The short version: I receive an introduction to Egyptian grooming, we confirm that the big man in the sky has not been waiting on us for a discussion and see the return of my nappy hat, we return to (and conquer) Cairo and we see a bunch of ancient Egyptian stuff while getting completely cooked by the ridiculous temperatures of Upper Egypt.
After getting back to Sinai, we went straight to Dahab to indulge in some beach, sun and diving times. While all of this was achieved, possibly the most exciting event while I was in Dahab was that I got my hair colored. This is always a bit of an adventure when you cannot really communicate with the hairdresser. After arriving and communicating what I desired to Oscar (of Oscar’s hairdressing – men & women), Oscar dabbed vaguely at my head with the dye from the box that he managed to send someone out to drum up and wrapped up my head to wait for the color to set. At this point, he pulled out some thread, raised an eyebrow, and regarded me critically. He then gestured towards my face generally and stated that “Egyptian woman do this” (they really have quite an aversion to hair in these parts). Apparently Oscar was so horrified by the general hairiness of my face that he felt it was necessary to conduct a full threading activity. He did not even ask for any money for this service – unheard of in Egypt and an excellent indication that he felt it was absolutely necessary to take care of this situation. I was torn between losing it with laughter and almost crying at the pain of having my upper lip unceremoniously threaded. I must admit that consenting to this activity also resulted in a measure of stress relating to the high chance that I would open my eyes to see a face devoid of eyebrows staring back at me from the mirror. Happily I still have both of these – so it was not entirely unsuccessful.
Aside from learning that I have a very hairy face that should really be subjected to better grooming, we did have a great time in Sinai. We did an overnight trip to Mount Sinai and St Catherine’s, which was pretty excellent. This included us being picked up from our hotel at 10.30pm and driving to Mount Sinai to start walking at 2am and catch the sunrise at 4.30am. As noted above, we did not receive any messages. It was the coldest we have been for quite a while and it gave me a chance to re-acquaint myself with my nappy hat of previous colder climes. After getting down the mountain via the seemingly endless steps of repentance and visiting the monastery, we managed to get back to Dahab at about 12pm the next day – completely shattered. The walk was totally worth it though.
We also did quite a bit of diving. For those divers that are interested, in Dahab we did a local reef dive at the Lighthouse, the Canyon and the Bells to Blue Hole dives. All of these were exceptional with great corals, fish and gigantic drop offs. At Bells we descended through a chimney that was open to the sea on one side and swum through an arch at 26m down. We went back to this dive site to snorkel the next day and Thomas free dived through the arch at 26m. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed (I spent what was probably the 30 seconds or so that he was down there hyperventilating over the fact that he may not reappear). The vis was also phenomenal. After Dahab, we stopped in at Sharm el-Sheikh. Sharm is a tourist hole that is probably best not visited. It is also populated mainly by Russians that come in droves and was about 43 degrees and quite windy. The best way I can describe this heat and wind combo (which I had never experienced before) is that it feels something akin to sticking your head in a fan bake oven. All menus have Russian translations and there are bars with themes relating to being “Back in the USSR”. In Sharm el-Sheikh we went to Ras Mohammed national park, which is a marine reserve and was meant to be much better than Dahab. Unfortunately we did not get to do the dives we wanted, and as such Dahab was actually better in our opinions. We did dive in a cave / canyon thing though, which was pretty sweet.
This section of the trip also included a much anticipated (read: dreaded) return to Cairo. That said, I feel that we owned Cairo second time round and actually achieved what we had intended – starting with the fact that the bus only broke down once on the way back and after an hour it was replaced with a new bus that had operational air conditioning. Boom! Success! The locals were also much less obnoxious second time around. We are now the proud owners of Ethiopian visas for under half the anticipated price – another success! We spent an extra day in Islamic Cairo and I remembered that I did want to mention something of this part of the city. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, non-Muslims are prohibited from entering most of the mosques. Naturally, this became somewhat forbidden fruit for us. Luckily, you are allowed to go inside the mosques in Cairo. While one might expect that the reason no one wants us in there is because people are praying fervently and they do not want tourists wandering about snapping photos, I now beg to differ. On going into numerous mosques in Cairo, the main activity going on seemed to be taking advantage of these relatively cool buildings to have a nap. Only the men though, naturally the women were busy working.
After finishing up in Cairo we boarded an overnight train and fell asleep exiting the suburbs of Giza to wake up as we approached Luxor. While I had always heard of things like the West Bank, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, nothing really prepared me for the true excellence of these sites. The size alone is breathtaking, never mind the phenomenal detail. In addition, the sites are also numerous – we spent five days working our way through everything on our list for Luxor alone. For anyone interested in things Egypt related, in/from Luxor we went to Luxor Temple, Karnak, Luxor Museum, Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Tombs of the Nobles, Temple of Hatshepsut, the Ramusseum, Midenet Habu, Abydos and Dendarah (deep breath). Probably my favourite things were the tombs of the Kings, Queens and nobles, Midenet Habu and Dendarah.
The only other thing to note about this really is that it was horrendously hot and we were each drinking about six liters of water a day. This was probably partly due to the heat and partly due to us deciding against an air conditioned tour and hitching / flagging mini-vans / hiking over mountains between sites.
From Luxor we travelled to Aswan in the hope of obtaining visas and a ferry ticket for Sudan. I cannot say that I liked Aswan very much. However, we did get to Abu Simbel, Philae, Kom Ombo and Edfu on day trips. These were pretty excellent (especially Edfu), however, I still think Dendarah was my favourite temple overall. Other than the people being generally obnoxious, the only other thing I have to report about Aswan is that I saw a butcher spraying the meat he had out to sell for the day with fly spray. Delightful. It makes one much more appreciative of the meat one receives that was covered by flies as it is always satisfying to know that your food has not been sprayed with poisonous chemicals.
We are now hoping to get to Sudan on the weekend. This is visa dependent. Based on our experiences thus far, I am not getting my hopes up too high on this front. If we do not get the visas in time, we will be staying in Egypt another week. TIA. Sigh.
June 2013