Alex & Danika's 2010 Adventures: Egypt to Jordan

The Middle East... what an adventure! It's kinda a long blog, we've covered so much ground in the last 3 weeks. From London we flew straight to Cairo, where we had a couple of days before we joined our Oasis overland tour to Istanbul. The heat was oppressive, mid 40s every day. We didn't find Cairo terribly compatible with pedestrians (our favoured method of exploring cities), and didn't really know what or where to go, so our wandering was limited to the suburbs near our hotel. Otherwise we enjoyed the A/C in our room :-P Our impression of Cairo is a big, dusty, dirty, polluted, sprawling concrete jungle. High street street fashion labels can be in a street with a laundromat on one side, and a kebab shop on the other. Traffic is crazy (that goes for the entire area), and the call to prayer rings out 5 times a day. It's ramadan at the moment, which is interesting to experience.

We joined our group of 21 others, and spent a day in Cairo/Giza visiting the Pyramids and the Cairo Museum, which houses many treasures and archaeological artefacts from the area. The highlight of these was Tutankhamen's head-dress, coffin, sarcophagus and burial boxes (can't remember their official name), which really were amazing – such famous items but seeing them in the flesh! Then later that night we boarded an overnight train South to Luxor.

Luxor, like Cairo is on the Nile, and we enjoyed a few excursions while we were there: to Abu Simble where the mightily impressive, relocated temples of Ramses the something are, the Greco-Roman Philae Temple (also relocated by UNICEF from one island to a slightly higher one), a Nubian village visit and meal, a quick visit to the Botanical gardens and then a wander around Elephantine island. Swimming (in the Nile), meals at local restaurants, wandering the markets, yet again hiding in our A/C room.

A very lovely and relaxing part of our trip was our two days on the felucas (sailing boats), where we meandered slowly down the Nile (35 km in 2 days :-P) stopping for meals and swimming. 2 days with no agenda, lots of reading, Mafia, Puno and numerous other games, refreshing dips and great food. We have a great bunch of people on this tour, probably half Kiwis & Aussies (which we're loving), a few Poms, Canadians, Americans and for the first time some Croats and a Pole. The 23 of us were split over two felucas, but we were always within cooee of each other. We slept on deck, in the balmy night air.

Then a brief visit to Ko Mombo temple ruins, before driving North to Luxor. We slept at a campsite, under the stars, visited the Souq (market), ate cheap falafel and shwarma, and lived in the pool during the heat of the day. On our only full day there we caught an early morning coach to the Valley of the Kings, where around 20 Kings/Pharaohs of Egypt had their tombs built and were subsequently buried. The tombs are all varying in size, with many open to the public (for a fee of course!!). We visited three, and saw some elaborate artwork, tunnels and tombs. Tutankhamen's tomb was the last one discovered in the 1920s, and is the only one that was fully intact with all its treasures. There's nothing there now (it's all on display at the museum), only his mummy.

In the afternoon I visited the huge, sprawling site that is Karnak Temple. Each king added a section to it, so consequently it has a wide range of styles. So far the most impressive of all the ruins we've seen, it has a huge hall with columns, a big sacred lake, statues etc. See the photos! Travelling northwards we hit the Red Sea and swam in the rather salty water, but in mid 40 degree heat, it was worth it! Arrived at a bush camp, outside St Paul's Monastery. Apparently there was a monk in around 300 AD who lived in a cave for 90 years, living on bread delivered by a raven. Now there's a huge Coptic monastery, which obviously has lots of money pouring in because they're building a great big church specifically for visitors. We didn't get much sleep, 2 or 3 bus-loads of tourists turned up at about 4 in the morning, and we learnt some new things about Arabic culture. Anything we'd left out (towels, clothes, mats etc) were “borrowed” by people to sleep on, the kids ran around, groups of women sat by our feet having loud conversations, the buses sat with their engines ticking away. When we woke up we couldn't leave our stuff unattended at all – in two minutes some guy would be playing with your torch and pinching your pillow. Pretty different to how strangers treat each other in the West, it's testing for us to get used to!

The following day we arrived in Suez, and drove through a tunnel under the canal. We legged it to St Katherine's Monastery at the base of Mt Sinai, where we had dinner and played soccer with some locals. At 8 we started walking up the mountain with our Bedouin guide, who broke up 3 hour walk with stops where he gave the story of Moses and a bit of local history. By midnight we arrived near the top, hired mattresses and crashed out for a 5 our sleep, waking up just before dawn. Then we walked a few minutes up the hill and found a spot to watch the sunrise. That was pretty awesome, sitting huddle together, listening to a group of Jewish Spanish (?) guys singing in Hebrew – goosebump material for me!

