A day in the life of an "expensive"

Last night we created a rainforest in the hotel room. The hot water wouldnt shut off, and it steamed up the entire room until one of the hotel guys came to turn off the hot water. Thank goodness for AC. The room got down to 28 overnight.

We woke up at 3AM to meet our car and driver that we hired to go to Abu Simbel. This is a temple in a town that is 40km from the Sudanese border. There are two scheduled times for convoys to pass all together on the road. There are many military checkpoints to get through, but mostly a long long desert highway. We were in an air conditioned limousine car (which we have decided means a car that has furry curtains and seat covers). It was comfortable, and we dozed most of the way there. Our driver kept trying to go really fast though, and his car was outfitted with a speed controller, or alarm, so when he hit a certain speed it would beep. He used headlights for some of the way, but mostly to flash at oncoming traffic. There is a different road code here. It seems sensible for them to drive on the wrong side of the road even on blind corners that are labeled in English and Arabic "Dangerous curve".

We arrived at Abu Simbel at 7AM and met our guide (or so we thought). We actually met the man that would take us from the car to the ticket gate to meet our guide. It's quite a life being an "expensive". Our guide's name was Tiger. He spoke English, but sounded like he practiced the entire speech nightly with a tape recorder. He is not even in the running to be named "guidey". He walked us by Lake Nasser, the largest man made lake in the world, and told us about the middle deep and the middle wide of the lake. He pointed out that the Nubian people who had lived along the banks of the Nile were displaced after the lake was created. They were not pleased about having to move to the desert. He sat us down and explained, with pictures, what we would be looking at within the temples. That was a good technique, since the tour guides are not allowed to explain things inside the temples themselves.

We saw many big Ramses statues, and inside, lots of wall reliefs depicting events in his life, or how he thinks he's a god. There may be the first attempt at animation shown on one of the wall carvings. The temple is unfinished, because Ramses died (a very old man, in his 90s), so they didn't continue. We were asked to look for Ramses with the god of fertility......who has "a magic stick" protruding from his loins.

The most impressive thing about these two temples was to realize that they had both been cut up into blocks of 1-3 tonnes and moved from the mountain face, up away from the water. They were reassembled, and a fake mountain was built around them. The temple was even realigned so that the sun entered and shone on the "holiest of holies" in the temple on almost the same day as before (Feb 22 and Oct 22).

We went in the temple that was dedicated to Nefertari (his favourite of of 86 wives). She is depicted with him on the temple facade, and she is the same height as he is. This is rare. There are however only 2 of her image, and 4 of his. So, we get the impression that he was a bit conceited.

Inside the temple we were shown the female goddess of fertility....she is depicted as a cow in a heavenly boat among lotus flowers.

It was sweltering at 7AM. We had had enough by 8:45 and were waiting for our car. On the long drive back we were glad of the AC. We saw mirages everywhere we looked. Quite an astounding sight. I hope my pictures turned out--the driver was surpassing his speed control while I was trying to photograph.

We returned, and had lunch (do not ever order anything called yoghoort, it looks like warm vomit on a plate). We decided that we want a decent evening meal, so we are taking up the offer of a new friend, Captain Hamada, our friendly neighbourhood felucca captain that took us for a ride yesterday for sunset. He's going to cook us fish on his boat tonight. His brother Ali and he live on the boat, and are quite the pair. We are bound to have a memorable evening as we felucca around Elephantine island--maybe we will even see Elephants?

The heat is getting to us, and we still need to catch up on sleep. Next post will hopefully be more sensible. We board the tour boat tomorrow, so it might be a while until we are using the internet--the life of the expensives is a taxing one!

Aswan - not recommended, even for the most intrepid of travellers!

