Nubian children

Came across a couple Nubian kids in Aswan.  I want to comment on sincere kindness that the Nubian people that I met.  They are generally very friendly and more interested in you and showing you their homes and inviting you for tea than getting your money.  I enjoyed this part of Aswan a lot and a lot of them live on a island in the middle of the Nile so you are away from all the noise from cars and touts.

Aswan

Some photos from walking around in Aswan and the Nile valley.  Quite a beautiful little city but again, full of locals trying to sell you boat rides and crappy "made in China" souvenirs.

Nile Valley

Nile Valley

Nubian ruins several layers deep.  These are still being excavated. 

Nubian Mummy

Islamic Cairo

Sleepy little alley in Cairo

Abu Simbel

Been a little lazy on the blog (blame the beaches of the Red Sea for that) so I suppose I should catch everyone up here.
After the Desert I arrived back in Cairo and spent a day there to wait for the night train that I was taking down to Aswan in the Nubian south of Egypt.  The train ride was supposed to be a 12 hour ride but in reality was close to 16!  Can't rave on the comforts much either.  Anyway, found my hotel and kept it low key for the night since sleep wasn't so easy on the train.  The next day, I booked my trip down to Abu Simbel which is the temple that Rameses the Great built for himself around the 13th century BC.  He also had one built, though not as grand, for Nefertari.  The entire temple was torn down brick by brick and relocated on higher land due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam when it was "discovered" well into the building of the dam that when it would be completed these temples would be under water.  Egypt can thank the USA and many other countries for the emergency relocation which cost roughly $40 million and took 4 years to do.
To get here you are required to go in a police convoy and everything was a bit rushed.  Get up at 3am to board the bus, drive 2 1/2 hours south to the temple, fight the crowds and souvenir vendors to buy your ticket, walk through the temples 45 min max with "no photo! no photo!"shouted in your ear.  Back on the bus for 2 1/2 hours back and done.  I'm happy I went but any readers out there wanting to go, contact me and I can recommend a much better way to get there without all this frenzy and a much better experience.  Here are the only 2 photos I took here.

3 Days and 3 Nights

Western Desert

Finally getting a chance to get some of these photos up.  These are from my 3 nights camping in the desert near the Bahariah Oasis which is a little north west of the center of Egypt.  This has to be by far my favorite excursion yet!!!  We visited the White Desert, the Black Desert and the Western Desert all of which were relatively close to each other but quite distinctly different.  Our first day took us out pretty far from the oasis with a stop off at a Bedouin village for lunch.  I would have liked to enjoy the village more but they obviously are used to large tourist buses stopping here for photos and expecting Baksheesh (tips) in return.  After lunch was where the pavement ended.  Our driver was quite the skilled driver in the sand.  Rolling along up and down and around sand dunes, he never got stuck in the sand the entire time we were out there.  There were many times I thought for sure this is it, we had better get out and start shoveling or something but his experience was phenomenal.  He was telling us over the campfire one evening that he comes from the south-western most point of Egypt and before working with the tour groups would make runs back and forth in transportation convoys of 5 jeeps, taking 25-30 days one way.  He definitely knew how to read the dunes to see where the sand would be the most compact.

In the Western Desert, we began to see these "fields" of small black rocks.  When we finally stopped to camp we were able to walk around a bit and do some exploring.  The black rocks were in all sorts of crazy shapes and forms.  The puzzle was finally solved.  They were fossils.  Fossilized coral, seashells, sea amenities,  snails and clams.  They were  everywhere.

Needless to say, my pack is a little heavier now.

The White Desert is equally unique due to the chalky white formations of rocks.  We were going to camp here for one night but this desert is a little easier accessible and there were many groups spending only one night there so we only spent a few hours here which was fine with us as it was a very large group and the serenity of the night before was calling at us.  Here are a few pics.

The final night was spent in the Black Desert.  Although not as beautiful as the others there are still wonders here.

By far, the best part about the 3 days spent in the desert was the camping!  There is an eery silence here that reminds you just how far away from anything living.  I don't think there has ever been a place where I have heard this complete silence.  No airplanes overhead, no bird or animal sounds, no traffic noise in the distance, just pure, sweet, 100% silence.  And then there were the STARS!!!

Of course we brought along a sheesha or hookah.  This is Cam, sparking up the coals.  We had Apple, the best flavor if you ask me.

Sean, warming by the campfire.

And here's our Bedouin camp.

The road from Siwa to Bahariah

I'm adding some photos from the 6 hour trip from Siwa to Bahariah.  There is no official road although one is being built.  There is only about 1/4 of this journey that is completed so the rest is just tracks in the sand.  To get between these two places, you have to hire a 4x4 Land Cruiser which costs about $300 total so what most people do is get a group together to share the cost.  While I was in Siwa, the Egyptian Government decided to close the desert.  There are several checkpoints along this trip and for tourists, you are required to get special permission to even go out into the desert.  The reason the desert was closed is still unclear but it finally opened and I was lucky enough to meet 3 other people that were going.  We were told that the reason for the checkpoints is if you do not show up at the next checkpoint within a certain amount of time, they come looking for you.  Not out of concern for you but concern that you are out in the desert digging and tomb raiding.

Here's where we stopped for lunch

Crashed remnants of a helicopter.  Very unfortunate location even if there were any survivors this is far far away from anything living.

Siwa Oasis

After spending a day in Alexandria I took an overnight bus to the Siwa oasis which is located near the border of Libya.  This is the view from my hotel window.  Hotel room was 40 Egyptian Pounds which is about $7 USD.  The village is surrounded by a mass of palm trees and a lake past the palms.  A quiet little town but well worth the journey into the desert.  I rented a bike for a day and spent the day roaming around.  These are the ruins that was once the village where people lived up until the 1920's when there was a rain storm that lasted 3 days which destroyed their mud brick homes.  

