Egypt

Well my time in Egypt has come to an end, it has been an interesting and enjoyable experience.

Our last night in Cairo as a group we went to a Dervishes dance show, where men play music, and spin around it was truly quite amazing, I took a couple videos so I will put them up on youtube as soon as I get a decent internet connection.

The next day most of our group, except Sharon went for a day trip to Alexandria, such a stark contrast between the two cities, even though there only a few hundred kilometres apart. So much more relaxed here, and cleaner, not as much garbage strewn about. Probably because it is only half the size, at 8 million, and probably being next to the ocean relaxes people, it is also cooler here, which was a welcome break. Saw the new great library of Alexandria as the original one was destroyed in an earthquake, it was truly impressive. It even had a copy of the Internet Archive which is a copy of old websites. It's a massive server room with I think 1.2 Petabytes of data. That reminded me of work too much, so I quickly left that part of the library.

My thoughts on Egypt is that it is a lovely country with very friendly people, it is amazing how many people just say "Welcome to Egypt", and they are just perhaps wanting to practise there English. Quite often groups of young teenage girls will stop and ask if they can take your photo with them, not sure what they do with these photos. I am probably on some website where they laugh at how I dress or something. The number of police officers here is insane, too many I think, they are just standing around, and some looking for bribes, I think they could be put to better use working on the infrastructure of the country, the roads aren't great, and garbage is a huge problem. Along the roads there are piles of rubble, old vehicles and plastic bottles galore.

In Cairo we visited a Garbage City, a place where some 40000+ people go around collect the garbage and sort through it to make money by recycling stuff, an amazing project, not a great life as it was very smelly and dirty, but at least someone is addressing the problem, but they certainly could use a better system.

I am now heading back to Cairo where I will fly to Dubai, from there I am really not to sure where I will go, I am torn between a few destinations, and since I just have over a month before I come home for Christmas I have to take that in to account as well.. Oh well I will figure something out.

Posted by Jason Willock

Whew, this last week has been a hectic one, lots of travel, lots to see, and
just a small amount of time for relaxing. It has been pretty enjoyable
though.

After the Felluca we headed to Luxor, for a couple days. Luxor is a pretty
touristy city on the Nile, with a good location for some sights. Checked out
a Sound & Light show at Karnak temple, it was pretty interesting, learnt
some neat facts. Next day we went to the Valley of the Kings, this is where
Tutankhamen's grave was found, and actually just today I read that just
yesterday they put his unmasked head on display for the first time there. So
I just missed that by a couple days! Oh well once you have seen one mummy,
they all rather look similar. We then had a good lunch at our day guides
house, got some insight into the thoughts of the general Egyptian people.

From what I have seen the government and police are fairly corrupt, the
people here are not overly impressed with there 'president' who is elected
but other candidates aren't really allowed to run, or something to that
effect. Our main guide Eman is a female, and I can see the struggles she
has to put up with being a female in a male dominated society, it would
certainly be trying. There is a lot of security here, too much I think, so
many check points, and the police always seem to want bribes to get through,
even if your paper work is order.

Anyhow, the next day was a tour of Karnak temple, where the light & sound
show was, it was neat to see it again during the day, this is truly a
massive temple, the photos I took don't do it justice, the scale of it is
just immense. It was a temple for the people to pray, not one for afterlife,
it would have been amazing to see it when it was alive and bustling with
activity.

The next day we headed to another ultra resort touristy city called
Hurghada, some massive resorts there, we however stayed at a little hotel,
we were only there for the night, so it was ok, as the next day we caught a
ferry to our little beach resort in a place called Nuweiba, this was a
pretty nice place on the Aqabaq Sea, where I could see Saudi Arabia just
20km's on the other side of the sea, and Israel and Jordan where just 40-50
km's away! We each had our own little beach hut a stones throw from the sea.
Truly a very relaxed environment, did some snorkeling, saw some great coral
reefs and tropical fish, it has reminded me how I want to get my SCUBA
certification, so I will have to look at doing that somewhere along my
travels.

After two days at the lovely resort it was time to head to Saint
Catherine's, and Mount Sinai. We climbed up Mount Sinai (where Mosses
received the 10 commandments), that was quite the trek, but it was worth it
to see the view, and watch the sunset, the climb down in the dark was also
nice, with a great view of the stars. Saint Catherine's was also interesting
place, the home of the Burning Bush.