Back down the mountain, then cooked breakfast at the bottom and a quick visit to the monastery and on to Dahab for 4 nights. This was a little oasis of pure relaxation amongst lots of site seeing and travelling. Dahab is the little sister to Sharm el Sheikh, a 100% tourist town. Dahab is much smaller, with pretty much a strip of cafes and shops along the coast. We did lots of chilling at bars and cafes, overlooking the Red Sea across to the United Arab Emirates which disappeared depending on the the haze :-P One day we spent snorkelling at the Blue Hole, which is an amazing geographical feature a 120m deep hole and 50m wide, just metres off the coast. The visibility in the Red Sea is amazing (30m), and the coral and fish life is up there with the best in the world. The next day Nik & both went diving, doing our Deep and Drift Dives that count towards our Advanced Diver course. Dive 1 was at the Canyon, a 33m deep canyon in the ocean floor, so narrow it's almost a cave at some points. Lion fish, eels, octopus, loads of fish life. Dive 2 we entered at El's Bell's, which is is another hole where we dove down 30 odd metres and came out off a huge wall that disappeared upwards to the surface and downwards to the floor hundreds of metres below. An amazing dive, it felt like we were flying, being surrounded by endless blue on 5 out of our 6 sides. We drifted down to the Blue Hole. The following day I had a huge day, up at 3 to drive to Sham el Sheik, then catch a dive boat 3 hours out to the Thistlegorm, a WWII wreck in 30m of water. This has been rated as the 2^nd best wreck in the world, and was totally worth visiting. Dive 1 we circumnavigated the wreck, seeing tanks, anti-aircraft guns, artillery shells and train locomotives amongst other things. Dive 2 we entered the hull, visiting the Captains Quarters and saw his private bath, then 2 decks; Bedford trucks, motorbikes, gumboots, batteries, electrical equipment, and loads more. Dive 3 was at Ras Mohamed, where we did a drift dive around two reefs, seeing lots of bigger fish, and around a wreck of a timber ship that was carrying a cargo of toilets – it's bizarre to see the sea floor covered with hundreds of toilet bowls :-) Because we'd done so much diving at depth, we had to wait a while before we drove over the range back to Dahab. Slept very well that night! Nik had a relaxing day with all our new friends, chilling at the Hilton, utalizing their nice pool :-)

Northwards again, we spent an entire day crossing the boarder to Jordan. We drove to an Egyptian port, where we moved from one queue to another for a number of hours, then waited till our huge ferry sailed. It was due to leave at 2, hence our arrival mid morning for processing through immigration etc, but we didn't board the ferry until around 3:30, and didn't depart til after 7. TIA! Disembarking took some time too, then processing through Jordan customs and immigration. Finally just after midnight we pulled into camp. Our visit to Jordan is for two major places, Wadi Rum & Petra. Wadi Rum is an impressive area of huge rock formations in the middle of the desert, and is one of the places Lawrence of Arabia hung out. Stinking hot, we attempted sand boarding again, to moderate success. The 4WD jeep safari was really just cruising around the area, it wasn't bush bashing through sand dunes. Our bush camp nearby was one of my favourites anywhere, in the middle of the desert, nobody in sight. Amazing stars, reminded me of being at Dad's in Armidale, with no big cities nearby. Fell asleep watching shooting stars. We became stuck in sand on the way out, which resulted in half an hour of sand shovelling to get the truck out.

I'd seen pictures of Petra, and had an idea of what we were seeing – a city carved into rock. What I didn't understand was the scale of the place – it's enormous! We arrived at the site very early in the morning (just after 6) and had the place more or less to ourselves until the late morning when buses and buses kept pouring in. Overall we walked for 10 hours, exploring all over the place. There are some great hikes up to high points, overlooking areas of the city, and one up to the Temple. Lots of it is just ruins or restored ruins, but there's also plenty of buildings that have been carved right out of solid rock and are still in pretty good condition. You're pretty free to walk around wherever you want, climbing up rocks and into caves. We're going through so much water each day, on days like this one when it's over 40 and we're on our feet we might go through 3-4 litres each. Some in our group are going through 6 or 7 though! It was a really good day, highly recommended!

We had one more day in Jordan before we arrived in Syria, which was spent travelling to Mt Nebo, where Moses is supposed to be buried. First stop was at the Dead Sea, where we all went swimming – a most surreal experience! It's evaporating and an alarming rate, consequently it's getting saltier each year. You can float with your body vertical, and it's a struggle to swim 'cause your body is so far out of the water, you feel like a cork! Any little cuts sting like nothing else, and you get out feeling so crusty and gross. Thankfully our next stop was at a canyoning place where they had showers (of sorts :-P) where we could get cleaner. From our bush camp we could look out over the Dead Sea, across to Syria and Israel, where we could see the lights of Bethany, Jericho and Jerusalem. So close, yet so far! We're hoping to visit Lebanon and Israel on another trip, one day.

That takes us up to Syria, where we are at the moment (although we're leaving tomorrow to enter Turkey :-P) We'll catch up about that next blog.

We're both well, a little browner and skinnier than before, and really enjoying our new bunch of tour buddies. At the moment we have another 2 weeks on this trip, then a few weeks in Eastern Europe before we meet Carly and explore some more. That all requires lots of planning and moving around, so we're trying to soak up all this pre-organised stuff before there isn't any left!

Shalom,

Alex

Plenty more photos on Facebook, but here are some: