And within the month, my friend Jen emailed me saying she was looking for a travel buddy for the fall to go to Egypt or Turkey or Tanzania and she'd love it to be me. Jen and I went to high school together and she went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis so ours has been a long-distance friendship since, though I actually see her quite a bit. Since her parents moved to FL just as we graduated, whenever she wants to "come home" it's been to my or my parents' house. She visited me the summer I lived in CO. She let me stay at her apt in Santa Barbara (where she went to grad school) the summer after I finished grad school while she was abroad in Kenya. She visited me in Eugene. Last summer I went to DC for work then she picked me up and I spent the Fourth of July with her in Norfolk, VA where she now flies helicopters for the Navy. Jen's parents were both in the military and they traveled a lot when she was growing up. Plus she's been stationed in Bahrain twice, and traveled all over Europe, so who better to travel with! Oh, and she knows some Arabic. We eventually agreed on Egypt in September, though aside from buying plane tickets, neither of us had any plans nor really looked into anything until the trip was upon us.
Day 1... and 1: September 1st... Mom takes me to the airport at 5am, gives me a peptalk and a hug, and I'm off. Five or so hours to JFK airport in NY to meet up with Jen... we grab a bite and our only drink of the trip before our overnight flight (I think it was 10hrs or so) to Cairo. We arrive in Cairo around 3pm September 2nd. The first excitement was that Jen and my seats weren't near each other, so we actually got out different doors on the plane and were ushered onto to different buses to take us from the tarmack to customs. I tried to cross over to get in Jen's bus but because I was walking apparently too close to the plane engine, I got yelled at and had to get on the other bus, which would've been fine except that my bus left first and I had to wait for about 15minutes for Jen's bus to finally get to customs. Definitely a moment when I wished my cell phone worked. Or that I spoke any Arabic.
Our only plans were at the beginning and end of our trip in Cairo. Jen had booked a hostel for our first few nights and organized with a local guide Ronda who had worked with a friend of Jen's on his trips to Egypt, and I had booked our last two nights at a Marriott since Jen thought it'd be fun to end our trip in luxury, or at least with a good shower and pool and Nile view. A car picked us up at the airport to take us to the hostel. Initial impressions: it's hot and sweat is already running down my back. The weather reports say it was 90-95' F during our visit, lows of 80'. And the traffic is just nuts! There are white lines painted on the road, but those seem to be guidelines. The cars literally drive all over the road, sometimes right in the middle of the white line, then they'll just jet over to another side, no turn signal, inches from another car. Amazingly still we only heard one accident the whole trip.
Our hostel in downtown Cairo was a family-owned hostel, pretty clean considering we paid about $10/night. In our first few minutes at the hostel, the guy working offered (forced) to design a full itinerary for our 10 days in Egypt. He mapped out exactly how we could hit most of the major sites on the Nile, then gave us a price ($495) that seemed pretty good considering it included all transportation, all hotel rooms, meals on some of the trips, and required much, much less work on our parts. So we forked over all our cash and hoped that we weren't getting swindled. Then we were invited to join the family (or at least the men of the family) and a few other hostel guests for dinner. We took a few minutes to take a walk around the neighborhood first, and had our first experience with what we'd already read about in our guidebooks: getting dragged into someone's store to buy crap. We were trying to figure out which street to take to get back to our hostel and someone tried to offer us directions, even though we kept trying to ignore him, and then walked with us. Eventually we're annoyed enough and trying to get him to leave so agree that, fine, we'll take your business card, except that his cards were in his shop which he claimed was on our way (it was a block out of the way). We followed him mostly because we weren't in a hurry anyhow and we were just wanting to get rid of him ultimately. So he gets us in his shop, tries to offer us tea (which I read is rude to turn down, especially during Ramadan) but since we were about to have dinner, we got out with just his card. Ugh. Note to self: don't talk to anyone.
