throws her arms around him..

Kat: “You totally saved the day!!! We would have slept in and completely missed the pyramids and I NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Ahmed (Completely caught off guard… Canadian’s are very strange): “Ok, you ready?”

The girls exchange a frantic look and laugh… FASTEST GETTING READY SESSION EVER ENSUES… Good thing neither of us ever shower anyways… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

As we drove across the city and the pyramids begin to come into view over the rooftops. We decided to make the last leg of the journey on Camels…

The Camels weren’t OVERLY pleased to see us but the let us get on. The only English words the children who brought the Camels over told us was to ‘sit back’ as we were getting on. Very good advise! You get on Camels while they are lying on the ground and when the straighten their back legs to stand up while their front legs are still kneeling on the ground it is very important to be leaning back so you don’t go right over their heads!

We travelled through the streets of old Cairo. It was a different kind of poverty then I saw in Argentina. It was mixed with cruelty and uncaring. I have tried hard not to judge these people to harshly because I know there is not way I can understand all the elements of their situation. But I have not been able to find any impartial words to describe it to you. I have no pictures to share. So I will move on…

When we reached the edge of the ancient town that lies in the shadow of the pyramids and their surrounding desert, our guide (a rather portly man who was walking along side us) stopped and proceeded to mount Ahmed’s camel so that he and the guide were sitting quite cosily together on top of one camel. The moment we realized what was going on Donia and I exchanged a look, equally gleeful and horrified by this situation. We nearly fell out of our saddles we were laughing so hard at his expression. Poor Ahmed looked so unhappy, uncomfortable and embarrassed that Donia took pity on him after a few minutes and invited him to ride on her camel… But NOT before I got pictures!!!!! Ahahahahahahaha

After our little game of Musical Saddles we proceeded into the desert area around the pyramids. The pyramids rose up from behind a very old graveyard.

We saw many people riding Arab horses around the sand dunes. Watching this beautiful beasts tear ass through the desert, their riders hooting and hollering (either out of fear or fun, sometimes both) gave me a whole new understanding of why Paddy acts the way he does. He would have fit in so naturally into this environment!

And after about 20 minutes of trekking through the desertous terrain atop Camels and bribing the police officers to let us in the back door of the area supposedly off limits to tourists, we had a magnificent view of them!

Stu, a good friend from my band who has been to Egypt before warned me before I came;

“Remember, if they say it’s $20 for a ride into the desert then they’ll take you out nice and far and say ‘By the way, it’s another $20 for the trip back out.’”

Well we didn’t encounter a problem that was quite as bad as that but our guide was definitely a rip off artist in his own right. Just in case we had been planning to complain about the fact that we were supposed to have gotten a camel each instead of sharing two between the three of us he stopped the camels half way back through the desert and demanded to be paid the full amount before going the rest of the way. Which of course we did pay him.

I’m not sure at what point it is that you pretty much accept the fact that you’re going to be ripped off no matter where you go here if you look foreign. You just begin to accept it because they’re poor and if you speak English they assume you must be rich and in comparison to them, you really are. Don’t get me wrong, we still haggled over prices as much as possible but it’s not as big a deal when you consider that it’s often only a matter of a dollar or two difference in Canadian. (The exchange rate on a good day is about $1 Canadian to $5.4 Egyptian pounds.) Poor Donia is a hero and a saint as most of the painstaking bartering was left up to her because I, of course, don’t speak the language. (Although there was those 3 bottles of water I got down from 30 pounds down to 20. Boo Yah!!!)

But of course, we were not done with the pyramids yet!!! Oh no! We were determined to get MUCH closer! So, after our camel ride we went around to tourist’s entrance. I paid $50 pounds to get in while Donia and Ahmed flashed their Egyptian passports and paid $2 pounds to get in. IT WAS SO WORTH IT!!!!!

First we explored the tombs surrounding the pyramids which were for the Royal family and Priests.

It was hard work but we were happy!

I got yelled at by security for collecting sand...

Then we set our sights on loftier goals…

Unfortunately though…

So we stuck to the ‘tourist approved’ height and areas to climb…

I desperately wanted to go into the pyramids and explore but we had missed the morning tour would have to wait 2 hours for the next one. We knew it would be worth it so we spent our two hours sitting at the very base of the largest pyramid in Africa, scrounging for what little shade we could find and contemplating its’ magnificence, its’ construction, its’ meaning to the world in the present, past and future aaaand talking about our favourite bands.

