Discovering Egypt

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  Luxor, Nile River Valley, Egypt
Monday, October 20, 2008

Phew...it is SO HOT here!  I'm basically sitting in a dry heat sweating while writing this entry.  Such sacrifices I'm making! ;-)  Today it is 95 F and yesterday was a few degrees warmer here in Luxor, Egypt.  No humidity like back at home, but it still feels like a heavy heat in a way.  The past several days seem almost like they didn't happen now that I am thinking back to everything! 

Let's see...today is Monday so I have to back up to Thursday, the day we departed Aswan on the feluccas!  I really enjoyed Aswan.  Our hotel was right on the Nile with a great view and it was cleaner (mind you, that is not necessarily 'clean') than Cairo was.  The market was also a lot of fun to walk through although I am kind of picky about my souvenirs and didn't get anything there.  The morning we left I had gone out to the market to by some nuts for the trip, but the place was closed, so on my way back I ran into Ahmed and he was going to get falafel for breakfast so I walked along with him.  It was a bit further than I thought it would be as we walked back into the part of the town where the carriage drivers live.  Very different from 5 minutes before along the water front.  There was a little girl carrying her baby brother that started walking with us.  She wasn't asking for any money, which a lot of the children do throughout Egypt, but just talked with Ahmed since she didn't speak English and I couldn't understand her.  She was really cute, her name was Heda I think she said.  At least that much I could understand better.  She told Ahmed she wasn't in school because she had been bitten by a dog and she told him about how she had gone to see the President (who happened to be in town while we were in Aswan, but we were visiting a temple at the time so we didn't get to see him) the day before and how exciting that was while she ate some of the falafel Ahmed bought for her.  He told me each of the pitas was less than $.20.  Its is incredible how cheap some things are here and it was so interesting to walk with this little girl and hear her story.  I would never have ventured up there on my own and so I was grateful to have a guide around to experience more of the true Egypt away from the tourist areas.  On the way back we managed to find a store where I bought a couple of bars (remember this...important part of a story later!). 

Felucca Time!  The feluccas are beautiful sailboats.  The sails are massive and rise so high into the sky!  There is a giant mattress that you lounge on with a much needed shade over you to protect you from the scorching sun, a 'kitchen' and even little changing area/cabin in the front of the boat.  I could sum up the entire felucca experience as................well I thought I could sum it up easily, but I can't!  We spent 2 days laying around and relaxing, playing backgammon, reading, writing, sleeping, eating.  However, after the first day half of the people were sick.  I had read that on any Egypt holiday you are most likely going to get sick at some point from the different cuisine, etc, but we are mostly convinced that part of the trouble was the felucca itself.  Not motion sickness, but for example, they washed our dishes in the same bucket that they asked us to rinse our feet off in before getting back onto the boat when we stopped!  (And used the bathroom...either the bush or the one we made at night)  We, of course, didn't realize this at first! Even though they used mineral water for the washing, hello, the bucket was not totally clean of all the germs!  I woke up the second morning with a pretty upset stomach, but I was not nearly the worst.  David and Luke were both really sick that first day.  Some stomachs are probably just stronger than others in addition to passing around a bug.  The food was really good that our Nubian crew cooked for us though.  All vegetarian too so I didn't have to worry about having something to eat, although some of the time I just had a very little bit not feeling like eating much, and others barely ate at all. I think that some people probably did not want to eat because they thought the food itself was not clean enough and was causing the problems!  People are still feeling a sick now though and it goes from person to person.  I think it is a combination of the food and the incredible heat. 

The sunsets on the boat were beautiful and zigzagging down the Nile against the wind was really cool.  Even at the time it didn't feel like I was on the Nile River!  In Egypt! Awesome! 

The first night was one of our groups birthdays and we sat around and played some games after dinner (before all the illness started remember!) by candlelight and then there was a big bonfire with music and singing and dancing!  It was so nice at night too out of the heat and even chilly although I didn't mind and with a sleep sheet and provided think woolen blanket I was plenty warm enough.  I even went 1/2 swimming in the Nile, it was actually really cold water even though the weather and sun are so hot and something about the cleanliness of the water kept me from going more than half way in...but I was 'swimming' (sort of :-)) in the Nile. 

