Hurghada & Cairo

Hurghada was a lot more ok than we were led to believe by the Lonely Planet. Yes, it’s very touristy and much bigger than we thought but reasonably relaxing in some ways. It certainly helps to get out on a boat for the day away from the bustle and thousands of Russian tourists and visit the reefs. We had two snorkels or dives at really great spots out in the Red Sea. Absolutely amazing fish life and pretty good coral – think we were very fortunate to be taken to very good spots that aren’t really damaged. Think much of the inner reefs are badly damaged these days so it’s worth getting out to the further away reefs as we did. For about NZ$25 each we got the boat for the day, all our snorkelling gear, a bottle of water, a soft drink, a full cooked lunch and the two dive spots – seriously good value!

 Hurghada shorefront

Snorkelling on a reef

After 2 nights in Hurghada we headed off to our last stop for the trip in Cairo by driving the very scenic road up the coast. Beautiful clear water and beaches along most of the way and seemed very popular with locals. Was nice to see the local people out fishing, camping, having a BBQ on the beach and in swimming.

That evening in Cairo we had a goodbye dinner at a nearby seafood restaurant. 9 of our group were carrying on to do the Jordan leg in reverse of what we had done before Egypt and were going to be joined by 3 new travellers. Our last morning of the trip saw us visiting the Egyptian Museum including a guide of the main pieces, Tutankhamen's treasure and absolutely amazing coffins and headdress, finishing up with the Royal Mummies. That part was quite fascinating but we had a bit of fun trying to queue for tickets and it ended up being a rushed visit as a result. Some other tourists decided it would be quite alright to try and queue jump, starting all sorts of chaos and making it very frustrating. Fortunately we managed to hold our own and in the end the ticket seller got very angry at them and sent them all back to the very end of the queue which was by that stage quite a long way back!

Luxor

The first evening in Luxor was a quiet one – Dave and I were still a bit up and down with our stomachs ever since we came out of the Western Desert so we skipped dinner and went to bed. The next morning saw us up bright and early for a hot balloon ride over the West Bank of Luxor. This was awesome and a really beautiful view over the area, with a great contrast between the green of the Nile Valley and the golden desert. We left from just in front of Hatshepsut Temple and floated over the Ramesseum, the Colossi of Memnon and Medinet Habu before landing smoothly in a local field. We then met up with the rest of our group (those that didn’t do the ballooning) at the Colossi of Memnon and headed off to the Valley of the Kings. We visited 3 tombs – Tutmosis III, Septah and Ramses III. The first one was in 2 levels and just painted rather than carved, which was quite unusual. It was ridiculously hot and stuffy and very short on air! Septah and Ramses III were much larger and beautifully carved and painted, with Tutmosis III and Septah having beautiful granite sarcophagi. We then headed to Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple, which was quite interesting but extremely busy, like the Valley of the Kings. Was very hot by now also! We then stopped at an Alabaster (calcite in Egypt rather than gypsum) gallery and bought a carved vase. Was very interesting to see how they carve the stone and also to hear them doing their sales pitch and explain how superior their products were compared to those in the market. Interesting enough though, much of their stuff was fake and using resin instead of stone (particularly the supposedly granite pieces)! We then visited the Valley of the Queens and visited 3 tombs there also, though unfortunately the tomb of Queen Nefertari was closed for restoration.

 Hot Air Ballooning, Luxor

View towards the Valley of the Queens, Luxor

Queen Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple

That evening we visited the Temple of Luxor under lights which was really wonderful. Added a really nice difference to the many temples we’ve seen and was much bigger to explore around than it looks from the outside. Later that evening we also had a cultural show at our accomodation including a belly dancer, whirling dervish (who was really good!), and a snake charmer. The next morning we visited the Temple of Karnak and then left for Hurghada and the Red Sea.