I figure each of our karma points went up quite a bit because of those meditative hours.

Then, it was time to venture inside!!!! Once again, Donia and Ahmed whipped out their Egyptian passports and paid a measly 20 pounds each while me and my fancy little foreign butt paid 80 pounds. This would be a theme for our entire trip. But, STILL DO WORTH IT!!!

No cameras were allowed inside, they confiscated both mine and Donias’ but they missed Ahmeds’ so we snuck it inside!!!! In the initial passageway past the entrance we had to duck to get through the brick that had been either dig or blasted through. After the dead pharaoh had been placed inside the pyramid was sealed up so that the entrance was completely sealed up and looked no different then any other part of the pyramid. This was to prevent grave robbers from getting in and stealing all of the fantastic treasure that were buried with the Pharaoh.

Then we came to what once would have been a very long stairway but again, in order to stop grave robbers from reaching the treasure, the ancient Egyptians had filed down the stairs behind themselves so that all that was left was a perfectly smooth, very steep and thin ramp that had a sheer wall on one side and a deep pit on the other. Modern day Egyptians had laid down wooden planks to use as foot hold and a metal railing on the pit side of the ramp for tourists to use but it was still a very long, hard climb.

Finally the ramp ended at a low tunnel that you had to crawl through in parts. And without warning you suddenly found yourself in a large rectangular room with high ceilings and nothing inside but a ominous stone tomb at the back of the chamber. It took my breath away. Such a cold, uncomforting and lonely place to sleep for thousands and thousands of years. Give me returning to the earth any day! We waited in the chamber until we were alone and Ahmed finally pulled out his camera to get some pictures of me inside the tomb. Then we made our way back out, came home and spent the rest of the day napping, thoroughly exhausted from the heat and excitement.

I will post Ahmed pictures of inside the tomb here as soon as I get them from him!! I don’t know how they turned out yet but I hope they were cool!

I know this has been a very long post so thank you to all of those that have hung in there with me! This day was by far one of my favourite of the trip, rivalled only by one day at the Red Sea which I will talk more about later… It involves Dolphins…. EEEEEEEEE!!!!

As I said before, Egypt has been a cornucopia of juxtapositions so it is only fitting that both of my favourite days here featured both great excitement and great upset.

Ode to City Stars Mall

Ok, now that I've posted my Calendar you can all see how terribly behind I am in updating the blog with my adventures. Well a large part of that is due to the fact until the last few days I have been so busy LIVING my adventures I've barely had time to eat and sleep, never mind sit down and WRITE about them. Also, since we were staying in hotels for most of the last 2 weeks the times in which we have access to some form or another of internet were quite few and far between. SO, now I am scrambling to catch up!

One place that I must make mention of is Cairo's newest and most fabulous mall called City Stars. (Which just HAPPENS to be only a few blocks down the road from us... WOOHOO!!!) City Stars has been like a home away from home. It has been our meeting place for many local Cairians who I now consider friends and a crash course lesson on the life of the average Egyptian (in a big city).

Egypt has been a place where I have witnessed many striking juxtapositions - unfathomable wealth and desperate poverty; unstoppable bulldozers of civil rights movements and centuries old oppressive and barbaric practices; wonderful acts of kindness and those looking only to take advantage.

City stars is not excluded from this pattern. When Donia and I walk out the front door of her family's Condo building we see a street lined with small shops, open-air stands and carts pulled by donkeys. They sell everything from bread and fruit to lingerie and jewellery or services of barbers, handy-men and pharmacies. Only a few blocks farther takes us to the gates of City Stars - a huge polished gem of a building in a sea of disintegrating apartment buildings. A tall fence of stone walls and iron gates surrounds the building with automatic rifle carrying guards and bomb squad sent dogs at every entrance. Once through the outer wall you proceed to the actual building itself where everyone goes through metal detector and has their bags opened and thoroughly searched before you are actually allowed to enter the mall.

