On the road again!!

Two weeks in Aswan, Aish!
It is long enough to realise that Egypt is not the Sudan! Dealing with the gippos is very trying. You need to haggle for the price of everything from a Coke to a cucumber. The moment you enquire about a price you can see the split second hesitation while they decide how far they can inflate the price.
Our haven was the rooftop pool deck at the Hathor Hotel, our oasis in a desert of thieves! From there we had a bird’s eye view of other tourists running the gauntlet of the “Hello… felucca?” in a pseudo American accent, followed by “Taxi, Carriage, Boat to Kitchener Island?” and we could also watch the passing Nile Cruise ships. You know you’ve been in Aswan too long when the same boats you saw leaving for Luxor are now coming back!
Not to say that the only thieves were the traders and touts, the government is in on the act too. This was blatantly apparent when Tom Cruiser finally arrived and we started the 2 day run-around to get him back. Customs was easy, the carnet was signed and we were off to the traffic police for step 2. This meant visiting each window in a smoky hall and handing over some money at each, even for a folder to store the million pieces of paper we were accumulating in. We then took one of the policemen back to the port where they take a rubbing of the engine and chassis numbers from the vehicle. Luckily our taxi driver had done this before and he was brilliant at keeping everything on track. It is impossible to manage this process without an Arabic speaker. Of course our traffic cop and his sidekick wanted baksheesh because they were working after 12 o clock on a Saturday! I told them, via the taxi driver, that we had travelled for 5 months without paying a bribe and weren’t about to start now.
Day 2 in the process found us at the offices of the government-owned insurance company and here comes an example of legislated extortion. The cost of the insurance is fixed as an annual premium, regardless of whether you need cover for one day, one month or one year. Talk about a rip-off. From there, back to the traffic police to pick up our number plates after watching our file going through about 10 steps before being signed off and sent to data capture – a process just crying out to be computerised. So after at least 10 hours continuous run-around over the 2 days we were nearly ready to get Tom back, nearly that is before paying the traffic police to release the car from the port!! The final nail – aaargh!

So…what have we been eating in Aswan? What a good question Linda! No, it hasn’t been all McDonald’s, although they do make a tasty McArabia, which is chicken or kofta in pita.
We have bought loads of the Arabian bread which is flat pita bread baked in massive street ovens, found at strategic points in the souk. The real price for them is EP1 for 20 loaves! It took us a couple of tries before we got this right. We were charged EP1 for 4, then for 10 and finally for 20. Hard bargaining required here!! The Egyptian meals generally consist of a soup, tahina and pita bread, salad, followed by grilled chicken, kofta (spicy mince meat rolls) or kebabs (usually lamb) served with rice (studded with bits of pasta), vegetables (aubergine and others in a tomato-ey sauce) and a pudding of fruit or a blancmange-like thing.
Street food was mainly chicken or beef schwarmas in pita or koushary which is a tub of rice and pasta with a tomato sauce, bits of onions and a sprinkling of chick peas – both very yummy.

Convoy-time
Kaz and Rebecca had packed up and checked out in time for the 2pm convoy northwards. Rebecca had been given handfuls of stuff when we said goodbye to the McDonald’s staff – McOffice will really miss us!!
We were hoping to stop at the temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu en route to Luxor. It turns out that only the 8 am convoy actually stops there so we opted to accompany the afternoon convoy as far as Kom Ombo, stay overnight, and then catch the next morning convoy to Luxor via Edfu.
What a good move! We arrived at Kom Ombo, ditched the convoy, and had the whole place to ourselves until some of the cruise ships docked and their passengers came ashore. The temple is situated on the Nile river and is very impressive. Our first Egyptian temple! We camped in the car park under the watchful eye of the guards. The Egyptians seem to have ordinary police, traffic police, Tourism and Antiquities police, and then there’s the military as well. A selection of all of them seems to be crawling all over the tourist sites.

Edfu was a real eye opener for us. The concentration of tourists was incredible - it gave us instant claustrophobia - so much so we first decided not to visit the temple and instead sat in the car park and had our coffee. As the hordes had then thinned out a bit, we changed our minds and went in…what a good move. It is the best preserved temple in Egypt and the statues and the hieroglyphics are amazing. Even BW, who we thought would suffer from temple-fatigue, was happy to wander around until it was time to take our place in the convoy to Luxor.

In Luxor, we made our way to Rezeiky Camp where we set up camp under the shady trees. What a relief to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I know I’m going on a bit about the tourists, but we can’t remember when we’ve been around so many people since visiting DisneyWorld nearly 20 years ago!!
The rest of Africa just doesn’t do tourists like Egypt does tourists, that’s for sure!
We made an early start to the Valley of the Kings which is on the west bank of the Nile river. This stretch of the river is quite amazing: it is home to the valleys of the kings and queens, various temples and loads of tombs. We watched the hot air balloons floating above the Colossus of Memmon which are…. well… quite colossal! They are two 18 metre high seated granite statues. We set off for the Valley of the Kings and visited the tombs of Tuthmosis IV, Ramses IV and IX. We tried to visit one from each of the XVIII, XIX and XX Dynasties. Three tombs (there are more than 10 to choose from) are included in the price of the entrance ticket. We then paid over a small prince’s ransom to visit the smallest tomb of them all, that of Tutankhamen. This to put into context the treasures retrieved from the tomb if we visit the Cairo Museum. What were the tombs like? Well, they were all very impressive in their own right.
The colourful walls are generally painted with pictures showing the pharaohs with the various gods, mainly Horus, Isis and Anubis, others covered in hieroglyphics and the quarried tunnels (painted or not) through to the tomb chamber are quite incredible especially if you keep in mind that they are 3500 years old. Rebecca was particularly intrigued by the goddess Nut who swallowed the sun each night at sunset and then gave birth to it again at sunrise the next morning. There were graphic paintings, generally on the ceiling, showing this goddess with the sun travelling through her body.

