Kom Ombo

We sailed as far as Edfu, and camped there for the night far from the
expensives and their party boat. We were beside some donkeys and
buffalo that were rustled in the middle of the night. (we arrived at
this conclusion because we can think of no other reason for two men to
load them onto a motor boat at 4am. )

That morning the expensives were off at the crack of dawn to tour the
Edfu temple. There was no wind and it was arranged by the felucca
mafia for Flower 2 (our boat) to hitch a ride back to Aswan with the
expensives' feluccas and the party boat with the loud motor.

Our plan was now modified to have us dropped off after lunch (5pm
Egyptian time) at Kom Ombo.

We ate wonderful balti fish that was bought from fishermen while we
were swimming from the rope off the stern. The fishermen got quite a
giggle.

At Kom Ombo we met a relative of Hamada who had just got his license.
He loaded our stuff in the back of the pickup with Hamada and some
other guy. We sat in the front seat, which was designed for perhaps 2
lanky Nubians, but not 2 pear shaped westerners. Poor Clare spent the
majority of the journey (when the driver was in 4th gear) with the
gear stick under her bottom.

We arrived at the train station and were the only white people there--
maybe the only white people they had seen all year. They enjoyed
pointing and staring and discussing us.

The train arrived and we were told that we must sit near the police
for our safety. Clare asked repeatedly if this was because we were
white or because we were women. We concluded it was because we are
both, and also independent. We refused help to carry our bags to our
special seats.

The train ride was predicted to be one hour--true to form it was
three. The lights were on half the time, and sales people walked ip
the aisles singing about grapes bananas wallets matches necklaces
water and sweets. There was one man with obvious learning problems who
wanted to sit in the empty seats by the police. He wouldn't leave, so
they whipped him. This has confirmed our view of Egyptian police.

Luxor was happy to see us. Our taxi man told us that he was a taxi, a
tour and a coffee shop. He was not a good driver, but we got to our
hotel and turned on the AC and all was better.

Sent from my iPod

How to wash up

1) Take all the dirty things onto the prow of the boat.
2) Fill a bucket with Nile water.
3) Pour a little water from the bucket into a dirty bowl (from the washing up pile) and add some washing up liquid.
4) Wash items in the bowl, using the scrubbing brush.
5) Rinse items in the bucket.
6) Lay items out on the prow of the boat to dry.
7) Use remaining water to clean and rinse the area where the washing up has been done.
8) Tie bucket back to the boat again.

Making Tea On The Boat

Step 1: The tea tray (10 inch round cake pan), tea glasses (1/2 cup), sugar bowl, loose tea, and tea spoon come off the shelf.

Step 2: The gas stove is lit (with matches or with flint, as Clare showed us)

Step 3: The kettle is filled with tap water, from a big container on board.

Step 4: The kettle is boiled, and the glasses are rinsed with boiling water. To do this, cardboard is needed to wrap the handle of the kettle or else you will be burned.

Step 5: Tea is spooned out carefully into the glasses. Captains take 1 spoonfuls, but we only take half (Egyptian spoonfuls are HEAPING spoonfuls).

Step 6: Sugar is added. Captains take 3 spoonfuls, and we started off taking 2, but weaned ourselves to 1.

Step 7: Hot water is added, and stirred.

Step 8: Drink the tea after it cools a bit and everything settles.

Step 9: Carefully lean over the edge of the felucca and hold the glass tightly and dump the tea leaves into the Nile.

Repeat 6 times a day at least.

Skills learnt on the felucca

1. R can now light a gas stove.
2. R and C can now bathe in the Nile with soap, shampoo and conditioner, whilst holding a rope.
3. C now has her felucca captain licence and can steer the boat around major obstacles e.g. rocks, cruise ships, swimming children, buffalo etc
4. R and C can now make candle holders out of plastic bottles.
5. We now know lots of new Nubian recipes and have an understanding of exactly what great food can be cooked over 2 hobs.
6. Captain Ali learnt how to use our digital cameras and then went photo crazy!
7. C learnt how to pee behind a bush, even with a dog sitting 10 cm away watching her.
8. R and C both learnt how to fish. One was more successful than the other....
9. How to make tea (see next post.)
10. How to wash dishes (see next post.)

