Egypt Encompassed (ok I’m stealing tour names now, but it has such a good ring to it :P)

2008-04-12

Summary

- Cairo

- Mosque of Ahmed Ibn Tulun and Gayer Anderson Museum

- Citadel

- Hearing-impaired KFC

- Hard Rock Cafe

The train ride took about 13 to 14 hours; I didn’t manage much sleep this time. Upon arriving in Cairo at about 10:30 or so, we went straight to the hotel and checked in. We had decided on a quick T-shirt design on the plane for an Egypt tour t-shirt, which we sent off to get made. There was no towels in our room, so we phoned reception and asked for some to be brought up. A bunch of us had decided to go to the mosque and citadel this afternoon, so at noon we met the others in reception and got a taxi. The mosque was huge; upon entering we had to have canvas slippers placed over our shoes. There was hardly anyone else there which was good. We climbed up one of the towers there. At the top of the tower a few of us went out onto the ridge/ledge; the wind was quite strong up there so that got the adrenaline pumping. There was a good view of the city up there. We went next door to the museum, which was quite interesting. It was not so much like your typical museum, it was a house with different rooms set-out as they would have been back in the day. This included Persian rooms, Chinese rooms, Islamic rooms, etc.

We got back in the taxi and went to the citadel where there were thousands of tourists and buses. We decided that we wouldn’t go inside and instead just took some photos of it from outside. Back in the taxi, we headed back to the hotel, then went for a walk to get some lunch. We ate at KFC; when I went up and placed my order they pointed to a sign at the counter which stated that all employees were hearing impaired. That made things interesting in trying to order; I pointed to the wrapstar up on the menu board behind them, but didn’t know quite how to ask for the combo. After pointing at the chips and drink I figure they got the idea. None of them spoke either, so it was just a bunch of pointing and sign language. There was a dude with a big video camera filming for something, possibly doing a story on the place; he was interviewing some guy out the front and then filming inside. We might end up on some Egyptian news or TV show.

After eating lunch we went back to the hotel and negotiated another papyrus painting with the hotel store owner, Hasan. We still had no towels in our room; others also had no towels and some of them made about 10 calls to reception and still had no towels. We headed off for dinner at Pizza Hut. Along the walk the plans somehow changed to dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, which I knew would end up being pretty pricey… it sure was. We caught a taxi to Hard Rock Cafe and ordered our meals, which were around 100 LE each (not bad once you convert, but expensive compared to other Egyptian restaurants). After dinner I haggled a taxi; they all wanted 20 LE, but I knew we could get one for 10 LE. After the 3^rd or 4^th guy I got one to agree to 10 LE. When we got back to the hotel, our T-shirts were ready; I have to say they are quite tacky in comparison to the other 2 tour tshirts we’ve bought on our last 2 tours, and were obviously rushed. I think a few people stayed up for drinks with Nate as he was finishing the tour (he only booked the Nile segment), but we went straight to bed since we had to be up at 6am. I don’t have the energy to stay up late being social and miss out on some decent hours of sleep, especially after a crap slep on the train; 3 months of touring has drained me also.

