Sorry about the dropping off, but when you get a headache you want nothing better than to crawl in bed and stay there forever. İ should warn everyone that İ am at an internet cafe in Turkey right now and the keyboard ıs where so some letters might be in Turkish. Ok, İ left off when we arrived at the really nıce hotel wıth the same sterile environment as all the other hotels that we had been at. At least the rooms were nıce,but of course everyone wants a cut and so they help you brıng your bags to your room or hot water to you room (ı wanted coffee) and they stand there waıtıng for money. It's really annoyıng. We spent the fırst day walking around our new home town and decıded that I shouldn't be out ın my tank top and shorts. Too many assholes hollerıng. We went back to the hotel and Robby made good use of the swımmıng pool whıle İ just chılled and read.
We had to wake up early (of course) to goıng on our fırst tour of the day. We fırst went to The Colossı of Memnon. They're basıcally to gıant statues that wıth stood an earthquake whıle the Temple they guarded fell down. Before someone got the brıght ıdea to repaır the statues, the people of the tıme used to say that ın the early mornıng the statues would talk to them. People came from all over to hear what stone men had to stay. Surprısıngly enough, once the statues were fıxed they stopped talkıng,. I wonder why that was? (Wınd)
Second stop, Valley of the Kıngs. People we met along the way saıd that the valley was not as ımpressıve as ıt ıs saıd to be and they are exactly rıght. Out of the 68 tombs dıscovered, 8 are open to the publıc and the admıssıon tıcket only gets you ınto three. The Egyptaıns love to make an extra buck anyway they can.Our lovely tour guıde told us the three tombs that he thought were the best and sınce we dıdn't know any better we went wıth hıs choıces. Fırst up was the tomb of Ramese I. Although smaller than some of the other tombs, the wall decoratıons were stıll very vıvıd ın color and technıque. Second was Ramese III. Hıs tomb was very small wıth only three rooms that were completed and two off to the sıde that were never fınıshed. felt caustrophobıc ın hıs tomb. Thırd tomb was the best, ın my opınıon. It was of merenphat (I spelled hıs name wrong) but hıs burıal chamber ıs the furthest underground than any of the other Kıngs. We had to go down 150 meters to the sarcophgus. The strange thıng about Merenphat's tomb ıs the fact that the top of hıs coffın ıs ın the room above hıs room wıth the bottom of hıs coffın. I have no ıdea what that means, but the Kıngs were an odd bunch.
A small bıt of background. The Valley of the Kıngs was dıscovered ın the early 1900's and of the 68 tombs that were uncovered, very few contaıned mummıes. 3200 years ago, when the Kıngs prıest realızes that tomb robbers were about, they quıckly gathered all the mummıes and moved them to one center grave sıte so that when they were robbed they thıef would thınk he stumbled upon a common person's grave sıte and not look too closely at the mummıes. Kıng Tut's tomb was dıscovered sometıme later because ıt was burıed under another Kıngs tomb and therefore ıt was not grave robbed. Last year another tomb was found, but archeologıst don't know who's tomb ıt ıs or even ıf ıt ıs a tomb. They thınk ıt mıght be the mummıfıcatıon room of Kıng Tut. We'll have to waıt and see.
The next stop was Queen Hatshepsut's magnıfıcant temple. She was the brave woman would decıded to become Kıng, whıch was unheard of ın those days, but worked because she told everyone that she was the daughter of the Sun God Ra. She stole the crowd from her nephew/cousın/step-son (the Egyptaın's lıked to marry theır own famıly members. Helped to keep the crown ın the famıly) and ruled for 13 years. She buılt many Temples and helped to ımprove Egyptaın lıfe before the Nephew got enough guts to reclaım hıs rıghtful crown, but at the cost of kıllıng hıs aunt. Vıcıous people. Anyhow, the temple was three storıes wıth beautıful ımages of the Queen and other gods all over the walls. Most have been messed up by the evıl Chrıstıan's agaın. They decıded that they lıked the Temple as a burnıng ground and also as a sıght to buıld a Chrıstıan church. All the pretty gardens that Hatshepsut mantaıned ın the front of the Temple were destroyed and now the area stands barren wıth sand.
The fourth and fınal stop for the mornıng half of the tour was the Valley of the Queens. Thıs was even less ımpressıve than the Valley of the Kıngs. I don't know how many tombs there are, but only two were open to the publıc. Queen Nefertıtı's tomb was only open to the publıc for about 6 years before they closed ıt ın 1998 and decıded to sell 10 mın vıewıng of the tomb for 22,000 a tour group. They're makıng bank. When ıt was publıc ıt was 150 a person. I thınk ı'll be skıppıng that tomb ın the present. The fırst tomb belonged to Queen Tıtı, one of the wıfe's of Ramese III (ı thınk). It was really small wıth a sarcogogus ın the mıddle of a lıttle room. Most of the Queens tombs are close to the surface of the ground, unlıke the Kıngs tombs whıch stretch deep ınto the ground.
The second temple that we went ın was suppose to belong to the wıfe of some random Kıng, but hıs 9 year old son happned to dıe fırst and so the temple went to the boy. When the Queen found out that her baby boy had dıed, she was pregnant at the tıme and unfortnately mıscarrıed the chıld due to the mournıng of the older son. Poor mom. The coffın of the 9 year old was empty (no one knows where the body ıs) but archeologıst found the skeleton of the 7 month old fetus. It was ın a glass case by the coffın. Very cool lookıng. Basıcally the shape of a sleepıng chıld ın bone form cemented ın dırt. The skeleton made the whole Valley of the Queens worth the money.
We ended our mornıng tour, got a bıte to eat and then started out on the tour of Karnak Temple. Karnak ıs a huge mess of temples from mulıtple perıods of Kıngs and Queens. It was the maın set up of worshıp ın the East Bank of the Nıle. The Egyptaıns belıved that the sun rose ın the East and set ın the West and so they lıved ın the East and were burıed ın the West. Everyone one added a sectıon to the Karnak mess of Temples as they went through theır years of rulıng, Ramese II decıded to buıld a 134 covered columed courtyard whıle Queen Hatshepsut buılt two Oblıesk dedıcated to Ra. Some kıng trıed to change the relıgıous belıefs of egyptaıns to a mono deıty socıety, but after he dıed, Kıng Tut restored the country's fate ın theır multı deıty belıefs. The place was huge. Lots of colums and entry ways ınto rooms of worshıp.
The god that I found the most memorable was the god of fetıllıty. Supposıvely there was a war goıng on and whıle all the men ın a small ısland vıllage were off fıghtıng, one lone man found hımself trapped on thıs manless ısland. SO, what should a healthy male do when surrounded by so many lonely women? After the war, when the kıng came back to thıs ısland he was shocked to fınd tons of lıttle rug rats runnıng around and many stıll ın theır mommy's tummy. Sınce the lone man had basıcally created a whole generatıon of people and the kıng couldn't, the Kıng cut off one leg and one arm of the lone man and then bansıhed hım from the ısland. All the Egyptaıns thought that sınce the lone man had produced so many babıes he was a God, the God of Fertılıty. In hıs hıerogylphıc the God ıs depıcted wıth an ıncredıble slong. Very funny.
The last Temple that we vısıted that day was the Luxor Temple. Ramese II buılt ıt to honor Ra. Alexander the great also buılt some parts of the temple because he become fascınated by the multı deıty relıgıon and somehow managed to convınce the Egyptaıns that he was a Kıng-God. I don't knwo how the man found the tıme to conquer half the world and become a God. Hum, ı guess anythıng ıs possıble when you put your mınd to ıt.
We had met up wıth Krıstın and Ken earlıer ın the day at Karnak and agreed to meet them for the lıght show at Karnak later that evenıng. We hopped ın a taxı and met the sıblıngs for what we thought would be a great show, but ın realıty turned out to be a huge waste of money. When I thınk of lıght shows I thınk lots of colorful lıghts shınıng through the aır over the Temple walls wıth voıces tellıng a story and possıbly pıctures (made of lıghts) shootıng ınto the aır lıke fıreworks. Not so wıth thıs lıght show. We slowly walked through the Temple grounds, stoppıng every few feet to stare at a random lıght that slowly turned on to ıllumınate a random rock whıle two brıtısh voıces lollıed us to sleep wıth the story of the Temple and the Kıngs. It was an hour and 15 mınutes of empty memory. All I know ıs that I really wanted to sıt down and look at pretty lıghts and what I got was whıte and blue lıghts poppıng up randomly on stones whıle my eye lıds drooped. We went home exhausted and poorer for the trouble, but at least we got to have a nıght on the town wıth some frıends.
The next day, we had orıgınally planned to have a whole day ın Luxor to just explore, but our lovely tour guıde fucked us over agaın and scheduled us for a 1 pm traın. That left us untıl noon to explore. We had agreed to meet Paul and the sıblıngs at 10am to do somethıng before we knew that we had no tıme and that cut our optıons of actıvıtes down to about nıl. I made Robby get up at 7 am so we could go to the Mummıfıcatıon Museum at 8 am and then maybe shop around a bıt untıl 10, but when we got to the Museum we dıscovered they opened at 9 am. Nothıng else ın the town was open and so we sat ın front of the museum for an hour lookıng lıke losers, tıred losers, untıl the doors opened.
We should have just stayed ın bed. It would have saved us the hımılıatıon of standıng ın the heat for an hour to walk through the museum ın a half hour, and we walked slow. The Loney Planet saıd that the Museum was very ınformatıve on the anıcent process of mummıfıcatıon, but I thınk the wrıter had had one too many sheeshas (hooka) at the tıme and was clearly not thınkıng rıght. The museum ıs so dımly lıte that I had to squınt to even read the sentence descrıptıon. A few random pıctures descrıbed the washıng and wrappıng of the mummy, but none told about the takıng out of the organs or the rıtes saıd over the body. We got to look at more Croc and cat mummıes and soem sarcofoguses. Oh joy. I want my money back!
At least Paul showed us a good tıme. We waıted a half hour for the sıblıngs, but the never showed. Paul took us to a cool book shop (we were tryıng to fınd a Turkey Loney Planet) and then we got a bıt lost tryıng to fınd a shop wıth an ankh that Paul found for me. I wanted an ankh (Egyptaın symbol of lıfe) and couldnit fnd one and Paul had stumbled across a stroe that he thought I would lıke. Only probably was, he couldn't remember where the store was. We ended up sharıng a pızza and then rushıng back to the hotel to pack and catch our traın on tıme. We saıd bye to Paul and hopped ın a cab. To our surprıse Krıstın and Ken were at the traın statıon. They had gotten on the wrong bus ın the mornıng and mıssed us by about 5 mıınutes. They felt bad and decıded to meet us at the traın statıon for a farewell. I thought ıt was ıncredıble sweet. No one else has ever done that for me before. Krıstın ıs also goıng to be ın Turkey, so you wıll most lıkely hear about her more as we plan to meet us wıth her.
We saıd goodbye and started our 15 hour traın rıde to Alexandra. We had expected to stay ın Alexandra for about three days and explore, then head out on a ferry to Cyprus. We had expected to do thıs, but thıs ıs not what happened. Sınce our stupıd traın left Luxor at 1 pm, ıt arrıved ın Alexandra at 2am. We stumbled ınto the nıght wıth a hotel ın mınd, but once the hotel was found (and fıve long ass flıghts of staırs clımbed carryıng our heavy packs), we were told they were booked and to try somewhere else. Thıs was not somethıng we wanted to hear ever, especıally at 2:30am. Three more hotels told us the same thıng before we found a hotel wıllıng to take us ın. They trıed to charge us for a breakfast that we would not be conscıence enough to eat and a lıttle ırrıtated arguıng later, we got the prıce of the room lowered and the breakfast taken off. We clımbed ınto bed at 4 am wıth the hopes of a few hours sleep and woke at 10 the next mornıng wonderıng why we even bothered tryıng to sleep at all.
The day started out wıth a plan to see the underground tombs and fınd out the ferry schedule. Maybe stop at the cute coffee house I saw the prevıous nıght. The plan of course changed when we spent three hours ın an ınternet cafe (that took an hour to fınd. You wouldn't belıeve how few there are ın Alexandra) and dıscovered that all ferrıes goıng to Cyprus from Alexandra stopped runnıng ın 2001. We heard slıght rumors of shıps leavıng from Port Saıd (343km's from ALexandra), but everythıng we found onlıne saıd tha the shıps were suspended. Great. We paıd extra to traın to Alexandra so that we could take a ferry to Cyprus and now we found out that there was no way to leave Egypt except by plane. My nerves were at theır ends. I serıously wanted out of the country. I couldn't take the annoyıng lewd remarks of the men, the leers, the totes, the hagglıng. I just wanted out and I was about to serıously hurt someone ıf I couldn't leave. The fact that we now had to travel back to Caıro was not makıng me feel any better. Robby and ı found a very sweet and helpful tour agent who kındly told us we'd been mıslead on the ferrıes and he helped us to book a plane to Istanbul. We decıded that Cyprus was too expensıve and over crowded wıth Lebanese refugees for us to waste money tryıng to get there when we wanted to go to Turkey anyhow. Cyprus wıll just have to waıt for another tıme.
We booked our flıght to Turkety for the next mornıng at noon meanıng we had to catch a 6 am bus to Caıro. So much for explorıng the cıty of Alexandra. My mood was not ımprovıng untıl I was able to get a decent up of coffee at a Brazılıan coffee shop and then after searchıng frantıcally for a stupıd spıce that we dıdn't know the name of for Robby's old boss, we ended up at a mall. A real, AC-ed mall. The best part about thıs mall was the fact that ıt had a Super WalMart type store ın ıt that sold everythıng. No dust covered cookıes and old chıps. There were fresh vegetables, a bakery that you could watch the cooks cookıng, alıses of toothpaste and soap, cheap clothes and electonıcs, a musıc and book sectıon and much more. No totes hasslıng us, just normal people shoppıng and havıng a good tıme. Who knew a Walmart store would make me so happy.
So today I puppy dogged eyed the bus attendant to gıve us a seat on the full bus to Caıro. He took a small 18 pound tıp on 26 pound tıckets as a sıde note, but we made ıt to the aırport before our plane left. I've decıded that ıf I ever need to fly anywhere ın the Mıddle East I want to fly Egypt Aır because the servıce ıs excellent. Nıce attendants, really good food, and awesome coffee. We ended up meetıng a guy named Matt on the plane and sınce we dıdn't have any ıdea where to stay ın Istanbul, we followed hım to hıs hotel. Sınce ıt ıs low season ın the Mıddle East, we had no ıdea that hotels mıght be booked full ın other countrıes. After lookıng dıshearted, the hotel guy told us there was one room avaılable, but at a hıgher prıce than we wanted. More Puppy dog eyes and I got the prıce down to somethıng managable. Now we are ın an ıncredıbly beauıtful town where people can wear what the hell they want, there are cobble stone streets, people don't harrass you ever step you take, the cafes are everywhere, we are rıght near the water, and ıt's just a happy envıronment. I don't thık I want to leave.
Wêll, I've wrıtten way too much as usually and I don't want to pay for another hour so I wıll say bye. see you next tıme.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The End of Egypt (Almost)
Hey everyone. I know I haven't written in a while so this is going to be a longer blog than normal since I do not know how to write short blogs. Sorry. Ok, when we got back from our day of walking and getting nowhere, we met up with a Brit named David and an Italian named Mikela (I know I butchered her name, sorry)that were staying at the same hotel as us. We had heard about the Cairo Jazz Club and thought it would be fitting to go drink some Stellas and listen to some music other than the Koran. So us brave souls ventured out into the crazy mess of hecklers and shoppers at 11pm in search of a little fun. We decided that we could walk to the club because July 26th St. Was close to our hotel, but after a frantic, pulling out hair hour of fruitless searching, we came up with no Jazz club and a bunch of unhappy wannabe drunks. Eventually we surrendered to the crazy cab honking and hopped in a taxi with just a street number and a direction. After going farther than we could of walked, we found the Jazz club in the she-she part of town. Luckily it was open until 3am, giving us plenty of time to get a little tipsy. But at first we walked in and walked right back out because the beers were 24 Egyptian Pounds and everywhere else they are 8-10 pounds. Fancy club - high prices. We walked the street pouting for a bit before David said, "Ah fuck it, I'll buy you guys the first round. I just want to get wasted!" And this is how we found ourselves sitting at a table, listening to bad techo (no Jazz played at the Cairo Jazz Club except on Sunday for two hour only), and awaiting a pitcher of shots that would give each of us 7 shots. While David was in the happy "buying of drinks" mood he spotted the 33 hot pitcher on the menu and ordered it. I was already feeling the effects of the one beer since I hadn't really eaten all day, but hell, we hadn't been drunk yet. The pitcher came, not as impressive looking as I would have hoped, but the favorite was decent enough. We managed to drink our 7 shots each in less than an hour. David, poor guy got drunk, but for some reason us lite weights and the tiny meanie Mikela stayed relatively sober. Very odd. All and all it was a great night where we got to go out and enough ourselves with the company of English speakers. Just what we needed.