Once inside though you feel more like you're in a palace than a regular mall. Seven stories of floors hosts over 250 stores and a plethora of restaurants and cafes. The centre courtyard features beautiful water fountains and a view of all 7 stories with their beautiful winding staircases, escalators and glass elevators, all the wall up to the pyramid shaped glass ceiling decorated with hundreds of sparkling icicle lights. In short it blows ANY North American mall I’ve ever been to WAY out of the water and is quite the contrast to the simple carts and shops we meet on our walk only a few blocks away.

Not that pictures have been able to do justice to ANYTHING I’ve seen on this trip, but here is one to give you a sense of it…

Now some of you are probably saying “Kat, you’re in EGYPT! Why would you waste even a SECOND of your time in a Mall!! You can go to malls all you want at home!”

Well I stand by my statement that spending a little time here and there as a mall rat has been a wicked lesson in modern Egyptian culture and we have had some pretty awesome experiences there. I think the most memorable would be the night we went to eat dinner at City Stars with Hillali and Ahmed on the first night I had met them.

We were STARVED after a long session of jamming with the band (in which we wrote 2 new songs which are WICKED!!!) and decided to hit Chilis’ for dinner (their traditional after-jamming hang out spot at City Stars). This evening happened to be the same night as the final game for the Egyptian Football cup. Egypt, like everywhere other than Canada and the US call Soccer Football and it is impossible to truly convey how Obsessed with the game they are. (They even put Jack’s obsession with his first and strongest love Hockey to shame.)

Try to imagine a seven story mall, packed with people hanging on the games every minute. When a team would score a goal the entire building would irrupt with cheers or groans. There was extra security everywhere to prevent fights and entire halls of the mall were made completely impassable by crowds of people gathering around an electronics store or restaurants with TVs to watch.

I should also mention that those were only the ‘soft’ football fans. The REAL fans were glued to their televisions at home, poised to riot the streets in their jerseys and painted faces the minute the winner of the game was announced.

It was pretty cool.

Calendar

Hey Mengs! Check eet out!

I like posteed a peecture of my calender here meng. So jou can like see whut Ee'm up to. Just like cleeek on the peecture meng and eet'll get big meng so jou can like reed eet an stuff.

H'okay? Eenjoy meng!


An' like don' woree meng! I gonna update dees calendar lots like, jou know, wen ever like new stuff happens, hokay meng?

The Palace

Donia and I went and played princesses at the Palace (also called the Citadel) and I have some FANTASTIC pics from our day there. It was so beautiful.

The Citadel is where the Royal family of Egypt (you know, Cleopatra, Nefertiti and King Tut’s modern day ancestors) lived before the revolution through them out of power and killed off most of the living blood line in 1952. Now parts of it are open to tourists to explore.

Our first item of business was this uber-touristy but very fun photography stand that would dress you up in traditional looking costumes and take photos of you in front of the palace.

Here is Donia as Cleopatra and me as her Bedawin servant:

Our pictures turned out so well that the photographers upgraded them to better quality prints and gave us extras for free so that we would agree to let them use them as promotional pics for their company! It was so hilarious and wicked!

The Palace has it’s own Mosque for the Royal family. In order to be properly respectful visitors had to remove their shoes and have arms and legs covered. Here I am at the Mosque’s inner courtyard at the foot washing station.

This is Donia inside the Mosque with the ornately decorated ceiling in the background.

The Citadel’s outer courtyard overlooked all of old Cairo. It was a breathtaking view. And look!! Pyramids!!!! This was our first glimpse of the Pyramids. I was so excited.

However, we were soon to get MUCH more up close and personal with the Pyramids than this!!!!!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Cairo Museum

It took us a couple tries to get to the Cairo Museum. Mainly because it required us to get up at 5:30 am in order to drive across the city and get in before the crowds and the heat. So, since we’ve been averaging getting to be at about 2 am, we missed the 5:30 am alarm a few days until we were finally able to drag ourselves out. (Of course on the days we missed the alarm we found other adventures to keep us busy… on one of these mornings Donia’s mom dragged us to a salon to have our nails done and they filed like half my foot off! I will never forgive her… of course, they do look kinda pretty now…)

Anyways!! Back to the Museum! THIS was a COOL Museum! When you walk in the front gates they have huge statues all around the grounds and, best of all, you’re actually allowed to touch these milleium old artefacts! You could feel this ancient history with your own hands!

hahahaha Zombie Donia!