2008-04-13

Summary

- Alexandria

- Alexandria National Museum

- Kom El Shoqafa Catacombs

- Qaitbey Fort

After breakfast at 6am on Sunday and fare-welling Alli and Bec who had finished the Nile tour with us now, we got on the minibus to take us to Alexandria. My guts weren’t doing too well today, possibly some dodgy food yesterday or something… Two months in east and southern Africa caused no major troubles, and if anything we’ve become more anal about our own hygiene and food choices, yet we are still becoming frequently ill in Egypt; obviously the food and hygiene standards in Egypt are really lacking. The drive took about 3.5 hours until we reached Alexandria. The city seems to be cleaner and fancier than Cairo. Rather than checking into the hotel, we did our sight-seeing first. Our first stop was at the Alexandria National Museum. Unlike the Egyptian Museum, we were allowed to take photos inside here as long as we didn’t use the flash. The museum was much smaller and more organised. There were 3 floors and ‘the tomb’ in the basement. The top 2 floors contained Greaco Roman statues and artefacts, while the bottom floor had the traditional Egyptian pharaoh artefacts. It was interesting to see how the Greeks and Romans influenced the statues. For example Isis, goddess of love and beauty, was traditionally a slim figure; however Romans did not consider a slim figure beautiful, but rather poor, and so later statues of Isis were influenced by the Romans to be a plumper rounder figure. There were also statues of Alexander, whose statues took on quite a feminine look. There was a section dedicated to the orthodox religion, with crosses, books and religious symbolism. In ‘the tomb’ there were original Egyptian artefacts that had been found in Egyptian tombs and there was also a mummy along with inner and outer coffins, and a sarcophagus.

Leaving the museum, we went to the Kom El Shoqafa Catacombs. The catacomb was discovered when a donkey fell down the ventilation shaft (after its use, the catacomb entrance had been covered over). The catacomb was built in the style of the Roman catacombs, but has a lot of Egyptian content. The entrance to the catacomb consisted of a spiral staircase of 91 steps (I counted just to check). Interestingly the steps are slightly sloped downwards and the steps nearer to the top are smaller than those at the bottom; making for an easier climb back up the stairs. The catacomb was originally built for 3 burials. The dead bodies were passed down a shaft central to the spiral staircase, then were passed along the ’slide’ tunnel at the bottom of the catacomb. The floor above had a ‘picnic’ area, where the relatives of the dead would come to share food together. The cups and cutlery used were not taken back into the land of the living, so were instead smashed. Over time the ‘picnic’ room contained a great deal of broken pottery; hence the name of the catacomb ‘ ‘ which means broken pottery. The carvings in the wall were much deeper than usual hieroglyphics, more like a statue carved into the wall to suit the Greek/Roman style. The Egyptian gods were pictured in Greek robes and often elements were missing or incorrect. For example the statue of the wife of the tomb owner has her right foot forward, meaning she has no direction; it should be her left foot forward. The catacomb then turned into a business, with more holes chiselled out of the walls to fit more bodies. When they ran out of space they dug sideways and dug straight into another tomb leaving them with plenty more space; over 400 burials in total. None of the bodies remain today as they were stolen by grave robbers to remove ear rings, amulets, rings, gold teeth, etc. These items were not removed inside the catacomb itself as it would have been pitch black, stinky and spooky down there; hence they stole the whole body and searched it once they were back on the surface.

From the catacombs, the bus took us to Qaitbey Fort where Alexander’s lighthouse once stood; one of the wonders of the old world. This was alongside the Mediterranean Sea. We didn’t bother going inside the fort. Next we were to go to the library, having unique structures around it, however the traffic was very heavy so we skipped the library and went straight to the hotel, arriving a little before 4pm. We took our gear up to the rooms and then went back downstairs to get some lunch. We walked down to a local vendor and bought a shawerma each which we ate back at the hotel. Our room was quite nice, but our balcony view was of a brick wall… very exciting. Skye and I did our laundry (others who had paid to have it done at the King Hotel in Cairo got most of it back dirtier than it’d started) and then had a snooze until about 7:30. We got ready to go out for dinner at 8; having to share a towel after showering since there was only one towel in the room. We caught a taxi to a nearby shopping centre and went downstairs to the food court for dinner. Having a dodgy belly, I just had spaghetti bolognaise and some garlic bread. I had to pry Skye away from the ‘Chocolate Only’ store. After dinner, we went back to our room and I went to bed feeling pretty unwell. The others in the group drank some rocket fuel they’d picked up for 18 LE (supposedly vodka, but vodka usually costs a couple of thousand LE’s).