The next day we went to the Cairo museum in the morning (rather afternoon) and visited the 7 ugliest and saddest looking mummies for an extra $15USD. Everyone had told us we should pay and see the mummies when at the museum, but it was not worth it and I recommend you save your money and go shopping or get drunk with it instead. There were lots of other museums that we went to that had mummies as well and were free. The rest of the museum was filled with every sarcophagus that was ever found anywhere through out the world. There must have been over 200 stacked and placed throughout the joint. A few artifacts of jewelry, paintings, statues and stones managed to find a spot to sit between all the coffins. It was an ok museum, but not worth the hype it's giving and they could definitely use AC. It was hella hot!
We boarded a night train to Aswan at 10pm and froze to death for the 15 hour journey to our next location. At first the AC was a welcome surprise, but once your body cooled down it was sleeping in a comfortable position and shiver or roll yourself into a tight ball to keep warm and risk serious cramping. It took us 13 hours to realize we had sleeping bags, but then we were too lazy to get them down and use them. We're morons. The train rolled into the station at 2pm the next day where we were greeted by our "sheep" (us being the sheep) herder who brought us to yet another sterile hotel where we got annoying stares everytime we entered the lobby. The only redeeming part of the hotel was the fact that the nice couple, Val and Eric, that we had met in the Bawati desert were also staying there. We agreed to meet them later that evening for drinks. First we climbed into a van and headed to Aswan High Dam and Phile Temple. The High Dam was built in the 60's to control the Nile and help the economy. The only problem was the fact that the dam caused the water level to rise in certain parts of Aswan and destroyed numerous Egyptian Temples. There was a committee set up to save the temples, but as there were over 200 temples only the "pretty" ones managed to get relocated.
Phile Temple is one of the Temples that was saved. A group of specialist spent 4 years cutting the Temple dedicated to the Goddess Isis into little bitty pieces and relocating it to higher ground. It's pretty amazing when you think about it because when we looked at the old ruins you would never have guessed that they hadn't stood where they were for their whole life. Phile Temple is on a small island with a columsaide courtyard before a vast, multi-room shrine. It has beautiful images of the goddess Isis and some other Gods on the walls along with Hieroglyphics depicting the priest rites and the story of the Goddess.
Unfortunately a lot of the pictures have been destroyed by evil little Christians who didn't want people praying to Pagan Gods. Evil bastards. They ended up desecrating almost all the famous temples and even used a few as trash burning rooms. (sorry if you're Christian. I only blame the B.C. Christians though)
The journey ended at 6pm giving us a half hour to freshen up and then head out with Val and Eric to Isis Hotel for drinks with their friend's, Apple and Matt. We walked to the ferry (because Isis Hotel is on it's own island in the Nile)which turned out to be a longer journey than expected since the hotel wasn't as close as we had guessed. Oh well, what's a nice walk in 90 degree heat? At least it ended with a semi-cold Stella and a pretty sunset. Matt and Apple turned out to be a very sweet couple from Canadian who were smart enough to book their own travel and tours, hence why they were staying at a hotel on an island and we were in a run down building. We chatted away the night and left around 10pm because Robby and I had to be up at 2:45 am to catch a van to Abu Simble. Yeah, sleep is just a wishful idea. We were all starving (Val, Eric, Robby and I) so a giant pizza was devouered before we finally passed out at 12:30am.
The lovely shrilling phone woke us a few hours later letting us know it was time to head out. We lazily clamored into our van and drove a few miles to sit in a caravan of other vans and buses going to Abu Simble. Apparently everyone has to go in a military convoy to the ruins and so we sat around for 25 groups to show up. It sucked because we could have slept another hour at least for all the sitting we did. When they were finally ready to take off, our van broke and the 8 of us got pushed into an already over crowded bus. Robby and I lucked out and got the only two real seats remaining while everyone else had to sit in a fake aısle seat. I got stuck as shotgun, but it wasn;t so bad because I had tons of room and the driver was nice. I slept the whole three hours to the Temple.
We were all kicked out of the van and given two hours to see the Temple before the convoy left (with or without you). Abu Simble is two Temples, both built by the ever egocentric Ramese II. He ruled for 67 years and built about 100's of temples. Most of them honoring his as a god or depicting him honoring a God. He was a zealous man who had 200 children with 73 wives (scary enough, four of them were his daughters)and couldn't get enough of himself. The funny thing was, he's about 5 feet tall. If he were around today I think someone would have just hit him on the head if he told them to bow down to him. I know I would have.
Anyhow, Abu Simble's smaller temple is dedicated to Nefertari and Hathor, the Goddess that sort of represents life and the sky. Ramese's built 6 statues out front of the Temple with 3 of them depicting his wife, Nefertari, as the Goddess Hathor and the other three with Ramese's image. This is one of the only temples dedicated to a woman. The Egyptians were a very patriarchal society.
The great temple of Abu Simble is Ramese's masterpieces. 4 colossal statues of the pharaoh adorn the entrance of the Temple supposively dedicated to the God Ra (sun god), but most of the hieroglyphics show Ramese's as the focus. There are a few rooms dedicated to the transformation of Ramese II from mere moral into a full fledged God. Told you he was full of himself.
The Temple was beautiful, but the kicker was the fact that when we turned the corner to the Temple I spotted a Jib and, yep, there was a film crew, but not just any film crew, the Holy Family film crew. I don't know if you remember me mentioning the fake walls at Umm Qays and Petra in Jordan, but it is the same film being made at Abu Simble. It was like we were always one step behind the film crew, there to see their damage, but not them. Then we caught up with them. Quite ironic I thought. They were filming some scene in front of the entrance to Ramese's Temple, but they weren't allowed to impede the tourist so every couple of second the poor director would have to yell "cut" because some random person wandered into frame. It's a great way to waste money and film.
At 9:30 in the morning we climbed back into our van and headed back to Aswan. More car sleeping and I was ready for the day at noon. We found some food and headed out to explore the city. We spent a few minutes asking locals where the ferry to the other side of the Nile was and eventually found it on our own. Kind of hard to miss a wooden lean to with lots of locals sitting around next to the water. We paid our whomping 13 cents to board the boat and sailed to the Tombs of the Nobles. Of course we were the only idiots stupid enough to venture out in the high noon heat to climb a 100 stairs just to look at some dead peoples grave sites, but hey, no one ever said we were bright. At least we gave the poor Bedouin inside the Tombs something to do.
We got a semi-guided tour of the ruins because the Bedouin essentially had to come with us to explore the caves since he held the keys to the locked gates. After the third tomb, the Bedouin got brave and started to point out certain hieroglyphics on the wall like "boat" and "man". Hey, it's the effort that counts, right? I enjoyed the tombs immensively, well until our bottle of 100 degree water ran out and my mouth felt like I'd smoke 20 joints. It was so dry I could have grown cactus. Robby and I looked like red beets basking in the sun. Sweat dripped from every pore. I just wanted to climb down the damn hill and get water, cold water. One simple goal that made us rush through the rest of the tombs and sit on a ferry waiting to cross to the side with ice coolers. The bottom of the hill only had more water hot enough to make tea, so I opted to wait a bit longer.
On the ferry we sat next to a family that first had the grandma's scolding us for wearing shorts and tanks and then had everyone else curious about our henna-ed hands. You'd think in a country that uses henna in all kinds of rituals, most of the people would know what it looks like on the skin. Guess not. It was a kind of cool interaction with the towns people.
I managed to find water (which was downed in about 3 seconds) and later that day we headed to the Aswan Museum. Now Cairo Museum gets all the glory for being the Egyptian Museum, but Aswan clearly is the winner in what a museum should be. It was Air conditioned, everything was neatly laid out with descriptions, there were proper docents walking around and telling you where to go, and there was a clear order to the lay out of the items. We spent two hours learning about how they moved all the temples in the 60's (from the flood of the High Dam), about the temples that are under water because they didn't get saved, about the Nubian people (Egyptian Bedouins), and the introduction of Christian, Roman and Islamic influence in Aswan. Quite a nice day.
The next day we went on a morning felucca (a big sail boat basically) ride to Kitchener Island and Elephanie Island. Apple and Matt ended up on our tour which was nice because we had people to talk to. Kitchener Island turned out to be a giant Botanical Garden of mostly trees. I think I saw three flowers, but there were tons of cats. We watched an idiot kid get bit by one of the "cute" kitty's because his family obviously didn't take the "animals in Egypt may have rabies" warning seriously. The best part of the İsland was when we sat down to look out at the Nile, a guy climbing a nearby rock turned on a switch and a waterfall poured forth from the rock. Magic!
Elephanie Island is home to a very sad museum where the one lone mummy head even looks bored. It's basically five small rooms with dust cases housing random objects like a necklace or spare head. A few broken pieces of hieroglyphic stones are sitting on the floor waiting to be kicked by the klutzy tourist. Our docents herded us into the rooms as if we would get lost without their assistance. Robby and I found ourselves herded to another building out more as artifacts when we tried to get to the ruin city. Yeah it's great to be a sheep.
Eventually we stopped listening to the docents and we found the entrance to the ruins of more than 20 different temples. When the ruins were discovered most of the Temples were broken and destroyed. Some very smart (or crazy) people pieced the broken pieces together and recreated the temples. You walked through a Temple and a wall would be made out of plaster with random bits of real stone thrown in. The real stones had drawings on them that the recreators extended to the plaster stones. They were trying to recreate the temple, including the images. I just thought it looked funny to have real drawings and then sketches coming off from the real. We wandered around for a bit and then the tour ended.
An hour later we found ourselves on a larger felucca with 6 other people and two guides getting ready to sail to Kom Ombo over the net two days. Our boat mates were a crazy Spaniard - Duan, a brother/sister dueo - Kristin and Ken, a British couple - Ian and Rose, and a Hippie - Paul. Everyone got along extremely well, but Rose and Ian mostly kept to themselves. We had all thought that we would be sailing for two days straight, but it turned out to be a total of maybe 4 hours over the 2 days. We spent the first day (well afternoon since we started the journey at 3pm) sailing back and forth between the two sides of the Nile since the winds were bad and a police boat was in the vicinity. Apparently our booked felucca ride was an illegal felucca ride. The captain asked us all to lie and say were only on a day trip if the cops were to talk to us. Great way to start out our trip. We chilled on the giant mattress deck reading and watching the waves. Duan somehow didn't realize what he was getting himself into and so he didn't bring anything to do on the whole trip. Us and the other family dueo tried to give him books, Suduko and a drawing book, but he didn't want any of them. He opted to sleep and explore the places that we landed. We eventually made it 2 miles up stream, where we camped. The place was pretty but essentially a sand dune with Nubian villages around the edge. Not really a wonderful place for girls to find a seceded place to pee. We waited until night time.
The following day we headed out early but made it all of a mile before lazily floating for a while. After another felucca beached at a small inlet, we followed suit. Two hours later there were four felucca's chilling at a small Nubian village. Our crew watched the small Nubian kids herding their donkeys and bulls while the Brits and Aussies of the other boats swam in the dysentery infected water of the Nile. One of the Brits from another Felucca told us they were even drinking the Nile water. Can anyone spot the morons? I mean, swimming is one thing (the water did look awfully inviting and semi-clear), but drinking the water?
We left after our 2hr (cough), 4 hr stay at the island and sailed another 2 miles to camp for the night a 100 yards from a Nubian village ferry dock. Everyone decided to venture into town after dinner for chocolate and soda. RObby and I made the mistake of getting hoho's and a twinkie. There was no chocolate and we were craving sugar. Yeah, whoever said that twinkies will out live the roaches was sorely mistaken. It was disgusting, but the donkey we feed it to enjoyed it. We all went for a walk with turned into a spectacle for the villagers. Like they've never seen white people before or something. Duan managed to convince the town boys to find a soccer ball and what started as a small game of soccer, us vs the 10 yr olds, turned into a huge event where about 50 or so people cheered us on and the teenagers decided to get rough. We ended up calling it quits after 2 hours and a score of 1-2 the Nubians. Our felucca guys were probably wondering where the hell went, or maybe not because they were stoned most of the time. When we said we had to leave all the boys followed us out of town trying to get us to come play again and then they went pyscho and turned into little molesters. Every 6-22 year tried to feel up all the girls. Even me bending a kids arm backwards and Robby socking one, wasn't a deterrent. After Duan chased a pervert who grabbed Kristin's boob, an adult finally stepped in an told the little fuckers to go home. Geez, you try and have a fun little game of soccer and end up the main attraction to a village of oppressed sexual adolescents. We quickly hurried back to the felucca and stayed there the rest of the night.
At 6am I awoke to the felucca sailing away from the dock. What the hell? We sailed across the Nile to the local ferry dock and I was awake by the time we got there because it's really creppy to open your eyes and have leering men staring down at you. I guess this was our captain's way of a wake up call. Also, I really had to pee, but we were of course docked at the ferry dock where there is lots of open space and stupid guys. Thank felucca captain, thanks!
We climbed into a truck at 7:30am and drove to meet a bus that would take us to Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple and then Luxor. Kom Ombo is supposed to be the Temple in the best shape. It was dedicated to Horus (the Guard against Evil God) and Sobek (the God of alligators). They split the temple, each getting their own equal sides. Edfu is a big temple dedicated to Horus.
We arrived in Luxor and found ourselves at a very posh hotel with a couple bellhops, a security guard at the door, and pool.
I'll continue this later because I have a killer migrain and feel like I'm going to puke. Sorry. More to come later.
The next day we went to the Cairo museum in the morning (rather afternoon) and visited the 7 ugliest and saddest looking mummies for an extra $15USD. Everyone had told us we should pay and see the mummies when at the museum, but it was not worth it and I recommend you save your money and go shopping or get drunk with it instead. There were lots of other museums that we went to that had mummies as well and were free. The rest of the museum was filled with every sarcophagus that was ever found anywhere through out the world. There must have been over 200 stacked and placed throughout the joint. A few artifacts of jewelry, paintings, statues and stones managed to find a spot to sit between all the coffins. It was an ok museum, but not worth the hype it's giving and they could definitely use AC. It was hella hot!
We boarded a night train to Aswan at 10pm and froze to death for the 15 hour journey to our next location. At first the AC was a welcome surprise, but once your body cooled down it was sleeping in a comfortable position and shiver or roll yourself into a tight ball to keep warm and risk serious cramping. It took us 13 hours to realize we had sleeping bags, but then we were too lazy to get them down and use them. We're morons. The train rolled into the station at 2pm the next day where we were greeted by our "sheep" (us being the sheep) herder who brought us to yet another sterile hotel where we got annoying stares everytime we entered the lobby. The only redeeming part of the hotel was the fact that the nice couple, Val and Eric, that we had met in the Bawati desert were also staying there. We agreed to meet them later that evening for drinks. First we climbed into a van and headed to Aswan High Dam and Phile Temple. The High Dam was built in the 60's to control the Nile and help the economy. The only problem was the fact that the dam caused the water level to rise in certain parts of Aswan and destroyed numerous Egyptian Temples. There was a committee set up to save the temples, but as there were over 200 temples only the "pretty" ones managed to get relocated.
Phile Temple is one of the Temples that was saved. A group of specialist spent 4 years cutting the Temple dedicated to the Goddess Isis into little bitty pieces and relocating it to higher ground. It's pretty amazing when you think about it because when we looked at the old ruins you would never have guessed that they hadn't stood where they were for their whole life. Phile Temple is on a small island with a columsaide courtyard before a vast, multi-room shrine. It has beautiful images of the goddess Isis and some other Gods on the walls along with Hieroglyphics depicting the priest rites and the story of the Goddess.
Unfortunately a lot of the pictures have been destroyed by evil little Christians who didn't want people praying to Pagan Gods. Evil bastards. They ended up desecrating almost all the famous temples and even used a few as trash burning rooms. (sorry if you're Christian. I only blame the B.C. Christians though)
The journey ended at 6pm giving us a half hour to freshen up and then head out with Val and Eric to Isis Hotel for drinks with their friend's, Apple and Matt. We walked to the ferry (because Isis Hotel is on it's own island in the Nile)which turned out to be a longer journey than expected since the hotel wasn't as close as we had guessed. Oh well, what's a nice walk in 90 degree heat? At least it ended with a semi-cold Stella and a pretty sunset. Matt and Apple turned out to be a very sweet couple from Canadian who were smart enough to book their own travel and tours, hence why they were staying at a hotel on an island and we were in a run down building. We chatted away the night and left around 10pm because Robby and I had to be up at 2:45 am to catch a van to Abu Simble. Yeah, sleep is just a wishful idea. We were all starving (Val, Eric, Robby and I) so a giant pizza was devouered before we finally passed out at 12:30am.
The lovely shrilling phone woke us a few hours later letting us know it was time to head out. We lazily clamored into our van and drove a few miles to sit in a caravan of other vans and buses going to Abu Simble. Apparently everyone has to go in a military convoy to the ruins and so we sat around for 25 groups to show up. It sucked because we could have slept another hour at least for all the sitting we did. When they were finally ready to take off, our van broke and the 8 of us got pushed into an already over crowded bus. Robby and I lucked out and got the only two real seats remaining while everyone else had to sit in a fake aısle seat. I got stuck as shotgun, but it wasn;t so bad because I had tons of room and the driver was nice. I slept the whole three hours to the Temple.