Inside you were not allowed to take pictures but I’ve bought lots of post cards that showed some of my favourite things from inside, including ancient chariots that had been buried with King Tut, his five gold covered tombes that all fit like 3D puzzle pieces inside one another and, of course, the Royal Mummies!

Another cool thing that surprised me to see were the mummified animals (‘pets’ if you will) that the pharaohs had preserved and buried when they died. There were horses, sheep, dogs, cats and, coolest of all, Nile Crocodiles! There were two crocodile mummies displayed and they were each at least 15 feet long!

AND I sent off postcards while at the Museum so hopefully you’ll get them before I get home! Miss you all!

Shisha, anyone?

After our week lounging at the beach we returned to Cairo and met up with Donia’s cousin Dina and Dina’s friend Susan. They are a riot and we had a tonne of fun on a girls night on the town.

We had wanted to have dinner on the Nile but plans fell through so instead, we went downtown to sit on the outdoor patio of a shisha bar!!!

Shisha is a tobacco based product that comes in different flavours like cherry, lemon or melon and it supposedly has no nicotine. You smoke it out of a tall glass container that has water in the bottom. (In Canada we often call them Huka pipes.) Don’t worry I’m not going to make a habit of it or anything but it was fun to try out this traditional pastime.

Donia's dad said I looked like a natural! LOL!!

Ras Sidr

Literally upon landing Donia and I were whisked away to Ras Sidr. The family beach home on the Red Sea with Mount Siani in view across the water on clear days. The beach was so quiet that most days we could count the number other people on the beach on two hands.

Check out the beach beauties! Yes the one that is so pale she glows in the dark is me, but don’t worry, I am now boasting a tan!

The owner of the resort has a son that rids horses competitively so along with the 3 swimming pools, tennis court, movie theatre and peer there was a huge stable with at least 40 beautiful arabian horses! (I know you're drooling at this point mom, they made me think of you a lot.)

Donia and I would walk over to the stables at night and pat the ones that would stick their heads out of their stall windows to catch some of the evening breeze. Every morning they would bring a few of them out to cool down in the ocean water. (Sorry Mom, no pics yet. But we'll be going back before we leave, I'll get some for you then!)

Speaking of my sweet Mom, she wrote me an email (yes! An email! She has actually braved the scary and unfamiliar world of technology to converse with her daughter on the other side of the planet!) saying that she had watched the sun set while riding last night and thought of me. We enjoyed many amazing sunsets on the Red Sea but they were quite different from our slowly crawling Canadian ones. One minute the sun is still hanging warmly in the sky and then, all of a sudden, it’s as through someone has snipped its string and it just drops out of the sky. The point from when it is still hanging in the sky above the water to when it has completely disappeared below the edge of the world takes little more then 10 minutes.

One of my FAVOURITE parts of Ras Sidr was when we would go into town and visit the bazaar. A patch work of sheets, carpets and other random material, this large make-shift tent housed merchants selling everything from uber traditional Galabeya (long tunic-like dresses with Egyptian designs and patterns) to furniture to pots and pans.

Below, some pictures of our Galabeya shopping!

Photos

Speaking of eyes, Jack...

Sunrise in the desert, our first morning in Egypt.


For our first week here we stayed in Donia's family's beach house right on the Red Sea. It was SO beautiful! The Ocean was practically right on our doorstep. We went swimming everyday, forced out of the water only to eat and when we where sure that no sunscreen in the world could protect us if we spent any more time in the water under the sun.

The summer house was in a desert area outside of Cairo, on the other side of the Suez Canal called Raas-Sidr. It was unusually cool in there for this time of year (but still quite hot!) and there was a constant beautifully cool breeze off the ocean. Every night Donia and I slept outside under the stars on the roof of the home. Below are a few pictures of our room under the stars.


Apparently there is a large population of Gekos in the area that constantly invade the beach homes. This poor, ill fated geko showed up one night and Donia killed it - but not before chasing it around the room as we all screamed and it letting it's tail fall off in hopes that we would loose it's trail. From that moment on I vowed to free any gekos I see before D can get her hands on them!
Every day we would make a trip into the small village nearby to pick up groceries and supplies. The locals would use these clay pots to cool and clean their water. We only drank bottled water though (doctor's orders!)