Things We Learned

1. Do not go to the Memnon hotel in Aswan
2. Do not follow a slimy man with the wrong name to the cruise ship
3. Tourist police are not there to help tourists, and dont like having their hands shaken by feisty western women
4. Egyptian time is 3 times longer than english time. They often use the phrase "slowly slowly" to emphasize this.
5. Nubian magic is alive and well in Aswan.
6. You can see more stars if you take the roof off the felucca
7. Donkeys are BRILLIANT!
8. The process of washing a boat never ends.
9. Dont trust anyone named Captain Chill
10. Nubian houses are blue because Nubians like blue.
11. Nubian villages are really hospitable--welcome actually does mean welcome here.
12. It is a compliment to be told that you are the colour of cheese.
13. Sleeping Captians is a great game
14. There are no phone books along the nile.
15. Felucca captains all know each other, and they all have friends who have friends who can find you the information you need.
16. Sometimes 15 year old boys can be VERY mature
17. The most fun conversations happen when people dont speak the same language.
18. White people bruise, and Nubians don't know that.
19. There is another meaning for "soap on a rope"
20. Cruise ships must have a lot of "egyptology lectures" since nobody is ever out in the fresh air.
21. Egyptians are astounded to see a blonde felucca captain, and tourists take lots of pictures.
22. "expensives" get better toilets.
23. Feluccas have postal addresses, but the captain and crew are almost illiterate.
24. Buffalo rustlers prefer the 4AM call to prayer for loading the animals onto their motor boat.
25. Egyptian tourist and antiquities police will shoot their guns if they find people robbing a temple.

A run in with the tourist police and some rash decisions!

On Saturday, as those of you who have been following our progress will know, we were scheduled to get on a cruise from Aswan to Luxor. We planned to eat breakfast, visit the Nubian Museum, say bye to the felucca captain (of previous posts) and then join the cruise. But a series of events led to a complete change in plans. Whilst we were stitting eating the usual hotel breakfast fare of day-old pitta and slightly soggy triangle cheese, the hotel man told us that our cruise man had come to collect us. We finished breakfast and met him. We both took an immediate dislike to the guy, which I think is pretty unusual for us. He had disgustingly greased back hair, a briefcase (!) and an extremely over enthusiastic manner. He was also not the man we'd been told would meet us and didn't know our names or even which boat we were going on. However, we went to get our bags and came down to hand in the key and join the cruise.

When we handed in the key, the hotel men claimed we had not paid. This was complete rubbish (and far too boring to go inot the details now) but led to us spending at least 45 minutes at the hotel desk talking round in circles. The main problem was that we are women and therefore know nothing and can not possibly be trusted to know what we're talking about. That and the fact that the hotel men clearly thought they spoke better English than us and could understand the Expedia voucher better. Hmmm. Given our problems in checking into the hotel and general standard of the hotel we were pretty unimpressed. As usual in these situations we started speaking French, which gives us some privacy and we also got talking to a very nice french family. Our slimy guide was not helping matters by urging me to pay so that we didn't miss any of his tour of Aswan and siding with the hotel men. He also said we had no time to go to the Nubian museum and could not say bye to the felucca captain. He then decided to list the entire itinerary of the day in an attempt to show me how silly I was wasting time with the hotel bill. We were to arrive in Luxor the next morning and then just do coach trips from the boat. He also revealed that he spoke French, which was probably the final straw. At this point I said to Rachel "I've half a mind to jack in this whole cruise thing and get Hamada to take us to Luxor on the felucca." Much to my surprise she agreed and ran off at full speed, coming back 5 minutes later with an agreed price and departure time. We were so excited. It was a reckless and rash and incredibly silly but without a doubt one of the best decisions of our lives (Rachel will post about what we got up to for 4 days and 4 nights on a 9 metre sailing boat!)