We were all kicked out of the van and given two hours to see the Temple before the convoy left (with or without you). Abu Simble is two Temples, both built by the ever egocentric Ramese II. He ruled for 67 years and built about 100's of temples. Most of them honoring his as a god or depicting him honoring a God. He was a zealous man who had 200 children with 73 wives (scary enough, four of them were his daughters)and couldn't get enough of himself. The funny thing was, he's about 5 feet tall. If he were around today I think someone would have just hit him on the head if he told them to bow down to him. I know I would have.
Anyhow, Abu Simble's smaller temple is dedicated to Nefertari and Hathor, the Goddess that sort of represents life and the sky. Ramese's built 6 statues out front of the Temple with 3 of them depicting his wife, Nefertari, as the Goddess Hathor and the other three with Ramese's image. This is one of the only temples dedicated to a woman. The Egyptians were a very patriarchal society.
The great temple of Abu Simble is Ramese's masterpieces. 4 colossal statues of the pharaoh adorn the entrance of the Temple supposively dedicated to the God Ra (sun god), but most of the hieroglyphics show Ramese's as the focus. There are a few rooms dedicated to the transformation of Ramese II from mere moral into a full fledged God. Told you he was full of himself.
The Temple was beautiful, but the kicker was the fact that when we turned the corner to the Temple I spotted a Jib and, yep, there was a film crew, but not just any film crew, the Holy Family film crew. I don't know if you remember me mentioning the fake walls at Umm Qays and Petra in Jordan, but it is the same film being made at Abu Simble. It was like we were always one step behind the film crew, there to see their damage, but not them. Then we caught up with them. Quite ironic I thought. They were filming some scene in front of the entrance to Ramese's Temple, but they weren't allowed to impede the tourist so every couple of second the poor director would have to yell "cut" because some random person wandered into frame. It's a great way to waste money and film.
At 9:30 in the morning we climbed back into our van and headed back to Aswan. More car sleeping and I was ready for the day at noon. We found some food and headed out to explore the city. We spent a few minutes asking locals where the ferry to the other side of the Nile was and eventually found it on our own. Kind of hard to miss a wooden lean to with lots of locals sitting around next to the water. We paid our whomping 13 cents to board the boat and sailed to the Tombs of the Nobles. Of course we were the only idiots stupid enough to venture out in the high noon heat to climb a 100 stairs just to look at some dead peoples grave sites, but hey, no one ever said we were bright. At least we gave the poor Bedouin inside the Tombs something to do.
We got a semi-guided tour of the ruins because the Bedouin essentially had to come with us to explore the caves since he held the keys to the locked gates. After the third tomb, the Bedouin got brave and started to point out certain hieroglyphics on the wall like "boat" and "man". Hey, it's the effort that counts, right? I enjoyed the tombs immensively, well until our bottle of 100 degree water ran out and my mouth felt like I'd smoke 20 joints. It was so dry I could have grown cactus. Robby and I looked like red beets basking in the sun. Sweat dripped from every pore. I just wanted to climb down the damn hill and get water, cold water. One simple goal that made us rush through the rest of the tombs and sit on a ferry waiting to cross to the side with ice coolers. The bottom of the hill only had more water hot enough to make tea, so I opted to wait a bit longer.
On the ferry we sat next to a family that first had the grandma's scolding us for wearing shorts and tanks and then had everyone else curious about our henna-ed hands. You'd think in a country that uses henna in all kinds of rituals, most of the people would know what it looks like on the skin. Guess not. It was a kind of cool interaction with the towns people.
I managed to find water (which was downed in about 3 seconds) and later that day we headed to the Aswan Museum. Now Cairo Museum gets all the glory for being the Egyptian Museum, but Aswan clearly is the winner in what a museum should be. It was Air conditioned, everything was neatly laid out with descriptions, there were proper docents walking around and telling you where to go, and there was a clear order to the lay out of the items. We spent two hours learning about how they moved all the temples in the 60's (from the flood of the High Dam), about the temples that are under water because they didn't get saved, about the Nubian people (Egyptian Bedouins), and the introduction of Christian, Roman and Islamic influence in Aswan. Quite a nice day.
The next day we went on a morning felucca (a big sail boat basically) ride to Kitchener Island and Elephanie Island. Apple and Matt ended up on our tour which was nice because we had people to talk to. Kitchener Island turned out to be a giant Botanical Garden of mostly trees. I think I saw three flowers, but there were tons of cats. We watched an idiot kid get bit by one of the "cute" kitty's because his family obviously didn't take the "animals in Egypt may have rabies" warning seriously. The best part of the İsland was when we sat down to look out at the Nile, a guy climbing a nearby rock turned on a switch and a waterfall poured forth from the rock. Magic!
Elephanie Island is home to a very sad museum where the one lone mummy head even looks bored. It's basically five small rooms with dust cases housing random objects like a necklace or spare head. A few broken pieces of hieroglyphic stones are sitting on the floor waiting to be kicked by the klutzy tourist. Our docents herded us into the rooms as if we would get lost without their assistance. Robby and I found ourselves herded to another building out more as artifacts when we tried to get to the ruin city. Yeah it's great to be a sheep.
Eventually we stopped listening to the docents and we found the entrance to the ruins of more than 20 different temples. When the ruins were discovered most of the Temples were broken and destroyed. Some very smart (or crazy) people pieced the broken pieces together and recreated the temples. You walked through a Temple and a wall would be made out of plaster with random bits of real stone thrown in. The real stones had drawings on them that the recreators extended to the plaster stones. They were trying to recreate the temple, including the images. I just thought it looked funny to have real drawings and then sketches coming off from the real. We wandered around for a bit and then the tour ended.
An hour later we found ourselves on a larger felucca with 6 other people and two guides getting ready to sail to Kom Ombo over the net two days. Our boat mates were a crazy Spaniard - Duan, a brother/sister dueo - Kristin and Ken, a British couple - Ian and Rose, and a Hippie - Paul. Everyone got along extremely well, but Rose and Ian mostly kept to themselves. We had all thought that we would be sailing for two days straight, but it turned out to be a total of maybe 4 hours over the 2 days. We spent the first day (well afternoon since we started the journey at 3pm) sailing back and forth between the two sides of the Nile since the winds were bad and a police boat was in the vicinity. Apparently our booked felucca ride was an illegal felucca ride. The captain asked us all to lie and say were only on a day trip if the cops were to talk to us. Great way to start out our trip. We chilled on the giant mattress deck reading and watching the waves. Duan somehow didn't realize what he was getting himself into and so he didn't bring anything to do on the whole trip. Us and the other family dueo tried to give him books, Suduko and a drawing book, but he didn't want any of them. He opted to sleep and explore the places that we landed. We eventually made it 2 miles up stream, where we camped. The place was pretty but essentially a sand dune with Nubian villages around the edge. Not really a wonderful place for girls to find a seceded place to pee. We waited until night time.
The following day we headed out early but made it all of a mile before lazily floating for a while. After another felucca beached at a small inlet, we followed suit. Two hours later there were four felucca's chilling at a small Nubian village. Our crew watched the small Nubian kids herding their donkeys and bulls while the Brits and Aussies of the other boats swam in the dysentery infected water of the Nile. One of the Brits from another Felucca told us they were even drinking the Nile water. Can anyone spot the morons? I mean, swimming is one thing (the water did look awfully inviting and semi-clear), but drinking the water?
We left after our 2hr (cough), 4 hr stay at the island and sailed another 2 miles to camp for the night a 100 yards from a Nubian village ferry dock. Everyone decided to venture into town after dinner for chocolate and soda. RObby and I made the mistake of getting hoho's and a twinkie. There was no chocolate and we were craving sugar. Yeah, whoever said that twinkies will out live the roaches was sorely mistaken. It was disgusting, but the donkey we feed it to enjoyed it. We all went for a walk with turned into a spectacle for the villagers. Like they've never seen white people before or something. Duan managed to convince the town boys to find a soccer ball and what started as a small game of soccer, us vs the 10 yr olds, turned into a huge event where about 50 or so people cheered us on and the teenagers decided to get rough. We ended up calling it quits after 2 hours and a score of 1-2 the Nubians. Our felucca guys were probably wondering where the hell went, or maybe not because they were stoned most of the time. When we said we had to leave all the boys followed us out of town trying to get us to come play again and then they went pyscho and turned into little molesters. Every 6-22 year tried to feel up all the girls. Even me bending a kids arm backwards and Robby socking one, wasn't a deterrent. After Duan chased a pervert who grabbed Kristin's boob, an adult finally stepped in an told the little fuckers to go home. Geez, you try and have a fun little game of soccer and end up the main attraction to a village of oppressed sexual adolescents. We quickly hurried back to the felucca and stayed there the rest of the night.
At 6am I awoke to the felucca sailing away from the dock. What the hell? We sailed across the Nile to the local ferry dock and I was awake by the time we got there because it's really creppy to open your eyes and have leering men staring down at you. I guess this was our captain's way of a wake up call. Also, I really had to pee, but we were of course docked at the ferry dock where there is lots of open space and stupid guys. Thank felucca captain, thanks!
We climbed into a truck at 7:30am and drove to meet a bus that would take us to Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple and then Luxor. Kom Ombo is supposed to be the Temple in the best shape. It was dedicated to Horus (the Guard against Evil God) and Sobek (the God of alligators). They split the temple, each getting their own equal sides. Edfu is a big temple dedicated to Horus.
We arrived in Luxor and found ourselves at a very posh hotel with a couple bellhops, a security guard at the door, and pool.
I'll continue this later because I have a killer migrain and feel like I'm going to puke. Sorry. More to come later.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Milling about
Yeah, so I bet a lot of you are wondering where Robby and I have been the past couple of days. Let's say we started off on a 10 hour bus journey from Dahab to Cairo. Now leaving the lovely town of Dahab was quite hard, especially because Robby wanted to stay an extra three days and get a scuba cert. We decided against it and left our small paradise. The bus ride was so memorable that I can't really recall it. Sad huh? We decided to use the guide book we bought and picked Sun Hotel in downtown. We had met a girl at the border to Egypt that said downtown was the place to be.
Our cabbie dropped us off in front of a run down set of buildings along the main downtown drag. We hopped in a elevator that took us past nine floors of concrete and green doors that you could literally touch until we stopped at the entrance to teh hotel. We walked down a small hallway and were kindly greeted by two young men who showed us a decent size room with a window that looked down on the main street. Perfect for people watching. The bathroom was in the hall.
The guide book got one thing right : hotels and hostels are interchangeable - a hotel can have dorm rooms and a hostel can have hotel suites. The guide book also said that the room shouldn't cost more than 45 Egyptian pounds, it lied. We bargained the price down to 60 a night (which is extremely cheap to Americans - $10 - but expensive in comparison to Egypt prices, especially since the bathroom is shared with everyone in the hall.)
Somehow Robby and i found ourselves having a very strong cup of tea with one of the hotel guys who happened to be a tour organizer. He captured our attention by describing a small desert excursion in the Western Desert. From there we were told about a feluccas (boat) trip down the Nile, a couple nights in Luxor and a visit to the Pyramids. After much talk, a little arguing and confirming of information and 2 hours time, we managed to get our whole 2 week Egypt tour planned for us. Yes, we know that you should shop around and check facts, but this guy seemed legit and he had tons of letters from happy customers that we felt we were getting a good price.
We let the plans soak into our heads for a bit before wondering if we got screwed somehow. It turns out that we paid a lot of money for a middle man to basically plan transportation and hotel in various places. Those two things happen to be the cheapest things in Egypt. Aside from the money that we gave the guy, we had to cover the cost of entrance fees to all the attractions and food cost. Somehow we were losing money, but then we didn't have to deal with the crazy hustlers or learn to barter. Everything was suppose to go smoothly, so not much sitting around waiting for a taxi or bus to show up. After talking to another couple that ended up having their hotel plan their trip, we felt a lot better about our predicament.
ok, on to the important stuff. The first stop on the trip was the Great pyramids at Giza, Saqqara, and Memphis. We were told that you needed a camel or horse to see Giza because it is 14 KMs. So our cabbie, the nice guy that he was, dropped us off at a horse place 4 KM's from the pyramids - far enough away so that we couldn't see how big it really was. We bargained a horse for Robby and I to 200 pounds each. Now this is a lot of money. When we rode the evil camel down Mt. Sinai it cost 50 pounds each and that would have been about an hour and 15 minutes long ride. This horse ride was about 2 hours. It was suppose to be 120 pounds, but we wanted to go the extra distance to the photo lookout that allows you to see the 9 pyramids in a row.
A little background on Giza. It is essentially three giant pyramids of a father - son - grandson trio. The first pyramid is 146 meters high and the other two are slightly shorter than the previous one. Each used to be covered with a different type rock - gradient, quartz and something else but over time other pharaohs and kings stole the precious stones and used them for their own temples and tombs. Kind of a "finder's keepers" world.
There are six little pyramids that belong to the wives and children of the pharaohs. There was also a town built at the base of Khulfu's pyramid that housed the builders and their families. Once the pyramids were completed (about 11-15 years on each) the builders were killed and their homes became their tombs. The pharaohs didn't want anyone else to know how their tombs were built or where they were built and with no witnesses, no gossip. Harsh policy - you spend nearly a decade and a half of hard, back breaking work to honor your king and in return he kills you. It is said that the town is a mass grave of over 100,000 people.
Back to the horses. We trotted to the entrance and were rewarded with an astounding site of the ancient triangles, but also hit with teh realization that we got gipped. All the pyramids are within a KM of each other and surrounded by 13KM of desert sand. Now if we were going to horseback ride through the desert a horse or camel would have been helpful, but we could have certainly walked the circumference of the pyramids. Since it was too late to cancel the horse, we made the best of it.
There was one guy leading Robby on a horse, but somehow I managed to get a boy to walk my horse (another thing - if the boy could walk the whole way, why couldn't I?). So the guy on the horse pointed out a few things about the pyramids and let us get off to touch Khulfu's - the tallest one. Up close it just looks like a bunch of huge limestone squares piled on top of each other. Nothing too special, but then you think back to how the Egyptians must have made it 7000's years ago without our modern technology and it becomes quite impressive. There isn't any Hieroglyphics anywhere but on some of the tombs of the builders. We were told that it isn't worth paying to go inside the pyramids because they are big empty rooms. All the stuff has been put in the Egyptian museum which we're going to see tomorrow.
Robby managed to convince the guide to let her run with the horse. They went sprinting past me and my boy walker a few times. I tried running once and felt like I was going to fall, so I opted to just watch. We trotted up to a small sand hill that apparently was the photo lookout. Now when we agreed to pay extra it was because we thought it was worth the money, but this look out was 200 yards from the pyramids and not that great of a shot. Nowhere near 60 pounds extra each. We agreed that when we got back to the horse guy we weren't going to pay the extra money.
There is also the Sphinx at Giza. Once, it use to be the fierce guardian of the pyramids, but now, after years of wind and people, it's face went from vicious to friendly. It's more like a puppy than a lion.
As we were returning our horses we were hit up for tips for the boy and the guide while being stopped in an alley. Now to me the guide should be included in the price of the horse and we didn't ask or want the boy. But seeing that we weren't going anywhere until we at least paid the boy, we shelled out a few pounds. When we got back to the horse guy we had a slight argument over the price of the horses because we had agreed on 200 and now we were saying 120 each. Oh well, we were over charged a ton and it wasn't worth it and then there were the hidden fees that we didn't appreciate, so the horse guy got what he deserved!
Next stop was the tomb of Teti at Saqqara. The cabbie said that the tomb was worth paying to go in because of the hieroglyphics littering the walls. Teti was the wife of King Zoser, the pharaoh who had the famous architect, Imhotep, build him the step pyramid. Teti's tomb was beautiful. there were many corridors leading to pillared halls or storage rooms. The walls depicted the purpose of the rooms and stories of Teti's life and passages into death. We could tell the storage rooms from the numerous painted Egyptian people holding offerings in their hands. There were a couple Stella's - giant doors that Egyptian's placed food and supplies in front of in hopes that the dead person's Ra (a person's dead spirit. a Ka is their live spirit) would be able to take them into the afterlife.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside the tomb for some reason, but Robby had me stand guard while she snapped off a few quick shots. After a bit we acquired a tag along "friend". I guess the Egyptians just didn't trust us. We went into another tomb next to Teti's. We had to go down a 100 meters into the ground and duck our heads for another 50 before we came to the tomb. The Sarcophagus was still there, but the mummies was removed. Most of the tombs that I've studies are very elaborate in design with numerous hieroglyphics depicting their journey into the afterlife, but this tomb was very different. The hieroglyphics were more like pretty children's drawings of flowers and stars. You could see the cartuos (the symbol of the deceased name in hieroglyphics) everywhere, but no pictures of Egyptians with offerings or goods to take into the after life. The sarcophagus was even strange. Just a very large rectangular square of gradient with nothing on the outside and a few hieroglyphics on the inside. Maybe the person buried in the this tomb wasn't too important.
