Matt Embarrasses the Family Again

Discussing with Ross that I was going to come
"uncorked" on Ebrahim if things didn't change

Our guide Ebrahim got in a bit of a funk about our group. Apparently he usually accompanies older groups on higher-end trips where they fly back and forth instead of train or bus travel. He’s also more into the culture so found our group a bit enigmatic. We have been getting up at 6:30 or earlier most days and then wasting some time at places like a perfume factory … then getting to the next hotel at 3 in the afternoon. Also we weren’t stopping for lunch regularly and (as we have said many times before) our army travels on its stomach.


Marina was gently trying to let him know that we wanted to wake up later, that we needed to stop for food more regularly, and she kind of got stuffed. A couple of dust ups when Marina raised her voice let me know that she wasn’t too happy – either with the way things were going and perhaps more importantly the way she was being treated.


Anyway he dropped a bit of a threat to our group that he would leave someone behind if we took more than exactly 1 hour for lunch, and I reacted … and told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to leave anybody behind, that I didn’t like the BS and also didn’t like being treated like a child … so things got heated a bit … I reminded him that for what we were paying for the trip we could be staying at a Ritz Carlton somewhere and that wasting our time going to places like a perfumery -- and then not stopping for lunch when we are hungry shouldn't be on the agenda. After 3 back-and-forths he sat down .... I believe I made my point.


Ross was sitting beside me and asked me why I am such a jerk sometimes. I told him that while I can be a demanding customer … (he sarcastically repeated the word "demanding?") I am just as demanding on my own teams to provide great service. I really hate it when guys ‘mail it in’. What's the point of not doing your best work ..... its an insult to your customers and yourself.

Twenty minutes later we stopped and Ebrahim asked us to be back on time -- no threats, just a request -- but all 12 of us ditched on his recommended hotel lunch and went to a place chosen by Jeremy and Sarah out of their Lonely Planet book. We had a nice lunch of fried chicken and veggies. We knew we were in time trouble when at 12:25 (after our washroom break and a 15 minute walk to the restaurant) we ordered the chicken and the guy took out some chickens and started to chop them up with a cleaver. The lunch was tasty and cheap, and unplanned though it was, we arrived back at the bus a little later than instructed as a group. I think that's called asserting our initiative.



Would you like Chicken, Chicken or Chicken?
The little restaurant from the Lonely Planet book series.
It was the most expensive of the three restaurants in
town because it had table-cloths. Still a 4 course dinner
for 25 Egyptian Pounds is about $4.50 CAD.



Anyway, I don’t know whether it was because of my outburst, our group's solidarity at lunch, or whether the cultural part of the tour was pretty much done .... but from that point on we felt the tour changed a bit, a little less cultural, a bit more adventure –- a little more sleeping in (until 7am at least) and lunch at a regular time -- and that suited us just fine.

Perhaps a little squeakiness isn’t a bad thing.

    

God what I would do for a beer, a clean toilet and bacon and eggs for breakfast

Nice Shower ... Unfortunately no Curtain

Nice Shower ... Drain is the Hole in the floor,
you hang your towel on the sink .. you can cut down
on prep time -- sit on the throne, have a shower
and brush your teeth at the same time.

Why is it that the cleanliness of public washrooms is proportional to a country's minimum wage. The countries with the highest minimum wage have the best public washroom facilities – while those with the lowest standard of living have the worst washrooms. Egypt’s are fundamentally horrible. You pay one Egyptian pound to get in – you’d think they could pressure wash them every once in a while. I can’t figure out why people mess around with toilets that don’t work properly (leak, don't flush, waste water, don't have seats, are cracked ... etc.) – a premium toilet costs only $150 retail – why mess around with old crap crappers? Go figure.

Read the Label ... John Warder?? Who the heck is
John Warder

I'll have a Stella .... what the heck!?!