We drove back to Luxor, after our obligatory coffee stop, with a quick detour into the parking of the temple of Hatshepsut to take a photo.
The next morning found us at the Temple of Karnak at 7am. It was an easy walk from the campsite. The impressive feature of the temple was the 134-column Great Hippostyle Hall, which is the same size as Notre Dame. The temple itself is huge, spread over a large area and even boasts a Sacred Lake.
We caught up on some washing (sorry, no time to check out the wi-fi at the Luxor McOffice) and caught the afternoon convoy to Safarga on the Red Sea. The president was also in Luxor but obviously didn’t know we were there so he didn’t pop in. We did wonder about the window dressing going on, painting kerb stones and planting trees, from Aswan all the way through to Luxor, while one street back from the main roads the streets were still full of rubble and litter and generally an eyesore.
The road from Safarga along the Red Sea to Hurghada was dual carriageway and in good repair so we trundled along quite happily. We drove into Hurghada looking for a campsite and unfortunately the one marked on the GPS had been a campsite once upon a time but not anymore. Hurghada is worse than we imagined! It is wall to wall resort, bright lights, souvenir shops, package tourists and restaurants. Yep, the James’s idea of hell on earth! We had a quick bite to eat and decided to head on to the first police checkpoint and camp wild. Well, we ended up driving until just before midnight when we drove into a parking spot near the coast and slept in the car. It was too windy to put up the tent. Rebecca was happy on the back seat and we put in some practice for flying cockroach class back to SA wedged as we were in the front seats.
At least we had put some kays behind us and Sinai was not too far away. To be honest we hadn’t missed any spectacular scenery as this stretch of the coast is either littered with oil and gas fields or ugly tasteless resorts.

Suez to Sinai
We drove into the fairly large town of Suez where diesel is dearer than Aswan which I found strange given all the oil refineries around. We found our way to the tunnel, which goes under the Suez canal, and before we knew it we were in Sinai. We drove around looking for the best spot for our coffee stop but the place is wall to wall security. There are even manned machine gun posts every 20m as one enters the tunnel. We finally “coffee’d” on the site of a Croatian refugee camp during WWII which is now a memorial and cemetery. Watching the super tankers gliding through the desert up the Suez Canal is a really strange but compelling sight; we could have stayed there watching for ages.
The road to Nuweiba on the eastern shore of Sinai in the gulf of Aqaba was our next stop. The drive through the Sinai Desert was bleak as the road wound through towering granite mountains and inhospitable desert. . If it wasn’t for access to the Suez Canal I can’t see why anyone would want to go to war for this piece of real estate!
There were a couple of police checkpoints who were interested in our nationality and wanted to check passports.
We found Nuweiba and checked into the El Waha campsite for two nights. After our long couple of days in the saddle, we felt we deserved a rest day. The campsite was deserted and we were camped right on the beach. That night we watched the moon rising over Saudi Arabia (18kms across the water!) and the gulf. It was our first beach camp since Mombasa over 3 months earlier! Wow, how time flies! We had a nice, lazy day swimming and snorkelling with BW. That evening we feasted in the restaurant on fresh fish caught that afternoon (we watched the fisherman deliver his catch to the kitchen!)

Dahab – dis is de place, mon!
So many people had told us to go to Dahab, just a short hop southwards from Nuweiba, that we decided to see what all the fuss is about. Our drive through the town didn’t highlight anything special except for the plethora of dive schools and divey hotels. We drove along the coast until we couldn’t go any further and then decided to check out the accommodation options. Camping doesn’t seem to be one of them. Our two nights in Nuweiba had been complimentary (don’t ask – it’s a long story) so we didn’t mind splashing out a little on a decent place to stay.
We chanced upon a place called Mirage Village which was right on the beach, looked very well kept, had parking for Tom and a vacant room so we took it. We walked along the esplanade (what a posh word) and found out why this place attracts so many people. The beach front is lined with Bedouin style restaurants with cushions and loungers just spilling out onto the beach. There are dive classes and snorkellers doing their thing just off the beach as well. No wonder that everyone we spoke to ended up staying here longer than they first planned. This place isn’t laid back, it’s positively supine!
Our first snorkel decided us on staying an extra night. Not even 10 metres from the beach there is a reef wall which is fantastic, especially for Rebecca who is keen on seeing the fish but still not mad keen on the “deep end”. At the Lighthouse site where we snorkelled, the deep end does drop off the wall down to 10 metres and I’m sure in the bay, deeper still. Great for clown fish, scorpion fish and the other typical reef inhabitants too. If the wind drops a bit (windy in the morning, but dies off in the afternoon) there is an eel garden dive site which is also supposed to be good for snorkelling. Hopefully we’ll check it out later today and let you know!