We are saddened to have to report our unhappiness with Aswan. This will be done through the medium of some letters we planned out whilst sitting for 3.5 hours in 40 degree heat to get into our hotel room:

Dear Grandpa,

Thankyou for your advice about trust in relationship to Egypt. You will, no doubt, be unsurprised to know that things have not changed since you were here in the war. The locals have proved themselves to be remarkably unreliable and very flexible indeed with their concept of time. Did 1 hour really mean 3.5 hours when you were here? I'm surprised anything got done. You will be pleased to hear that we have now taken matters into our own hands and have booked a trip to Abu Simbel with an organised, Western company.

Lots of love, Clare xx


Dear President of Egypt,

Whilst we are huge fans of the female only carriage on the metro, love the lemon squash with mint and would happily sit for hours in an ahwa drinking mint tea, we would like to ask you to improve the time-keeping, reliability and general service skills of your citizens (particularly the male ones.) We are fed up of delays, times being wrong, rudeness and annoying men trying to get us to buy everything in sight.

Thank you very much,

Ms Morley & Ms Bearse

Our night train

We had a four step mission:

Step 1: Take the metro with all our bags, and get on the girl car.

Step 2: Change lines to head to Giza, still on the girl metro car

Step 3: Find the train station from the Giza metro station.

Step 4: Get on the right train at the Giza station.

Our friendly hotel man, not the cranky one that lost Clare's clothes, was trying to be helpful I think, when he told us that it would be very difficult for us to get to Giza train station without a taxi. I was trying to find out how close the train station was to the metro, and that too was apparently very difficult...."you have to go right and left and down..." But he conceded that there would be signs, and probably helpful people, so it wouldn't be impossible for us to succeed.

We set off, confident in our metro navigation skills, but still leaving an hour for potential complications with step 4 of our plan. We were wondering why the train left from Giza, and not the more popular central Ramses station.

Step 1 was accomplished in a great showing of girl power. We got giggles and big smiles from the children, and mothers on the train. I'm sure they don't see girls with enormous backpacks on the train often.

Step 2 was also not a problem. Rush hour doesnt affect the girl car as much, so we had enough space for us and our bags.

Step 3 was a bit of a challenge. We met a very very very helpful man that we wanted to avoid. He was trying to find out where we were sitting and on what train. We went to ask the tourist police (something we try to avoid, as they tend to sit in groups on street corners and leer at us). We did get ushered in the right direction, with the helpful man following us. Time to start speaking french again!

Step 4 was the biggest issue. We checked with the tourist information on the platform, and we plopped ourselves down on the dirty benches at the station to wait for the hour that we had until our train was supposed to come. Trains, like everything else here seem to be running perpetually slow, so we were expecting to wait an hour and a half at least. We had come prepared with snacks that we got at almost uninflated prices from a friendly snack seller that we have bought water from over the past few days.

We sat and waited, worried until we saw more foreigners arriving. There were announcements made in fuzzy Arabic that I'm not even sure Arabic speakers could understand. Luckily the Mexican couple beside us had a guide with them to help them get on the correct train. We figured that since they were also taking a sleeper train headed in our direction that we must be on the same train as them.

Trains came and went, locals got on and off, and we noticed that there were always one or two people hanging out on the back of the last train car. I guess hitching a ride on the rails is an accepted practice here.

The train was 20 minutes late, and there were fuzzy announcements that mentioned Aswan, so we asked the mexican's guide about the announcements. He said that the train hadn't come yet, but he realized we were going to Aswan, and the Mexicans were going to Luxor. We were on different trains--mild guide panic moment--he went with our tickets to check if our train had come and gone.....

Luckily it hadn't, and it would still be another 15 minutes until it did arrive. He was able to point us in the right direction, so we did get on the correct train, and he even gave us his phone number in case we had trouble on our travels. I hope we don't need to use it.

The train was great--AC and food (dinner "of sorts", and breakfast "of sorts")--we enjoyed our snacks! Our seats got converted into beds, and we had a good peaceful sleep with double locked doors. I don't know that I enjoy sleeping on a train--it feels like sleeping on a runaway roller coaster. That perhaps explains why I am so tired today.

Mosque moments with the Muezzin... and other grand adventures!

