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