Walking on Sacred Ground

We've spent a wonderful few days relaxing by the Red Sea in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt. As the perfect closer to our trip, we hiked to the peak of Mt. Sinai this morning to watch the sunrise. As usual, our trip envolved a crazy Egyptian driver and a departure time in the middle of the night, but it was absolutely worth it to stand where Moses did thousands of years ago. The sunrise was beautiful and we enjoyed the serenity of our surroundings and reflected on what an amazing trip this has been!

Tucker Turns One

Happy birthday Tucker! Although we don't know his "official" birthday, we decided that Tucker should be a St. Patty's Day puppy. Unfortunately, no photo since we don't know how big he is since we haven't seen him in almost three months. Thankfully, he's in the loving home of Scott's parents and we can't wait to see how big he's gotten when we return home in a week! Scott says I have to stop calling him a "puppy" now:(

Pharaonic Fatigue in Luxor

We departed from our cruise ship on Wednesday morning overwhelmed by the task of visiting the many tourist sights in Luxor. In fact, of all cities in Egypt, Luxor has the greatest number of historical sites (e.g. Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's Temple, Colossi of Memnon, Valley of the Queens, Karnak Temple, Luxor Museum, etc.) On Wednesday we self-toured the East Bank and on Thursday we opted to see the West Bank's highlights via guided tour. By the end we truly had "Pharaonic fatigue". The sites are very impressive, larger than life, and so interesting to visit after studying Egyptian history as children and for myself, in a few art history classes while at Tufts. It's amazing to walk through the pyramids and tombs with such well preserved drawings and realize that you are looking at something that was made in some cases almost 5,000 years ago! But, like our many safaris in southern and eastern Africa, we have to admit that once you've seen one gazelle, you've seen them all...and over time the pylons and columns of one temple begin to look similar to the next. So, this evening we depart for Sharm-el-Sheik and a visit to the Red Sea. No more temples or pyramids. We'll spend the next few days by the beach and then visiting the religious landmarks of St. Katherine's Monastery and Mt. Sinai, and then we'll return to Cairo for our flight home! [Note: We have yet to find a computer in Egypt to upload our own photos...so for now you'll have to enjoy someone else's photos of the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut's Temple.]

The Convoy to Abu Simbel

We are truly convinced that the Egyptian military has chosen to play a cruel joke on the tourists that arrive in Aswan with the intention of visiting Abu Simbel. The small town 240 km south of Aswan and 40 km north of the Sudanese border is home to two magnificent temples built by Ramses II along the banks of the Nile (now Lake Nasser). The only way to reach the town is by tour bus in a armed convoy that leaves at 4:30 a.m. from Aswan. We were up at 3:30 a.m. to be picked up by our driver and luckily slept through most of the drive, which entails 3 hours of driving through the barren desert as drivers of minibuses and large charter buses jockey back and forth for prime position....again, the rules of driving seem to be non-existent in most of Egypt. Ramses II built the temple as a gateway for foreigners traveling from the south with four larger than life statues of himself (of course), which were meant to signify his power throughout Egypt. He also built the smaller Temple of Hathor for his wife, Nefertari (not to be confused with Nefertiti). After returning from Abu Simbel, we picked up our tickets for our Nile cruise that departs tomorrow. Since arriving in Egypt, and with our trip quickly coming to a close (we moved our return flights up to Friday, March 21st), we have decided to finally treat ourselves! We've stayed in so many cheap hotels (in fact our current residence, the Hathor Hotel, costs $18US/night and has a bathroom smaller than my old studio in the East Village), we opted for the 5-star Semiramis II for our 2-day cruise down the Nile to Luxor. The other option would have been to hire a felucca, the traditional Egyptian sailboat for a 4-day trip down the Nile, but we decided that we weren't as open to that adventure which could have entailed a lot of negotiating and baksheesh (tipping) to find a reliable captain. Bon voyage!