2008-04-14

Summary

- Library

- El Alamein Military Museum

- El Alamein Commonwealth War Cemetery

On Monday morning we went down for breakfast; would you like some bread with your bread… all they had was different kinds of breads and pastries. Fine by me today as that’s all I planned on eating; I wouldn’t trust my guts with any dairy yet. We headed off, stopping off at the library since we’d missed it the day before. We checked out the huge solar disc there and other various sculptures around the library. I somehow forgot my camera today, leaving it in the hotel room. Leaving the library, we went to the Al Alamein Military Museum; about 1.5 hours drive away. The museum was all right, but nothing special. They had a bunch of photos and dressed up manikins and a display of the guns and tanks found from WW II. By this stage it was approaching 1pm, so we stopped off for ‘lunch’… ok we stopped off at a deli for snacks. We went to the Al Alamein Cemetery where they had an Australian Memorial for the soldiers who had died in the war. The cemetery had hundreds of tombstones set in rows. Then we headed back to Alexandria. Hardly worth the 175 LE we’d paid (it was an optional extra activity) in my opinion, I think that was also the general opinion of the rest of the group. We had also decided not to go out to the oasis the following day, which would cost 480 LE per person. While it would be cool to see an oasis in the desert, I’m not sure it’s worth the 480 LE and the 4 hours of travelling time, especially combined with the 3.5 hours of travelling time back to Cairo first.

We got back to Alexandria at about 3pm, so had some real lunch; more shawermas. Probably not a good choice on my part; it didn’t help my upset guts. We chilled out in Dru and Kate’s room for a while. When we got back to our room, housekeeping had been and only left one towel again, but had left two hand towels…. what the?! While we talking about how retarded that was, there was a knock on the door; housekeeping asking if everything was fine. Well actually no, we’d like another towel, although it wasn’t a simple task to explain that we wanted another big towel… not another hand towel! She came back about 10 minutes later (at least they actually bring the towels when you ask for them here!) with a towel and then stood there waiting for a tip. I just said ‘thank you…..bye’, I wasn’t going to tip her for not getting it right in the first place (We already tip for the housekeeping anyway). Isn’t it obvious that we need two towels… or am I asking a bit much there…? After she’d gone we realized that they’d taken the empty toilet roll, but hadn’t replaced it so we had no toilet rolls in the bathroom.

We were supposed to have dinner at some fancy restaurant like 30 mins away by taxi, but none of us could be bothered going so far for dinner and paying so much, so we ended up just going back to the same food court we’d been to last night. Everyone changed their mind about going to the oasis tomorrow, as did we, since there wasn’t really any other good sites in or around Cairo that we hadn’t seen so there was nothing else to do as such if we didn’t go to the oasis. I was contemplating a chill day, especially since my stomach still hadn’t settled, but decided we’re only here once so might as well do something. I have already decided I am going back to Africa, but not back to Egypt. We didn’t leave for dinner until about 8:15pm (the meal times here are all out of whack; always later than usual). After our amusement ride in another crazy taxi, we headed down to the food court to get stared at again; sorry for being a white tourist! I had spaghetti bolognaise again; something boring and bland and relatively safe that might stay in my stomach for more than an hour… it’s pretty hard to stuff up the cooking and preparation of spag. bog., but there’s always the cooking hygiene to battle with over here). As you can probably tell by the nature of my writing, I’m getting a bit fed up with my travels in Egypt. Dru and I are gonna peak if we don’t have toilet paper and towels in our rooms back at Cairo tomorrow. Some of the girls went to the shops afterwards and Skye and I couldn’t be bothered waiting around, so we caught a taxi back to the hotel since it was almost 10:30pm and we had to be up at 6am tomorrow. We got the best taxi back, it was all pimped up; neons, mirrors, a metallic skull drink holder, all sorts of meters and dials… it was awesome. And he was cranking hip-hop music, even better. I had to tell him how awesome his taxi was before we got out When we got back to our room we packed up most of our stuff before going to bed.