The cabbie told us that the Step pyramids wasn't worth seeing teh inside and that we should get going. He also told us that Memphis was the city of teh pharaohs and that alls left of it is a few rubbled buildings amidst a forest of palm trees. There’s a museum that had nothing worth looking at except a 14 meter tall Ramese II statue. The cabbie convinced us that we'd seen everything worth seeing and that we should return to our hotel. Stupid us believed him.
I partly blame myself and the rest I blame on the cabbie. I told Robby not to bring the guide book because it was heavy and what was the point since we already knew where we were headed. Yeah, bad idea. The guide book said that there were about 15 more pyramids and tombs at Saqqara and that everything is covered under the cost of the admission ticket. The cabbie told us that you had to pay extra at each tomb or pyramid. So we pretty much just scratched the surface of Saqqara, wasting our tour fare to see the whole of Saqqara. We also skipped out on Memphis, but the guide book did say it sucked, so i don't feel so bad. In all, we ended up spending half a day seeing these great beauty's and standing on the street corner of our hotel at 2pm wondering what we were going to do for the rest of the day.
We decided to go find a movie theater and cool off. The weather isn't too hot, but it is humid or something and you end up drenched in sweat just walking a block. We wandered around the downtown for a while and only managed to find Arab movies. Not going to help us much. We opted to go sit at a coffee shop next. That proved even more fruitless. The coffee shop that we wanted from the guide book didn't exist anymore. We eventually found it's location and the new coffee shop in its place didn't look too appealing. We ended up back at the hotel watching Skulls 3 on the one TV in the lounge.
The next day we hopped on a dingy, dirty and non ACed bus. Our original seats were unacceptable. One was half sideways while the other was pushed completely back and didn't stay forward. We were changed to two seats with 3 inches of leg room for the 5 1/2 hr ride to Bawati. We did have the luck of being seated around a group of Americans and some Aussies. They were all heading to the desert like us, but with different tour groups.
At 2 in the afternoon, Badry, our tour guide and owner of Sahara Camp, picked us up from/saved us from the over-eagar hustle hounds at the bus stop and brought us to the qiant little hut camp in the middle of the desert. The camp was quite cute in all respects. two rows of five bamboo huts lined a canopy covered set of tables. The huts had two beds and a small patio in front. Badry feed us great vegetarian chili and said to relax because we weren't going anywhere until about 5pm - too hot out. So our first impression of a 3 day, 2 night desert trip was spend the first day on a ungodly hellhole of a bus and then sit about for three hours. Yeah, not happy about handing over money to a tour organizer.
Luckily the rest of the 2 days were fun or we would have asked for our money back. Badry took us t the cold springs in a Bedouin camp. Now the Western Desert is teeming with springs all over. It is the natural source of water for the Bedouins in the area and there are rivers that run 100 meters underground that are everywhere. The spring that we went to was not one of the rock encircled clear water springs that you'd imagine, but rather a murky looking bit of water encased in a cement tub. The Bedouins essentially stick a pipe attached to a generator in the ground and pump the water below into large cement pools. The water is then routed to their gardens and houses. It's pretty ingenious, but not the natural spring I had been looking forward to. We basically went swimming in someone's laundry and camel water. The water was about 70 degrees as well, but it felt so good in the Egyptian heat. Badry tried to throw me in a few times and I had to promise him that I would go in the Hot spring so he would leave me alone.
Now I wish I hadn't of made that promise. The hot spring turned out to be about 110 degrees. I put my foot in for 2 seconds and thought it was on fire. But a promise is a promise I literally jumped in and immediately jumped out. Good thing pain hits after the fact. Hot is hot. I'll stick with the cold spring, thanks.
We drove through the surrounding area and watched the sunset from on top a cliff that housed the English House. The English House was a stopping outpost that watched the road from Cairo to the desert and stopped anyone who looked suspicious, It was built around the first world war era. Only a few walls remained now, but they were built with volcanic stones instead of bricks. Pretty neat.
Robby had expressed an interest in acquiring henna and so Badry stopped in town and picked up henna power for her. We went back to camp, star gazed for a bit and then hennaed each other. Badry drew childes flowers, that I said looked lovely, but hoped would wash off in a few days. I needn't have worried because the henna didn't take too well and after the first day it looked like a small sun spot. Robby's going to mess around with different oils to mix with the power to see which will hold to the skin better.
The next morning we had breakfast with a couple that just returned from the black and white desert. They said it was lovely and we wished we had went with them so that we could have had someone to talk to besides Badry. There's only so much you can talk about with a Bedouin. At 1pm we headed to the desert for a night of camping. Along the way we made 2 pit stops at random cafes in the middle of nowhere that if I had not stopped there I would have wondered "who stops at these places?" as I drove on by. The Bedouins are very good at wasting time and we were starting to wonder if we were ever going to start the journey into the desert. Eventually we drove past the desert boarder crossing and enter a world of sand and rock.
First stop was Crystal Mountain. In actuality it is one big rock made out of quartz. The ground was littered in little crystal pieces that we felt obliged to take a few. As we finished marveling at the rock a succession of other tourist showed up. Robby and I hoped that one or more of them would be camping near us so that we would have company that night. Instead we ended up meeting up with this German couple at a couple of the other locations along the tour route, but it was fruitless because they kept to themselves no matter how many times we tried to engage them in conversation. Damn Germans!
Badry drove like the crazed Bedouin that he is and we went sideways on a sand dune and bumped across jagged rocks until we ended at the Black desert. Not so much black sand as volcanic dust covered mountains. It is rather ugly in all respect. Lots of orange sand peeks through a thin layer of black dust on small hills. We drove on to a desert oasis in the middle of sandy dunes.
Imagine seeing sand for miles and all of a sudden a little island of palm trees pops up and there's a spring in front. If I had a camera I could have filmed a million different chase or paradise scenes at this one locations. Really cool. The spring was built as a stopping post for camels as crazy tourist cameled 8-15 days across the desert. I think I'll stick to a jeep, thanks. And this time we got to ride inside the jeep. No AC, but shade and open windows.
The last part and most fantastic part of the journey was the white desert. It is also doesn't exactly live up to it's name because it is orange sand with white mountains, but non-the-less it is spectacular. 1000's of white rocks as strone about the desert floor in random sizes and shapes. We saw one that looked like a 20 foot tall rabbit, a 50 foot nuclear explosion, small arches, huge domes, and many more. They were everywhere that I was surprise Badry didn't hit one as we drove through. The white desert use to be the ocean floor millions of years ago. Since then the water has dried up or been diverted elsewhere and what's left is these amazing white masterpieces and black pebbles scattered about. We camped off a small white table looking rock and as Badry and Zucky (the other Bedouin with us) set up camp I sat and gazed at the beauty of the place. i could almost see the ocean surrounding us. Very calming and peaceful. After we had eating dinner and star gazed a bit we were joined by a Bedouin and 2 guys that we rode the bus down with. The guys showed off their dancing skills - think Pulp Fiction without any skills and maybe a little too much alcohol and you have their dancing. We tried to top them, but ended up spinning in circles and doing the electric slide. Now Bedouin music is a steady beat on a bongo and very slow. Our dancing wasn't in beat or style of the music, but it was pretty fun.
We all had a go at the bongo, but it is a lot harder than it looks to keep a beat. Does a dying animal sound like pretty music? yeah, I didn't think so either. We left the drum to the experts. The boy's guide taught us some Bedouin games that turned out to be very cruel, but funny jokes. The first one was spinning around 10 times while you held your ear with one hand and then kept your index finger of the other hand on the ground. After 10 spins you had to grab the water bottle 10 feet away. The first guy failed, I made it an inch within the water bottle, Robby stopped after 3 spins and the last guys dove and miraculously jumped on the bottle. Great fun.
The next game I stupidly volunteered to do. It was walk blindfolded over a line of water bottles. Basically there were four evenly spaced water bottles and I stepped over one and landed, then over the next and so on. Every time I lifted my foot I asked the group if I was good and they said I was. After I completed the line of four I took off the blindfold and found that all the bottles were sitting in a circle off to the side. Haha, they got me good.
Robby got "got" better. The boy's guide told Robby and one of the boys to bend over so he could leap frog them. they reluctantly did and he managed to jump both of them. Then he told Robby to leap frog and she agreed. Her mistake. Right as she put her hands on the guides back to push off and over him, he crumbled. Robby went crashing, face first, into the sand. She got a mouth full of sand and 6 other people laughing their asses off at her. It was priceless. The boys thought it was so funny they told Robby that if they ever needed a smile they would think back on her eating sand and chuckle. We stopped playing games with the guide after that. No one trusted him.
The boys left a little later, but it was great to have their company for the short time that we did. It made the night that much better. Robby and I had run out of small talk with Badry and Zucky and were pretty much staring at the stars until the boys came along.
The next morning we packed up and headed back to camp. Another woman arrived later than morning and we told her about the trip to come. Overall there was a lot of sitting around and wasting time, but the white desert was amazing and it made it worth the whole trip down there. We hopped on an equally bad bus back to Cairo and turned in for the night.
Today we decided to visit Islamic Cairo and the City of the Dead. Well it turns out that Friday is not the best day to be visiting Muslim places. It's their "Sunday" and hours of operations were limited to 9-11am and 3-5pm. After wandering the streets of Cairo for 2 hours in the morning attempting to find the Temples on our own, we arrived to Mohammad Ali's Temple just as they were closing the door for a 4 hour pray. All our getting lost, being constantly starred at and sweating to death was for nothing. We hopped in a cab to the market bazaar, but we let out early because of traffic. We ended up in the Arab market instead of the market where all the tourist go. It wasn't too bad, but I felt out of place. We did, however, manage to see the inside of one mosque near the market. After paying a fortune to get in we wandered up the tower and had a great view of all Cairo. It isn't too impressive to look at, but it's large.
We eventually found the tourist bazaar by walking in circles and accidentally stumbling upon it. The streets were lines with army guys all dolled up in riot gear. We weren't sure if the army was expecting a riot or if there really was nothing better for 3000 or so army guys to do on a Friday afternoon than stand about a street corner. A couple 100 were piled in vans that also lined the streets. It made me think of the Jews in teh Holocaust when they were stuffed in train cars. It was hella hot out and there were soldiers crammed in basically metal ovens. What was the point? After the 10th leer or ogle from a soldier I stopped caring and started to make faces back at them and take their picture (Egyptian's do not like their picture taken, especially without permission. Oh well, annoying the crap out of me is permission enough).
We shopped around for a bit and then decided to walk back to the temples that we were at earlier. It was a long walk, hot and a stupid idea. We did however manage to find the City of the Dead. The City is built on top and through out mass graveyards. Cairo decided some time ago that they had too many people and so they built them housing in the mausoleums. Just imagine that you walk out your front door (if you have a door to begin with) and your yard is littered with grave markers, and not small ones like we have in America, but huge gothic cement squares with a cross built on the front and back. Kind of like a small bed with huge bed post. Your child's playground is a dust cover yard of dead people. A bit creepy. It's said that on Saturday nights the towns people play soccer, using the graves as goal post. Yeah we got the hell out of there.
We managed to walk almost the entire perimeter of the Citadel (A giant Mosque inside a fortress of castle looking walls), but we never quite managed to find an entrance into the thing. We gave up after 5pm because we figured it was closed anyhow. So for the whole day we planned to see numerous Mosques and the City of the Dead and in reality we managed to walk for hours, arrive at numerous closed Mosque, get hustled in a market of thieves, glared at by horny soldiers, and walk among the dead. Quite a day indeed.
That's all for now. Sorry to write so much. I really didn't think much had happened over the past couple of days. I guess I was wrong. Bye
Our cabbie dropped us off in front of a run down set of buildings along the main downtown drag. We hopped in a elevator that took us past nine floors of concrete and green doors that you could literally touch until we stopped at the entrance to teh hotel. We walked down a small hallway and were kindly greeted by two young men who showed us a decent size room with a window that looked down on the main street. Perfect for people watching. The bathroom was in the hall.
The guide book got one thing right : hotels and hostels are interchangeable - a hotel can have dorm rooms and a hostel can have hotel suites. The guide book also said that the room shouldn't cost more than 45 Egyptian pounds, it lied. We bargained the price down to 60 a night (which is extremely cheap to Americans - $10 - but expensive in comparison to Egypt prices, especially since the bathroom is shared with everyone in the hall.)
Somehow Robby and i found ourselves having a very strong cup of tea with one of the hotel guys who happened to be a tour organizer. He captured our attention by describing a small desert excursion in the Western Desert. From there we were told about a feluccas (boat) trip down the Nile, a couple nights in Luxor and a visit to the Pyramids. After much talk, a little arguing and confirming of information and 2 hours time, we managed to get our whole 2 week Egypt tour planned for us. Yes, we know that you should shop around and check facts, but this guy seemed legit and he had tons of letters from happy customers that we felt we were getting a good price.
We let the plans soak into our heads for a bit before wondering if we got screwed somehow. It turns out that we paid a lot of money for a middle man to basically plan transportation and hotel in various places. Those two things happen to be the cheapest things in Egypt. Aside from the money that we gave the guy, we had to cover the cost of entrance fees to all the attractions and food cost. Somehow we were losing money, but then we didn't have to deal with the crazy hustlers or learn to barter. Everything was suppose to go smoothly, so not much sitting around waiting for a taxi or bus to show up. After talking to another couple that ended up having their hotel plan their trip, we felt a lot better about our predicament.
ok, on to the important stuff. The first stop on the trip was the Great pyramids at Giza, Saqqara, and Memphis. We were told that you needed a camel or horse to see Giza because it is 14 KMs. So our cabbie, the nice guy that he was, dropped us off at a horse place 4 KM's from the pyramids - far enough away so that we couldn't see how big it really was. We bargained a horse for Robby and I to 200 pounds each. Now this is a lot of money. When we rode the evil camel down Mt. Sinai it cost 50 pounds each and that would have been about an hour and 15 minutes long ride. This horse ride was about 2 hours. It was suppose to be 120 pounds, but we wanted to go the extra distance to the photo lookout that allows you to see the 9 pyramids in a row.
A little background on Giza. It is essentially three giant pyramids of a father - son - grandson trio. The first pyramid is 146 meters high and the other two are slightly shorter than the previous one. Each used to be covered with a different type rock - gradient, quartz and something else but over time other pharaohs and kings stole the precious stones and used them for their own temples and tombs. Kind of a "finder's keepers" world.
There are six little pyramids that belong to the wives and children of the pharaohs. There was also a town built at the base of Khulfu's pyramid that housed the builders and their families. Once the pyramids were completed (about 11-15 years on each) the builders were killed and their homes became their tombs. The pharaohs didn't want anyone else to know how their tombs were built or where they were built and with no witnesses, no gossip. Harsh policy - you spend nearly a decade and a half of hard, back breaking work to honor your king and in return he kills you. It is said that the town is a mass grave of over 100,000 people.
Back to the horses. We trotted to the entrance and were rewarded with an astounding site of the ancient triangles, but also hit with teh realization that we got gipped. All the pyramids are within a KM of each other and surrounded by 13KM of desert sand. Now if we were going to horseback ride through the desert a horse or camel would have been helpful, but we could have certainly walked the circumference of the pyramids. Since it was too late to cancel the horse, we made the best of it.
There was one guy leading Robby on a horse, but somehow I managed to get a boy to walk my horse (another thing - if the boy could walk the whole way, why couldn't I?). So the guy on the horse pointed out a few things about the pyramids and let us get off to touch Khulfu's - the tallest one. Up close it just looks like a bunch of huge limestone squares piled on top of each other. Nothing too special, but then you think back to how the Egyptians must have made it 7000's years ago without our modern technology and it becomes quite impressive. There isn't any Hieroglyphics anywhere but on some of the tombs of the builders. We were told that it isn't worth paying to go inside the pyramids because they are big empty rooms. All the stuff has been put in the Egyptian museum which we're going to see tomorrow.
Robby managed to convince the guide to let her run with the horse. They went sprinting past me and my boy walker a few times. I tried running once and felt like I was going to fall, so I opted to just watch. We trotted up to a small sand hill that apparently was the photo lookout. Now when we agreed to pay extra it was because we thought it was worth the money, but this look out was 200 yards from the pyramids and not that great of a shot. Nowhere near 60 pounds extra each. We agreed that when we got back to the horse guy we weren't going to pay the extra money.
There is also the Sphinx at Giza. Once, it use to be the fierce guardian of the pyramids, but now, after years of wind and people, it's face went from vicious to friendly. It's more like a puppy than a lion.
As we were returning our horses we were hit up for tips for the boy and the guide while being stopped in an alley. Now to me the guide should be included in the price of the horse and we didn't ask or want the boy. But seeing that we weren't going anywhere until we at least paid the boy, we shelled out a few pounds. When we got back to the horse guy we had a slight argument over the price of the horses because we had agreed on 200 and now we were saying 120 each. Oh well, we were over charged a ton and it wasn't worth it and then there were the hidden fees that we didn't appreciate, so the horse guy got what he deserved!
