Egypt - Abu Simbel; Even Further South

Hour number ten of an eternal, soul-crushing ferry ride to Aqaba probably isn’t the ideal time in which to try to write another article about Egypt, but what the hell else am I going to do? This story is about Abu Simbel.

What is Abu Simbel, you ask? How convenient for me. Abu Simbel consists of a pair of ancient Egyptian temples. One of the temples was built in honor of Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for 67 years, from 1290 to 1223 B.C. (I’ve heard that from so many tour guides that I’ve committed it to memory. More accurately, I’ve had it etched into my now-crushed soul), and the second was built in honor of one of his 42 wives, Nefreteri. She was a Nubian princess and the temples were built in what once was Nubia.

To visit the temples, we had to leave Aswan early. Damn early. We had a 3:30 a.m. wakeup call and were on the road by 4:00 a.m. The way to Abu Simbel was mostly desert but the views of the sky were mesmerizing. I don’t know if I have ever been so far away from all city lights and the lack of reflection made the stars brighter than I have ever seen before. Even without the temples, the view alone made the trip worth the time.

We didn’t go to where the temples of Abu Simbel were built because that land is now buried under Lake Nasser. The temples were moved in the 1980s to their current location. Even though I was pretty much templed out by this point, the temples were impressive. For me, the most stunning feature were the massive statues of Ramses II directly outside of the temples.

Inside the temples were some of the most vivid carvings and paintings that I have seen in any Egyptian temple. To be honest, I think that much of this art was so vivid because of restoration, but that didn’t make it any less stunning.

Unfortunately, there really wasn’t much else at Abu Simbel. We drove three hours each way to spend less than two hours at the site. The next day, we headed back to Cairo. We visited a tenth-century mosque and a museum dedicated to some 20^th century British dude who donated a house to Egypt. As you can probably tell from my lack of excitement, this final day in Africa was fairly anti-climactic. The next day, we were heading to the Sinai Peninsula and Asia for what has been the high-point of my trip thus far, but that’ll be the next post.

Stay tuned.

Egypt - More Temples, More Temples, More Temples

Upon leaving Luxor, we have continued to travel up the Nile River towards southern Egypt (the Upper Kingdom). We have had a lot of free time on the trip up the Nile and the trip has been fantastic. I have enjoyed immensely watching Egypt going by as we sit in the warm Egyptian sun, sipping the local brew. It has been like watching television with the sound off. The background is constantly changing between lush, green fields of sugar cane or palm trees, or sand-colored mountains or little villages. Also, the people that are on the cruise with me are very interesting and fun to hang out with. If there was nothing on this trip but the Nile River cruise, it would be worth it.

But of course, there is more. What more is there? Temples. Lots and lots of temples. In the last three days, we have stopped in three towns to visit temples dating back to the periods of Greek and Roman rule of Egypt.

The first temple we stopped at after leaving Luxor was the Edfu temple, which is the second largest temple in Egypt behind the Karnak Temple. It was very impressive, though to be honest, suffered from following the Karnak Temple on the itinerary.

After leaving this temple, we re-boarded the boat and went down to the Kom Ombo temple further upstream. This was the first temple that we saw at night, and we ended up paying for it. Many of the lights were out at the temple because of a rare rainstorm that occurred a few days earlier. Despite this, the tour went on until we entered the third room of the temple. At that point, the oldest member of our group fell into an unlit pit, about a foot deep, and landed on his hip and head. He was sore, so we persuaded our tour guide to go to the hospital with him to get looked after. That ended our tour, but most of us were sort of getting templed-out by this point in the day any way.

Today, we visited another temple on an island in the Nile near Aswan. I forget the name, but I’ll try to look it up and put it in here before I post this. (If I forget, remind me.) (Note: Temple of Philae. I remembered to look it up.) The temple was moved brick-by-brick from another Nile River island between 1982 and 1990 because the original island was being submerged by waters rerouted by the Aswan Dam. At this point, the original island is completely submerged, but the temple remains intact. Earlier in the day, we visited the Aswan High Dam, which I believe is the largest dam in Africa and one of the largest in the world. To be honest, I was a little disappointed because I was hoping for views and scenes as impressive as the Hoover Dam in Nevada, but those didn’t exist. We only spent around twenty minutes there, so I took some pictures and then we left.

This is our last night on the Nile. We get up at 3:30 in the morning to hop on a bus to go see yet more temples at Abu Simbel. From there, we will return to Aswan and then hop a 13-hour overnight train (see my earlier post about the train if you want to know if I’m looking forward to it) back to Cairo before heading into the Sinai Peninsula.

