Egyptian / Tourist "interaction"
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Aswan,
Egypt
Saturday, March 18, 2006
... these Egyptians have taken it to mean exploit tourists. Travel Egypt by yourself and you'll get the picture very quickly.
We piled out of the train from Cairo. Justin pointed to six dozen other backpackers also getting off the train and said "I think we're going to have a housing crisis." With so many other people needing beds, and not having reserved accomodations in town, Justin and I anticipated a problem on our hands. We booked it to the best recommended hotel in our guidebook. We got there and found a room for four bucks a night each. It had a private bathroom - but without a working shower - we would discover at 3 the next morning.
On the train we had discussed visiting Abu Simbel together (it's a tomb from pharonic times and it's in every picture book ever compiled on Egypt. When the government of Egypt decided to put a dam on the Nile, they realised that it would flood and be lost forever, so in an enormous engineering effort, they moved it up to the top of a hill). It is a 280 km trip towards the Sudan, and it can only be reached through a special day trip. At the Nubian Oasis, we discovered that the personel were not going to give us a reasonable price for the trip. We haggled a bit, but when the best we got was one dollar less than ten dollars above the going rate, we said we would go and shop around.
We found a pizza place the guidebook recommended. It seemed clean enough, and the pizza was tasty when seasoned with hunger. However, the waiter who brought it to us stood two feet away from the table and didn't move until we finished eating. We sat there for a moment expecting him to give us some space, but it never happened. We fed on the pizza while this man picked at his nails. Waiters of the world: such conduct doesn't earn good tips.
Justin had an idea of what he wanted to see that afternoon and toggled off thataway. As for myself, there were some ancient tombs to explore on the left bank of the Nile. I hired a Fellucca across the river at twelve times the cost of the motor boat ferry. Sadly, I couldn't find the motorboat launch after walking hundreds of meters up and down the riverbank. After a seven minute ride, my boatman shouted oaths at me when I gave him no baksheesh. I dodged seven children who each wanted a "dollar." Up the hill from the riverbank, I bought a ticket for the Prince's Tombs.
These tombs are cut into the riverbank which goes up quite a ways. Over the eons the Nile has whittled through more than thirty stories of rock (so I estimate). A few thousand years ago, wealthy men got in on the trend of carving a tomb out of the cliff face on the cliffs (for all I know, they may have invented tomb carving). I probably would be able to pass on a bit more knowledge about this site if I had had the desire to follow a swarmy fellow who sat in the shade of one of these tombs and offered to show me around. I was long worn out of "helpful" company (it was only 11 am) and I explored the tombs by myself.
Most of the tombs had been relatively recently unearthed for the first time since they had been filled in, and there was a surprising amount of original paint and heiroglyphs to see. The plaster looked fantastic in spots, and although the rooms were bare it felt amazing to see ancient history up close. But only so close. Local birds had capitalised on the caves and they had set up nests under the ceilings. I'm all for bird rights and such, but this sort of squatting is abhorent when the inhabitant is perfectly hidden, and then it sneaks right up behind you and flaps its wings until you jump out of your skin. It's not hospitiable. There's also the fact that these birds don't give a damn about the upkeep of the place either. One tomb was outright depressing. Old-as-the-hills paint and plaster had been splattered with bird feces to the extent that the ancient paint was only just visible.
I spent the rest of the day walking around getting hassled. Above the tombs is the sandy eastern fringe of the Sahara desert. Some guy was hanging out in a ruined observation post with his camel and he wanted me to ride it. For half an hour he followed me around as I walked over the sand. I was tired of it, and I had ran out of water (it was more than 30 degrees out) and I went to get the motorboat across the river. All the felucca boat captains along the wharf were still trying to drum up my business. Taxi drivers slowed next to me as I walked along the sidewalk, offering rides. I tried sitting in the park for a while until a group of kids wanted financial support from me and some Danish seniors. I had a few minutes of peace at one point in a quarry far to the south of town. It's where the brilliant red granite found all over southern Europe and West Asia comes from. I walked back to my hostel and passed down a market street. You can imagine how peaceful that was. Gosh I am cynical about all that. Sure the scenery was splendid. But that's not the part I remember.
Back at the hotel, Justin had managed to get us a half decent price on the tour. We slept at 9 pm, to be ready for a 3 am wake up call for the service to Abu Simbel.