Next stop was the tomb of Teti at Saqqara. The cabbie said that the tomb was worth paying to go in because of the hieroglyphics littering the walls. Teti was the wife of King Zoser, the pharaoh who had the famous architect, Imhotep, build him the step pyramid. Teti's tomb was beautiful. there were many corridors leading to pillared halls or storage rooms. The walls depicted the purpose of the rooms and stories of Teti's life and passages into death. We could tell the storage rooms from the numerous painted Egyptian people holding offerings in their hands. There were a couple Stella's - giant doors that Egyptian's placed food and supplies in front of in hopes that the dead person's Ra (a person's dead spirit. a Ka is their live spirit) would be able to take them into the afterlife.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside the tomb for some reason, but Robby had me stand guard while she snapped off a few quick shots. After a bit we acquired a tag along "friend". I guess the Egyptians just didn't trust us. We went into another tomb next to Teti's. We had to go down a 100 meters into the ground and duck our heads for another 50 before we came to the tomb. The Sarcophagus was still there, but the mummies was removed. Most of the tombs that I've studies are very elaborate in design with numerous hieroglyphics depicting their journey into the afterlife, but this tomb was very different. The hieroglyphics were more like pretty children's drawings of flowers and stars. You could see the cartuos (the symbol of the deceased name in hieroglyphics) everywhere, but no pictures of Egyptians with offerings or goods to take into the after life. The sarcophagus was even strange. Just a very large rectangular square of gradient with nothing on the outside and a few hieroglyphics on the inside. Maybe the person buried in the this tomb wasn't too important.
The cabbie told us that the Step pyramids wasn't worth seeing teh inside and that we should get going. He also told us that Memphis was the city of teh pharaohs and that alls left of it is a few rubbled buildings amidst a forest of palm trees. There’s a museum that had nothing worth looking at except a 14 meter tall Ramese II statue. The cabbie convinced us that we'd seen everything worth seeing and that we should return to our hotel. Stupid us believed him.
I partly blame myself and the rest I blame on the cabbie. I told Robby not to bring the guide book because it was heavy and what was the point since we already knew where we were headed. Yeah, bad idea. The guide book said that there were about 15 more pyramids and tombs at Saqqara and that everything is covered under the cost of the admission ticket. The cabbie told us that you had to pay extra at each tomb or pyramid. So we pretty much just scratched the surface of Saqqara, wasting our tour fare to see the whole of Saqqara. We also skipped out on Memphis, but the guide book did say it sucked, so i don't feel so bad. In all, we ended up spending half a day seeing these great beauty's and standing on the street corner of our hotel at 2pm wondering what we were going to do for the rest of the day.
We decided to go find a movie theater and cool off. The weather isn't too hot, but it is humid or something and you end up drenched in sweat just walking a block. We wandered around the downtown for a while and only managed to find Arab movies. Not going to help us much. We opted to go sit at a coffee shop next. That proved even more fruitless. The coffee shop that we wanted from the guide book didn't exist anymore. We eventually found it's location and the new coffee shop in its place didn't look too appealing. We ended up back at the hotel watching Skulls 3 on the one TV in the lounge.
The next day we hopped on a dingy, dirty and non ACed bus. Our original seats were unacceptable. One was half sideways while the other was pushed completely back and didn't stay forward. We were changed to two seats with 3 inches of leg room for the 5 1/2 hr ride to Bawati. We did have the luck of being seated around a group of Americans and some Aussies. They were all heading to the desert like us, but with different tour groups.
At 2 in the afternoon, Badry, our tour guide and owner of Sahara Camp, picked us up from/saved us from the over-eagar hustle hounds at the bus stop and brought us to the qiant little hut camp in the middle of the desert. The camp was quite cute in all respects. two rows of five bamboo huts lined a canopy covered set of tables. The huts had two beds and a small patio in front. Badry feed us great vegetarian chili and said to relax because we weren't going anywhere until about 5pm - too hot out. So our first impression of a 3 day, 2 night desert trip was spend the first day on a ungodly hellhole of a bus and then sit about for three hours. Yeah, not happy about handing over money to a tour organizer.
Luckily the rest of the 2 days were fun or we would have asked for our money back. Badry took us t the cold springs in a Bedouin camp. Now the Western Desert is teeming with springs all over. It is the natural source of water for the Bedouins in the area and there are rivers that run 100 meters underground that are everywhere. The spring that we went to was not one of the rock encircled clear water springs that you'd imagine, but rather a murky looking bit of water encased in a cement tub. The Bedouins essentially stick a pipe attached to a generator in the ground and pump the water below into large cement pools. The water is then routed to their gardens and houses. It's pretty ingenious, but not the natural spring I had been looking forward to. We basically went swimming in someone's laundry and camel water. The water was about 70 degrees as well, but it felt so good in the Egyptian heat. Badry tried to throw me in a few times and I had to promise him that I would go in the Hot spring so he would leave me alone.
Now I wish I hadn't of made that promise. The hot spring turned out to be about 110 degrees. I put my foot in for 2 seconds and thought it was on fire. But a promise is a promise I literally jumped in and immediately jumped out. Good thing pain hits after the fact. Hot is hot. I'll stick with the cold spring, thanks.
We drove through the surrounding area and watched the sunset from on top a cliff that housed the English House. The English House was a stopping outpost that watched the road from Cairo to the desert and stopped anyone who looked suspicious, It was built around the first world war era. Only a few walls remained now, but they were built with volcanic stones instead of bricks. Pretty neat.
Robby had expressed an interest in acquiring henna and so Badry stopped in town and picked up henna power for her. We went back to camp, star gazed for a bit and then hennaed each other. Badry drew childes flowers, that I said looked lovely, but hoped would wash off in a few days. I needn't have worried because the henna didn't take too well and after the first day it looked like a small sun spot. Robby's going to mess around with different oils to mix with the power to see which will hold to the skin better.
The next morning we had breakfast with a couple that just returned from the black and white desert. They said it was lovely and we wished we had went with them so that we could have had someone to talk to besides Badry. There's only so much you can talk about with a Bedouin. At 1pm we headed to the desert for a night of camping. Along the way we made 2 pit stops at random cafes in the middle of nowhere that if I had not stopped there I would have wondered "who stops at these places?" as I drove on by. The Bedouins are very good at wasting time and we were starting to wonder if we were ever going to start the journey into the desert. Eventually we drove past the desert boarder crossing and enter a world of sand and rock.
First stop was Crystal Mountain. In actuality it is one big rock made out of quartz. The ground was littered in little crystal pieces that we felt obliged to take a few. As we finished marveling at the rock a succession of other tourist showed up. Robby and I hoped that one or more of them would be camping near us so that we would have company that night. Instead we ended up meeting up with this German couple at a couple of the other locations along the tour route, but it was fruitless because they kept to themselves no matter how many times we tried to engage them in conversation. Damn Germans!
Badry drove like the crazed Bedouin that he is and we went sideways on a sand dune and bumped across jagged rocks until we ended at the Black desert. Not so much black sand as volcanic dust covered mountains. It is rather ugly in all respect. Lots of orange sand peeks through a thin layer of black dust on small hills. We drove on to a desert oasis in the middle of sandy dunes.
Imagine seeing sand for miles and all of a sudden a little island of palm trees pops up and there's a spring in front. If I had a camera I could have filmed a million different chase or paradise scenes at this one locations. Really cool. The spring was built as a stopping post for camels as crazy tourist cameled 8-15 days across the desert. I think I'll stick to a jeep, thanks. And this time we got to ride inside the jeep. No AC, but shade and open windows.
The last part and most fantastic part of the journey was the white desert. It is also doesn't exactly live up to it's name because it is orange sand with white mountains, but non-the-less it is spectacular. 1000's of white rocks as strone about the desert floor in random sizes and shapes. We saw one that looked like a 20 foot tall rabbit, a 50 foot nuclear explosion, small arches, huge domes, and many more. They were everywhere that I was surprise Badry didn't hit one as we drove through. The white desert use to be the ocean floor millions of years ago. Since then the water has dried up or been diverted elsewhere and what's left is these amazing white masterpieces and black pebbles scattered about. We camped off a small white table looking rock and as Badry and Zucky (the other Bedouin with us) set up camp I sat and gazed at the beauty of the place. i could almost see the ocean surrounding us. Very calming and peaceful. After we had eating dinner and star gazed a bit we were joined by a Bedouin and 2 guys that we rode the bus down with. The guys showed off their dancing skills - think Pulp Fiction without any skills and maybe a little too much alcohol and you have their dancing. We tried to top them, but ended up spinning in circles and doing the electric slide. Now Bedouin music is a steady beat on a bongo and very slow. Our dancing wasn't in beat or style of the music, but it was pretty fun.
We all had a go at the bongo, but it is a lot harder than it looks to keep a beat. Does a dying animal sound like pretty music? yeah, I didn't think so either. We left the drum to the experts. The boy's guide taught us some Bedouin games that turned out to be very cruel, but funny jokes. The first one was spinning around 10 times while you held your ear with one hand and then kept your index finger of the other hand on the ground. After 10 spins you had to grab the water bottle 10 feet away. The first guy failed, I made it an inch within the water bottle, Robby stopped after 3 spins and the last guys dove and miraculously jumped on the bottle. Great fun.
The next game I stupidly volunteered to do. It was walk blindfolded over a line of water bottles. Basically there were four evenly spaced water bottles and I stepped over one and landed, then over the next and so on. Every time I lifted my foot I asked the group if I was good and they said I was. After I completed the line of four I took off the blindfold and found that all the bottles were sitting in a circle off to the side. Haha, they got me good.
Robby got "got" better. The boy's guide told Robby and one of the boys to bend over so he could leap frog them. they reluctantly did and he managed to jump both of them. Then he told Robby to leap frog and she agreed. Her mistake. Right as she put her hands on the guides back to push off and over him, he crumbled. Robby went crashing, face first, into the sand. She got a mouth full of sand and 6 other people laughing their asses off at her. It was priceless. The boys thought it was so funny they told Robby that if they ever needed a smile they would think back on her eating sand and chuckle. We stopped playing games with the guide after that. No one trusted him.
The boys left a little later, but it was great to have their company for the short time that we did. It made the night that much better. Robby and I had run out of small talk with Badry and Zucky and were pretty much staring at the stars until the boys came along.
The next morning we packed up and headed back to camp. Another woman arrived later than morning and we told her about the trip to come. Overall there was a lot of sitting around and wasting time, but the white desert was amazing and it made it worth the whole trip down there. We hopped on an equally bad bus back to Cairo and turned in for the night.
Today we decided to visit Islamic Cairo and the City of the Dead. Well it turns out that Friday is not the best day to be visiting Muslim places. It's their "Sunday" and hours of operations were limited to 9-11am and 3-5pm. After wandering the streets of Cairo for 2 hours in the morning attempting to find the Temples on our own, we arrived to Mohammad Ali's Temple just as they were closing the door for a 4 hour pray. All our getting lost, being constantly starred at and sweating to death was for nothing. We hopped in a cab to the market bazaar, but we let out early because of traffic. We ended up in the Arab market instead of the market where all the tourist go. It wasn't too bad, but I felt out of place. We did, however, manage to see the inside of one mosque near the market. After paying a fortune to get in we wandered up the tower and had a great view of all Cairo. It isn't too impressive to look at, but it's large.
We eventually found the tourist bazaar by walking in circles and accidentally stumbling upon it. The streets were lines with army guys all dolled up in riot gear. We weren't sure if the army was expecting a riot or if there really was nothing better for 3000 or so army guys to do on a Friday afternoon than stand about a street corner. A couple 100 were piled in vans that also lined the streets. It made me think of the Jews in teh Holocaust when they were stuffed in train cars. It was hella hot out and there were soldiers crammed in basically metal ovens. What was the point? After the 10th leer or ogle from a soldier I stopped caring and started to make faces back at them and take their picture (Egyptian's do not like their picture taken, especially without permission. Oh well, annoying the crap out of me is permission enough).
We shopped around for a bit and then decided to walk back to the temples that we were at earlier. It was a long walk, hot and a stupid idea. We did however manage to find the City of the Dead. The City is built on top and through out mass graveyards. Cairo decided some time ago that they had too many people and so they built them housing in the mausoleums. Just imagine that you walk out your front door (if you have a door to begin with) and your yard is littered with grave markers, and not small ones like we have in America, but huge gothic cement squares with a cross built on the front and back. Kind of like a small bed with huge bed post. Your child's playground is a dust cover yard of dead people. A bit creepy. It's said that on Saturday nights the towns people play soccer, using the graves as goal post. Yeah we got the hell out of there.
We managed to walk almost the entire perimeter of the Citadel (A giant Mosque inside a fortress of castle looking walls), but we never quite managed to find an entrance into the thing. We gave up after 5pm because we figured it was closed anyhow. So for the whole day we planned to see numerous Mosques and the City of the Dead and in reality we managed to walk for hours, arrive at numerous closed Mosque, get hustled in a market of thieves, glared at by horny soldiers, and walk among the dead. Quite a day indeed.
That's all for now. Sorry to write so much. I really didn't think much had happened over the past couple of days. I guess I was wrong. Bye
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Vacation hot spots
Yeah so Aqaba and my lazy day didn't happen until about three days later than originally planned. Robby and I secured us spots on a jeep trek through Wadi rum. We had originally decided to go to Wadi Rum, but then the Bedouin's told us it wasn't pretty and we should go to Wadi Araba. Yeah we didn't listen. So at 7 am we hopped on a small city bus with three other backpackers (a nice Japanese couple and a bizarre Czech) and headed to the desert. Our trip organizer, Mohammed (go figure), met us at the crossroad and we piled all our gear and 5 people into a tiny pick-up. We ended up at Mohammed's house where the odd Czech decided to take his chances and attempt the desert on foot while the rest of us preferred to see the 20 KM mountain filled plains by jeep. We left our bags at Mohammed's, taking only the things we would need for an overnight at a Bedouin village, and hopped into the back of a 1950's or so Jeep/truck that ran on four gears and black smoke. All four of us were piled in the back of the Jeep with no Shade cover while our two Bedouin guides sat in the cab. The heat was about 40-43C. I think that's around 110 degrees F. The Japanese couple was smart and wore long sleeves and pants, but not us - shorts and tanks. I looked like a lobster for a few days afterwards.
We started our journey rolling around on the practically wooden seat because Bedouins do not understand the concept of safety. 50Km or 100 Km through a sandy dune or up a mountain, doesn't matter. People in the back holding on for dear life with white knuckles, alls good. After a few minutes of adjusting to the driving we started to look around and realized we were in a magical place. Wadi Rum is comprised of giant mountain peaks that tower above red sand and white sand plains. The mountains are carved by erosion into masterpieces of thin rocky lines on top of small caves that seem to stair step 100's of feet high. The rocks almost look like they're dripping pieces of themselves. Very cool.
After an hour or so and two "stuck in the sand" pit stops, we halted under the shade of a tall cliff and rested for a bit. The Bedouin's made us tea and sang a few songs. They also decided to climb a 15foot rock using their selves and a small rope. They succeed and I think that all Bedouin's are part Monkeys. They can climb mountains like they're walking on flat ground. When we were in Petra our Bedouin friends weren't even winded when climbing the 500 stairs to the top of the Tresaury. Here, in Wadi Rum, they went up and down the small rock face in 2 seconds. Robby, the Japanese guy and me climbed the same rock, but with a hand boost and one scratched tummy. Not so easy if you're a normal person who hasn't lived in the desert for your whole life.
After the climb it seemed to be nap time, but Robby ended up venturing off a little with one of the guides who in turn asked her to marry him 4 times. He said that she was old and that all his siblings were already married, including the 17 yr old who had 2 kids. Yeah, nice married proposal, "You're old. You should marry me." (To all the guys out there - this is not the way to get a woman).
We continued our interesting jeep ride up a rocky hill almost vertical to look out onto the valley. At some point along the way we wondered if anyone would find our bodies if the Jeep flipped and crushed us, but since the Bedouins live all over the desert, we were sure someone would have found us and have given us a nice burial. We had already passed one make-shift grave while driving.
The lookout was betaking. A vast plain of white sand with a red sand mountain in the far corner and wild camels graving in the middle. There was a road that stretched across the whole area that went to Aqaba. We joked about going on it because we had to go to Aqaba the next day, but then we remembered all our stuff was at Mohammed's.
Our next stop was an arch made out of rock that we all climbed. The Bedouin's raced up the jagged edges while the rest of us contemplated the least deadlist way up. On the way down the poor Japanese girl got frightened and her husband and the two Bedouins had to slowly coax her down. I was proud of her for even going up, but she vowed never again.