There, I’m finally up to date in my articles. Now if I could only find some internet connection strong enough to let me post them . . .. I’m sure these posts are a little dated when you get them, but I’m hoping they will catch up to real time soon.

Egypt - Life of Luxor-y

After heading out of Cairo, the next stop on the tour was Luxor. I can almost say that I liked Luxor as much as I disliked Cairo. The first port of call in Luxor was the Karnak Temple, which is the largest temple in Egypt. Roughly five thousand years old, the Karnak Temple has, among other things, the oldest surviving obelisks in the world. In addition, it has a room (once, but no longer, covered with a stone roof) with 134 (or something like that) massive columns that had to truly have been breathtaking while in use. To be honest, they were still breathtaking. We were at Karnak Temple for a few hours and, if I ever get internet service again, there will be plenty of pictures of it on Facebook.

After Karnak Temple, we returned to the boat for lunch on the Nile. Afterwards, a friend and I went down to the Luxor Bazaar. Let me tell you about the bazaars here in Egypt. Walking through a bazaar here is truly like running through a gauntlet. The bazaar in Luxor spanned several city blocks. On each side of the block were stores selling cheap, generic local souvenir-type items. In this sense, it was very similar to a Sunday afternoon in San Telmo in Buenos Aires. The difference is that every single shopkeeper at an Egyptian bazaar yells at you or grabs you and attempts to get you into his shop. (I will leave the pronoun in the masculine because there were few women running the shops in Cairo and no women running the shops in the smaller cities.) I learned quickly that the best plan was to not make any eye contact and to pretend that I spoke an unpopular Polish dialect because the minute that a shopkeeper thinks he has gotten your attention he becomes that much more aggressive. As a business technique, I think it probably is very ineffective because it dissuades people from browsing the merchandise. To pause even for a second is to invite a shopkeeper to pounce on you like a buzzard on a livestock carcass. Nevertheless, I was scammed into buying some souvenirs for people back home. I’m sure I overpaid, but I got the items that I wanted and I guess I’ll accept it as a learning experience.

We spent the night on our cruise ship on the Nile. It wasn’t moving and I slept well, but I was awakened at 5:00 in the morning so we could get breakfast and hop on a bus to the west bank of the Nile to visit the Valley of the Kings. Our first stop was at a temple built by a queen of Egypt around 3500 years ago. I forget her name, but her temple was breathtaking. (Note: I looked it up. Queen Hatshepsut.) Once we realized that around 60% of the temple was a reconstruction of what the temple used the look like, I was able to get my breath back and breathe much easier.

Technically, this temple was not in the Valley of the Kings. After visiting the temple, we went to the Valley of the Kings to visit three tombs. No pictures are allowed at the Valley of the Kings, so if that’s what you’re waiting for, I apologize. We visited three tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Two belonged to Ramses I and Ramses III. I forget who the third one belonged to, but I’m sure he understands. The tombs were very interesting, though all of the treasures have long been removed. The most striking thing about the tombs, from my perspective, was the vividness of the colors of the 3700-year-old paintings inside the tombs. We learned what some of the hieroglyphics meant and the names of various Egyptian gods, which added to the experience. We also went to the tomb of Tutankhamen. It cost an extra 100 Egyptian pounds ($19 U.S.) and we had seen all of the treasures in the Cairo Museum a few days before, so we didn’t enter the tomb, but it was interesting to see from the outside, nonetheless.

Overall, I was very pleased with Karnak. It was a much better representation of the Egypt that I expected to see than was Cairo or the pyramids. I can say that the Karnak Temple has been the high point of the trip thus far and I hope it is an omen of things to come on the trip and the first of many pleasant surprises.

Egypt - The Train From Hell

I have no pictures for this post, so I’m just going to add random Pyramid and Sphinx pictures.

Upon leaving the pyramids, we went to a train station in Cairo and boarded an overnight train to Luxor. The train was an experience I won’t forget soon . . . no matter how hard I try.

The train was a sleeper train. I was in a cabin with another man who is around 75-years old. The cabin had two bunks to sleep in, one on top and one on bottom. Since there was no way he was climbing the ladder, I ended up in the top bunk. We’ll get back to this story later.

After the train arrived, we went into our cabin to await our “airplane-style dinner.” I’m not sure the exact nature of the food that they served us, but I can tell you that there is one member of our tour group that consumed it and hasn’t been seen since. I was hungry, though, so I ate it. Perhaps to my detriment, I have severe problems turning down free food.

