Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 11:10:23 +0300
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: Eastern Desert trip: FULL report
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Due to popular demand (21 people have asked for the write
up) I will post this to the list. This is my wife’s write
up and I have edited it a bit for more vanagon content.
Thanks to EACH (of the 21) of you for writing.
===============================
Our trip into Egypt’s Eastern Desert was, like our previous
excursions, an adventure. One “adventure” which,
thankfully, we didn’t have to cope with was van trouble – or
at least, serious van trouble. Again if you like pictures
go to www.photopoint.com and enter Stebbins@aucegypt.edu to
get into our ‘album’ and this trip is called the “Eastern
Desert Trip”. If you like to follow along with a map
try:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/africa/Egypt_rel97.jpg
for an overall map of Egypt.
As it turned out, our itinerary for this 8-day trip didn’t
correspond to the actual route we took, for reasons I’ll
mention in a minute. Nevertheless, our original plan was to
head east from Cairo to the Red Sea, travel south along the
western coast of the Red Sea as far as possible, then head
inland (west) to the Nile, and travel north down the Nile
back to Cairo. We were successful with most of this plan,
except for the Nile part …
We left Cairo on the 12th of April, heading south-east-ish
from Cairo toward a Red Sea coastal resort town called Ain
Sukhna. As we left Cairo Pat mused “why can’t little,
inconsequential things go wrong like …. the odometer rather
than big things like the coolant system” (trouble that we
have had before). Anyway at Ain Sukhna (on the Red Sea
coast) we headed south, following the main road along the
Red Sea (here called the Gulf of Suez). Not surprisingly,
the Red Sea coast is considered a prime tourist development
area – so following the coast means passing by many (often
quite unappealing-looking) established, newly-completed, or
unfinished resort hotels. Consequently we decided to look
for secondary roads that followed the Red Sea, but that
which might not have yet fallen prey to tourism. After a
few hours’ drive, well into the afternoon, we found one that
suited our taste: a small paved road that allowed us to
travel in relative peace along the coast while gazing out at
the amazing multitude of blues that colour the gulf, and at
the rugged coast of the Sinai across the Gulf of Suez. As
sunset approached we began to hunt about for a place to camp
for the night. We found what we thought seemed like the
perfect spot: a little cove, a fishing spot where the
fishers were just pulling in their nets for the day.
Unfortunately … no sooner had we stopped and begun
preliminary preparations for setting up camp, out of what
seemed like nowhere came a soldier. He explained to us that
it was “not possible” to camp at this point, and no amount
of persuasion by us would change his mind. So off we
continued on the secondary road, feeling a bit concerned as
darkness approached, which would make finding a camping spot
rather more difficult.
A few kilometres down the coast we came to a small military
outpost right on the water’s edge, staffed by three young,
male soldiers. We stopped and asked them where we could
find a place to camp. They thought about it for a moment,
then gestured to a flat spot just across the road from their
outpost! Once we parked the van, the soldiers invited us
back to their outpost for tea – a typical form of Egyptian
hospitality – which we gladly accepted. As we walked to the
outpost, we both took in our surroundings: it was a lovely
spot, with the road following the Red Sea and the colourful
mountains of the Eastern Desert looming closely up behind
the van. As we sat and drank our tea, our hosts attempted
to chat with us, and we with them – a bit of a struggle,
since their English and our Arabic were equally limited.
However, I found the linguistic challenge to be a real
pleasure, and once again was very thankful for the extremely
helpful Arabic tutor we have in Cairo!
Not only did the soldiers offer us tea; they also invited us
to have supper. We agreed, and supplied some fresh
vegetables and juice as our contribution to the meal. After
about an hour of socializing, supper was served. We
discovered, much to our disappointment, that once our hosts
served out the food, they didn’t plan on joining us to eat!