We ended the crazy drive at a Bedouin camp about 10 km's from town. The Jeep sort of broke down which ended the sight seeing early. Oh well, we ended up meeting a very nice Northern Ireland girl at the Bedouin camp that we semi-latched onto because she spoke fluent English and we hadn't realized how good it felt to speak properly again (it had been two weeks of broken English and miscommunications.) The Bedouin's feed us a great feast, sang songs, and danced until we went to bed.
We had to get up at 6am to catch a bus to the crossroad to catch another bus to Aqaba. We ended up sitting at the edge of the Wadi Rum town with 5 other backpackers after having been refused entry on the bus because it was full. The five other backpackers hitched a ride to the crossroad, but didn't get much further since we met up with them a half hour later when another bus showed up. Since there were now 9 of us all head to Aqaba (the Northern Ireland girl went to Petra), all the buses that drove to Aqaba were mostly full and refused to stop for us. Our next idea was to hitchhike. We managed to cram all our gear and 9 people into a small F-150 type of truck that smelled strongly of piss and BO. We made it a mile before the driver stopped at a gas station and changed the agreed rate to include highly expensive gas. This prompted us to abandon ship and hop into a van that smashed 7 of us into one row of seats that had two sides. Very uncomfortable, but a cheap ride to where we needed to go.
We lost half the backpackers in Aqaba and went with the Japanese couple to Petra Hotel - apparently the guide books backpacker paradise. Tucked between two other equally scummy hotels and down a dank alleyway we found a surprisingly descent and cheap room. We had planned to stay in Aqaba for two nights but upon arrival we changed it to one night.
Aqaba is the "beach town" of Jordan, but if you are a girl you better approach the beach in nothing short of an overcoat. The public beach is crawling with sleazy men that believe women should be covered at all times and it's very rocky and dirty. The heat is terrible that we felt like we were going to pass out and were thankful our room had a fan. We managed to wander down to the old fort that is really neat. It had a couple prison cells that are now crawling with beetles and bats. We also decided to relax a little and maybe wander around an air-conditioned mall, but after the taxi ride to the "big, new" mall we realized that wasn't going to happen. The mall was primarily deserted. I think there were maybe 2 other people in the whole place besides the employees and half the stores were closed. There was no AC and it smelled funny.
We quickly exited and decided to try the next mall. One step inside told us the same story. Robby and I had been told by numerous people that Aqaba is the place where Jordanians go to buy all their clothes and presents because it is cheap. They forgot to mention the fact that malls are open, but the stores are closed and no one shops there during the day. The places were like a scene from the "Stand" - after the world has gone to hell. We ended up watching movies on the one English TV channel until night when we dared to venture out again in hopes that the heat had dissipated a little and more people decided to walk around. One out of two isn't so bad, there were a lot more people walking around, but I think the temperature jumped 10 degrees. It was hella hot. We had taken a shower and immediately wanted another one.
In the morning we got the hell out of dodge and crossed the border to Eilat - the Israeli beach town. Now Aqaba and Eilat are so close you could almost spit on each other, but they are a world apart in atmosphere. The minute we entered Eilat we felt more secure - less creepy stares from guys, people walked around in bikini's, everyone was general nice and didn't care how you looked. The place was built up as a mini paradise and it had name brand hotels to prove it. We had a hard time finding somewhere to sleep that wasn't a fortune because it was high season and everything was right on the water.
We managed to find an air conditioned mall that was swarming with happy, friendly people. We played "girls" for the day and window shopped. Israel has some of the most unique, but stylish clothing. I would have bought so many cool things except for the fact that Israeli's are built different than other people and nothing ever fits correctly. I guess it's a safety precaution for travelers, because where were we suppose to put all our newly acquired clothes? Our backpacks already weighed a ton and our funds are not yet ready to take a shopping plunge. We enjoyed ourselves and shopped around and went to the movies. This was our long awaited relaxing day.
The following day we went to Dahab, Sinai. We had bought a "Let's Go" book on Egypt because we were sick of not planning our trips and the book said that Dahab was a backpacker's paradise. The book didn't lie. Dahab is beautiful. It is a lazy sea side town of ex-backpackers that originally came to the town for a few days and woke up 6-months later as dive instructors. The reefs and fishy's are some of the best for scuba or snorkeling. The water is that green-blue shade that we all wish American beach's had, aside from the constant haggling Egyptians everyone is respectful and we can wear whatever the hell we like. Stuff is cheap and there's alcohol. (Egypt is a Muslim country and they don't drink, so very few places serve alcohol).
The first day here was check in - we walked the boardwalk for a while before we found a place that didn't look too run down or built of straw and mud. We unloaded, walked along the boardwalk of cute shops, many restaurants, and scenic views. We found a small club that showed free movies at 9pm and stayed until 2am watching Ocean's Eleven and The Punisher (which is a truly terrible movie by the way).
We woke the next morning intent on snorkeling. The hotel was supposed to have trips everyday, but they canceled the one that day. Luckily the scuba center next door hooked us up. We ended up riding ATV's out to Three Pools, where we snorkeled for an hour and then rode the ATV's back. This trip proved that I am definitely a land animal and Robby a creature of the sea. I loved the ATV, going three times faster than Robby. I don't know if it was her ATV or her, but she was often too far behind me to even eat my dust.
Once at the sea I freaked out a little in the water. I really hate not being able to touch the bottom or see the bottom, plus a snorkel is not a great reassurance that you will be able to breath underwater. I panicked a bit and swallowed disgusting salt water. Not a healthy diet. After a little bit of flailing around, I clamed down and enjoyed the fishy's swimming below. A couple schools of small purple and blue fish passed by and the coral was amazing. I decided that when my hands turned all wrinkly it was time to exit the water. Somehow I had upset something or other because I had small cuts all down my legs. I looked like I had just learned how to shave my legs for the first time. It was very odd, but everyone said it was nothing deadly and to just put Neosporin on the cuts and I'd be fine. Another reason to hate the water, random things attack me.
On the way back from the snorkel hole, our ATV guide picked up a friend and so I drove the guide back to the shop and Robby drove the friend. We had to stop a lot because Robby went too slow and the friend made funny faces and comments about Robby's "Driving miss Daisy" skills to me behind Robby's back. It was entertaining. The guide loved driving with me because I went really fast - but we almost tipped twice. Oppps.
We had decided that we wanted to go to Mt. Sinai since it was supposed to be beautiful. The taxi to the Mt. left at 11pm and arrived at the mountain at 1 am. We signed up and decided that sleep was for the dead. At 1:30 am today we climbed up MT. Sinai in the moonlight with camels on our asses and annoying foreign groups that brought retarded cameramen with them who liked to turn on their camera lights at sharp curves, essentially blinding you, and film you almost stumble off the cliff. But when we reached the top, 3 1/2 hours later we were rewarded with a magnificent sunrise that was worth all the hard work. For those of you who don't know, Mt. Sinai is supposively the place where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. It's is very religious and very beautiful.
On the way down we had a choice of taking the 3700 step staircase that some crazy monk built out of repentance for his sins or walking back down the camel path. After 700 stairs, us and another guy that was traveling up the hill with us, decided to hop on a camel and be lazy. We thought that the camel would be a very easy and relaxing trip down the long mountain. Oh how wrong we were. I should have know that camels are a bad idea from the short camel ride I took with Birthright. Apparently I needed another go at them to realize just how much I hate camels.
We all made it a 6th of the way down the mountain before I called it quits and said I'm rather cut my leg off then continue down the mountain on the camel. Just to give you an idea of how bad a camel is riding down a hill with many steps - You rock back and forth between the two hard wooden posts of a saddle while your groin painfully smashes again the front post with every forward motion. Then the rest of your body is swaying around like a rag doll as your stupid camel decides he doesn't like stairs and jumps down them when hit by the guide. You have to straddle the camel in order not to fly off him, but this is so uncomfortable you end up straining your arms to keep yourself centered in the saddle, which doesn't work too well.
I've decided that riding a camel down Mt. Sinai would be the perfect punishment for a pedophile because after the first ten minutes he would undoubtedly have suffered numerous blows to his balls and by the time he reached the bottom, he would be shooting blanks for the rest of his life if he even managed to get himself to ever work again. It hurts that bad. Kind of like someone punching you over and over again in your groin. But I encourage everyone to try a camel at least once in your lifetimes because it is a unique experience. just down try it down hill. Maybe straight or uphill only.
So in the course of three days Robby and i had visited all the beach towns from Jordan, Israel and Sinai. I think Sinai is the most laid back and peaceful beach town, Israel the busiest and best for shopping and hanging out and Jordan for creepiest.
Now it is 2pm and I think that I've been awake since 9am yesterday (with a few short naps thrown in). Until next time take care and protect yourself from camels.
We started our journey rolling around on the practically wooden seat because Bedouins do not understand the concept of safety. 50Km or 100 Km through a sandy dune or up a mountain, doesn't matter. People in the back holding on for dear life with white knuckles, alls good. After a few minutes of adjusting to the driving we started to look around and realized we were in a magical place. Wadi Rum is comprised of giant mountain peaks that tower above red sand and white sand plains. The mountains are carved by erosion into masterpieces of thin rocky lines on top of small caves that seem to stair step 100's of feet high. The rocks almost look like they're dripping pieces of themselves. Very cool.
After an hour or so and two "stuck in the sand" pit stops, we halted under the shade of a tall cliff and rested for a bit. The Bedouin's made us tea and sang a few songs. They also decided to climb a 15foot rock using their selves and a small rope. They succeed and I think that all Bedouin's are part Monkeys. They can climb mountains like they're walking on flat ground. When we were in Petra our Bedouin friends weren't even winded when climbing the 500 stairs to the top of the Tresaury. Here, in Wadi Rum, they went up and down the small rock face in 2 seconds. Robby, the Japanese guy and me climbed the same rock, but with a hand boost and one scratched tummy. Not so easy if you're a normal person who hasn't lived in the desert for your whole life.
After the climb it seemed to be nap time, but Robby ended up venturing off a little with one of the guides who in turn asked her to marry him 4 times. He said that she was old and that all his siblings were already married, including the 17 yr old who had 2 kids. Yeah, nice married proposal, "You're old. You should marry me." (To all the guys out there - this is not the way to get a woman).
We continued our interesting jeep ride up a rocky hill almost vertical to look out onto the valley. At some point along the way we wondered if anyone would find our bodies if the Jeep flipped and crushed us, but since the Bedouins live all over the desert, we were sure someone would have found us and have given us a nice burial. We had already passed one make-shift grave while driving.
The lookout was betaking. A vast plain of white sand with a red sand mountain in the far corner and wild camels graving in the middle. There was a road that stretched across the whole area that went to Aqaba. We joked about going on it because we had to go to Aqaba the next day, but then we remembered all our stuff was at Mohammed's.
Our next stop was an arch made out of rock that we all climbed. The Bedouin's raced up the jagged edges while the rest of us contemplated the least deadlist way up. On the way down the poor Japanese girl got frightened and her husband and the two Bedouins had to slowly coax her down. I was proud of her for even going up, but she vowed never again.
We ended the crazy drive at a Bedouin camp about 10 km's from town. The Jeep sort of broke down which ended the sight seeing early. Oh well, we ended up meeting a very nice Northern Ireland girl at the Bedouin camp that we semi-latched onto because she spoke fluent English and we hadn't realized how good it felt to speak properly again (it had been two weeks of broken English and miscommunications.) The Bedouin's feed us a great feast, sang songs, and danced until we went to bed.
We had to get up at 6am to catch a bus to the crossroad to catch another bus to Aqaba. We ended up sitting at the edge of the Wadi Rum town with 5 other backpackers after having been refused entry on the bus because it was full. The five other backpackers hitched a ride to the crossroad, but didn't get much further since we met up with them a half hour later when another bus showed up. Since there were now 9 of us all head to Aqaba (the Northern Ireland girl went to Petra), all the buses that drove to Aqaba were mostly full and refused to stop for us. Our next idea was to hitchhike. We managed to cram all our gear and 9 people into a small F-150 type of truck that smelled strongly of piss and BO. We made it a mile before the driver stopped at a gas station and changed the agreed rate to include highly expensive gas. This prompted us to abandon ship and hop into a van that smashed 7 of us into one row of seats that had two sides. Very uncomfortable, but a cheap ride to where we needed to go.
We lost half the backpackers in Aqaba and went with the Japanese couple to Petra Hotel - apparently the guide books backpacker paradise. Tucked between two other equally scummy hotels and down a dank alleyway we found a surprisingly descent and cheap room. We had planned to stay in Aqaba for two nights but upon arrival we changed it to one night.
Aqaba is the "beach town" of Jordan, but if you are a girl you better approach the beach in nothing short of an overcoat. The public beach is crawling with sleazy men that believe women should be covered at all times and it's very rocky and dirty. The heat is terrible that we felt like we were going to pass out and were thankful our room had a fan. We managed to wander down to the old fort that is really neat. It had a couple prison cells that are now crawling with beetles and bats. We also decided to relax a little and maybe wander around an air-conditioned mall, but after the taxi ride to the "big, new" mall we realized that wasn't going to happen. The mall was primarily deserted. I think there were maybe 2 other people in the whole place besides the employees and half the stores were closed. There was no AC and it smelled funny.
We quickly exited and decided to try the next mall. One step inside told us the same story. Robby and I had been told by numerous people that Aqaba is the place where Jordanians go to buy all their clothes and presents because it is cheap. They forgot to mention the fact that malls are open, but the stores are closed and no one shops there during the day. The places were like a scene from the "Stand" - after the world has gone to hell. We ended up watching movies on the one English TV channel until night when we dared to venture out again in hopes that the heat had dissipated a little and more people decided to walk around. One out of two isn't so bad, there were a lot more people walking around, but I think the temperature jumped 10 degrees. It was hella hot. We had taken a shower and immediately wanted another one.
In the morning we got the hell out of dodge and crossed the border to Eilat - the Israeli beach town. Now Aqaba and Eilat are so close you could almost spit on each other, but they are a world apart in atmosphere. The minute we entered Eilat we felt more secure - less creepy stares from guys, people walked around in bikini's, everyone was general nice and didn't care how you looked. The place was built up as a mini paradise and it had name brand hotels to prove it. We had a hard time finding somewhere to sleep that wasn't a fortune because it was high season and everything was right on the water.
We managed to find an air conditioned mall that was swarming with happy, friendly people. We played "girls" for the day and window shopped. Israel has some of the most unique, but stylish clothing. I would have bought so many cool things except for the fact that Israeli's are built different than other people and nothing ever fits correctly. I guess it's a safety precaution for travelers, because where were we suppose to put all our newly acquired clothes? Our backpacks already weighed a ton and our funds are not yet ready to take a shopping plunge. We enjoyed ourselves and shopped around and went to the movies. This was our long awaited relaxing day.
The following day we went to Dahab, Sinai. We had bought a "Let's Go" book on Egypt because we were sick of not planning our trips and the book said that Dahab was a backpacker's paradise. The book didn't lie. Dahab is beautiful. It is a lazy sea side town of ex-backpackers that originally came to the town for a few days and woke up 6-months later as dive instructors. The reefs and fishy's are some of the best for scuba or snorkeling. The water is that green-blue shade that we all wish American beach's had, aside from the constant haggling Egyptians everyone is respectful and we can wear whatever the hell we like. Stuff is cheap and there's alcohol. (Egypt is a Muslim country and they don't drink, so very few places serve alcohol).
The first day here was check in - we walked the boardwalk for a while before we found a place that didn't look too run down or built of straw and mud. We unloaded, walked along the boardwalk of cute shops, many restaurants, and scenic views. We found a small club that showed free movies at 9pm and stayed until 2am watching Ocean's Eleven and The Punisher (which is a truly terrible movie by the way).
We woke the next morning intent on snorkeling. The hotel was supposed to have trips everyday, but they canceled the one that day. Luckily the scuba center next door hooked us up. We ended up riding ATV's out to Three Pools, where we snorkeled for an hour and then rode the ATV's back. This trip proved that I am definitely a land animal and Robby a creature of the sea. I loved the ATV, going three times faster than Robby. I don't know if it was her ATV or her, but she was often too far behind me to even eat my dust.
Once at the sea I freaked out a little in the water. I really hate not being able to touch the bottom or see the bottom, plus a snorkel is not a great reassurance that you will be able to breath underwater. I panicked a bit and swallowed disgusting salt water. Not a healthy diet. After a little bit of flailing around, I clamed down and enjoyed the fishy's swimming below. A couple schools of small purple and blue fish passed by and the coral was amazing. I decided that when my hands turned all wrinkly it was time to exit the water. Somehow I had upset something or other because I had small cuts all down my legs. I looked like I had just learned how to shave my legs for the first time. It was very odd, but everyone said it was nothing deadly and to just put Neosporin on the cuts and I'd be fine. Another reason to hate the water, random things attack me.
On the way back from the snorkel hole, our ATV guide picked up a friend and so I drove the guide back to the shop and Robby drove the friend. We had to stop a lot because Robby went too slow and the friend made funny faces and comments about Robby's "Driving miss Daisy" skills to me behind Robby's back. It was entertaining. The guide loved driving with me because I went really fast - but we almost tipped twice. Oppps.