There was not a whole heck of a lot to do on the felucca so there is not too much more to write about, except the story of the peanut bar.  I told you to remember those bars I bought at the market for later.  I wanted something sweet in the middle of the afternoon on Felucca Day 1 so I ate my peanut bar.  It was hard as it was one of those bars with the hard sugar to make it sweet.  Almost to the end of my bar there was a very hard bit in one of my bites and after realizing it was not a hard bit of sugar like I thought at first, I pulled it out of my mouth and it looked like a tooth!  I knew I hadn't broken one of mine, (Especially after quickly checking and having someone else look in my mouth just in case!) so I got a bit, no a lot, weirded out!  Ahmed was not even sure what it was after trying to bite it himself (why he would try to bite what I told him could possibly be a tooth is beyond me!), but the captain said it was a rock.  I have decided to call said item the 'tooth like rock' which for some reason makes me feel better.  The unfortunate thing, and the reason to include this story, is that somehow the 'tooth like rock' seemed to scratch the side of one of my back teeth and cause a bit of a chip or something to another with a teeny little slightly sharp bit now.  This is all very aggravating as I could not help but have my tongue seeking out the spots and then my tendency for increased anxiety caused me to continue to stress about it.  But, fear not, I am going to go to a dentist in Sydney when I arrive to Australia which I am told will be easy because they have 'heaps' (a very Australian term which I prefer so much over the 'tons' I hear back home all the time!) of private ones there and it should be easy to get in.  Crisis averted!

We stopped in Daraw on Felucca Day 2 which is a village several years behind all the rest, although everywhere there seem to be cellphones!  It was so dirty and there was meat hanging up in the streets which definitely grossed me out especially the fact that someone would eat it after it had been hanging out in the heat covered with flies all day long!  Cooking it could never clean that meat enough for me to go near it; vegetarian or not!  The people there, and all over Egypt, especially the children, call out hello to you.  They all also want to know 'what country?'  David is from Canada and even though I have not seen it in any stores they all say "oh...Canada Dry!"  They also say "Welcome to Alaska!" all the time thinking it is so hot here it is like going to the cold of Alaska.  I sometimes feel like correctly their misconceptions as it is not as cold as you would imagine all the time, but I have not been there in the winter yet...so I don't want to say too much. :-) 

Luxor has been much more dirty than Aswan, but is a very interesting city.  On the way here and around the city are some incredible temples.  Yesterday some of the group road donkeys to the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank of Luxor.  The donkey riding did not agree with my back and I think my donkey was too skinny and I kept slipping, so I walked up most of the way after all, but the view was absolutely incredible back down to the Nile River Valley below.  We met the group after a treacherous decent down the other side of the mountain and our local Luxor guide, Ahmed, and Egyptologist gave us so much more information than we usually get when we visit temples.  We even went in to King Tutankhamun's tomb and saw his mummy!  So much smaller than I was expecting.  It was really neat to see it though because we had seen all the treasure taken from the tomb in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 

We have also seen the Edfu Temple, Luxor Temple (right in the middle of the city and impossible to miss!), Karnak Temple, and Hatshepsut Temple, to name a few in the past couple of days in addition to the many in the Valley of the Kings.  There is so much to see here that you have to fill the days even in the intense heat!

I am discovering so much about Egypt...and about how I react to Egyptians, Egypt inself, and the Muslim religion and culture.  There is so much to learn about and take in and I am loving the discovery so far!

Miss you and love you all!  Hope you enjoyed the rather long (forgive me!) blog!  I would love to hear from you all as I have been just a bit homesick (maybe the 5 week slump), but still really enjoying the trip and the group that I am traveling with now.  Tell me how you are and any updates by email or whatever!

I am off to join the rest of the group on the roof!

Love,
Ali / Althea

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