Today (Wednesday) has been a day of great adventures. We took a very cheap taxi (we knew we'd bartered well when the driver looked sad as we left!) to Hussein Square with the intention of going to the local market there, which comes highly recommended. No sooner had we left the taxi driver than we were accosted by a man asking us to come into a mosque. The mosque in questions is about 1500 years old so we decided it would be fun, and he claimed women were welcome. He also claimed to be the Muezzin (the man who leads the call to prayer) so we found ourselves entering the Mosque without much chance even to discuss it. Visiting the mosque involved taking our shoes off and dressing in a long dress with a hood that made us look like ewoks! The tour was incredibly long and involved us having our photo taken in front of every mihrab. The "muezzin" was very keen to tell us exactly what to do and where to stand etc but he did show us a lot and, every time we got a question right, he gave us mosque tokens (which he wanted us to wear as jewellery!) The whole experience was quite surreal. The man 's English was dreadful and the moment when he made me film him standing next to Rachel singing the call to prayer was hysterical. The video will be released in the future, if we receive enough money to make it worth our while! He also gave us 5 books each about women and Islam and 2 CDs of the qu'ran and was clearly attempting to convert us. The books are weighing heavy in our bags but neither of us, as good Christians, feel that we can throw them away. They may get left in cafe or book exchange somewhere!

We thought we were ready to leave when we got our shoes back but this was a mistake! Actually we were going to climb about 150 steps up to the top of the minaret and to go outside and walk around the mosque roof and climb out of windows for more photos. The 'muezzin' spent the whole time shrieking with delight when he took a photo and calling me 'Principessa' so it was with some relief that we did eventually escape.

But things continued to be a little odd. We wandered into the market ,where I decided it was time to use the wonderful head covering my Mum bought me, and looked at the most beautiful displays of fruit and veg, unlike anything we have in the West. Then we wandered further and found a lot of raw Egyptian cotton for sale. We were immediately befriended again by a man who took us to see where the cotton was died and then to see where mother of pearl boxes were made. He took us deep into the bag streets of Islamic Cairo where the people were unhappy about me using my camera. We had to escape from this guy by inventing our tour group that we had to meet.

We then made it, eventually, to what should have been our destination for the morning - the market. After all our excitement this was just too touristy and tacky and we were very unimpressed. We found a cafe haven though and had a relaxing late lunch. We decided by this time that we'd had enough of Cairo and thought that a few hours in a female zone that wasn't the metro was necessary. Sadly we chose the Hilton hotel where they have a minimum cafe charge for non resident that was high enough to send us scrambling for the door. Shame on them. Another company for me to boycott. So we walked through the male-dominated crazy, dirty streets of Cairo to the internet cafe. We will soon head for out hotel to reclaim our bags and then Metro to Giza station and onwards to Aswan - it is definitely time for a new place!

Clare's clothes have been found

They are unwashed. She is now doing a good laundry job in the sink.
We hope they will dry in time.

Sent from my iPod

Today Clare has had her clothes stolen

As the title suggests, Clare has lost a lot of clothes today. In an
attempt to inject money into the Egyptian economy, she decided to hand
some laundry in to the hotel (the hotel Capsis). Sadly, they have
decided not to hand it back to her, and the whereabouts are unknown.
On the plus side, both Clare and Rachel did laundry of a personal
nature in the hotel sink, so Clare is not completely bereft, and this
confirms everything Clare's grandfather has ever told her about
Egyptians.

On to the adventures of our day. The first point of note is that it
was overcast this morning leading us to hope that we might experience
one of the six rainy days Cairo has per year. Sadly, we got overcast
confused with smog (see previous post about pollution in Cairo).