We had decided that we wanted to go to Mt. Sinai since it was supposed to be beautiful. The taxi to the Mt. left at 11pm and arrived at the mountain at 1 am. We signed up and decided that sleep was for the dead. At 1:30 am today we climbed up MT. Sinai in the moonlight with camels on our asses and annoying foreign groups that brought retarded cameramen with them who liked to turn on their camera lights at sharp curves, essentially blinding you, and film you almost stumble off the cliff. But when we reached the top, 3 1/2 hours later we were rewarded with a magnificent sunrise that was worth all the hard work. For those of you who don't know, Mt. Sinai is supposively the place where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. It's is very religious and very beautiful.
On the way down we had a choice of taking the 3700 step staircase that some crazy monk built out of repentance for his sins or walking back down the camel path. After 700 stairs, us and another guy that was traveling up the hill with us, decided to hop on a camel and be lazy. We thought that the camel would be a very easy and relaxing trip down the long mountain. Oh how wrong we were. I should have know that camels are a bad idea from the short camel ride I took with Birthright. Apparently I needed another go at them to realize just how much I hate camels.
We all made it a 6th of the way down the mountain before I called it quits and said I'm rather cut my leg off then continue down the mountain on the camel. Just to give you an idea of how bad a camel is riding down a hill with many steps - You rock back and forth between the two hard wooden posts of a saddle while your groin painfully smashes again the front post with every forward motion. Then the rest of your body is swaying around like a rag doll as your stupid camel decides he doesn't like stairs and jumps down them when hit by the guide. You have to straddle the camel in order not to fly off him, but this is so uncomfortable you end up straining your arms to keep yourself centered in the saddle, which doesn't work too well.
I've decided that riding a camel down Mt. Sinai would be the perfect punishment for a pedophile because after the first ten minutes he would undoubtedly have suffered numerous blows to his balls and by the time he reached the bottom, he would be shooting blanks for the rest of his life if he even managed to get himself to ever work again. It hurts that bad. Kind of like someone punching you over and over again in your groin. But I encourage everyone to try a camel at least once in your lifetimes because it is a unique experience. just down try it down hill. Maybe straight or uphill only.
So in the course of three days Robby and i had visited all the beach towns from Jordan, Israel and Sinai. I think Sinai is the most laid back and peaceful beach town, Israel the busiest and best for shopping and hanging out and Jordan for creepiest.
Now it is 2pm and I think that I've been awake since 9am yesterday (with a few short naps thrown in). Until next time take care and protect yourself from camels.
Friday, July 14, 2006
I'm fine
This is just a short blog to let everyone know that Robby and I are currently in Dahab, Sinai, Egypt. This is basically a small sea-side town where Aussie backpackers came for a few days and woke up 6-months later as dive instructors. If you like the water for scuba or snorkel, I would suggest you come here. It's very beautiful. The water is a blue-green. Mostly clean and has lots of little fishes to play with.
We are both aware of the current situation in Israel and Lebanon and as of now it is not effecting any of our plans. As along as the fighting stays to the other Middle Eastern countries we should be fine. I hope that nothing to terrible happens and that every thing will be peaceful soon. Fighting sucks and it would make it extremely hard to get home as I have to fly out of Tel Aviv and getting into a country at war is troublesome.
So if you were worrying, please stop. If we feel it is too dangerous to do something we will avoid it. We're asking around about safety in places before we go. We're being safe so no worries.
Bye for now. Have a great summer.
We are both aware of the current situation in Israel and Lebanon and as of now it is not effecting any of our plans. As along as the fighting stays to the other Middle Eastern countries we should be fine. I hope that nothing to terrible happens and that every thing will be peaceful soon. Fighting sucks and it would make it extremely hard to get home as I have to fly out of Tel Aviv and getting into a country at war is troublesome.
So if you were worrying, please stop. If we feel it is too dangerous to do something we will avoid it. We're asking around about safety in places before we go. We're being safe so no worries.
Bye for now. Have a great summer.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
More pictures I took from a friend.
Grave stone of a suicide victim. Interesting because most of the grave stone have no pictures, only words and the date of death and birth.
Pretty house in Safed.
Does anyone get that feeling of just having to sit up straight? Well I did and now I'm Buddha.
The 2 Russians and the Twins.
Alex and us at the Soldier's cemetery in Jerusalem.
A pretty nature park that we went to during the first week of Birthright.
So, let me start with the Weddings. Before I came to Israel I knew that I would be going to Jordan and therefore I called up my old friend, Faris, from Webster, who happened to be Jordanian, and asked him 1.) If he knew of any cool places to visit and cheap places to stay, and 2.)If he was going to be in Jordan so he could show me around. It turned out that he was going to be in Jordan at the same time that I was and that he was getting married. So not only would I get to see him, but I would get to go to his wedding.
Now present day. Let me quickly jump back to Israel for a second. While RObby and I would staying at the Heritage House, Chaya the House mom, told everyone at the Hostel about a Jewish Orthodox Wedding that everyone was invited to. Apparently Jewish people do not send out invitations to certain friends and family. Instead they just send out announcements and everyone is invited. Chaya convinced us and three others to go and check it out because we had never been to a real Orthodox wedding. We dressed up nicely and headed out with one other girl and her brother. The cabbie took us to a street that had about 700 Orthodox men singing and dancing in the street around a van with an obnoxious glittery crown on top. There was really loud Hebrew music playing. We all got out of the car thinking, "Gosh, Jews really know how to throw a party!" It turns out that we were in the wrong location and that the happy dancing guys were celebrating the grand opening of a 10 million dollar Yeshiva (school). We wandered down the hill to hail another cab and to our surprise two more people from the Heritage House popped out of a cab. We yelled at them to get back in since they were in the wrong location. I think we confused them a little since we practically screamed, "get back in the cab! Get Back in the Cab! You're in the wrong location!" We didn't want them to have to pay for another cab like us.
Eventually all six of us made it to the correct location and entered the wedding after everything, but the dancing had happened. In an Orthodox wedding the women are on one side of a divided room and the men on the other. This is to allow the married couple not to have a wandering eye and it lets everyone be themselves without having to worry about appearances - the women could basically uncover their hair (they wear wigs or hats in public. Their immediate family are the only ones that are suppose to see their true hair since it is a symbol of beauty).
The two guys that we were with went to the guys side while the four of us girls sat to one side of the room while numerous Neve girls tried to explain what was going on. So the ceremony had basically be completed and now the bride and groom were in a special room where they are allowed to touch for the first time. In Orthodox culture, most of the people are matched together through a matchmaker or friends. They usually know everything about each other before they go on a first date by asking the other's family and friends about that person. After a few dates, if the couple likes each other they keep going out. Of they don't connect they try again with someone else. Since there is no touching on any of the dates, the couple gets to see each other's personalities and their true feelings. If they truly like each other they are married after a few months. Yes, shocking. I thought it was weird at first as well, but they say they know all the details about each other's lives before the first date and usually a friend would hook you up with someone they knew - meaning "would you hook your friend up with a jerk?" no, so the marriages usually last. I think there is about a 4% divorce rate. Nice huh?
Since the bride and groom were busy kissing or what not, we watched as everyone ate. Chaya had said that there is always tons of food and so we didn't eat anything and were starving. Now Chaya had been right, there was a ton of food, but the family was semi-poor and they were paying by the plate, so all non-official guest got soda only. Grrrr. We talked, our stomachs growled, and eventually the bride and groom came out of the little room and there was a whole lot of dancing. We all got pushed in a giant circle and around and around we went with the bride in the middle who danced with relatives and friends. When you're the bride or groom you better have your dancing shoes on because there are no exception's, only dancing. About an hour into the dancing a bunch of other people from the Heritage house shoed up, including the "hippies" They're a group of kids that all went on a Birthright trip together and decided to stay and travel for a bit afterwards. They're the "hippies" because the three guys carry instruments with them, everywhere and randomly decide to stop on a bench and play music. One has dreads, a couple with bandanas, and the 2 girls with them dance. They're all really nice and it was funny to see them, at the wedding because they came in normal clothes and carrying their instruments. When we asked them later why they weren't dressed up, they said they hadn't expected to come to the wedding and that they just ended up there. See, anyone is invited, just not feed.
2 hours later our stomachs were really growling and we all did a mass exodus to Ben Yehuda street to grab food. It was a interesting wedding, but I prefer to marry the American way.
Back to Jordan. I had to tell about the Israeli wedding so you could see the difference between that one and the Jordanian wedding. After Robby and I saw the Amman ruins we called Faris to come pick us up. He said that he would find us a nice hotel so that we could be close to his family for the wedding. It turns out that the hotel was Faris' house. Since there were just two of us, his mom said we could stay there.
Faris' house is amazing. It is an apartment that takes up an entire floor of a complex. All the furniture had that "look at me, but don't touch" feel along with the pictures on the wall. But since we couldn't stand the whole time we decided to risk breaking something and sit. It's surprising how elegant chairs can be really comfortable.
There are two maids in Faris' house. They are both from the Philippines and extremely nice. Robby and I preferred to talk to them than half the family because they were a little more down to Earth. Also they spoke fairly decent English, while everyone else knew "Hello". The first night that we were there there was a party for Faris at 10 pm. A bunch of family and friends came from all over. At first they all wondered about the two quiet white girls hanging about, but after a while people found out we were Faris' friends and then they started to talk to us. Robby made friends with a 12 yr old girl who has been traveling all over Europe this summer for fun. I'm very jealous of her life. She also spoke wonderful English and was often the translator for her parents and other people.
We finally got to meet Nor, Faris fiance. She is really cute and her and Faris make a great couple. Ever since I met Faris he had always joked about needing to find a "wifey" and now he finally found one. They met last year while hanging with the folks. They weren't even looking to get married and it just happened. Now that's better than a match maker in some ways. At least you know it is love instead of someone telling you it is love.
The following day was the wedding day, but it was a very lazy day. Faris' dad woke us up early for no reason that I could see other then the fact that we were in the living room and he wanted to watch TV. We lounged around drinking coffee and tea until 2pm when one of the aunts took us and her daughter to get our hair styled for the wedding. Robby just got hers straighten, but I decided to get mine curled. In the end I looked like something out of a 60's TV show. Semi=straight hair on the sides and the back with lazy curls at the bottom and then my bangs were side parted across my face. There was a small bob going on, but I made it vanish or the wind from outside destroyed it. After sitting around for another 3 hrs, my hair had started to go back to craziness, but at least I looked liked I came out of the early 90's now instead of the 60's. Jordanian's must really love the 60's hairdos because everyone else came back from the parlor with some sort of bob or Hawaiian style. Odd.
At 6:30pm a traditional Arab band came to the house and clapped and sung for an hour while people danced and Faris looked nervous. We danced all the way into the cars that then drove to Nor's house. There were about 12 cars all fighting for room on the road, honking in crazy happiness, and flashing their lights. Maher, Faris' brother was sticking out of the sun roof singing and dancing to Faris who was driving behind him in a Audi TT decked out with flowers and ribbons. Once at Nor's house we all got out and followed the singing band into the house where Nor and Faris united and stood together as the singing continued and people congratulated them. A bit later we danced back to the cars a headed to the reception. Now about 20 cars blocked traffic and made a ruckus. Everytime we hit a stop light, a bunch of guys ran out of their cars and danced a circle around Faris and Nor.
Hussian taught RObby a saying, "Afflent Majnun." roughly translates to " The rich are crazy." It is completely true. At the hotel we annoyed the residents for a bit with more loud singing and dancing as we walked down a hallway. 2 1/2 hrs after the singing first started, it ended and we went outside to the pool area to have drinks (non alcoholic since Muslims don't drink. They're already crazy enough). Faris and Nor vanished for a bit and Robby and I got stuck talking to Nor's uncle and his whole family of 8 kids and some brothers with kids. It turns out that one of the Uncles will be in Cairo the same time as us and he told us to look him up when we go there. We probably will since it's done us a fair amount of good hanging with people that have been referred to us.
at 10pm Faris and Nor returned and we all went inside to the grand ballroom where there was more dancing and singing. Faris and Nor walked around slowly so everyone could see them and eventually we were allowed to grab some of the really good food. Later that night Faris' grandma practically dragged us on stage and made us dance. That lead to everyone else wanting to dance with us. It was Jordanian dancing, so kind of shaking your hips while moving your hands in a slow, lazy up, and down way. Robby did something wrong since one of Faris' uncle's started pretending to swim everytime he saw her afterwards in imitation of RObby's horrible dance style.
Overall it was a fun day, but drawn out longer than it should have been and we didn't get to eat until our stomachs caved in. We also found out that Faris and Nor got officially married two weeks earlier and that's why there was no vows ceremony. Just dancing, singing and showing off.
We stayed at Faris' house for another night. We had planned to go to Madaba, supposively an interesting town with lots of Bible history, but we needed to figure out what we were doing with Aqaba. Somehow we had got ourselves hooked into going to Aqaba with Maher the following day at 6 am and we didn't know if we were going to spend the night at Faris' again or if we should have gone to find another hotel. We wanted to ask Maher and then go to Madaba for the day, but Maher didn't show up until 2 pm with Faris and we ended up eating lunch with the family and not having enough time to go to Madaba.
Maher took us dancing that night with his cousin and we went over our plans for Aqaba, basically a very touristy city since it is mostly beaches. We realized kind of late that Maher is 18 and not interested in the same stuff as us. We still wanted to see Petra and then Wadi Rum. He wanted to party and lay a bout on the beach. Luckily the plans got canceled because Maher had to stay another day to say bye to his brother who flew in for the wedding and then he wasn't allowed to go to Aqaba since Faris and NOr were going and it was considered rude since it was like jumping in on the honeymoon.
Now present days. We arrived in Petra yesterday after taking a small public bus. Petra is not that touristy of a place for Jordanians and therefore none of the big, nice buses come down here very often. So our bags got to be pillows for other passengers and sometimes steps. we planned ahead this time and found a hostel online that was in the town over from Petra. The bus dropped us off at the door of the Petra Gate hotel and we realized, planning isn't always a good thing either.
Now I've stayed in some pretty gross and creepy hostel before, but this one takes the cake. Down into the dungeon we walked and the choice of the blue room or the yellow room we were offered. I choose the blue room since it looked friendlier. The waiting room of the Hotel was covered in dust. They were doing some repairs, but I'm pretty sure the inside of the place hadn't seen a vacuum or dust mop in a decade. I was scared to sit on anything. Not sure my pants would have recovered. The blue room was two beds with blue comforters that have seen better days. There's no door on the bathroom, it's just separated from the last bed by a wall. There's a toilet, but you can only sit sideways on it since the wall is practically pushed up against the front of the toilet. The shower is rusted over and just a spigot hanging over the toilet. Yeah, next time we'll just wander in and out of places until we find one that we like. We had half paid for the night at Petra Gate and therefore had to stay. Luckily they gave us sheets that smelled refreshingly clean and we curled up in those the whole night. No telling what's under the covers.
The owner of the hotel was extremely nice. He drove us out to Little Petra and told us to explore and then hitchhike back to the hotel. He said it was perfectly safe and that anyone would pick us up. On the way to Little Petra we drove down a long whinedy, hilly road that maybe had one car drove by every 8 minutes. Robby and I looked at each other and decided it was going to be a long walk back (about 5 miles.
Since we didn't know what Big Petra looked like, Little Petra was amazing. Sandstone mountains on either side of us and giant pillars carved into the rocks everywhere. The Byzantines built Little Petra as a resting station on the journey to Big Petra. They liked caves and lots of the openings resembled 8 foot sarcophagus. A bit unnerving, but neat.
As we were following a set of stairs to nowhere, a Bedouin found us and showed us about. He grew up in Petra and knew the ins and outs of the desert. We went on a fairly long hike up through the hills and into the valley. I didn't know I was going to be hiking that day and so my stupid flipflops basically drove me crazy and had to be thrown down the mountain in order for me not to fall off the cliff. I decided that I was not going to bring a bag to Big Petra. Only a camera. Trying to boulder doesn't work with cameras and bags swinging every which direction.
The bedouin's name is Mohammed and he invited us back to his house for dinner. Along the way we met his cousin who told us about a performance he was doing later that night at one of the tourist bedouin camps. We all decided to head to the tourist camp later and watch the singing. Mohammed took us to his house so he could change clothes and we hung out with his three sisters, his mother and a couple of his brothers. One of the sisters spoke a little English, but most of them didn't speak any English. We entertained them by giving them Altoids Sour candy. They all thought it was sweet and when they put it in their mouths they got a kick out of watching each other pluker up. One of the brothers didn't like the taste, but loved to eat the candy. He kept asking for more and then cringing when he ate it. Fun stuff.
The cousin came back and all four of us headed to the Tourist camp. The camp is run by Mohammed's family and so everyone knew each other. We walked around the place and then had dinner with some Jordanian archeologist. Robby was happy. The cousin, who's name is Macmood, sung and danced with 7 other guys. It was nice, but they were a little off key and they kept whispering while trying to sing. Afterwards we went and looked at the stars with the guys. They invited us to jeep out to Wadi Araba with them the next day. We said yes because we were planning on going to Wadi Run anyhow and they said that Wadi Araba was prettier. Both are deserts with lots of hiking and beautiful landscapes.