Meanwhile the hotel men were threatening me with the police. They seemed quite shocked when I didn't seem bothered. They started smoking and drinking tea with the slimy guide and we waited. I knew that eventually I would end up paying again and claiming back from Expedia or travel insurance because the police are so corrupt here but I wanted to cause them all maximum inconvenience. The Policeman eventually arrived and there were hearty handshakes all round. All round the men that is. Clearly as a woman, and a wannabe criminal (!) I was not to be included and in true Egyptian style they would just talk about me in Arabic and then tell me what to do. I was having none of this and put my hand out to shake the Policeman's hand. The look on his face was priceless and clearly the men took an even greater disliking of this feisty Westerner than they had already. As predicted, the Policeman sided with the hotel and, short of actually going to the Police station and getting my bank details up online, which would have been unsafe and they would not have believed anyway, I had no choice but to pay. I made it very inconvenient and told them loudly and clearly that they should be ashamed of themselves and that we would make it our mission to ruin their hotel on the internet. Never go to the MEMNON HOTEL in Aswan.

But we were excited because of our rash decision and now had to get rid of slimy guide. This was quite hard. He refused to believe that we were serious and told us how he had left home at 2 am to pick us up and how he had done this and that already for us. I pointed out that it was our money and we could do what we liked. He eventually gave up, we dumped our bags on the felucca and headed to the Nubian Museum. That would have been good but we were too excited to take it in and anyway, a man shouted at Rachel for using her flash even though she hadn't. Obviously he was right as he was a man and it took a firm 'Oh, for goodness sake go away and leave us alone' from me to get rid of him.

Lessons learnt: Egyptian men are, generally, pretty horrible and have no respect for women. Nubian felucca captains are, however, a different thing all together. And impetuous decisions should be encouraged!

Gaining an understanding of Egyptian Time

Our dinner with Captain Hamada and Ali was wonderful. There is seemingly always a breeze on the Nile. We sailed around Elephantine Island (no elephants), and up the Nile. We had agreed on a 3 hour sail including a fish dinner, but as we have come to realize, Egyptian time is usually multiplied by 3 to arrive at English time. The wind was strong, and other feluccas were being told to go to the shore. Captain Hamada told us that one of his felucca colleagues (Captain Chill) had capsized, and that was why the Nile Police were out and about. He however was not worried, and was very skillful in navigating the wind, and he pretended that he couldn't hear the warning of the other boats, so we pushed on. We sailed for about 4 hours, capturing another beautiful sunset from the water. We even went under a bridge, which is quite a feat--the sails needed to be taken in, and the mast angled to fit under.

We had fun chatting with the Captain, and trying to chat with Ali, who is 15, but works harder than many adults I know. He is very shy. We told him that, but "shy" in Arabic means tea, so I think he was confused. He did make us lots of good tea though.

The fish were gutted, de-scaled, and cooked with the heads on. Hamada was the chef of the evening while Ali took over as captain. It was the best fish and rice I've ever tasted. We learned that the fish was called "Balti", and we think it is the kind of fish, not the word for fish. We ate by candle light. A 1.5 liter plastic bottle was cut in half, and water put in the bottom. The cap was cut and a candle was inserted into the top of the bottle, so when the top of the bottle was inverted, it rested on the weighted bottom half, and protected the candle from the wind. It is a marvellous way to reuse the bottles. We ate with our hands, tea glasses and dishes were washed in the Nile (there is quite a process--as we later learned), and there was a constant need to wipe the boat down of any dirt or crumbs, sand or water.

Having already ducked the Nile Police we felt like we were being a bit sneaky, but we didn't realize that captains were not supposed to sail after dark with tourists. Hamada said that at this point we weren't really tourists, we were being Egyptians. We laughed and played games together after the meal. It was here that we were introduced to "Nubian Magic", a string game. I used my knitting yarn to show the guys how to play "Cats cradle". Then we played a game that I learned at camp where everyone is on the ground in a circle with arms overlapping and each person takes a turn to tap the ground, passing the tap around the circle. It was a relaxing time in the cool breeze, and I think we all were hoping that we could just stay there longer. We had the invite to get our stuff from the hotel and have a sleep over, but we decided that we needed to use a proper bathroom and headed back to the horrible Memnon hotel. Clare navigated the boat on the way back, including steering us skillfully between several cruise ships to reach the mooring. We said our goodbyes, partly sad to think that the next day we'd be off on one of those gigantic boats, who look so dirty and noisy in comparison to the "Flower 2" with a patchy sail, chipping paint, and bedecked in flags from the Chelsea football club, and several from Jamaica.

We hopped straight into bed at 1AM, thus concluding our 9 hours of a 3 hour cruise, and confirming the mathematical equation of

3 x Egyptian Time = English Time