2008-04-15

Summary

- Cairo

- Arabian Nights

- Wadi El Rayan (oasis)

- Valley of the Whales

On Tuesday morning we were up at 6am, packed everything up and had breakfast… or should I say BREADfast and then we headed off at 7am. Mohamed decided that we wouldn’t go to the hotel in Cairo but instead meet the 4WDs to take us to the oasis on the outskirts of Cairo and have the mini-bus driver take our bags to the hotel. This was designed to gain an hour of time as it was half hour to the hotel and half hour back to that point. However, when we arrived at the point we had to wait half an hour for the 4WDs to show up anyway, and not going to the hotel meant there was not that toilet stop. I had been holding on for about an hour and I told Mohammed that if he didn’t get me to a toilet soon I was gonna fill my pants. The rest of the bus found my TD troubles quite amusing and tried to encourage me to do my business amongst the bushes on the median-strip. I held on; the 4WDs came and they stood around arguing about something for 15 minutes… maybe it wasn’t an argument; Arabic always sounds like an argument. We finally took off and pulled over at a petrol station a few minutes down the road… ah relief! We continued on our way; I ended up in the back of the 4WD sitting sideways. It was a hot day so it was bloody hot back there as the air-con only really cooled the front of the 4WD. We stopped off after almost an hour for lunch at Arabian Nights. We were welcomed by a band of 6 with drums and horns. The hotel was all an outdoor setting with a beautiful pool area and dining area with music playing. We asked about the cost of rooms there and it was only US$150 for a suite for 4 people, quite a good price for the quality of the place I thought, yet we were the only ones in the whole palce except for the staff… odd. We sat in the dining area along side the pool, but as it was so hot (even under the shade of the umbrellas) we went down to a carpeted area under a grass canopy. It was surprisingly much cooler under there, so we lounged around on the cushions on the floor as we waited for lunch. With my edgy stomach, I went for pasta again; spaghetti bolognaise. It looked and tasted great, but there was obviously a lot of pepper and/or spice added as it was quite hot, hence I thought it best not to eat much of it as spicy food was the last thing I needed right now.

After lunch there was some trouble with the bill, with the total money collected being 70 LE short. I’m not sure how or what they stuffed up as they collected payments from each person individually for their meals and drinks. Anyway, we left Arabian Nights and headed on our way to El Rayan. We drove for about another 1.5-2 hours before arriving alongside the waterfalls. The body of water was much larger than I’d anticipated, a huge lake where you couldn’t see from one end to the other. There were heaps of locals there jumping off the waterfalls. We went down to the water for a swim. The first spot we went to had garbage littered along the water’s edge so we walked up a bit further. The water was still pretty manky there; very sludgy under your feet and the water was green in colour, presumably algae. It was so bloody hot though, so going in the water was the only way to cool off. Not quite the crystal clear oasis water I’d imagined… We had lots of annoying locals who would come along and stare at us, particularly at the girls. Even when you stare back at them and give them a wtf look, they don’t stop staring… weirdos. I had to use the toilet there, which was really bad; absolutely reeked and there were flies everywhere, not to mention all the mess on the floor, walls and doors.