Now I am back in Cairo for one more night, and then the tour ends, but most
of us from the tour are going to do a day tour of Alexandria, which should
be nice. I am going to stay there for a couple nights, and then I am heading
off to Dubai for a while, this is where I will try to get my Visa for India
sorted out, and plan my travels in India. As I think that will be my next
stop before coming home for Christmas.

Posted by Jason Willock

Well I am now in Luxor Egypt, after 2 days and 2 nights on a Falluca boat ride down the Nile. It was quite relaxing, just sitting on the Nile, floating dow the river, which is suprisingly quite still for a large river. It takes a while to get anywhere, as we have to zig zag across the river catching the wind.

We ate and slept on the boat, I think that is the longest I have gone with out meat, it was pretty nice food, our cook was a Nubian, so we had some very tasty Nubian vegetarian dishes. The nights were pretty chilly, I borrowed a blanket from the ship, and was a bit cool at night, the days however are very hot, it was nice sitting on the boat catching the river breeze.

Along the way we stopped at a couple of temples, again quite impressive, so much history, it is amazing how things have lasted so long here!

Again I am writing this from an Internet Cafe, I tried to do an update earlier today, but the internet died halfway into my message, so I will keep this brief. Hopefully I will be able to find a way to upload some photos soon.

Tomorrow our group is off the Valley of the Kings, should be quite interesting!

Posted by Jason Willock

Well I have a few minutes before we board the Falluca for two days so I will do a quick update on what I have been up to.

The camel ride was interesting through the start of the Sahara, I had a pretty tempermental camel who wasn't overly keen on the whole thing, but it was still a unique experience. We then learnt a lot about the nubian history, went to someones house, and watched a wedding video and then had a nice Nubian dinner.

Getting up at 3am wasn't too bad, as I went to bed pretty early, and was able to sleep on the 3 hour bus ride. Numerous busses traveled together with a police convoy for safety. The ride was uneventful, with the terrain being pretty inhospitable desert. But Abu Simbel and the Philae Temple. Hopefully I will be able to upload some photos soon. As I have seen some pretty amazing stuff.

The people here are quite friendly, of course you have the odd con man, but just walking down the street people say 'Welcome'
And police officers will stop to talk to you, and are more than willing to help you out. In the Philae Temple I had one police office with a machine gun walk around with me for about 10 minutes and explained some of the temple to me.

Well it is time to go to the boat! Should be an interesting expiereince sleeping on a boat on the Nile River!

Posted by Jason Willock

Well I arrived in Cairo safe and sound, the cab ride from the airport was a tad bit insane, traffic here is crazy, I thought I had seen crazy in Morocco, and Naples, but Cairo takes the cake. It was in the mid 30's and the air was filled with diesel from fumes from all the cars. Not so enjoyable to breath.

The city of Cairo is non stop, always something on the go! We took the metro to the pyramids of Giza. Quite impressive, got to go inside one of them, so cramped and hot, I couldn't imagine working in there, especially in the dark or just with torch light! After the pyramids we had a nice lunch, pasta with chick peas and lentils with a tomato sauce. Quite nice and healthy, and it was only $1cdn! Things here are so cheap it is a refreshing change from Europe!

We then took a 13 hour overnight train to Aswan where I am now. I slept quite well on the train, it was quite a luxury train two people in each carriage, my roomate on the tour is a guy named David who is from Sydney but has been working in South England for a while. Also in our small group is Shannon, who is a Malaysian girl who has lived in Sydney for 10 years, and a couple who are dairy farmers from New Zealand. A nice small group lead by our leader Eman a nice Egyptian girl.

Not much else to report, it is very hot here in Aswan today, nearing 40!! It is quite a nice setting along the Nile River. This afternoon we are going on a camel ride and then dinner in a Nubian village. Then have to get up early 3am to start a tour to the temple of Abu Simbel. Looking forward to the temple, not so much the wake up time, but should be able to sleep on the bus there.

After that we are going on 2 day boat ride along the nile. That should certainly be interesting!

So I will probably do another update after that!

Posted by Jason Willock