 Luxor Temple

 

 Luxor Temple

Whirling Dervish

Kate in the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak

 Temple of Karnak

The Upper Nile - Aswan to Idfu

Our first afternoon in Aswan and along the Nile saw us on a tour to the High Aswan Dam for a brief visit, then on to the island of Philae and the Temple of Isis. It was a beautiful evening out on the water, the first of many to come, and lovely lighting on the temple walls as we watched the sun set onto the Nile. It was a very very early start the next morning at 2.30 am to drive by convoy to Abu Simbel as they only open it in the morning, just after sunrise. Was pretty amazing to see the documentary and displays about how they moved the temples - almost seems unbelievable that they actually managed to! The original location now lies some 200 m away under Lake Nasser, formed when they built the High Dam. They have actually moved a number of temples and ancient sites, but many more remain submerged. 

Temple of Philae

Us at Abu Simbel

The afternoon saw us back in Aswan with time to swim in the pool and check out the local souq. Really great fun actually and we managed to bargain down a ghalabeia (like a kaftan) from LE 150 to LE 35 (about NZ$8). Have actually found in general the asking for baksheesh and hassling for shop custom not nearly as hard work as we thought it would be – definitely true that smiling and keeping your humour about you makes a huge difference. In fact, the Arab people are quite the jokers – something I think is sometimes lost on many of the tourists! It does get tiring after a while though and we couldn’t imagine having to haggle for everything if we were trying to do it ourselves – would be quite an epic! The thing that scares us the most over here is the insane driving. The Egyptian people have no regard for how dangerous driving is – there are no seatbelts, they speed, they text, smoke, drink and talk on their phones constantly. We have had two taxi drivers swipe off wing mirrors from other cars, nearly had collisions about half a dozen times and unfortunately we also came across a full head-on collision just minutes after it happened on the road from Luxor to Hurghada. There was one body and half a dozen bloodied, broken ones. Not a sight we ever want to see again, made worse by the actions of a few other drivers who were so impatient to get past they nearly ran over the dead man to get past.

The next morning in Aswan we took a water taxi over to the beautiful botanical gardens of Kitchener’s Island – a much appreciated cool walk amongst the trees, flowers and birdlife. Following that we headed over to the West Bank for a 45 min camel trek through the desert around St Simeon, before arriving back at the Nile and on to our feluccas for the next day and a half. We spent the first night past the new bridge just north of Aswan, on a sandy beach and celebrated Scott’s birthday with us all dressing up in the local clothes we’d brought from the Aswan souq. Our Nubian felucca crew were joined by others from their village that we had stayed with previously and provided us with some awesome African drums, dancing and singing around the fire. Was a great evening. 

Felucca on the Nile in Aswan

Dave camel riding

Us dressed up on the banks of the Nile

The next day was spent just relaxing and reading on the felucca as we drifted down the Nile towards the Temple of Kom Ombo. The wind rather died off about half way through the day so it was super slow going and we ended up sailing a bit into the night to try to get as close to Kom Ombo as possible to be right there for the opening at 7 am the next morning. We left the feluccas and the wonderful Nubians and visited the really interesting temples of Kom Ombo (temple to Horus and Sobek) and Idfu (main temple to Horus) the next morning. That afternoon we drove north to Luxor.

 Our feluccas

Temple at Kom Ombo

Temple at Idfu (Edfu)

The Western Desert

Sorry about the delay on these, wrote most of the entries out there at the time but the internet was actually pretty sporadic and a bit hopeless sometimes so couldn't upload them!

Arriving in Cairo late evening, we met the rest of our group now joining us for the Egypt leg and said goodbye to Ian and Minesh, who had to go back for work. We now also have Kath from Melbourne, Tamara from Alice Springs, Sandy from Brisbane, Rachel from Melbourne but living in London, Claudia from Berlin, Uli from the US (but originally german), Nick and Trudi from Auckland (Nick works for Golder!), Darryl and Evelyn from New Foundland. After staying the night in Giza City, we woke early for our tour out to thew pyramids and sphinx. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour unfortunately and for the first itme we felt much more like a mass tourist than travellers, especially as we had to go there in a tour coach. That’s the really cool thing about travelling in a truck, you get to mix in with the locals a lot more, especially as we’ve been doing quite a lot of camping also. The pyramids were very impressive, if completely overrun with people and we enjoyed going to see the Solar Boat, a 4600 year of wooden ship buried with King Khufu for travelling to the afterlife. Just so incredible to see a wooden boat in such good condition despite it’s age.