We tried to insist that they join us, but to no avail. So,
we tucked in to what was a delicious meal of fresh fish,
cooked and fresh vegetables, and macaroni. After the meal
and as we headed back to the van for the night, Malcolm
tried to offer them some money for the food (again, not an
uncommon custom, in our experience); but they wouldn’t take
it, telling us that we were their “friends”. We were both
very touched by this generosity and hospitality, never
having encountered anything quite like it before in Egypt.
The next morning, as we prepared to leave, we left them a
large tin of peaches, our attempt at a more concrete “thank
you”. As we waved goodbye to our hosts, we both felt that
our trip was off to a very good start.
Only a few more kilometres down the road, we came to yet
another checkpoint, at the entrance to some kind of oil
processing/storage factory (there are numerous oil drilling
rigs out in the Gulf of Suez). Here the soldier was quite
insistent that we could not pass through his checkpoint. We
even tried asking at the factory if we could continue on,
but the worker who accompanied us back to discuss the matter
further with the soldier had no luck. I was a bit
discouraged, thinking that we would have to retrace our
steps about an hour back along this secondary road to the
main road. But, as Malcolm was turning the van around, we
noticed some workers drive by in a truck; they gestured to
us to follow them – and showed us a way along dirt/sand
roads AROUND the checkpoint!! Once they showed us the way,
off we went, and continued on without further interruption
back to the main road and on down the coast.
Our next destination was another Red Sea resort town, a
place called Hurghada. It’s one of Egypt’s largest and
best-known resorts, and caters mainly to foreign tourists on
package tours. It’s not a very attractive place; developers
have been ruining and are continuing to destroy the coral
reefs along the coast, by building large and often
astoundingly garish hotel complexes beside and out into the
Red Sea. Notwithstanding the fact that Hurghada isn’t
really our idea of a good vacation spot, we decided that
we’d like to try a day snorkeling along the coral reefs, and
it’s in Hurghada where one finds the tours which provide
this. So, after we arrived in Hurghada, and looked around a
little, we found a travel agent where we booked a snorkeling
trip for the next day. Then, by way of preparation, we
visited Hurghada’s aquarium, where we saw numerous varieties
of fish and other ocean life common to the Red Sea.
That night, we had supper at a marvelous restaurant, a
branch of our favourite Cairo restaurant, a place called
Felfela. Hurghada’s Felfela is built terraced up a small
cliff overlooking the Red Sea; and with lots of outdoor
tables, the ocean views are marvelous and the food was
great.
The next day we had a lovely time on our snorkeling trip.
We traveled to three different ocean spots by boat, spending
several hours paddling about, marveling at the varieties of
coral and fish. Our visit to the aquarium the day before
had been an excellent preview of what we would see while we
snorkeled: fish of a whole range of sizes, coloured in the
most amazing yellows, blues, greens, pinks, reds, stripes,
dots. An additional benefit of this trip was its price –
for the very low cost of 40 Egyptian pounds (about $15.00)
each, not only did we have hours of snorkeling, but lunch
and equipment were provided as well. All in all, most
definitely a truly memorable part of our Egyptian adventure!
The following day we headed south along the coast from
Hurghada, having spent the previous two nights camping in
the desert a few kilometres from the town – and,
unfortunately, getting the van briefly stuck in some sand on
the second night (seems like none of our desert trips is
complete without this ritual). Except for a short stop to
look around in a small coastal town called Al Queseir, we
were primarily interested in simply driving along the coast
as far south as we could. For much of the day, our trip
kept us quite close to the ocean, which was a treat. I’ve
often assumed that travel posters which illustrate tropical
island paradises with lovely, impossibly blue oceans had had
their colours enhanced. This trip along the Red Sea coast
made me realize that some of these impossible colours are
indeed possible. Here the ocean is simply amazing, with the
water gleaming turquoise, azure, aquamarine and every colour
in between – and all at the same time!!