We left the oasis and went to the Valley of the Whales. This area used to be underwater and there are fossils that have been found here of whales with legs. These fossils are apparently one of the best places in the world for supporting the theory of evolution. We saw a few of the fossils there, but it was a 3km trail to see them all which would have taken a couple of hours, which we didn’t have. The landscape there was great too; golden rock formations littering the desert sand. We left the fossils and later stopped off by some large rocks for some photos. After about 10 minutes a sand storm picked up so we jumped back in the 4WDs and headed on our way. The sun went down as we drove; there has not been a spectacular sunset in Egypt yet due to all the dust/smog in the air. We went back to Arabian Nights for dinner as we’d liked it there earlier. Shane challenged me to a game of large chess; the metre high wooden chess pieces on a big chess board type of chess. I beat Shane and then beat Mohammed, but when I played against our 4WD driver he was just too good for me. A few people went in the pool for a charge of 20 LE, since we weren’t actually staying at the hotel. I ordered Spaghetti Napolitana with no spice, which was much better. All was well until we were paying our bills. It was a 30-45 minute process. The guy collecting the money spoke very little English; he couldn’t even tell us how much our bill was in English. We were overcharged by about 20 LE (the bill was 75 LE), so asked to see the menu again. Anyway, a couple of others were arguing about their bills also and some people were being asked to pay a bill they’d already paid, while others were still waiting for change; it was all just very unorganized. The guy came up to us again later and asked for us to pay and we asked how much and he looked at our bill and this time it was 70 LE. Mohamed translated our Arabic bill for us and they were charging us 20 LE each for our 15 LE meals. Skye and I, as well as Mohamed, asked for a menu on several occasions, but it never came so we just gave them 60 LE and walked off (15 LE for both meals, 3 drinks at 5 LE each, then their 10% and 12% taxes it should have come to 55 LE). It was only 20 LE they were trying to overcharge us, which is only like $4, but that’s not the point…. it’s the ethics of the thing and I’m sick of being ripped off.

The drive back to the hotel met fairly heavy traffic in Cairo, so we didn’t get to King Hotel until 11pm in Cairo. We then had to wait around for our room key from reception, which was another 15 minute process… how hard can it be? We were all getting pretty pissed off by this stage cos we were tired and wanted to go to bed to get some sleep before our 5:30am start tomorrow to leave at 6am. We finally got our room key, collected our luggage and went up to our room… ONE TOWEL… ffs. We both wanted a quick shower so we had to share the towel… but the shower was one of those nozzle showers on a hose that you can take off the hook on the wall if you want… except this shower’s hose wasn’t even long enough to reach the hook on the wall so you had to hold it while showering and the hose was so short it only came up to just above waist height… pathetic. I’s had a gut-full, so I made good use of the comments card that was sitting in our room. The only positive thing I had to say about King Hotel was the waiter there was really good. The bellman was also good, but I didn’t have room to add that in after all the negative comments.

2008-04-16

Summary

- Sinai

- Saint Katherine

- Mt. Sinai

Wake-up call at 5:30am… arghh, sick of early mornings! We went downstairs for 6am and waited for everyone else to come down. Shane had now finished his part of the tour (Nile and Alexandria), so we saw him off. We had two new starters this morning who would be joining us for the rest of the tour. Off we went in the mini-bus for our long drive to Sinai. Hopefully they’ve found those 2 terrorists they were searching for in the Sinai area, according to the smart traveler (DFAT) update on 8^th April 2008. We stopped off at about 8am for a loo stop and snacks for anyone, then went through the tunnel underneath the channel. We had now left the Africa part of Egypt and were entering the Asia part. We stopped off for lunch at about 10am. My stomach seemed to be settling, although by the sounds of it everyone else’s seems to be firing up, so I decided to order rice and some veggies. The ‘veggies’ consisted of a chopped up potato, which was cold. The rice was also cold.

We continued on our way after lunch, passing through several security checkpoints along the way, and arrived in St Katherine just after 1pm. We waited around for our room keys and then lugged all our gear into the rooms. We were originally supposed to be in a 6-person hostel room, but we ended up in 3-person rooms instead. Since there was 11 of us, there were 3 groups of 3 people and 1 group of 2. Being the only couple we got the room between the two of us. The rooms were pretty average and the bathrooms were really dirty. We got towels, but they were half the size of a normal towel. The shower didn’t drain properly so we had to keep turning the water off throughout our showers. We didn’t get into our rooms until after 1:30pm and only had until 2pm to get ready for the Mt Sinai climb. I don’t think I ended up forgetting anything; I changed into pants, strapped my ankle, put thick socks on and hiking shoes, wore a lighter coloured t-shirt so I wouldn’t get too hot, and then packed 2 litres of water, tripod, camera, polariser, shutter release, jacket, beanie, and head torch.