Our first Egyptian meal was pretty typical of what we had after that: noodles cooked in broth, really really dry bread (sorta like a pita but drier), potatoes cooked in stewed tomatoes, a small amount of roast meat (meat is really expensive so you don't have it much)... They eat a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, rice, noodles, chicken... but everything is a bit bland, nothing spicy or really flavorful.So we hadn't planned our trip to be during Ramadan but did realize that we'd be there during Ramadan, which made it an interesting time to visit. About 85% of Egyptians are Muslim and Ramadan is a holy month (mid August-mid Sept) during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. They don't even drink water during the hottest time of the year. So around 6pm they have a "break fast," seems like mainly at home,
then after evening prayer around 7pm people start going out. The stores are open and the streets in Cairo were absolutely packed by 9pm. People basically stay up nearly all night snacking and drinking (not alcohol, Muslims don't drink and we saw very few places that served alcohol). Then around 4am, they have another big meal before the 5am sunrise. Ramadan actually ended on Day 8 of our trip, Thursday Sept 9. I thought it'd be really challenging, say, if we wanted to find lunch, but we did a lot of tours so we actually didn't have any issues. We tried to be respectful by not eating or drinking really obviously in public, which was actually hard to do. We also tried to be respectful by keeping covered, so we wore pants or shorts or skirts that covered our knees and shirts with sleeves that covered our elbows. The Muslim women (maybe about 25% wore birkas) were covered. Most wore long-sleeved undershirts with t-shirts atop and pants/jeans and headscarves. Funny, the lingerie shops were packed! I thought they'd have been too conservative for that. Apparently though during Ramadan they're also supposed to be abstinent. And Ramadan was ending in a week. So maybe the ladies were stocking up for the big party?Our trip ended up being planned as such:
Day 1 (Sept 2): evening in Cairo, night shopping
Day 2: exploring Cairo with our guide Ronda, the Egyptian museum
Day 3: desert excursion west to Bahariya Oasis and the Black Desert and White Desert, camping
Day 4: Black Desert and White Desert then back to Cairo, then sleeper train south to Aswan
Day 5: Aswan -- High Dam and Philae Temple
Day 6: quick trip south to Abu Simble Temple, back to Aswan, felucca (sailboat) north/downriver on the Nile
Day 7: felucca, then van to Kom Ombo Temple and Edfu Temple on the way north to Luxor
Day 8: Valley of the Kings and Hatschepsut's Temple on West Bank Luxor, Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple on East Bank, sleeper train back north to Cairo
Day 9: exploring Cairo with our guide Ronda, the Pyramids at Giza
Day 10: exploring Cairo's market, prepare to go home
Day 2: despite that people were up all night partying (talking, smoking hookas, kids out wandering), we had some decent sleep and were so far adjusting to the 9-hr time difference. Breakfast (as it was every morning after) was a few rolls, a lil container of strawberry jam, a lil wedge of cheese (like those Laughing Cow/Babybell cheeses, soft, like a bland cream cheese), and tea with sugar (no milk). Wow, filling. Oh, here's me over the Nile.We met up with Ronda, our Cairo guide, at the Egyptian Museum, which is the largest museum in Egypt and contains almost all of the relics from temples and tombs, including all of King Tut's tomb treasures that were discovered in the 1920s, and several mummies. King Tut's treasures were really impressive, especially considering that he wasn't even an important pharaoh, just popular because he was 1- a boy king and 2- they found his tomb nearly completely intact unlike almost all that had been raided. So if a boy king who didn't do anything fabulous had that many riches... what about the really popular pharaohs?
The mummies are interesting to see- some still have eyelashes, hair, teeth, they all have nails still. They were treated with a black resin to help preserve them so they look a little charred. I kept thinking about the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the guy drinks from the wrong challis and shrivels before their eyes. That's exactly what a mummy looks like. I don't know if the pharaohs themselves would have appreciated being on display like they are. Would they enjoy that they are still known, thousands of years later, or would they resent that now sweaty tourists parade past their bodies en masse? Anyhow they didn't allow cameras in the museum but here's a pic of the mummy of Ramses II, or Ramesses II, or Ramses the Great (one of the most popular pharaohs because he ruled for 66 years and directed tons of building projects all over Egypt).
After the museum, which we didn't have nearly as much time in so we ended up going back at the end of our trip, Ronda took us to lunch in Giza at a restaurant with a view of the pyramids. It's strange because the pyramids are actually on the edge of town, not out in the desert. Then we were dragged into the usual guided tour trap... being taken to various shops where they give you a demo of how they make a particular product (this day was papyrus
paper and perfume and cartouche jewelry and Egyptian cotton) and try to sell you. The guides get a cut of the profit but it's pretty annoying because we didn't ask to go to these places. Whatever. Quick note: a cartouche (which yes is a French word) is an oval with a pharaoh's name written in hieroglyphics inside. Only pharaohs could have a cartouche because the circular shape that surrounds the name has no beginning and no end symbolizing eternal life. Anyhow they carved cartouches all over their temples and tombs, which is how archeologists know whose tomb is whose-- they put their names on their buildings.
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