We decided to head inland (west) at a town called Marsa
Alam, where a) we believed (based on our travel books) we’d
gone as far south as we could, and b) the last major
Egyptian road west from the Red Sea can be found (although
based on our experience with Egyptian maps, you never can
tell…). Within a few kilometres of leaving the coast, the
terrain became hilly, then quite mountainous and scenic.
Along this road we found what seemed to be a fairly remote
spot and set up camp for the night.
The next morning we headed on west, our goal being to link
up with the main north-south road along the Nile at a town
called Edfu. Our plan was to head north from Edfu to Luxor
and points north. Based on our previous experience with
traveling along the Nile in Upper Egypt (when we were
diverted onto the Nile road during our trip to the Western
Desert oases), I was fairly certain that when we reached the
Nile road, a checkpoint and police escort would be awaiting
us. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when we arrived at
the Nile road and were able to turn right (north) without a
checkpoint or police escort in sight. We continued merrily
north, stopping to visit an archaeological site called Al
Kab (where there are the remains of a town, some cliff tombs
and a few small, ruined temples), where we were the only
foreign tourists. Unfortunately, shortly after we left Al
Kab, our solitary travel ended when we encountered a police
checkpoint. We were asked (told) to stop, to wait for a
convoy of tourists (i.e., a group of tourist vehicles
accompanied by military vehicles) that would be coming from
Aswan (south of us) and headed for Luxor, with whom we would
join up. We were reassured that our wait would be brief,
5-10 minutes … an hour later, the convoy arrived, and off we
went to Luxor.
Before hunting for a place to stay in Luxor, we decided to
make the best of what remained of the day and go
sight-seeing. As we’d been to Luxor before (during our
decadent, five-star Nile cruise in January), we’d already
visited numerous of Luxor’s big-name sights, but also knew
there was plenty more to see. I was interested in three:
Medinet Habu (
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Egyptology/gate.html &
http://www.kv5.com/html/data_habu.html ), the Ramesseum (
http://touregypt.net/ramseum.htm &
http://www.kv5.com/html/data_ramesseum.html ), and the
Tombs of the Nobles ( http://www.tut62.net/noblestombs.htm
). We settled on Medinet Habu for the afternoon, and spent
a pleasant, leisurely couple of hours touring the site’s
impressive temple and surrounding ruins. One of the
drawbacks of our last visit to Luxor was that, as part of a
tour, our time at each sight we visited was strictly limited
and monitored by our guide – and was never enough for me.
Now we were able to explore more or less at our leisure.
After Medinet Habu, we went to look for a place to stay in
Luxor. We had already investigated accommodation
possibilities for Luxor, and knew of a couple of campgrounds
there. We managed to find only one of these, which turned
out to be acceptable, though a bit noisy (what with barking
dogs, crowing roosters, cackling chickens and a nearby
mosque with its five-times-daily call to prayer). Its main
advantage (in addition to showers) was its location within
the town of Luxor itself. So, once we were settled at our
campsite, we went out for a stroll and to find a place to
eat. I was able to borrow a 6mm Allen wrench to tighten up
a coolant pipe as it was leaking a few drops when cold (not
once it warmed up. That was the ONLY vanagon trouble that
we had on this trip.
The stroll turned out to be somewhat less leisurely, but
more instructive, than I anticipated. In addition to seeing
additional Luxor sights, we hoped, within our two- or
three-day stay in the area, to visit two other
archaeological sights not too far from Luxor: the temples
of Abydos and Dendara. While on our evening stroll, we
decided to stop at Luxor’s Tourist Authority to find out
about possible tours to these two places, since they seemed
a little off the beaten track. It was with mixed emotions
that we discovered that the only way to get to these places
was to join one of the three-times-a-day police convoys
especially set up for this purpose. Feeling somewhat
disgruntled by this state of affairs, we nevertheless
realized it was the convoy or no trip. So, we made plans to
join the next day’s 8 a.m. convoy to Abydos and Dendara.