We took the bus to the base of the mountains, arriving just before 2:30pm. All but 2 people from our group were doing the hike. We walked by St Katherine Monastery before the walk got steeper. The guide set off at quite a fast pace, and after only a few minutes most of us were falling behind, but he did not slow down. For the first 15 minutes a guy followed us with a camel; if you don’t want to climb the mountain or can go no further, you can get on a camel that will take you to the top… well not the top but to the base of the 700 steps that lead to the top. He must have figured we looked like a determined bunch and given up trying to sell a camel ride. Every 20 minutes or so we’d pass another hut/cafeteria where we’d rest for a few minutes before continuing. After about 1.5 hours we reached the base of the 700 steps. By this stage you’re so knackered the pace has slowed right down. We continued until reaching the last cafeterias before the peak of Mt Sinai at about 4:30pm. We sat around there for about 40 mins or so; I bought a Mars bar from the cafeteria. Then onwards up the last 100 steps; after sitting around the lactic acid had built up so my legs were kaning and each step was such an effort. We got to the top of Mt Sinai, where Moses was said to have received the 10 commandments from God. There was a film crew up there filming by the church/chapel at the top. We watched as the sun got lower and after about 30 mins it started to set. When I setup my tripod, before I’d taken a single shot, the head snapped off. I was pretty ticked off that I’d lugged it up the mountain and it’d broken before I’d even used it. A German guy at the top had a multi-purpose tool so I used the pliers to dismantle the tripod further, making it usable. The wind was very strong at the top of the mountain, having a really chilly bite to it. We watched and snapped the sunset. Right after the sun disappeared from view we had to start descending the mountain so that we could tackle the stairs while there was still light. Bit of a shame really as the best shots are generally taken after sunset. The light gradually faded and we relied on our head torches to see where we were going. Going down the mountain took less than half the time it took to go up; not taking any rest stops along the descent.

We got back to the hostel after 8pm and went straight to the dining hall for dinner. It was a buffet dinner and what’s new the food was cold. I barely ate anything but bread, I figured that was the safest option. The veg was stone cold, casserole stone cold, some of the rice was edible but generally it came in warm and cool pockets. There was a cat and a kitten walking around the dining room floor hanging around our feet… very hygienic! The staff knew the cats were there but did nothing about them. We bought a water there, which cost twice the price of what it’d normally cost in Egypt. We packed away most of our gear, having emptied my small backpack to take up the mountain, and then Skye went to bed while I went down and had a quick smoke of some apple sheesha, before heading to bed myself.

I don’t think I mentioned previously that we were originally meant to climb Mt Sinai for sunrise tomorrow, but this would mean we’d have to get up at about 1am and when we got back down we’d pretty much be going straight to the port to catch the hydrofoil to Jordan, so would not have time to sleep during the day. We opted to do the sunset climb today instead, which meant we had to leave Cairo by 6am this morning to reach St Katherine in time to hike up Mt Sinai for sunset.

