Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 16:09:36 +0200
Reply-To: Stebbins <stebbins@AUCEGYPT.EDU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stebbins <stebbins@AUCEGYPT.EDU>
Organization: The American University in Cairo
Subject: Cairo report: Suez Trip
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
The trip started out smoothly enough, my 18 year old son
had arrived OK in Cairo after a 4 month backpacker trip
through Europe (London to Athens) and was now officially
enrolled in the American University here. As he knows no
one here in Cairo, he deigned to accompany Pat and me on a
trip to Pelusium . Pelusium is a major archeological site
in the northern Sinai Peninsula. We first headed east to
the Suez canal (a 2 hour trip from Cairo, one hour to get
out of Cairo, 16 to 18 million people) and then one hour
east across straight desert road to the canal.
Near the town of Suez, there is a tunnel under the canal and
one sees nothing of the canal, it is very anti-climactic.
We then headed immediately north while getting only glimpses
of the canal. Just about where we were to hit the
Mediterranean, we headed east to our destination. Two
police checks later, our instructions suggested turning
north “at a big sign”, which we did. This road took us up
again towards the Med. Sea and across salt flats with no
archeological site to be seen. Upon turning around, we
decided that the 2 mud humps we had passed rising above the
salt flats must be “it”. We drove across the salt flats as
far as I dared to and parked the van. We were treated to a
vast area, just a few meters above the salt flats. Only
about 1 percent of the area has been excavated with the rest
lying unexplored. I will spare you a historical description
of Pelusium, suffice it to say it was! a major port city as
the Nile use to have a major branch emptying in to the Med.
Sea here. When the Nile shifted course, Pelusium died. For
the curious, see
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/pelusium/ .
It had rained the day before and there about 15 native
Bedouin folks walking around with eyes glued to the ground
looking for anything of value. As we began walking around
too, folks came up to us with Roman coins, glass ware, and
oil lamps that they had uncovered that day. I might have
bought a few, but my partner Pat is an archeologist and she
was against contributing to the looting of the site.
After an interesting walk around, we headed back to Cairo.
I stopped for gas and (as we all do) I did the “vanagon walk
around” and saw green fluid under the van. RATS. I traced
the source of the leak to the diversion block where the HOT
cooling fluid is diverted either to the rear heater, the
front heater or the front radiator. As some of you may
recall, my van has been resurrected from a junk yard after a
PPO’s engine box fire. The PO mechanic has put it all back
together again with parts from this Audi and that Passat. I
tell you that, as this part of the van is not stock (by any
means). There is a hose coming of the diversion block that
was leaking at the screw clamp. I tried to play with it and
re clamp it and I thought I had it fixed. Off we went and
just a few kilometers down the dirt road, my son says
“There's smoke back here dad, really SMOKE!”. So I turned
off the engine and coasted towards the police check that I
could see just 100 meters ahead.
My “fix” had come undone and was now just spewing coolant
out and causing all of the steam back there. This time I
took the hose right off and looked at it, and the collar on
to which it was clamped. The hose and clamp were OK, but
the collar of the plastic diversion block was cracked.
Well folks I don't carry a spare diversion block with me (I
hope you do) and there was no VW dealer in sight (actually
there was only the police check in sight) and Cairo was
about 200 kms away. So I looked & puzzled, and puzzled &
looked and finally I thought that maybe I could get enough
purchase on the collar if I put the clamp right at the end
of the hose. So I tried this and filled the cooling system
up with water, that I obtained from the police check (yes, I
then bled the system as well as I could). I started off
driving with the engine cover off, so that my son could keep
an eye on the hoses. He said “no problem” so on we drive.
After about 20 or 30 kms of “no problem” I stopped to put
the engine cover back on and we continued on our way.
As I said, tunneling under the Suez canal is not much fun,
so we decided to take a ferry across north of toe town of
Ismaillia. As we approached the canal, we could see LARGE
ships seemingly floating along the desert sand, an
interesting sight. There were about 50 trucks lined up at
the ferry crossing and we almost turned back but we were
waved up in front of the trucks. Seems the rule is 2 BIG
trucks, 2 small trucks and 2 cars at a time. As we sat
waiting, other ocean going container ships passed not more
than 30 meters in front of us, HUGE. As we settled on the
ferry, a pick-up truck with about 15 young teenage Bedouin
girls/women in the back had parked in front of us. They
were phenomenally curious about Pat, crowding around her
open window looking, chatting giggling. My virile 18 year
old son in the back was unsure of his bodily safety, but was
grinning from ear to ear at the prospects of what could
happen if order was not maintained!! :-)
Interestingly enough, the ferry boat (about 10 cars/trucks
at a time) leaves the dock, then waits for a HUGE ship to
pass, then darts across the canal in front of the next
oncoming, ocean going, container ship!! Much fun for the 10
minute ride across!!!!
Well, I checked the cooling hoses again after another 20
kms, and all was OK, so we continued on to Cairo. Now, with
all of the stopping (van trouble) and waiting for the ferry,
it was now dark. We don't like driving in the dark as the
Egyptian drivers are very environmentally conscious (that is
as politely as I can say it) and they have a tendency to
drive with NO head lights, often no lights at all. Also the
road is used by donkey and horse carts and the “breakdown”
lane can be any chosen lane. Adding to this, was the fact
that we were now heading into Cairo on a road that we had
not taken prior to this excursion.
All was OK till we hit Cairo and its 18 million people.
Pat, being a cartophile had 3 city maps and 2 Egypt maps so
we felt quite confident that we would be home quickly.
Nevertheless, one minute we thought we knew where we were,
the next we were hopelessly lost. Within the city itself,
Pat found the compass to be the most useful directional aid
as, if we kept going west in the city, we would eventually
hit the Nile! We also asked directions with our “phrase
book Arabic” and understood mimed directions more so than
the accompanying verbal directions: “Watch the hands, not
the mouth!” After an hour and a half, we made it home
safely and “all's well that ends well”.
As a post script, having had to take off a coolant hose, I
lost so much coolant and replaced it with just water, that I
now had far too much water to coolant ratio. I asked around
at the local shade tree mechanic (near my apartment) and he
tried to convince me that Blue coolant was the same as Green
coolant and that it mattered not about Phosphates (all this
in his broken English and my broken Arabic). I had a hard
time finding Green, Phosphates coolant, and they all want to
sell me Blue coolant. I insisted on Green so he said he'd
get me Green. Well folks, what he tried to sell me looked
like “lime drink”, watery with pulp floating on the top! I
ended up going to the VW dealer and I paid 230 (55USDs)
Egyptian pounds for the real VW Orange coolant.
Also I can't find another coolant diversion block locally as
no water-cooled vanagons have been imported to Egypt in any
quantity (there are a few around but no stock of spare
parts). So I called my PO mechanic in Halifax and the
coolant diversion block, new reservoir cap and some oil
filters are in the air as you read this. When the stuff
gets here, I’ll have to figure out how to install it and
flush the coolant, and add the VW coolant. Every trip is an
adventure. Joys of vanagon ownership. Malcolm
|