After dinner, the beds were pulled down and I climbed on top. The bed was a wooden board with a thin mattress. All things considered, it wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, however, it was only about three feet wide. Now, I’m not the largest person in the world and have managed to sleep on twin beds plenty of times without falling off, but usually the twin bed in question isn’t in a vehicle making several abrupt stops throughout the evening. I had trouble getting to sleep, mainly because of the fear that I was going to be thrown violently from by bed and hurled mercilessly to the ground some six or seven feet below.

Somehow, at some point, I managed to fall asleep for a few hours when disaster struck. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and I had to piss. I was laying in a three-foot-wide bed in complete darkness with only a vague memory of where the ladder was and a person sleeping six feet below me that I didn’t want to wake up at 3:30 in the morning and I had to piss. I tried to hold it. I held it for about fifteen minutes. Then, just when I though I wasn’t going to be able to hold it any longer, salvation struck. A light came upon me as if from an angel delivering me from my torture. The light, however, wasn’t heavenly in nature. Rather, it was from the door of my cabin that had just been opened by the 75-year old man in the bottom bunk who also had to piss. I found the ladder and, soon, all was right in the world again.

At 5:00 in the morning, somebody started pounding on our door. It was the wake-up call. We were arriving in Luxor a 6:00 am, so they were giving us breakfast and giving us a few minutes to get ready to go. The breakfast consisted of various breads, some edible while others were not, butter and fig jam, which I quite enjoyed. Our next place to sleep would be a cruise boat on the Nile, but it wasn’t ready yet, so we loaded our luggage on a bus, hopped on a horse-and-buggy and made off for the Karnak Temple. That’s where the high point of the trip (so far) begins . . .

Egypt - Great Pyramid and Sphinx Edition

When people start talking about Egypt, one area is almost always the first topic of discussion – the pyramids/sphinx. The area of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx was the first tourist thing that we did on this trip, so I will talk about that now.

My first vision of the Great Pyramid was very similar to my first vision of the Eiffel Tower. I was in a town car coming from the airport and when I was in Giza, I noticed the Great Pyramid through a cloud of mist off in the distance. I knew what it was immediately, of course, but the mist made it sort of a surreal experience.

I made it to the hotel, met with my tour group, and the next morning we began our tour of Egypt with a trip to the three famous pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

I don’t want to have two negative entries in a row, but neither do I want to lie. I found the pyramids to be pretty disappointing. The three famous ones in Giza, including the Great Pyramid of Cheops are impressive in their size, but ultimately they merely are large man-made structures. They don’t sing or dance, but just sort of sit there. Granted, from a historical perspective, they truly are amazing – but, you know how you go someplace and you take pictures and you later think that the pictures don’t do the place justice? Well, pictures do justice to the pyramids. They are what they have always appeared to be, for thousands of years.

It didn’t help that the area around the pyramids was a pig sty and tourist trap. The ground was covered with camel crap and there were throngs of people swarming to every tourist trying to hustle, scam and sell cheap crap for crazy prices. One person in my group was asked by a police officer if he wanted his picture taken by the policeman. After the policeman took the picture, he asked the tourist for 5 Egyptian Pounds (about $1).

One of my favorite scams was that whenever one of the hustlers came up to a tourist he would offer whatever he was selling for a pound. The Egyptian unit of currency is a pound. When the tourist tries to give the seller an Egyptian pound, the seller corrects him and says it is an English pound, which is about eight Egyptian pounds. I saw this numerous times. What I didn’t see, but what I heard was common, is when a seller tells a tourist that the price is a Nubian pound, which is worth whatever the seller says it is worth because there’s no such thing as a Nubian pound.

After the pyramids, we went to see the Sphinx. This was perhaps the one thing in Egypt that I was most interested in seeing. Once again, it was a little disappointing. It reminded me of when I saw Mount Rushmore. I remember thinking, “is that it? It’s much less impressive in person than I expected.” I sort of felt that way about the Sphinx, too.

I went into the temple that is adjacent to the Sphinx, but that was a waste of time. It was sixteen columns, mostly restorations. Nothing, and I mean nothing, else. Well, there was a “wishing well” that gets cleaned out by the guards shortly after closing time. Other than that, there was nothing.

Earlier in the day, we had gone to the Cairo Museum. There was plenty of typical Egyptian stuff in the museum, but the prize pieces, comprising nearly half of the museum, were the treasures of Tutankhamen. The gold death mask and other golden treasures truly were amazing. Our tour guide was knowledgeable and friendly and I think I learned a lot. I enjoyed the museum, though at the time I was mainly just excited about seeing the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. Little did I know that the museum would be the high point of the day.