They have since rebuilt their town around the old one but still use the old mud brick type of construction.

Donkey transportation.  I'm still trying to figure out the 4x4?!?

Discovered by a dumb ass

kom el shokafa catacombs

Alexandria, Egypt

These catacombs were discovered in 1900 when the donkey of a man that was working near the area fell into one of the shafts that led to the tombs.

out of reach

Internet in Egypt is quite sparse.  Short and sweet entry here with no photos at this time.  Soon to come I hope though.  I've been in the desert oasis, Siwa for the past 2 days trying to arrange a 4x4 trip to Bahariha oasis near Bawiti.  The trip was 6 hours and went through the desert with paved road for about 1/4th of the way.  The rest was driving on the dunes.  Amazing journey.  No plants, birds, other cars, nothing...just us and the sand.  Got some great photos from this.  We stopped about midway for lunch and everywhere you look is littered with seashells, in the middle of the desert.  Tomorrow I'm off on a 3 day/night camping trip back into the desert so I will be out of cell range until Saturday evening.  This should be good.  Again, photos to come afterwards....

For all your Burka needs

Algeria 0 - Egypt 4

Thursday was the Egypt vs Algeria soccer game.  This was quite a big game for Egypt and I spent the evening walking around downtown.  Cairo is a rather bustling city with lots of traffic, people and noise.  It was quite amazing how the city pretty much came to a halt during the match.  Everywhere you looked, every alley, open space, restaurant or store had a TV and a crowd huddled around to watch the match.

   

Well Egypt won and the celebration spilled into the streets and continued well into the night.  I was luck to be right smack in the middle of it all.  Had I not known what was going on I would have thought that this was a riot or protest but it was the country united in sheer crazy happiness for their home team.

Cairo Continues...

The Great Pyramids

The Sphinx

The first layer of the pyramid

Spent my first day visiting the pyramids which turns our are more than just a big pile of 4000+ year old building blocks.  I was able to go inside of the one with the still intact top.  There is no photography allowed inside the pyramids so here’s a photo of me inside the pyramid.  Thank you iPhone!!!

The entrance into the pyramid is only about 4 ft tall and has hand railings on both sides to so you are able to hold yourself steady as you descend approx. 100 ft down then another 50 ft up all the while staring at the ass of the person in front of you.  Once inside, in the exact center, is a room that opens up about 30 ft high where the body and treasures were laid.  The memory I will take away from this experience will be the smell.     Since there is little ventilation within the tomb, the tomb smells like the inside of a shoe...a really really bad smelling shoe.  Oh did I say that the temperature is quite high as well?  So the inside of a hot, moist, sweaty smelly sneaker.  Um yeah.  I guess there’s a price to pay to earn the bragging rights of being inside the Great Pyramid that’s visited by over 5000 people daily.  All in all, it’s pretty spectacular to be amongst something that was put in place and is still standing from so long ago.  

Here’s a few photos from Cairo.  Actually a beautiful city and relatively clean, Cairo didn’t fail to impress me.  Here’s a view of the skyline from Al-Azhar Park, their equivalent of Central Park.

Al-Azhar Park

On my second day, I went to the Egyptian Museum.  Sadly, the museum looks like it is quite short of funding as everything is cramped into 2 small floors.  Again, no photography is allowed but the main attraction is the King Tut exhibit which is amazing.  To think of the age of these items and to know that so many of these treasures were found and looted along the years (again +4000 years ago) to have one complete tomb untouched for such an eternity is quite amazing.  I wondered what it must have been like to be the one who wandered upon this great find not even knowing at the time what it was.  These Egyptians were smart dudes.  I once buried a jar of coins within the pine trees near my home in Wisconsin as a boy.  I doubt anyone will ever find or care about this in the year 2384 A.D.

Just a few random pics of what I saw walking through the local markets of Cairo.

Egyptian phone repair labor union rep.

Buffalo Head anyone?  I'll take the hooves.

Cairo Arrival

Well, I have arrived to Cairo.  I'm always amazed at how easy it can be to get into some countries and others are more inquisitive about how long your stay is, where you are staying and why are you here.  This is not the case for Egypt.  What is always the case with entering into a new country is the waiting.  The passport line was moving along ok and it comes up to my turn and the man sends me away because I didn't pay the other booth for the $15 Visa.  I would think signage would be of some use here but got the visa and moved back to the back of the line to wait again.  Pretty uneventful.  Get to airport, get on plane, sleep a little, get off plane, stamp passport.  Move along.  Next in line please.  There were lots of people holding signs waiting for their guests with their names nicely printed and readable from afar to drive them off to their destinations except mine.  Once out of the baggage area, I find mine.  I wonder if he knew that my favorite sharpie color is light blue.

This is, after all, budget travel I suppose.  At lease he was there.  

On the walk to his car he hands me his cell phone and motions it to my ear.  I'm told that there are other people being picked up so "5 minutes ok? ok?"  (which became 25 minutes)  So the driver doesn't speak English, well, a car is a car and at least he was holding my name right side up!

Met a couple from Brazil in the taxi that are doing Cairo in 3 days who are also staying in my hostel. I'm not big on tours but we did manage to get a cheaper rate for the tour of the Pyramids and the Sphinx tomorrow since there were 3 of us so starting off with the big daddy of the sights right off the bat.  Not much else to say at the moment.  It's 8pm here and for me it's still 1pm with little sleep.  Going to fight the urge to sleep now and see if I can make up the 7 hour difference.  Wish me luck.