Egypt

My Egypt trip has been great... despite a major case of the trots and less than ideal toilet facilities, but we won't get into that too much, except to say that it is pretty bad when one of the better places you get to poop is in some poor guys banana field.

I flew into Cairo and am now spending a couple of days at the end of the tour here as well. Cairo is just so surreal. I think the roads pretty much give you a picture of what the whole city is like. Huge and filthy and the rich and the poor all thrown in together and trying to get about as quick as possible. A taxi ride in Cairo is similiar to rally driving, it's very exciting. In Cairo, you have a massive highway, 3 lanes each way, and you will have taxis and cars weaving in and out of lanes, no blinkers, you just toot your horn and go, and if you can't decided which lane to sit in, just sit in the middle until you decide.

But then you are not only weaving in and out of other cars and buses, there will also be scooters, bicycles, a couple of guys with donkeys and carts, mini-vans so full that people are hanging out of the doors, once i seen a herd of sheep. Then the pedestrians will take a look and think, this looks like a great place to cross! The first time i crossed a road here i was sure i was going to die, and I know I said the same thing about Rome, but this was way worse. A hundred times. But it was cool, I just place another person, a local, preferably a mother and child or someone with a disability between me and the oncoming traffic and bolt across the lanes when they do. Easy.

The tour itself was great. We visited the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Cairo, then we went to Aswan where we went to Abu Simbel, the Aswan High Dam which is the biggest man-made lake in the world, the Temple of Pilae and then spent 2 days floating down the Nile on a felucca. Abu Simbel was absolutely amazing. The statues are massive, and not only is the building of them just 'wow', but in the 70's the Egyptian government acutally moved them as they were going to be drowned with the building of the dam. The temple of Abu Simble was one of my favourite things, the statues reminded me of 'the oracles' in the never ending story, I kept thinking they were going to open their eyes and shoot me with lazers.

The felucca ride was great too. So relaxing and such a beautiful part of Egypt, especially in comparison to their filth-ridden cities. it was especially good as me and rikki weren't feeling so well. Rikki was so bad she had to get an injection to stop the nausea and take some anitbiotics. Me though, I too tough for that.

Next we went from Kom Ombo to Luxor. We had to get the police convoy for this. The police convoy is a bit of a money maker for the Egyptian government started after some tourist bus got shot-up or something. It's all part of what I like to call Egypt's 'Illusion of Security'. I mean, they have 60-70 buses in the convoy and half a dozen police cars scattered along the way. If someone wanted tourists, it's like take your pick. They also have quality metal detectors everywhere. They beep for almost every person and the guys on the door don't look twice at anyone. In one airport there were two sets of metal detectors, both going off randomly for different people. Or when we went to the Pyramids, our tour guide Sherif says 'please leave your bombs on the bus while you go through security'. We all get off the bus, go through the metal detectors, then get back on the bus, which has driven through with no-one looking twice at it! Funny.

We also went to the Valley of the Kings. It is sensational and changes your whole image of what every temple and tomb you've already seen would have looked like. You see all these carvings and you think, wow and imagine the stone walls and columns etc complete. Then in the Valley of the Kings you realise, 'oh shit', everything was actually painted and coloured and you're just 'wowed' all over again.

After all that I left Rikki :( in Luxor where she was heading back to Cairo and I went to Dahab with the rest of the crew. Dahab was great, diving that equals the Barrier Reef and we climbed Mt Sinai, which so far is the absolute highlight of my trip. We climbed it in the middle of the night so that we would get there for sunrise. It is 2100 and something metres, the 4th highest mountain in Africa. Mustafa, our guide, was pretty happy with us as we powered it up the mountain and did the whole climb in 1.5 hours (it usually take 2-3 hours). I ended up being in the first half dozen to the top, so i was pretty happy with that effort. So we scored ourselves a pretty good possie to watch the sunrise. The only problem was it was on a hill at the edge of the cliff and I went to sleep and when I woke up 20 minutes later, I had slid a metre down my matress. I was like 'oh crap, glad i didn't sleep much longer'. I have so say, the hikinh up the mountain by torchlight was well worth the effort, even the 760 steps at the end. It was one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. I'm sure the photos won't do it justice.