Egypt Continued

[zahryn]

Day 3: What a brilliant, unstable, painful and glorious day!! We started late, very late :o) By the time we got ourselves out of bed it was nearly 10:30!! We got dressed and from the minute we left the hotel that morning, things outside were v. odd; the traffic was all being detoured, there were lines of Tourist Police and serious looking men in suits everywhere. We had an inkling of the cause because Mohammed the perfumier had said something about Musharef coming to Cairo (the president) to make a speech today. It’s a good job too because the sight that greeted us when we left our hotel could have been really worrying. We went to a little place on the Talaat Harb called “Café Rich” for breakfast, we had Spanish omelette because they had “no continental breakfast left”?? It was still very nice and we walked to the museum feeling pretty good.
We managed to get across the nightmare roundabout with relatively little trouble thanks to the Police and we made our way into the museum. It’s incredibly big and just packed to the rafters with all manner or priceless antiquities; we saw Tutenkhamuns various burial regalia (that man really knew how to shop!!) papyrus scrolls over 4000 years old, jewellery that is so intricate you can’t imagine how it was made by hand. We saw sarcophagi, rocks, pots, weapons, golden boomerangs AND Mummies!! We saw Royal mummies with teeth, some with henna-dyed hair, toenails and skin, we saw a Queen and her pet baboon and the restored face of the Queen who was over-stuffed to that her cheeks exploded. We also saw some Ancient pictures on Egyptian rock and my comment “Ahh, but does the picture go all the way through like Brighton rock?” was completely hilarious but only to me…I was tired, what can I say?
We saw too much to list it all here, our feet and legs got tired and painful but we were determined to keep going. Clay printed tablets, contracts in demotic script, the Egyptian version of the Rosetta stone and the iconic mask of King Tut. This and the mummies were the highlights of the day.
Not sure what to do with ourselves after 5 hours walking around the museum, we headed back to the hotel to pee and work out what to do next. We had a brief look through the Egypt book but couldn’t find much to inspire us so, starting to feel as though we were grasping at straws we decided to head out to a café we read about called “Zahret Al-Bustan” which looked quite close. Our plan was to sit, have a drink and talk about our options to decide what to do with our next 3 days.
We found the place no trouble and almost immediately bumped into “Aladdin” who ran the place (prn: Alah-Deen) and some businesses down the street. We sat down with tea and shisha to talk and we chatted for a while about our trip, what we’d seen so far and what we still had left to do. Alaa quoted us a brilliant price for a 2-day/1-night trip into the desert from an oasis at Bahariyya, a night under the stars in a Bedouin camp, complete with white and black sand deserts, caves, temples and a night fire with BBQ. LE 550 for both of us was a gift, especially as Shelli at the hotel had quoted us LE 1100 for the same trip!! No doubt we’re still paying over the odds, but Alaa is also booking our Nile dinner cruise for LE 200 instead of the LE 500 that Shelli asked which has almost paid for our night in the desert, so we’re not complaining.
After a rest we went up to a little takeaway place on the corner called “Kazaz” and bought 2 shawirma, one beef and one chicken. Spiced meat, cut into very thin strips and mixed with grilled veg, in a bun with some kind of white sauce. Very tasty and we took them back to the hotel to eat while we talked over our options. We decided quite quickly to drop the Ceramics museum from our itinerary, go with the desert oasis option, cancel the Nile cruise we’d already booked with Shelli and re-book for less than half the price with Aladdin.
Once that was decided, we went back to Zahret Al-Bustan, sat outside with more shawirma and drank tea, smoked shisha and watched the array of interesting activities; men playing backgammon, hawkers selling packets of tissues and (unbelievably) a muslim woman walked down the street and stopped outside the café to breathe and eat fire for baksheesh!! It was so relaxed, just watching and being part of a culture so alien to our own. When Alaa came to meet us, we went to his shop, paid him for the trip (which we have decided is tomorrow) and I succumbed to my papyrus habit a little bit more :o”>
By this time we needed to pay up, get back to the hotel to pack and have an early night. 6am wake-up tomorrow so we have eaten sticky cakes from the bakery and are now showering before bed.
Long trip ahead of us tomorrow, but just one more thing to be excited about :oD