We headed to the pyramids and did most of the journey on the wonderful
"women only" carriage on the metro. We had to take a taxi for the last
nine kilometers, and were joined in our taxi by a smooth talking
Egyptian who insisted on showing us his passport to prove that he
lived in the UAE and worked as a manager for Domino's pizza. He was
attempting to win the guidey award of the day, however, we soon became
suspicious as claimed to be coming home for a vacation but had no
baggage. Thank goodness Clare and I both speak French--we were
discussing the situation and planning a strategy should we not end up
at our intended destination. (this is why we should all learn French
boys and girls).

We were invited to the pizza man's home for refreshments and "Egyptian
hospitality" and offered a place to view the sound and lights show on
his roof. We declined, and were then taken to the horse mafia entry
point to the pyramids. This was the entry point the pizza man told the
driver to take us to. We are therefore going to boycott Domino's
pizza, whatever you guys decide to do is completely up to you.

We had plenty of previous experience with the Jordanian horse mafia at
Petra, and were able to extricate ourselves from the situation easily.
Thereby scamming the scanners--we got to the pyramids for a total of
3.5 pounds a piece, we did not ride any mad horses, donkeys, or
camels, we simply walked a few blocks through the chaos until we found
a proper tourist entrance (not the main gate though).

The pyramids were underwhelming, full of touts, trash and tourist
police who were trying to be guidey saying "statues ok, no climbing"
when we were several meters from the pyramids and infront of a
multilingual no climbing sign.

We found the main gate to get tickets to enter the second pyramid.
Clare felt claustrophobic and didn't end up getting to the middle.
Rachel did, and saw the empty Pharonic sarcophagus, got really hot and
sweaty and came back out. We then headed to the post office, which had
AC and helpful staff. They sold us a lot of very big stamps.

The return trip to the Giza metro cost us double our first taxi rate,
but we got him down from 20 pounds to 10, and he didn't pick up any
more people along the way.

We took the girl car to Coptic Cairo where we had a very beautiful
lunch in a walled garden, where the owner was genuinely friendly and
interested in giving us a good meal. He didn't even try to sell us on
a Bedouin massage (his other business). The name of the shop is Coffe
Shop (SAAD) on 14 Mar Gerges St. We'd definitely go back there.

We toured many Orthodox churches and a synagogue. The most beautiful
of the bunch was the hanging church. It was a delightful change to be
in a calmer and more peaceful atmosphere without the hard sale of
tourist trinkets.

We returned at 4 to have a siesta and search for Clare's clothes.
Sent from my iPod

Finding the Women

We used the Cairo underground tonight from the hotel to Cairo tower.
It is a clean and safe and quick way to get around. Tickets cost a
pound each and we negotiated a line change without trouble. There are
one or two cars on the train for women only, and we chose to ride
there. We were the only foreigners there and it was fine. It is nice
to see women. We spend the day dealing with men on the street, as
servers, and in stores. The women's car is so colourful and polite, and we are not hastled at all.

The tower cost 65 pounds but the guidey book said it should be 30
pounds. We are going to learn Arabic numerals to see what the local
price is for all these attractions. We think it looks like a place for
expensives.

There was a nice windy look out platform. We saw the pyramids in the
distance, the Nile and many soccer fields and swimming pools. Our goal
was to see the sun set from the outside, but thought better of that,
and went to the cafe inside for cake. Yes...cake for dinner. It was
delicious!

After cake and sunset we looked at the night view, then navigated the
metro to find a cafe on the street where shisha (waterpipe) is
smoked. We had directions that is women friendly. It was needed, as
many of the men tried to escort us to their shops and eateries by
saying things like "come and consume".

We found one and ordered mint tea. The waiter said that they had it
and then sent someone running to buy mint down the street. The tea was
great, the atmosphere was interesting. We could hear the call to
prayer from several loudspeakers, the street vendors were also calling
out. The traffic noise and honking was there as it always is, and we
were being leered at by some sleazy men. We were the only foreigners
there.

We had a fun day. Cairo is busy, but not so scary. Tomorrow we go to
the pyramids and to Coptic Cairo.

I'm going to try and steal Internet from the hotel. They overcharged
me earlier today.

Sent from my iPod