Egypt is a fairly devout country and the farther you get from Cairo or Alexandria the dryer the climate and the dryer the towns – in the alcohol sense that is. Once we left Luxor, we didn’t find anyplace to buy beer, wine or whisky. A couple of beers can make an uninspired meal palatable. But I’ve had enough coke, sparkling water, bottled water, juice … Come to think of it we didn’t do much in the way of dining. As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate fine dining, good wine, the pace of a meal, an aperitif, an appetizer, a main course, and so forth. Much of the eating in Egypt is either buffet or served all at once. The pace is fast – maybe a little wine would slow everything down a little and make it more like dining instead of eating.


Breakfast usually includes a boiled egg (cold), Pita, some spreadable cheese, cucumber, tomato, and some jam – occasionally it’s also served with refried fava beans. It is a nice change but after 2 or 3 weeks of it, it gets old. Some bacon, eggs and toast; French toast; perhaps an egg McMuffin and hash-browns…. Now that would be a good breakfast. Also I’ve drunk enough Nescafe instant coffee with Coffeemate creamer to last a while too.

The White Desert to the Bahariya Oasis

The next day we mounted up in three 4x4’s because the next Oasis was over the Sahara and we had a lot of dodgy roads (being generous here) to cover. Our driver we think was named Jimmy and he was a lot of fun.

The first indication of the type of ride it would be was when we were tooling along at about 130km’s an hour in a tight formation – three white Landcruisers about ½ car length apart, they spread out a bit, then did a hard left off the tarmac onto the sand …. I thought we were going over for sure.

Then we were zooming along the desert sometimes in tracks, sometimes on hard stuff, sometimes in soft stuff. The drivers were (I think) pretty skilled (or very lucky) because we took many different routes and fall-away curves where I thought the machine was going to do a flip, and we never did.

Did I mention there were no seatbelts? None that worked anyway … though I managed to combine two into a cobbled together lap belt, so at least I wouldn’t crush one of the kids if we did flip over.

Several hours of this took us through one checkpoint after another. Egypt is difficult to figure. It has a lot of command and control – more police all armed to the teeth than I’ve seen anywhere. We probably drove through 20-30 checkpoints … some pretty desolate – like who’d you piss off to get stationed here kind of desolate. Also many of the industries seem to be nationalized …. So I wonder if the economy is a bit communist – along with basic capitalist elements like small shops

At a few spots in the desert there are these turn-outs which you might call basic rest stops. There’s a cement arbour with a bench and small berm. We walked out into the desert and then realized there was a forest of dried up turds right by the side of the road … boy you’d need to be fairly desperate to “lay your load beside the road and a walk away contented”. Mind you, in relative comparison to other washroom facilities in Egypt these were superior.

After several hours in the Sahara, we came into the White Desert Park and looked at the monuments. These are pieces of stone where most of the structure is eroded away from wind action. Apparently the entire Sahara was the bottom of an ancient ocean – that makes sense with the oil they’ve found under it. Marina here...Matt didn't mention  how unbelievably beautiful the white desert is. We admired the natural stone structures, played in the sand, watched an amazing sunset, and enjoyed an evening by the fire with local music played by our drivers and of course, a little dancing. Back to Matt...

 They bivouac’ed the three trucks together and then pitched a tent between the LandCruisers. Then they laid out mattresses (again I’m being generous here) and gave us some blankets. We had a cookout of a traditional Egyptian meal (Pita, pita and more pita, plus some cheeses, homous, babaganousch).

After a somewhat sleepless night, we woke up around 8am and had breakfast (Pita, pita, and more pita …..) then mounted up into the Landcruisers again and made for the next Oasis.

Several hours of 4 wheeling across the Sahara later, we arrived at the next Oasis at Bahariya – checked into the Hotel and used a flushing washroom for the first time in 36 hours. The hotel had WiFi and in addition to checking in at work, a couple of us guys watched the football games (my two favorite teams the Patriots and Seahawks were soundly beaten) over the Internet.

It was actually a great way to watch the games – we watched the Seahawks lose to Chicago live, and then the Patriots to the Jets without commercials or other stops – it makes watching a game really fast.