Day 4: A very early start, alarm went off at 6am and we eventually got up at 06:30. We were downstairs to meet Karim by 07:00 but another guy showed up instead, he knew where we were going and had arrived on time at the right place so we took a leap of faith and got in a taxi with him. We went to another hotel and picked up 3 more people, Aurelian, Seline and Pierre (can you guess they’re French?), which made us feel much better about the whole thing. Our guide took all 5 of us to the bus station; he put us on the bus and told us we’d get our tickets at the next stop from a guy named “Dohi”. I’ll pass over the next 5 hours of bus journey to Bahariyya Oasis, the miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, the sore bums and the toilet break that changed my opinion of UK toilets forever. The only thing of note was the ancient man sitting two seats over who spent the entire trip spitting on the floor of the bus and using the curtains to blow his nose. Suffice to say that by the time we got to the real Bahariyya stop, after a couple of false possibles, we were desperate to stretch our legs.
We met “Wagdi” who was our contact for the trip and he put us in a 4WD off-roader with “Hamada” our driver and Bedouin guide. First stop was to register our presence with the local Tourist Police, then we headed out of town and into the desert. Again, the pictures will do far more justice to the scenery than my words ever could, we drove until about 3pm, stopping to fill a tank with water at a tap by the side of a random road in a random village miles from anywhere, then we went “The Oasis Café” for lunch in another little village, very tasty lunch which consisted of bread, tuna and onion and “stuff” with a sort of tomato and cucumber raita tasting thing and some crisps in a flavour we’d never had before and couldn’t put a name to. It was all really nice and since our last meal had been a weird tomato and jalapeno pitta, which left a stinging sensation in my mouth AND had cottage cheese in it, anything was great.
After we’d eaten and used the stand-up loo again it was back on the road. The scenery started changing, getting lighter, the stone getting whiter and we stopped to take some photos, we came to (what I thought was called) The Christian Mountain” which actually turned out to be called “The Crystal Mountain” because it’s formed of solid and naturally occurring Quartzite!! (there were no lions or crosses in sight!!) V impressive, Red climbed it and came back with lumps of quartzite that he found, I had a couple of smaller pieces, it’s there by the ton all mixed into the sand. I also found a fragment of pottery but I have no idea if it’s anything significant and may never know.
Back in the jeep again we drove on much rougher un-tarmac’d roads down into an alien landscape. Huge blocks of white stone in amazing shapes, standing high above what looks like a snow-covered landscape. It’s quite a breath-taking site and it’s here that we’ve stopped for the night. The Bedouin set up is complete, the French have been off with the roll of loo paper to re-create scenes from “The Mummy” which they have greatly enjoyed (the pictures are pretty funny) and we are all sitting round the table enjoying the fire and smells of cooking, the star-scape later will be incredible with no civilisation within miles and another happy, experience-filled day is over.


Day 4 needed a postscript :o)
Hamada turned our light off once we were all settled down in a row with our sleeping bags and thick woollen blankets. There was some slight annoyance from the flash of the camera by the French, but they were having a good time so we just stared up at the a ceiling full of bright stars for ages. Once the others had quietened down we could gaze and chat in whispers, pointing out constellations and shooting stars to each other until I fell asleep. I woke up during the night to go to the loo and the moon and stars made it quite easy to see. I lay awake afterwards for a while getting warm, and got up just as the sky was beginning to lighten. I went behind the truck had a quck clean up with baby wipes and changed my underwear, I’d started having dreams about clean, normal toilets which is evidence of my psyche becoming obsessed, a wash and brush-up was just what I needed. I got back into my bag all cosy and warm and stayed awake long enough to see the constellations in the East fading behind the dawn, and then fell asleep for another few hours.
Magic AND romantic :wub: :o)