There were always grazing animals - goats, sheep, even donkeys that would wander by the side of the road. Look! Baby Donkey!!!

The people who live as nomads in the desert are called Bedawin. We often saw them traveling on camels with their herds. These Bedawin started waving at the camera as I was taking pictures.

More on our wonderful time at the Red Sea and pictures to come soon! I am enjoying taking some time to look back and reflect. Now we back in Cairo where we are experiencing a severe heat wave so we are keeping pretty low key and staying indoors as much as possible!

Emails

Thank you all for the emails asking about my trip!!! I miss you guys like crazee!!


Everyone has been asking for photos and because there is only dial up over here it has been really hard to send them to everyone. So!! I plan to be posting MANY photos here for everyone to see. Hope you enjoy them!!!

Air born

Hello and welcome to my adventures in Egypt! This is the blog of Katharine Dubois. Please forgive me if I begin in a whimsical tone, I have been looking very forward to this trip for some time and have recently been reading a lot of Tad Williams...

I made my escape from work, routine and the familiar on June 19, 2007 to travel to Egypt with my best friend Donia and her family. It was a warm afternoon in Toronto as we made our way to the airport - at least I had thought it was warm, I now know that I didn't even know what warm was... yet!

Getting to the airport and on the plane itself was quite the accomplishment. We had already had quite an adventure already, what with travel agents who 'forgot' to book our tickets and an evil principal who at the last minute ruined my sweet farewell with my boyfriend Jack and forced me to scramble for travel arrangements from our home in St. Catharines to Toronto (thank you mom and dad!!!!!). But all that takes us too far back, I will begin with our flight...

Delayed. Surprise! Yes, delayed because of thunderstorms in Toronto which made us arrive in Frankfurt at approximately 7:10am to catch our connecting flight to Cairo which was supposed to leave at approximately 7:10am....
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Lucky we were not the only connecting flight that the plane was waiting for. So, my time spent in Germany was on an incredibly crammed bus (so full by the end that there wasn't even any standing room), without air conditioning for half an hour until they shuttled us over on a half minute ride to the air plane. I'm sure we could have gotten there much faster if we could have just walked. The German airport was very organized and orderly though and we only had to promise them my first born child so that Donia and I could sit together on the flight... just kidding... sort of. Once again, thank you travel agent.

Not much to tell about the flying itself, airplane food is airplane food, we had minor turbulance coming into Germany but the flight out was fine. A much more interesting flight must have been the one that Donia's brother-in-law, Sam, and son, Joey, took a few days earlier. Unfortunately, Sam forgot that Joey has an instant reflex of being sick to his stomach immediately upon stepping into an airplane and thus was not prepared for the spray that covered himself and the surrounding chairs. Poor Joey, poor Sam. At least Sam did not forget after that whenever they switched planes and Joey felt fine apart from his initial first reaction upon getting onto each plane.
Joey's nickname hensforth on this trip has been "...Ah-blaa".

Many of you may have heard that Donia seems to get a lot of unrequited... attention, while here in Egypt. I believe that her record for marriage proposals in one summer so far was 15? Well don't you all worry I will be keeping track of how many she gets this summer and reporting frequently. If any of you thought that this ailment was an exaggeration let me tell you what happened literally THE MOMENT we set foot on Egyptian soil (well I guess 'sand' technically but whatever, it's just an expression after all).

We were next in line to be cleared through customs. Before the officer waved us forward he paused. He took a long moment to look us both over and then took a long drag from his ciragette, eyes narrowing but his gaze never leaving us. He waved us forward and began talking to Donia in Egyptian, smiling in a coy, confident way. I could tell by the way Donia had gone bright red and was smiling in a way that looked like she was trying to be polite while two fat dung beetles had become wedged up her nose that this situation was going to cause me much merryment and mirth at poor Donia's expense. Finally after forcing a crumpled piece of paper with arabic writing and numbers on it into Donia's hand he handed me back my passport without ever actually taking his eyes off Donia to look at it.

Thus marked our official landing in Egypt. Donia had to promise she would discuss the offer with her father and get back to him if they would consider it. Marriage Proposal #1.