A few words about convoy travel itself is in order here.
These convoys were initiated (I believe) in the early ‘90s
in response to threats and attacks by Islamist terrorists,
as a way to “protect” tourists. This form of “protection”
has become particularly intense since the 1997 massacre of
tourists at Luxor. The Luxor convoys operate as follows:
anyone wishing to travel along the Nile either joins a tour
and travels by bus, hires a taxi, or has their own vehicle.
All such vehicles congregate at a designated spot in Luxor,
for travel at a designated time. Our convoy was quite
impressive: perhaps 30-40 vehicles, including massive tour
buses, minibuses, a few hired taxis and cars, and one
burgundy 1991 Volkswagen camper van. At a signal from the
police (who are milling about on foot and in two or three of
their own vehicles), the convoy moved out – wagons ho! …).
Then the fun began. Once outside Luxor’s town limits, the
main preoccupation of the police seemed to be to exhort the
vehicles in the convoy to drive as fast as possible. The
stated speed limit of 90 kph was of no consequence as 30-40
tourist vehicles hurtled down the Nile road at over 110 kph,
weaving and dodging around donkey carts, goats, sheep,
pedestrians, cattle, and the occasional oncoming auto
driving along on the wrong side of the road. That is, all
but one vehicle …which after the first 10 kilometers ALL of
the other vehicles had passed and the burgundy campervan
stubbornly and proudly brought up the rear, ambling along at
95-100 kph, ever-resistant to police threats and cajoling to
“hush” (“move along” – rhymes with “bush”). Moreover, the
police were “hushing” us from a position of about one metre
behind us, and to the left – i.e., they occupied half of the
oncoming lane, just to make sure no-one outside the convoy
could pass, while forcing oncoming traffic off the road.
All of this on a narrow 2 lane with minimal shoulders.
In addition to the fact that herding we tourists together
into a well-defined group at well-advertised times and
pushing us along the Nile did very little to make me feel
secure from a terrorist threat, the alarming speed and
chaotic travel conditions contributed to a rather
nerve-wracking, three-hour drive to our first destination,
Abydos. However, Abydos, our first stop, was worth every
minute of the hair-raising trip. Here is found the
loveliest temple I’ve seen in Egypt. It’s distinctive for
two reasons: a) the temple itself is nearly complete, with
its roof and columns intact, unlike many of even the
grandest temple ruins like those at Karnak and Luxor; b) the
interior walls of the temple are filled with exquisite,
finely-detailed, beautifully and delicately coloured
reliefs. I wandered about the place for about an hour and a
half, completely entranced. Here it was possible to imagine
the grandeur of pharaonic ceremonial of so many thousands of
years ago.
After tearing ourselves away from Abydos (the police in our
convoy told us it was time to go), we headed for Dendara.
Here, too, is a marvelous, nearly-complete temple,
surrounded by the ruins of various smaller temples and also
an early church. I found Dendara a bit gloomy and dark,
with the shadowy figures of bats (and their squeaking)
somewhat unnerving. Nevertheless, it, too, was a most
interesting place where we wandered about for a couple of
hours. Then, as promised, we were returned to Luxor in our
convoy by about 5:30.
We decided to stay another night at the Luxor campground,
because there were still two places we planned to visit,
both on Luxor’s famous West Bank. So off we went the next
morning to the Ramesseum, the ruined temple complex which
Ramses II had built to his own greatness. Here lies the
broken, colossal statue of Ramses II ( part of the top half)
which inspired Shelley in his poem “Ozymandias”. The whole
place really is a marvelous ruin, definitely a reminder of
the saying “how the mighty have fallen”…. Our final stop on
the West Bank were the Tombs of the Nobles, right across the
road from the Ramesseum. I was interested in visiting these
tombs, because, unlike the more religiously-oriented tombs
in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, the Tombs of the
Nobles contain wall and ceiling paintings illustrating
scenes from Egyptian daily life. There are numerous of
these tombs open to the public, and we managed to visit ten
of them. I found the scenes – which depicted such
activities as hunting, fishing, harvesting crops, pressing
grapes, cutting hair, circumcising, playing music as well as
the offering of food and gifts to the gods – quite
delightful, many of them still retaining their vivid and
varied colours.