Day 5: The sun was hot and well into the sky when we woke up for the day. Hamada had cleared up the night before and was making tea and heating bread for breakfast. We ate flatbread with honey, fig jam, halva and cream cheese, drank tea and then started to pack up. Hamada has a system in place which puts everything back on the roof, lashed down so it’s all in order next time he needs to take it all down next time. We ‘helped’ as much as possible then cleaned our teeth and got into the truck. We had planned to ”leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but photos” and that’s how we left the site…except that the truck wouldn’t start…in the middle of the desert….with no mobile phone signal for miles The diesel was too cold. :o(
Luckily the desert tour guides look after their own and before long 3 other jeeps surrounded us, one guy hooked the battery terminal to the coils to get things hot enough to start. We were going in no time and then we did the rounds helping out a truck with a slow puncture before heading further into the “white desert national park” to see some more amazing scenery.
I’m deliberately being non-descript about what we saw because it truly has to be seen, to be believed. We drove back to Bahariyya, stopping at a big black mountain where I was nearly left behind after a potty break :-O and then another stop at Hamadas parents house before taking a drive down to the Oasis salt lake, hot sulphur springs and then back to Wagdi’s house for a fine lunch before the bus back to Cairo. After lunch Red and I went for a walk around the block, talking about the things we’d seen, we met a little group of kids who all shook hands with us, then I went back to the truck to get some sweets, but only two of the kids were brave enough to come and get them before we got back on the road to go catch the bus.
We waited in town for an hour until the 3pm bus to Cairo started up, then took our seats for the trip. It turns out we were in the wrong seats (the only convention the Egyptian people embrace wholeheartedly is bus seat numbering and being in the right seats) but nobody seemed too bothered. Now we’re 1.5 hours into our 5 hour bus ride back to Cairo. Not sure if we’ll be in time to have our dinner on the Nile or not. We’re so relaxed, chilled out and happy that we don’t really mind either way. We have washing to be done, packing to do and both of us are really looking forward to a shower.
We’re back in the hotel, tired but very appreciative of the past few days. We did have a rest stop on the bus trip back to Cairo and I managed to take a picture of the type of toilets that have been plaguing me. I’ve nothing against a less sanitary culture or more basic facilities, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to clean up after going to the loo when you’re squatting over a bed pan on the floor and the only thing available to wipe with is your own hand and a bucket of cold water??….Is it any wonder I haven’t been anywhere without baby wipes for the past few days? :oD
We arrived back in Cairo at just after 20:20 and were met by Aladdin with a car. We said goodbye to the French and chatted with Alaa in the car about our trip and our plans for tonight. We opted to go back to the hotel, shower, change and then meet him again for a later seating of the Nile cruise, so that’s what we did. We took the “Four Seasons” cruise ship “Aquarius” and enjoyed a 2 hour buffet with live music (terrible) belly-dancing, sufi dancing and the added entertainment of an engagement party!
I have two things to say: 1. belly-dancing isn’t that great to watch when the dancer spends the entire time grimacing in pain, trusting that her audience will be too entranced by her boobs and hips to pay much attention to her face. 2. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have an engagement party which is more like a wedding reception (including the dance and the cake) when you’re getting engaged to a man you hardly know, just so you can spend (chaperoned) time together and get to know each other for a year or two before you actually get married. The engagement party seemed to be a really big deal, the entire group were dressed in their finest, there was even a video being made, but I couldn’t help wondering how much of it was the couples idea of a good night out.
Anyway, we had a lovely dinner and after the entertainment we went up to the top deck and enjoyed the Niles-eye view of Cairo. Aladdin hadn’t been on the Four Seasons cruise before, preferring the earlier “Memphis” event, so he joined us for dinner. It was a nice (if loud) evening and afterwards Alaa dropped us back at the hotel. After much grumbling from a tired Amy we have packed and are ready to go out tomorrow morning for batteries for the camera, upload all the new pictures to memory sticks and then check out of our hotel. We’re leaving the bags here while we spend the day in Cairo, then at about 7pm we’ll make our way by taxi to Ramses station to catch the sleeper to Luxor.
Adventure Stage 2 starts the day after tomorrow…