 Us in front of the Pyrimids of Giza

Pyramid and the Sphinx

We are now out in the Western Desert and I’m trying to write this (in Word) in the very bumpy truck as we head to Aswan. We’ve spent 3 nights camping out here, which has been really awesome. The first night was out in the Black Desert, near Bahairya Oasis. It’s a rocky dersert with lots of black basalt. Got a good 2 hour time exposure of us camping out inder the stars around the camp fire. The air is surprisingly clear out here, although sand does manage to get everywhere! The second night we spent in the White Desert which was really really cool – lots of strange eroded shapes, beautiful white limestone and we slept near an escarpment with a big sand dune under a crescent moon. Got visited during the night by a desert fox (very cute) and also some scarab beetles.

 Our first night in the Black Desert (timelapse 2 hours)

 Dave at Crystal Mountain, White Desert NP

 Strange eroded limestone shapes, White Desert

Dawn in the White Desert

Last night was spent on a roof top in Daklha Oasis after visiting a local artists house and also a 200 year old mud brick city, Al Qasr, complete with even a mud brick mosque and minaret. Our final night in the desert was spent in a Nubian Village on the West Bank of Aswan, overlooking the Nile Valley. Is a welcome change to see the green and water after the desert!

 Al Qasr mudbrick village, Dakhla Oasis

Local food at the Nubian village, West Bank, Aswan

Sinai Peninsula to Cairo

The Sinai Peninsula was awesome – very laid back and some truly impressive mountains. Like everything over this part of the world, it’s ridiculously barren. It seems incredible that so many people fight so much over this landscape when it’s nearly impossible to even grow a weed. It’s all great big rocks and mountains of granite, basalt dikes, limestone and sandstone. The diving town of Dahab was really chilled out and a great way to relax after our last few busy days. I spent the first afternoon in bed recovering from sea sickness after the ferry crossing (one of the main reasons we got through so fast!), then was right into the diving all the next day. Dave did an introductory dive at the Lighthouse with Mel and Robyn, while Joe and I did our refresher dives that morning also at the lighthouse, then in the late afternoon I went on another dive to the Islands (a dive I had been very keen on doing), while Dave and Ryan snorkelled above. The Islands was awesome, lots of amazing towers of coral and incredible fish life, just like everywhere in the Red Sea. Definitely the best combination of fish and coral we’ve ever seen anyway. Next day a bunch of us headed out for the day to the Blue Hole and snorkelled from El Bells back into the Blue Hole and then another snorkel from the Blue Hole out in the other direction and back in again. Lots of people out there but well worth it. The section of reef from El Bells to the Blue Hole in particular was amazing. The wall goes down to over 800m deep and you can see the divers below you with their bubbles coming up everywhere. We’ve seen many lion fish, angel fish, barracuda, an octopus, stone fish, clown fish, trigger fish, parrot fish, pipe fish and many others we can't name.

Chillin' in Dahab 

The Blue Hole

We left Dahab about 7 pm that night and drove 2 hours to the Monastery of St Catherine and Mt Sinai. We started climbing the mountain about 9.30 pm and arrived on top ion about 2.5 hours. It was an awesome hike in the dark as we were the only people walking at that time so it was so silent and beautiful under the stars. We hired mats from the Bedouins up on the mountain and sleep out in a little hollow just underneath the summit. Dave and I brought ear plugs which was a really good idea, as after a pretty good sleep we woke just before dawn to hundreds of other people crowding the summit to see the sunrise. Most people start walking about 3 am. There were many pilgrims so much singing at dawn and prayers, as this is the mountain where Moses recieved the Ten Commandments. We found a great little viewpoint away from the crowds and watched the rising sun bring beautiful colours across the granite landscape – truly a memorable experience.

 Us on top of the world - Mt Sinai

 Dawn on Mt Sinai

 Camels and Bedouin

Monastery of St Catherine - is built around a cutting of the Burning Bush!