We departed the West Bank and returned to Luxor to join
another, early-afternoon convoy, which traveled from Luxor
to Hurghada. We weren’t particularly pleased to be doing
this; however, when we had originally learned about the
convoy system a couple of days earlier, we also learned
that, in order to travel along the Nile from Luxor to Cairo
(our original plan), we would have to pay 400 Egyptian
pounds (about $150) for a “special” police convoy – since
there were no regularly-scheduled police convoys which
traveled that route. Needless to say, and especially given
our recent experience of traveling in a convoy, we rejected
the idea of paying for the privilege, and decided to retrace
our travel steps to Hurghada (on a slightly different route)
via one of the regular convoys.
We arrived at the designated convoy starting point a little
early, and basically hung around, trying to stay cool –
because by this time, 1-2 p.m., Luxor was HOT. According to
our van thermometer, the outside temperature was 44 C (111
F), and the temperature inside the van was 48 C (118 F)!!
For this Canadian, even a dry heat is a little uncomfortable
at these temperatures. Once we were on our way, however,
the temperature did “cool off” to 40, then into the 30s as
we headed east toward the coast. Happily, the van and its
recently-repaired cooling system performed magnificently in
the scorching heat.
Once we were well away from the Nile and headed for
Hurghada, the convoy regime “loosened up” a bit – no more
“hushing” at us, for example. And once we reached the Red
Sea coast, joining the road there at a town called Port
Safaga, the convoy dissolved and we were on our own again.
We spent one more night at our camp spot outside of
Hurghada, and enjoyed another delicious, scenic meal at
Felfela’s there.
The next, our last, day of the trip was relatively
uneventful, during which we made the long drive from
Hurghada back to Cairo. We decided to vary our return route
a bit by turning inland (west, from the Red Sea coast) on a
different, more southerly, road than the one we had first
taken from Cairo. We arrived at the junction of the coast
road and the road we wanted to take and encountered, not
surprisingly, a police checkpoint. Here we were told by the
police that it was “not possible” to get to Cairo by this
route. At this point in the trip we were getting a little
tired of being told by police what we couldn’t do, or what
wasn’t possible; so, we decided to be a bit resistant, and
asked “why?” Generally speaking, this can be a rather
frustrating question to ask in Egypt, because it’s often
answered with a non-answer: a shrug or a look of puzzlement
for even asking the question. In this case, we were given
two different answers: a) because the road we wanted went
to Giza (and somehow, by implication, not to Cairo); and b)
because the road we wanted was “very bad” for 25 kilometres
of its (over 100 km.) length. Answer (a) didn’t make much
sense to us, because Giza is a suburb of Cairo; and we were
both feeling bloody-minded enough to ignore answer (b) by
assuring the police that our van could handle bad road
(which it generally can). This time our persistence paid
off and the police reluctantly let us take the road we
wanted. As we headed back to Cairo along this road
congratulating ourselves for persisting, Malcolm looked
down and noticed that the odometer had stopped rotating!!
We were sure glad that Pat had not mused about cracked
pistons!!!! (back in Cairo I took the odometer apart and
put the central pin back in – works fine now).
We were, shall I say, misinformed about the quality of the
road – it was just fine, and took us, after a couple of
hours, to the Nile road about 100 kilometres south of
Cairo. From there it was a fairly straightforward, though
chaotic (the road being very busy with cars, donkeys,
pedestrians and even a few goats) trip back to our
apartment. Another of our Cairo adventures completed, with
one final major trip – to the Western Desert oasis of Siwa.
We hope to get that posted in a few days!
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