2008-04-17

Summary

- Monastery

- Boat from Nuweiba to Aqaba

We had breadfast in the dining room, which was once again littered with cats and kittens, before heading to the St Katherine Monastery at 9am. The monastery was packed with tourists. When we finally got inside we had a look at the Burning Bush and the well that was used, and then went inside the church. I had brought my external flash along on my camera, but as it turns out you can’t use the flash inside the church anyway, so I didn’t use the flash at all. However, as I went into the church I noticed that the flash diffuser off the end was missing. The place was packed so I just had to go with the flow of the crowd. When we got back out I retraced my steps in the monastery, but couldn’t find it. The crowd had dispersed from the Burning Bush so I went up and touched it. I think it is said that if you touch the Burning Bush you will be blessed. We left the monastery and Mohamed was feeling pretty ill, although I can’t say I’m surprised after seeing him put his bread down on a filthy table before picking it up and eating it the yesterday at lunch. As we walked back to the bus I saw some mangled plastic rubbish in the dirt… hang on, that’s the flash diffuser; hardly recognizable, but it was definitely mine. It had obviously been trampled by the crowds so it was all out of shape and covered in dust. I nabbed it up off the floor, brushed it off and bent it kinda back into shape… it’ll still do its job. Maybe that Burning Bush paid off. We went back to the hostel and cleared out our gear, packing it on the bus. We had our last look at Egyptian souvenirs in the markets as we were interested in getting a small Tutankhamon statue, however the price the guy was asking was too high and he wasn’t willing to budge enough. The guy selling the glass perfume bottles was a prick, he was so rude when I said I wasn’t coming into his shop cos I wasn’t interested in glass bottles; I’d never buy anything from him and I’d recommend nobody else buy his glass perfume bottles at St Katherine hostel. We left St Katherine at around 11:30am.

We arrived at the Nuweiba sea port at about 1pm and sat in the bus waiting for Mohamed to sort things out. It looked like things weren’t go so well with a lot of shouting and arm waving. I think we couldn’t get on the 2:00 hydrofoil. At about 2:00 we were told to go through the security, which we did and then had our departure stamps stamped in our passports before waiting for the boat. We were told by Mohamed (before he left us, as he does not leave Egypt so does not come on the boat) it’d be about 1.5 hours, so we waited, and waited. There was nothing to do at the terminal but wait. There was a single canteen selling crisps, chocolate bars and drinks; so there was nowhere we could get anything for lunch. 1.5 hours went by and we waited, another 1.5 hours went by and we waited. The uncomfortable seats in the terminal combined with my hunger had me getting quite restless and impatient.

Somewhere between 6 and 6:30, there was some movement and we made our way out to the buses, piling our luggage on the bus and climbing onboard. The bus only drove a few minutes, then we had to get off and put our backpacks back on. The luggage is quite heavy with all our souvenirs, so it sucks picking up bags and putting them down all the time; I’m probably carrying over well over 30kg with both backpacks combined (carry-on camera backpack and checked big backpack); no luggage trollies here. We loaded our bags onto the boat (which was not a hydrofoil, so obviously the hydrofoil left at like 2pm then and we must have got thrown onto a slow boat) and went onboard. We saw a booth saying passport stamps, so David and I lined up there. When David got to the front he was told he needed to collect all the passports from the group and bring them back all together. I had read that this would happen in the pre-departure notes for the tour. So David collected everyone’s passport and took them back. A couple of the people on the tour were yelling at him and abusing him; I can’t quite understand what that was all about, they knew the procedure. Most of them were all worrying about their passports, but I can’t say I was bothered by it at all; this was what was always done on the tours. We had never been told by our Egypt tour leader (Mohamed) about the passport procedure on board (which probably would have put more people’s minds at ease), nor were we told that there was nowhere to get lunch at the port terminal. The boat did not start moving for like an hour. There was a canteen on board, so we got some chocolate bars and a lunch box consisting of 2 burgers, a bag of crisps and a can of Marinda; at least it was something resembling a meal since breakfast was at 8am this morning… like 11 hours earlier. All the locals on the boat were unbelievable, leaning forwards in their seats to look down the row at any female tourist, Skye included. Even when you look back at them and shrug and give them a ‘what?!’ gesture they just keep staring. Blondes get it really bad in Egypt, and the more skin that’s revealed the more attention you will get. Skye told me that she gets hassled a lot more, with comments yelled at her, when she’s walking with the other girls compared to when she walks with me. I exchanged my remaining Egyptian Pounds to Jordanian Dinars, though I only had 50 LE left so I’d worked out the costs pretty well. This converted to only 6 JD. This is the first time that we have used a currency that is stronger than the USD.