Part 2 of the Trip -- Off to the Oasis(es)

We probably should have done more research on Egypt before we came, but you know, general life things like soccer, tennis and boat maintenance (not to mention seasons 13-20 of the Simpsons) seemed more important at the time. If we had we would have known the first part of our trip was the temple and museum visiting, cerebral part of the trip – and the second half was the adventure part. I have described our family as being “Kinetic” … meaning that we’re happiest when we’re busy and doing things. When we sit around too much we get grumpy … and frankly, after 6 or 7 days of visiting temples we were all pretty much cranked up.

 

Fortunately our tour to the Oasis(es) fixed that for us. The only downside was the ridiculous amount of bus riding that we did. I guess we have spent nearly 40 hours on buses in the last week. The first big trip was from just outside Luxor to Dakhla. We got up at 7, on the bus at 8 and we zoomed along the desert for about the next 8 hours. We arrived in Dakhla and holed up in the hotel – that I cannot even remember what it was. We ….hmmmmm.... not a clue. So...Marina looked it up and has decided to add a little here.

It was a long travel day and yes, we hid out in the hotel - I think they fed us there and we all just crashed early. However, the next day we did go to a medievil village with homes made from mud and mud brick. The "village" is above ground and ground level is only used to get access. It was pretty neet as it was easy to imagine how people lived. The government had forced everyone to leave to preserve the village,  however, there was one very old lady who still lived there, she refused to leave because the spirit of her husband was still there and as she was so old, the government allowed her to remain.

In the afternoon we got back onto a bus that took us to Farafra and we tranferred to 4x4s and our three vehicles took off towards the White Desert. Now...we're starting to have some action!

Rooftop Sanctuary



Evening Balloon Ride Over the Valley of the Kings



Our Shandy Recipe

One of the features of our hotel in Luxor was a rooftop pool and bar. Jessie braved the passive solar heated (aka not heated) pool for about a minute, (see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZYMqGKqvlE ) the rest of the time we just sat in the lawn chairs enjoying the sun. Luxor is a tourist city so we could get a beer, so Marina and I would share a beer or two (hers a Shandy half and half with Sprite) and just enjoy each other’s company.




They have a masseuse up there and we had side by side massages. Typical hotel massage – not nearly deep enough, though Marina’s masseuse offered to pluck Marina’s chin hairs with string (does Marina really have chin hair???  I've never seen any in 20+ years) I thought she was offering to floss her teeth -– YUK! – and my guy got a lot closer to parts of me than I though appropriate – talking to Marina afterward she said the same thing … it is hard to relax and pucker at the same time. Topping it off there were a couple of guys that were smoking and watching Marina have her massage – partly nude of course – until Marina said ‘get rid of those guys’ and they were chased off. I can’t understand Arabic but I am pretty sure I heard the words “Free Show” being said.

Anyway, it was a really good place to watch the sunset, which we did with our friends nearly every night.

Luxor -- Tourists Under Seige

Temple of Luxor

Luxor has some unbelievably great features and it’s getting better in terms of the new walkway that’s being constructed between the Temple of Luxor and the Temple of Karnack. It’s a multi-year project to build this stone walkway 3km’s long and 10 meters wide lined with statues of the Ram god that resembles a Sphinx only with a ram’s head instead of a lion’s head.



By the time Luxor came on our agenda we’d been touring

Temple of Luxor from Across the Nile

 temple after temple and we were getting weary. Instead of touring Karnak we decided to go to the Light and Sound show … a kind of show in the Temple that has some re-enactment, music and descriptions. Karnak was so impressive if for nothing else other than its massive size. The columns are bigger than those of the Parthenon … and they’re dozens of them. There are pieces built by a number of successive Pharaohs from Ramses through to Tutankhamen. Karnak is a shrine to the god Amon from who king Tut derived part of his name. There were several obelisks, some sandstone, some granite, a number of large columns, a lake for reflection and large structures surrounding the temple. The Pharaoh’s would take a ceremonial wooden boat up the Nile and make offerings to the priests of the temple. Apparently they were the true power behind the throne.