Walking down was a mass of people but not too bad after the first set of stairs and it was great to admire the views we hadn’t seen in the dark on our way up. We had a reasonably long drive into Cairo, past the intriguing Suez Canal, where you really do see the ships gliding though the sand. Arriving into Cairo was awesome as our driver Johan is a master of Egyptian roads! He is seriously better than many of the locals – of course, having a truck and a big horn helps, but is really was amazing the way he threaded us through the chaos! At times we had 4 or 5 queues of traffic when there were only 2 lanes painted on the road. There are no traffic lights either – quite amusing :)

Dead Sea, Petra & Wadi Rum

Leaving Amman we headed down off the mountain plateau and into the rift valley between Jordan and Israel. Our first stop for a swim i the Dead Sea was within nearly spitting distance of the Isreali border, which was interesting. We could see the buildings of Jerusalem and even some black smoke at one stage. Had thought that the Dead Sea was wider across than it was! Floating in the Dead Sea was a strange experience. The water is crystal clear (also not expected – had thought that it would have been murky because of all the salt) so you can see the bottom, even when you are out in pretty deep water. It’s really hard work to move actually because you are so buoyant! The flies were a bit much down below sea level so we headed up into the cooler mountains again, south of the Dead Sea for lunch, on our way to Wadi Musa and Petra. The truck is really well equipped and we are eating very very well, although our stomachs are taking quite some time to settle down and get used to everything over here. This first week of our journey through Jordan there are just 11 of us, plus scott and our driver, Drew (from South Africa). There are Katherine and Walter from just north of Sydney, Mel from Brisbane, Ryan from Auckland (coming home from London), Javier from Mexico City, Joe and Robyn from Montana, Minesh from Dublin (but he’s actually English), and Ian from Cardiff.

Floating in the Dead Sea

 

Dead Sea

Our Truck

 

We spent two nights in Wadi Musa so we could spend a full day in Petra. Petra was awesome. Was pretty cool at first, walking in early morning and seeing the Treasury, but the real gems come the more you get off the beaten track and out exploring the surrounds. We had a guide for the first couple of hours who took us through the main areas, right through the cobbled roman street, then we left him and decided to explore as a whole group, which was pretty cool as we were all about he same fitness level and everyone was keen to do the same thing. We walked for about 7 or 8 hours, first up to the monastery, Al Deir, then back down and up to the High Place of Sacrifice in the afternoon, past the Roman Soldiers’ Tomb. Dave and I then went back and had a look at the royal Tombs, before finally heading back through the Siq and back to our accommodation. That evening after dinner, we went back down again for Petra By Night, which, although the candle lanterns were really neat, was a bit of a disappointment as there was no music, just some our of time and tune chanting. Think the flute player might have been sick and they suddenly had to improvise! It was a big day anyway so we were all pretty tired!

 Petra

 Wadi Musa

Heading south again we spent some time touring around Wadi Rum in 4wds, having fun trying to snowboard down the sand dunes, wandering amongst the impressive rock landscape, visiting an arch, canyon and Lawrence’s spring and house. We arrived into Aqaba for dinner and to catch the ferry across to Egypt. We started waiting for the ferry about 9.30 pm, got onboard about 11.45 pm, where we then got cabins and never felt the ferry leaving, arrived in Nuweiba about dawn and finally got to Dahab about lunchtime after waiting in the port for the various stages of immigration. That was apparently a reasonably fast ordeal – Johan, our new driver (also from South Africa) said that the first time he did it, the whole thing took him about 36 hours!

Wadi Rum

Amman & Jerash

We arrived in Amman, capitol of Jordan, at a reasonable time of the morning, having reached daylight waiting for our connecting flight in Dubai. The 3 hour flight from Dubai to Amman was incredible for the contrast between the deep blue of the Gulf of Oman and the yellow brown of the desert peninsula of Saudi Arabia. In fact, we saw no vegetation at all on the approach to Amman, other than a few green irrigation circles. Trees seriously struggle here, and while not really in the desert in this part of Jordan, the ground is very rocky and barren (seems to be all folded limestone), actually very much like the dry areas of south eastern Spain (which Kate visited in 2002). There are even many olive orchards, cypress and the same sort of gnarly pines.


Amman was a bit of a shock for us in that it was so different to any place we have ever travelled before and the differences were a little overwhelming on the first day. A lot of it is tiredness also, but it didn’t take too long to get the feel of the place, although we still find it tiring wandering the streets! The biggest challenge is the very frequent hassling by taxi drivers (particularly) and some shop owners just because you are foreigners. It’s interesting to see how much you are bugged compared to locals who are left pretty much totally alone. We have paid a bit more than the locals for the same services, even the local bus, but it’s not been too bad. There are many times where we could have paid much more if we hadn’t been firm and relatively on to it!

Our first day in Amman we spent the morning having a bit of a nap after our flight, then decided to head out for the afternoon to downtown Amman and The Citadel, a large complex of Roman ruins (built approximately during the 1st century, with a further Umayyad palace and Byzantine basilica from the 6th and 7th centuries) on top of Amman’s largest hill. We soon found that Amman is very hilly! It’s an amazing city of almost identical limestone and concrete block apartments all clambering on top of one another all over the hills. Would be very easy to get lost and confused in! We walked all the way from our accommodation into the downtown area, which was a real assault to the senses so we very much enjoyed the peace and quiet of wandering the Citadel complex in the late afternoon light. The complex has excellent views over the city so well worth it, even just for that! On our way back, we were getting a bit worried about food for dinner. It’s actually a bit hard to find restaurants – there are some stalls etc but rather hard to know what they’re selling and whether it’s ok to eat. We found this little place near the Citadel where this wonderfully friendly young guy made us a type of Jordanian BBQ. It’s a pita bread stuffed with meat, tomato, chillies, onions and spices, and thrown in a big oven – seriously yummy!

 The Temple of Hercules on The Citadel, Amman

 View over Amman from The Citadel

Yummy Jordanian food!

Today we visited the roman city of Jerash, about 50 km north of Amman. We took the local bus which was JD1 each, each way (about NZ$2), compared to taxis which are JD10-15 (NZ$20-30), although it took some convincing of the taxi drivers that we were going to take the bus! Jerash was amazing – much better than we had expected, though not sure what we did expect! We had a wonderful time exploring the ruins and it was surprisingly quiet. Tour groups seemed to come and go and certainly not as far into the city as we explored. The restoration work is really excellent and many of the buildings, roads and columns are being largely reconstructed from the rubble. They say that only about 10% of all the ruins have been excavated and that is certainly impressive. Highlights were the two roman theatres, the Temple of Zeus, Temple of Artemis and the beautiful paved and columned roads, where you can still see the grooves from the ancient chariot wheels. In its heyday, more than 15,000 people lived in the roman city.

 Walking down the Cardo Maximus

 The South Theatre

Temple of Artemis

All in all, we are glad that we are starting our trip here instead of Cairo as I think it gives us a more gentle start to a new culture and way of doing things. We are also really glad we had a couple of days here to try things ourselves and make our own way around, but it certainly is tiring and hard work so think the tour will give us a bit more time to relax in that respect.

We are just listening now to the most beautiful call to prayer we have ever heard. The beautiful blue King Abdullah Mosque is right across the road from our accommodation. We got woken up this morning at 4 am by his amazing singing – it brings a lump to your throat.

Haha, just met our tour leader, Scott, for the rest of our trip. Turns out he is from Christchurch, lived in Shirley, went to Banks Ave School and even had the same teachers as me!! Such a small world!