After he pyramids and the museum, we left Giza for a train station in Cairo to head to Luxor. That’ll be in the next post. Until then, later.

Egypt - Cairo Edition

I’m still rolling down the Nile and watching Egypt slowly pass by me while I summarize the trip. Now that I’m out of Cairo, it is truly a beautiful place. Cairo, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly beautiful.

That leads me to this – the Cairo Entry.

My hotel in Cairo wasn’t in Cairo proper. Rather, it was in Giza, which is on the west bank of then Nile, but is considered part of Greater Cairo. According to my Egypt tour guide, Cairo has around 22 million people and Giza has another 18 million. That sounds a little high, but what do I know?

I love cities. If you’ve read my prior entries, you know how much I love cities. In my brief two-day stay in Cairo, I have to say that I didn’t like Cairo at all. Granted, I didn’t see a ton of it and it may be unfair for me to say that I didn’t like it, but I didn’t like it.

As far as observations, I think the first thing I noticed was all of the clothes hung up from the buildings in the city. It sort of reminded me of what I imagined New York would have looked like at the turn of the last century. It was just something that caught my eye.

Another thing that caught my eye are the number of unfinished buildings that I saw. I saw numerous buildings that were occupied but had a column jutting up from them or otherwise appeared to have another floor in an early state of construction. I was later informed that this is common because people in Egypt do not have to pay taxes on buildings until the building is completed. Because of this, they make the buildings appear to be incomplete. I also heard from others that this is common in Italy, Greece and Turkey as well, though I don’t have any first-hand information about that.

Like many big cities, much of the city appears to be under construction. This doesn’t make any city very attractive. On top of this, the city is a mess. There is garbage strewn everywhere. I know I had some complaints about Buenos Aires being dirty, but Cairo is much, much worse.

Speaking of amplifying a negative aspect of Argentina, the streets in Cairo were the craziest I have ever seen. I walked a few miles in Giza down a street and there were no traffic lights. The street was six lanes, three in each direction, and there were no lane markers on any of the streets. Crossing the street required great skill, great luck, and blind faith in an almighty being. I did it once, well twice because I went back as well, and I anticipate that I will now be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder for years to come.

Lest I sound like I’m coming down hard on Egypt, I think that everything I have seen in Egypt, well most everything, has been awesome since I left Cairo/Giza. But as far as Cairo is concerned, I believe that my two days there were more than sufficient.

Egypt - Getting Here

At the moment I am sitting on a boat, sailing down the Nile between Luxor and Aswan, drinking a Stella. This Stella isn’t the Stella Artois that you’re familiar with (I don’t think), but is an “Authentic Egyptian Lager Beer” named Stella that is eerily similar to Stella Artois. Since Muslims don’t drink (for the most part) and Egypt is 85% Muslim, it hasn’t been easy to find Egyptian beer, but here we are. I’ve got the afternoon with little to do between lunch and afternoon tea, so I thought I’d draft some entries on Egypt. I’m not sure when I’ll post them, but it’ll be as soon as I can. (Note: I finally found some WiFi in Aswan and I'm posting about a half-dozen entries to show up at 16-hour intervals, so they are on their way.)

First up – the trip to Egypt.

The trip to Egypt really wasn’t too bad. It started with a two-hour flight from RDU to JFK in New York. I arrived at RDU three hours early because I’m a good little traveler (and because it was necessary in my last international flight out of Buenos Aires) but it was sort of a waste of time. American Airlines isn’t busy at all at RDU, so I was through check-in within ten minutes of arriving at the airport.

Getting to JFK, I had a five-hour wait before I hopped on my plane to Cairo. I actually needed much of this time because I had to get back in line to check-in for my flight to Egypt. From JFK to Cairo, I flew a direct flight on Egyptair. The flight I took to Cairo is the only flight on Egyptair per day out of JFK, so the counters weren’t open when I arrived five-hours prior to my flight. I had to wait around for an hour or so and then I was near-first in line when the counter opened. I went through with no problems and went to the gate.

The JFK terminal for international flights, at least international flights on smaller, foreign airlines, was dead. Fortunately, I ate before I went through security because there was virtually nothing there one I got through. Fortunately, there was free internet, so I played around online while I waited for my flight to board.

Everything went pretty much on time and I hopped on my plane to Cairo. This was my first time flying on Egyptair and I was pleasantly surprised in some aspects and not particularly pleased with others. Among the pleasant surprises was the care package that we received on the plane. It included earphones, a sleeping mask that I desperately needed and a toothbrush. That was more than I received on any of my other flights. Among the disappointments was the lack of entertainment on the flight – which was particularly disappointing on an eleven-hour flight.