Temple of Karnak

Columns at Karnak

Granite Obelisk at Karnak

Walking around Luxor presented a real challenge of our abilities to deal with aggressive vendors. I don’t think the kids will have much trouble haggling, negotiating, or saying no to many things for a while. We found Luxor really difficult for the first day or so, then got into the spirit of it as time went on, beginning to enjoy walking through the bazaar.

Select your Ride this one has only been driven by an old lady on Sundays ...

Is that a dog or a donkey?

On our third morning in Luxor we caught a ferry to the other side of the river and hopped on the back of some donkeys and rode to the Valley of the Kings. Ross ended up with a pint-sized donkey that was barely tall enough to keep his feet off the ground. Jessie loved her donkey – what a surprise, Marina’s was a bit pokey, and mine was the herd’s ‘bad boy’. We had to separate my donkey from Jessie’s because he kept biting her ass’ ass (couldn’t resist) – 

Keep those feet up Ross!

the donkey who receives the bite giddyaps a little when it happens. One highlight is when John, one of the guys on our trip, rode by cowboy hat in hand whooping along at a canter. Then about a minute later Ross’ donkey decided to be the front runner and trotted by with Ross’ feet hitting the ground occasionally. Despite his diminutive size, Ross’ donkey kept the lead until the end of the journey.


We dismounted, thankfully as my hips were on fire, and mounted up into the back of a Landcruiser for a couple minutes ride to the entrance of the Valley of the Kings. Once inside we had tickets to visit three tombs out of the 15 or so that are open there. We chose not to enter Ramses II’s tomb (the nicest of all) and Tutankhamen’s – the most basic as he was an unimportant king that died at age 18 and was buried in an inconspicuous place – hence why they found his tomb intact with 1.6 tonnes of Gold .. plus all the other pieces. It’s hard to imagine the amount of treasure a truly wealthy long-serving king like Ramses II (67 years) would have had in his tomb. [No Photos Here ... they collected the cameras]

OMG Another Freaking Temple

The three tombs we visited were very impressive. With some of them being carved 100 meters or more into the cliffs, they go down into the rock through wide hallways with elaborate designs carved and painted on the walls. The Ancients believed that to prepare for the afterlife, they would need to bring with them riches from this life. The mummification process would preserve the body so it would be able to serve them in the Afterlife. The organs were placed in urns and also in the tombs. During the time of the Pharaohs they would employ thousands of people to cut the rock, decorate the tombs and guard the Valley. The Valley is roughly pyramid-shaped (apparently why they chose it) and has only one entrance. Regardless of its natural protection, all the tombs were looted over the years and some time ago (can’t remember sorry) all the Royal mummies were moved to another location and disguised to protect them from robbers.

Valley of the Queens Entrance

Pigeon Hole Tombs in the Valley of the Queens

The view inside the Columns

After the Valley of the Kings we mounted up on the Landcruiser taxi and headed to the Valley of the Queens – next valley over. The temples there were reconstructed this century since they were totally destroyed over the ages. They're massive though and definitely worth the visit. The sun was shining and it was very warm … so just walking around the temple was awesome. The structures were destroyed during the crusades but parts of them have been rebuilt over the past 100 years to give us an idea of some of their original splendor.

Sunset from the Hotel Rooftop

We went back to our hotel to watch the sunset from the upper rooftop and prepared for the next day’s journey -- to Dakhla .. almost all day in the bus. We visited a mud-brick Islamic town from about 1000 years ago and got a chance to see how basic their lifestyles were. Many of today’s traditions were born from rules on how to run an orderly society 1000 years ago. When you see how basic life was … wow what a difference.

Graffiti ... Nothing is New

You know how they say there is nothing new …. Well it’s true when it comes to graffiti. 

Graffiti at Abu Simbel

We were overwhelmed by it in Athens where the entire city is covered with spray-paint tags. In Egypt the graffiti is chiseled into the stone monuments. It seems that most everybody who visited Egypt in the 1800s and up until 1950 or so, carved their name or initials into the ancient monuments.


So … parents whose kids are caught tagging the school, take a trip to Egypt and find out that your great-great-great-grandfather was tagging the statues at Abu Simbel and realize it’s an embedded trait to mark where you’ve been.