The Adventure to Aswan

After a few days in Cairo, we opted to head to Upper Egypt. The name is counter intuitive since we actually headed south to Aswan, but since the Nile flows north, the northern part of Egypt from Cairo down to Memphis is deemed Lower Egypt (represented by papyrus), while Lower Egypt include Luxor, the Valley of the Kings and Aswan are considered Upper Egypt (represented by the lotus flower). Here's where the adventure begins... We purchased tickets for the sleeper train from Cairo to arrive Saturday morning in Aswan. Unfortunately, we didn't look at the tickets, but based on the recommendation of the ticket agent, we planned to arrive at the train station by 8:45 p.m. (or at least, that's what we recalled being said). We spent the day at the pyramids and then returned to our hotel around 7 p.m. With some time to kill, we sat around and had a nice cold soft drink and recapped our stay in Cairo. Scott pulled out the tickets around 8 p.m. to double check the time (for the first time) and noticed the tickets said the train departed at 8:10 p.m.! Needless to say, we left in a whirlwind to catch a taxi in the hopes that maybe the tickets were misprinted! Thankfully, we had one of the crazy Cairenne taxi drivers who got us to the Giza station in record time. Naturally, we argued over a reasonable price as we were trying to rush to the station. Luckily, the train was still in the station when we arrived at 8:40 p.m....but all the doors were already closed and the train started to pull away as we watched from the platform! Following Scott's instruction, we both ran ahead to a car with an open door and jumped in! We found ourselves surrounded by Egyptian soldiers yelling "no, no, no" to us, (note: as a tourist in Egypt you can't travel anywhere without being in an armed convoy) but there was no way we were getting off the train. Of course, we ended up being the obnoxious Americans who ended up stopping the train in the station so we could board the regular sleeper train car and then had to proceed to walk through 9 cars until we reached our own cabin...did I mention we had huge hiking packs and were trying to squeeze by the attendents who were already serving dinner to the other passengers on the train?!? This is how the adventure to Aswan began...

Walk Like an Egyptian

Having spent a few days in Cairo, we now find new meaning to the phrase "walk like an Egyptian," or more appropriately, walk like a Cairenne. Living in New York City for several years did not prepare us for the mayhem and chaos of traffic in Cairo! In order to cross the street, you must play "chicken" with the oncoming traffic -- literally dodging cars across several lanes of traffic -- and as far as we could tell during our three days in the capital, there was no method to the madness of how traffic flowed. We both agreed that a Cairenne taxi driver could quite easily out-maneuver any NYC cabbie! Our arrival in Cairo was a welcome sight with the return to Western culture, which we were quite ready for, and the traffic on the right side of the road again. We "splurged" and stayed downtown at the Talisman Hotel, a small boutique hotel hidden off Talaat Haarb. Unfortunately, our taxi driver had difficulty finding it at 2 a.m. when we arrived on our flight from Dar Es Salaam. We've certainly shifted gears since leaving Eastern Africa and now are growing accustomed to being typical tourists and seeing all the sight. We visited the Egyptian Museum and walked around Khan el Khalili (the market that puts NYC's Chinatown to shame!) We also took in a Sufi dance at a local mosque. Sufi dancing originated as a form of prayer. It involves a lot of music and men dancing, actually, the men spin a lot. One man was spining in a circle for 30 minutes straight! They were colorful skirts which twirl around and apparently after all this spinning they aquire a trans-like state of prayer. Of course, one of the main highlights of our stay in Cairo was the day we spent visiting the Pyramids of Giza, as well as the more southern pyramids at Dashur, Memphis an Saqqara. The pyramids at Giza are the most well known for their size and grandeur, but it was also interesting to see the pyramids at Dashur, which were the "prototype" for the Giza pyramids, as well as the first pyramid built at Saqqara, the Step Pyramid. Another highlight of our stay in Cairo was our date night at the Semiramus Intercontinental where we had cocktails and then had a traditional Lebanese dinner and watched a show, the main act being the world-renowned belly dancer, Dinah. She was quite amazing, unfortunately, she doesn't go on stage until almost 2 a.m. so it was quite a late night for us! Our own photos and videos to come "in shallah" (God willing), if we find a computer that works properly!