Having flown a lot of long flights recently, I’ve learned a little. For this trip, I brought earplugs. This was particularly fortunate considering there was a child who is certain to have a future in horror movies as a screamer. Generally, I have a lot of trouble sleeping on airplanes, but between the earplugs, complimentary sleeping mask and a handful of Tylenol PM, I did manage to get about three or four hours of sleep on the plane, for which I was very thankful.

I usually get nervous before I go through security, immigration and customs on foreign flights because you never really know what to expect. I think I was more nervous about Egypt than I usually am because this was my first trip to the Middle East. Unexpectedly, the trip through immigration and customs was a breeze. I got to immigration and there was no line. I got to the agent and he asked if I had a visa. I though “damn, did I screw this up somehow?” I said “no, where can I get a visa?” He directed me to the bank directly behind me. I went to the bank and they charged me $15 for a visa sticker. (This was a pleasant surprise because I had read that an Egyptian visa cost $45.) I purchased the visa and returned to the line, which still was empty. Without a single question about why I was in Egypt or the intended length of my stay, I got my passport stamped and went through.

On the other side of immigration, I was met by a representative of my tour group. I picked up my luggage and was taken to the Great Pyramids Hotel in Giza. It was surprisingly easy. We’ll see how it goes when I head to Jordan, Israel and then back into the United States.

Stay tuned for more.

Buenos Aires - Passing Thoughts

As I write this, I’m sitting on the balcony of my room at the Grand Pyramids Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. It’s about 65 degrees outside and it’s pretty pleasant. Before I start writing about Egypt, however, I wanted to do one last post about Buenos Aires. If I decide to do a post about the TEFL class that I took, it’ll be two last posts because that experience deserves a post all to itself. That can wait, though. My main concern with my dearth of entries on Argentina is that I am not going to have as much to look back on as I do in other countries because I was so busy and having too much fun to post regularly. So, for this final post, I think that I’m just going to set out observations in bullet point fashion in order to remind of these things later on. Then, I’ll move on to Egypt. Then, maybe, TEFL, but that can still wait.

- * People in Buenos Aires: For the most part the people were very friendly. The ones that I met in the TEFL class (this isn’t the TEFL post) were absolutely wonderful. The vast majority of the people I met spoke no or very little English, but most were very patient and helpful as long as I attempted my broken Spanish with them. I noticed some occasional anti-American sentiments directed toward me (since I didn’t really hide the fact that I am one) but probably not as much as I did in Europe, overall.

- * Grocery Stores: One of the things that I love to do when I go someplace new is to check out the grocery stores. After I moved into my second apartment, I went grocery shopping almost every day in BsAs. One thing I noticed was the entire aisle dedicated to various fruit cakes. I had heard that they love them some fruit cakes in Argentina, but I still have to attribute the volume on it being the Christmas season. Another thing I noticed was that milk, yogurt and other similarly liquefied items were sold in bags. This left me with two assumptions: 1) that it must be much cheaper to pack items in plastic bags than in plastic jugs (why else do it?), and 2) people must be cutting the corners of these items and refilling some container with milk (how else could you store it?). The big thing you notice, of course, is the prices. As long as you buy Argentine items, the prices are phenomenally low. Once you start buying imported (American) items, the prices become much closer to American prices, though still a little lower. One exception to the price rule is ramen, which I noticed was about 150% more expensive (50 cents a pack) than in the United States. I can’t explain.

- * Spanish-Speaking Bias: I actually thought this was funny. I went to a website to price a ferry trip from Argentina to Uruguay. The site was in Spanish, but I could make out most of it – or at least the price. I clicked on the “English” button, and the site was translated into English – and the price was translated into 20% more than it had been in Spanish. I place this piece of information in the “Good to Know” file.

- * Oh, there’s so much more . . . the people walking down the street walking twenty dogs at a time . . . the way every doorway in Buenos Aires seemed to have some guy standing in it; not always the same guy, but some guy . . . the way the chain of convenient stores boasting “open 25 hours” were often closed (as Steven Wright would say, “we are open 25 hours, but not in a row”) . . . the steak was so good . . . the bread was so bad . . . I heard that this spring was milder than normal, but the temperatures were so perfect in November and December, but it rained too much, which I also heard was not normal.

That’s it for now. I fear I may have waited too long to write this entry because I feel like there’s so much I’m forgetting, though I hope that much of it was covered in earlier posts. Of course, TEFL wasn’t , but that can still wait.