Phuket, Thailand

We arrived early morning in Phuket after 3 flights and a long wait overnight in Bangkok airport. This first day was a quiet one as we were pretty out of it for most of the day! Our accommodation in Phuket is Boomerang Village in Kata Beach. It has wonderful gardens, very friendly hosts and staff and lovely and quiet. The village is on the hill at the back overlooking Kata Beach. The first day we spent mostly at the swimming pool, trying our best to keep awake until night time so we could adjust to the new time zone better. We booked a trip for the following day out to the Phi Phi islands as the weather was supposed to be very good. Leaving early the next morning we all squeezed on to a large 3 engine speed boat with about 30 other people. This was a good indication of how busy this particular area of Thailand is! Our first stop was Maya Bay, the famous beach on Ko Phi Phi Lei that featured in the movie “The Beach”. Fantastic beach, pity about the hundreds of other people! Was literally pushing other boats out of the way to squeeze in at the beach and get onshore. We did kind of know it would be very busy but still something to keep in mind in future. Think if we went again it would be worth spending the night out on Ko Phi Phi Don to allow more time visiting Ko Phi Phi Lei and getting there outside the busy times. Because it’s reasonably far from Phuket, if you do it as a day trip, the only way is by speed boat but you still don’t get a lot of time to look around. Our next stop was around the other side of Ko Phi Phi Lei for a swim in a beautiful lagoon with steep sided limestone cliffs, before heading over to Ko Phi Phi Don, visiting a monkey beach and spending some time snorkelling on the reef, before having our included buffet lunch on the beach. Only time for a quick look around the shops and beach (were trying to head to the other beach on the other side of the sand isthmus but didn’t even have time to do that – had to turn back!) before we were off again to our final stop for the day at Khai Island. We spent the longest time here just relaxing and snorkelling. Lots and lots of fish, which was really neat, but getting quite murky water (as we were further north into Phang Nga Bay) and the coral is pretty average. Khai Island is a sea of umbrellas. Definitely could have spent more time at the Phi Phi Islands and less time there, but think that’s how the tours work with the companies getting more out of having everyone on a private island where they have business relationships with the vendors etc.

 Our accomodation, Boomerang Village, Kata Beach

 Maya Bay, Ko Phi Phi Lei

Ko Phi Phi Don

 Our next day was spent around Kata Beach, having a relaxing walk along the main Beach and over to Kata Noi, the smaller beach to the south. Kata Beach area is really beautiful and definitely the place to stay in Phuket, very quaint shops, beautiful sandy beach and great food. It’s also well known for the snorkelling around the headland between the two beaches. We are planning to do some of that today but the surf was up the other day so we just explored around then.

Yesterday we went on another tour and this one was much better than the Phi Phi Islands and an absolutely incredible area. We went up into Phang Nga province, just north of Phuket. Took about 2 hours to drive to the pier, but through fascinating countryside of rubber plantations and little villages. Our tour started off with sea canoeing though the caves and lagoons of Panak Island and Hong Island in the Phang Nga National Park area at the head of Phang Nga Bay. The limestone islands here are so impressive and we saw them on our approach by plane from the window – looks just like a drowned version of the limestone provinces in China. These great monoliths rising steeply from the sea – wonderful! We went first on Panak Island into a cave tunnel that we had to lie down in our canoes for that opened up into this little mangrove filled lagoon in the middle of the island, completely surrounded by towering vine covered cliffs. The lagoon on Hong Island was also spectacular, with many little caves to explore and a wonderful tall monolith guarding the entrance. Like with the Phi Phi tour there were many of us doing the same thing, but with us all on larger, slow boats and much mre room and time to spend, it was quite comfortable. We had a traffic jam in one of the tunnels in our sea canoes which was actually quite funny! Our next stop was a fairly brief visit to James Bond Island, or more correctly, Kao Tapu (means crab eye mountain – because it looks like a crab’s eye stalk!). Ridiculously busy again but ok! After that we had an excellent buffet meal lunch on board the boat while steaming off to our own private beach for a swim and some relaxing and canoeing. The rain set in big time at this point so we headed back in the rain to the pier and the long drive back to Kata Beach. A really great day out and well worth it!

 Mangrove Lagoon in Panak Island, Phang Nga Bay

 Hong Island, Phang Nga Bay

Kao Tapu aka James Bond Island, Phang Nga Bay

We are now just enjoying our last day in Thailand before heading to Amman this evening via Dubai. Had a look at the weather for Aswan just before, 39, 35, 34 and 37 degrees over the next four days – yikes! :)