It also turns out that Macmood is one of the staff members on the excavation in Jordan that RObby is working on in two months. So now she has a friend. Mohammed drove us back to our hotel and told us to meet him the next day and he would show us Big Petra and then take us to Wadi Araba.
So today we went to Big Petra and lucked out on getting in for the student price of $15 dollars instead of the normal price of $30. Everyone here has told us that we need about 2 days to see most of Petra and about a week to see all of it. I think that we covered most of it in the 8 hours we were there today. We saw a lot of the pillars carved into the rocks, the Treasury (which is the famous pillared building from Indiana Jones) a bunch of tombs, a Roman church that was discovered 14 years ago and is huge, we hiked a giant mountain and I almost had a heart attack, but it was worth it for the view and then we hiked down it semi illegally. There was a sign at the bottom that said, "no climbing". Opps, but there was no way in hell that I was going to climb down the way I came up. No way. The beginning to {Petra is a shady passage way in the middle of gray sandstone. Beautiful patterns are carved into the rock by erosion and human hand. It was my favorite part of Petra. Hopefully I'll get the pictures uploaded soon and be able to show you guys.
We were suppose to climb the 900 steps to the monastery on the hill, but we both decided no. RObby can come back and climb to her heart's content, but I just wanted a shower or a hot tub. My knees are killing me. Petra's beautiful, but I don't need to climb every mountain to feel the magnitude of the place.
Robby and I decided that we didn't really feel comfortable enough to go with Mohammed and Macmood to the desert and camp out, so we are going to go watch the World Cup tonight and head to Aqaba tomorrow. We plan to find a hotel on the beach and actually lay about doing nothing but sleeping and swimming. It sounds refreshing after the last two days. I'm completely out of shape and everything hurts. I need a lazy day.
Talk to you guys later.
Grave stone of a suicide victim. Interesting because most of the grave stone have no pictures, only words and the date of death and birth.
Pretty house in Safed.
Does anyone get that feeling of just having to sit up straight? Well I did and now I'm Buddha.
The 2 Russians and the Twins.
Alex and us at the Soldier's cemetery in Jerusalem.
A pretty nature park that we went to during the first week of Birthright.
So, let me start with the Weddings. Before I came to Israel I knew that I would be going to Jordan and therefore I called up my old friend, Faris, from Webster, who happened to be Jordanian, and asked him 1.) If he knew of any cool places to visit and cheap places to stay, and 2.)If he was going to be in Jordan so he could show me around. It turned out that he was going to be in Jordan at the same time that I was and that he was getting married. So not only would I get to see him, but I would get to go to his wedding.
Now present day. Let me quickly jump back to Israel for a second. While RObby and I would staying at the Heritage House, Chaya the House mom, told everyone at the Hostel about a Jewish Orthodox Wedding that everyone was invited to. Apparently Jewish people do not send out invitations to certain friends and family. Instead they just send out announcements and everyone is invited. Chaya convinced us and three others to go and check it out because we had never been to a real Orthodox wedding. We dressed up nicely and headed out with one other girl and her brother. The cabbie took us to a street that had about 700 Orthodox men singing and dancing in the street around a van with an obnoxious glittery crown on top. There was really loud Hebrew music playing. We all got out of the car thinking, "Gosh, Jews really know how to throw a party!" It turns out that we were in the wrong location and that the happy dancing guys were celebrating the grand opening of a 10 million dollar Yeshiva (school). We wandered down the hill to hail another cab and to our surprise two more people from the Heritage House popped out of a cab. We yelled at them to get back in since they were in the wrong location. I think we confused them a little since we practically screamed, "get back in the cab! Get Back in the Cab! You're in the wrong location!" We didn't want them to have to pay for another cab like us.
Eventually all six of us made it to the correct location and entered the wedding after everything, but the dancing had happened. In an Orthodox wedding the women are on one side of a divided room and the men on the other. This is to allow the married couple not to have a wandering eye and it lets everyone be themselves without having to worry about appearances - the women could basically uncover their hair (they wear wigs or hats in public. Their immediate family are the only ones that are suppose to see their true hair since it is a symbol of beauty).
The two guys that we were with went to the guys side while the four of us girls sat to one side of the room while numerous Neve girls tried to explain what was going on. So the ceremony had basically be completed and now the bride and groom were in a special room where they are allowed to touch for the first time. In Orthodox culture, most of the people are matched together through a matchmaker or friends. They usually know everything about each other before they go on a first date by asking the other's family and friends about that person. After a few dates, if the couple likes each other they keep going out. Of they don't connect they try again with someone else. Since there is no touching on any of the dates, the couple gets to see each other's personalities and their true feelings. If they truly like each other they are married after a few months. Yes, shocking. I thought it was weird at first as well, but they say they know all the details about each other's lives before the first date and usually a friend would hook you up with someone they knew - meaning "would you hook your friend up with a jerk?" no, so the marriages usually last. I think there is about a 4% divorce rate. Nice huh?
Since the bride and groom were busy kissing or what not, we watched as everyone ate. Chaya had said that there is always tons of food and so we didn't eat anything and were starving. Now Chaya had been right, there was a ton of food, but the family was semi-poor and they were paying by the plate, so all non-official guest got soda only. Grrrr. We talked, our stomachs growled, and eventually the bride and groom came out of the little room and there was a whole lot of dancing. We all got pushed in a giant circle and around and around we went with the bride in the middle who danced with relatives and friends. When you're the bride or groom you better have your dancing shoes on because there are no exception's, only dancing. About an hour into the dancing a bunch of other people from the Heritage house shoed up, including the "hippies" They're a group of kids that all went on a Birthright trip together and decided to stay and travel for a bit afterwards. They're the "hippies" because the three guys carry instruments with them, everywhere and randomly decide to stop on a bench and play music. One has dreads, a couple with bandanas, and the 2 girls with them dance. They're all really nice and it was funny to see them, at the wedding because they came in normal clothes and carrying their instruments. When we asked them later why they weren't dressed up, they said they hadn't expected to come to the wedding and that they just ended up there. See, anyone is invited, just not feed.
2 hours later our stomachs were really growling and we all did a mass exodus to Ben Yehuda street to grab food. It was a interesting wedding, but I prefer to marry the American way.
Back to Jordan. I had to tell about the Israeli wedding so you could see the difference between that one and the Jordanian wedding. After Robby and I saw the Amman ruins we called Faris to come pick us up. He said that he would find us a nice hotel so that we could be close to his family for the wedding. It turns out that the hotel was Faris' house. Since there were just two of us, his mom said we could stay there.
Faris' house is amazing. It is an apartment that takes up an entire floor of a complex. All the furniture had that "look at me, but don't touch" feel along with the pictures on the wall. But since we couldn't stand the whole time we decided to risk breaking something and sit. It's surprising how elegant chairs can be really comfortable.
There are two maids in Faris' house. They are both from the Philippines and extremely nice. Robby and I preferred to talk to them than half the family because they were a little more down to Earth. Also they spoke fairly decent English, while everyone else knew "Hello". The first night that we were there there was a party for Faris at 10 pm. A bunch of family and friends came from all over. At first they all wondered about the two quiet white girls hanging about, but after a while people found out we were Faris' friends and then they started to talk to us. Robby made friends with a 12 yr old girl who has been traveling all over Europe this summer for fun. I'm very jealous of her life. She also spoke wonderful English and was often the translator for her parents and other people.
We finally got to meet Nor, Faris fiance. She is really cute and her and Faris make a great couple. Ever since I met Faris he had always joked about needing to find a "wifey" and now he finally found one. They met last year while hanging with the folks. They weren't even looking to get married and it just happened. Now that's better than a match maker in some ways. At least you know it is love instead of someone telling you it is love.
The following day was the wedding day, but it was a very lazy day. Faris' dad woke us up early for no reason that I could see other then the fact that we were in the living room and he wanted to watch TV. We lounged around drinking coffee and tea until 2pm when one of the aunts took us and her daughter to get our hair styled for the wedding. Robby just got hers straighten, but I decided to get mine curled. In the end I looked like something out of a 60's TV show. Semi=straight hair on the sides and the back with lazy curls at the bottom and then my bangs were side parted across my face. There was a small bob going on, but I made it vanish or the wind from outside destroyed it. After sitting around for another 3 hrs, my hair had started to go back to craziness, but at least I looked liked I came out of the early 90's now instead of the 60's. Jordanian's must really love the 60's hairdos because everyone else came back from the parlor with some sort of bob or Hawaiian style. Odd.
At 6:30pm a traditional Arab band came to the house and clapped and sung for an hour while people danced and Faris looked nervous. We danced all the way into the cars that then drove to Nor's house. There were about 12 cars all fighting for room on the road, honking in crazy happiness, and flashing their lights. Maher, Faris' brother was sticking out of the sun roof singing and dancing to Faris who was driving behind him in a Audi TT decked out with flowers and ribbons. Once at Nor's house we all got out and followed the singing band into the house where Nor and Faris united and stood together as the singing continued and people congratulated them. A bit later we danced back to the cars a headed to the reception. Now about 20 cars blocked traffic and made a ruckus. Everytime we hit a stop light, a bunch of guys ran out of their cars and danced a circle around Faris and Nor.
Hussian taught RObby a saying, "Afflent Majnun." roughly translates to " The rich are crazy." It is completely true. At the hotel we annoyed the residents for a bit with more loud singing and dancing as we walked down a hallway. 2 1/2 hrs after the singing first started, it ended and we went outside to the pool area to have drinks (non alcoholic since Muslims don't drink. They're already crazy enough). Faris and Nor vanished for a bit and Robby and I got stuck talking to Nor's uncle and his whole family of 8 kids and some brothers with kids. It turns out that one of the Uncles will be in Cairo the same time as us and he told us to look him up when we go there. We probably will since it's done us a fair amount of good hanging with people that have been referred to us.
at 10pm Faris and Nor returned and we all went inside to the grand ballroom where there was more dancing and singing. Faris and Nor walked around slowly so everyone could see them and eventually we were allowed to grab some of the really good food. Later that night Faris' grandma practically dragged us on stage and made us dance. That lead to everyone else wanting to dance with us. It was Jordanian dancing, so kind of shaking your hips while moving your hands in a slow, lazy up, and down way. Robby did something wrong since one of Faris' uncle's started pretending to swim everytime he saw her afterwards in imitation of RObby's horrible dance style.
Overall it was a fun day, but drawn out longer than it should have been and we didn't get to eat until our stomachs caved in. We also found out that Faris and Nor got officially married two weeks earlier and that's why there was no vows ceremony. Just dancing, singing and showing off.
We stayed at Faris' house for another night. We had planned to go to Madaba, supposively an interesting town with lots of Bible history, but we needed to figure out what we were doing with Aqaba. Somehow we had got ourselves hooked into going to Aqaba with Maher the following day at 6 am and we didn't know if we were going to spend the night at Faris' again or if we should have gone to find another hotel. We wanted to ask Maher and then go to Madaba for the day, but Maher didn't show up until 2 pm with Faris and we ended up eating lunch with the family and not having enough time to go to Madaba.
Maher took us dancing that night with his cousin and we went over our plans for Aqaba, basically a very touristy city since it is mostly beaches. We realized kind of late that Maher is 18 and not interested in the same stuff as us. We still wanted to see Petra and then Wadi Rum. He wanted to party and lay a bout on the beach. Luckily the plans got canceled because Maher had to stay another day to say bye to his brother who flew in for the wedding and then he wasn't allowed to go to Aqaba since Faris and NOr were going and it was considered rude since it was like jumping in on the honeymoon.
Now present days. We arrived in Petra yesterday after taking a small public bus. Petra is not that touristy of a place for Jordanians and therefore none of the big, nice buses come down here very often. So our bags got to be pillows for other passengers and sometimes steps. we planned ahead this time and found a hostel online that was in the town over from Petra. The bus dropped us off at the door of the Petra Gate hotel and we realized, planning isn't always a good thing either.
Now I've stayed in some pretty gross and creepy hostel before, but this one takes the cake. Down into the dungeon we walked and the choice of the blue room or the yellow room we were offered. I choose the blue room since it looked friendlier. The waiting room of the Hotel was covered in dust. They were doing some repairs, but I'm pretty sure the inside of the place hadn't seen a vacuum or dust mop in a decade. I was scared to sit on anything. Not sure my pants would have recovered. The blue room was two beds with blue comforters that have seen better days. There's no door on the bathroom, it's just separated from the last bed by a wall. There's a toilet, but you can only sit sideways on it since the wall is practically pushed up against the front of the toilet. The shower is rusted over and just a spigot hanging over the toilet. Yeah, next time we'll just wander in and out of places until we find one that we like. We had half paid for the night at Petra Gate and therefore had to stay. Luckily they gave us sheets that smelled refreshingly clean and we curled up in those the whole night. No telling what's under the covers.
The owner of the hotel was extremely nice. He drove us out to Little Petra and told us to explore and then hitchhike back to the hotel. He said it was perfectly safe and that anyone would pick us up. On the way to Little Petra we drove down a long whinedy, hilly road that maybe had one car drove by every 8 minutes. Robby and I looked at each other and decided it was going to be a long walk back (about 5 miles.
Since we didn't know what Big Petra looked like, Little Petra was amazing. Sandstone mountains on either side of us and giant pillars carved into the rocks everywhere. The Byzantines built Little Petra as a resting station on the journey to Big Petra. They liked caves and lots of the openings resembled 8 foot sarcophagus. A bit unnerving, but neat.
As we were following a set of stairs to nowhere, a Bedouin found us and showed us about. He grew up in Petra and knew the ins and outs of the desert. We went on a fairly long hike up through the hills and into the valley. I didn't know I was going to be hiking that day and so my stupid flipflops basically drove me crazy and had to be thrown down the mountain in order for me not to fall off the cliff. I decided that I was not going to bring a bag to Big Petra. Only a camera. Trying to boulder doesn't work with cameras and bags swinging every which direction.
The bedouin's name is Mohammed and he invited us back to his house for dinner. Along the way we met his cousin who told us about a performance he was doing later that night at one of the tourist bedouin camps. We all decided to head to the tourist camp later and watch the singing. Mohammed took us to his house so he could change clothes and we hung out with his three sisters, his mother and a couple of his brothers. One of the sisters spoke a little English, but most of them didn't speak any English. We entertained them by giving them Altoids Sour candy. They all thought it was sweet and when they put it in their mouths they got a kick out of watching each other pluker up. One of the brothers didn't like the taste, but loved to eat the candy. He kept asking for more and then cringing when he ate it. Fun stuff.
The cousin came back and all four of us headed to the Tourist camp. The camp is run by Mohammed's family and so everyone knew each other. We walked around the place and then had dinner with some Jordanian archeologist. Robby was happy. The cousin, who's name is Macmood, sung and danced with 7 other guys. It was nice, but they were a little off key and they kept whispering while trying to sing. Afterwards we went and looked at the stars with the guys. They invited us to jeep out to Wadi Araba with them the next day. We said yes because we were planning on going to Wadi Run anyhow and they said that Wadi Araba was prettier. Both are deserts with lots of hiking and beautiful landscapes.
It also turns out that Macmood is one of the staff members on the excavation in Jordan that RObby is working on in two months. So now she has a friend. Mohammed drove us back to our hotel and told us to meet him the next day and he would show us Big Petra and then take us to Wadi Araba.
So today we went to Big Petra and lucked out on getting in for the student price of $15 dollars instead of the normal price of $30. Everyone here has told us that we need about 2 days to see most of Petra and about a week to see all of it. I think that we covered most of it in the 8 hours we were there today. We saw a lot of the pillars carved into the rocks, the Treasury (which is the famous pillared building from Indiana Jones) a bunch of tombs, a Roman church that was discovered 14 years ago and is huge, we hiked a giant mountain and I almost had a heart attack, but it was worth it for the view and then we hiked down it semi illegally. There was a sign at the bottom that said, "no climbing". Opps, but there was no way in hell that I was going to climb down the way I came up. No way. The beginning to {Petra is a shady passage way in the middle of gray sandstone. Beautiful patterns are carved into the rock by erosion and human hand. It was my favorite part of Petra. Hopefully I'll get the pictures uploaded soon and be able to show you guys.
We were suppose to climb the 900 steps to the monastery on the hill, but we both decided no. RObby can come back and climb to her heart's content, but I just wanted a shower or a hot tub. My knees are killing me. Petra's beautiful, but I don't need to climb every mountain to feel the magnitude of the place.
Robby and I decided that we didn't really feel comfortable enough to go with Mohammed and Macmood to the desert and camp out, so we are going to go watch the World Cup tonight and head to Aqaba tomorrow. We plan to find a hotel on the beach and actually lay about doing nothing but sleeping and swimming. It sounds refreshing after the last two days. I'm completely out of shape and everything hurts. I need a lazy day.
Talk to you guys later.
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