The Bus Odyssey - Escaping Cairo
Trip Start
Oct 27, 2006
1
3
9
Trip End
Nov 11, 2006
Suez,
Red Sea and Sinai,
Egypt
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
I went off to scavenge some food for the trip (I told Mum I'd get snacks, so she almost cried when I came back with cheese sandwiches because she was hoping for something unhealthier) and a toilet. I drink a lot of water, so I go to the bathroom a lot. This makes a 7 hour bus trip (actually it turned out to be more like 8 hours) rather daunting for me because there is no way I could ever last 7 hours without going to the toilet. Sure, the driver won't be able to either, so the bus will definitely stop but this is hardly reassuring when you have no idea what the bus driver is saying if he makes that kind of announcement. Plus it is a well known fact that most men pee quicker than women, what if the driver didn't take this into consideration and left without me?! The point is I was anxious to find a toilet in the bus station to delay the onset of "when is this driver going to stop so I can get off the bus and pee" stress.
One guy sent me to a bathroom that was still under construction and had four workmen on ladders mending the ceiling, which I declined. I found another that had several women standing near the doorway. This looked more promising. When I came out of the (truly disgusting) toilet, the women had shut the door and were barring the way out and said "money". Fortunately I was much bigger than they were. When I acted like a thick head and said "No thank you!" and went to open the door, they scattered. This did not work when the bus stopped at Suez and I sprinted off for a toilet stop. The toilet was even stinkier but the woman who blocked the exit was really big and I couldn't see any way to get out without manhandling her, so I parted with the pound she asked for.
After 6 years in Taiwan, where the public toilets can sometimes be really rank (a lot of women step on the toilet seat and often miss the bowl, if you get what I mean... and even if they don't miss, many are recalcitrant non-flushers of toilets and because paper cannot be flushed, but must be thrown in the bin by the toilet, this bin is usually overflowing with tissue paper smeared with various things best left unsaid... apologies to anybody who just ate!), I am hardly a sissy about a stinky dunny, but those in Egypt often made me gag. Since there is no doubt a shortage of water, most don't flush and I suspect half are never cleaned. The worst I saw was at the bus station in Al Milga which looked like something ugly had exploded all over it and the walls. In such cases there is only one thing to do and that is roll up trouser legs, block nose and thank any deity listening that my legs are long so I don't need to sit on the toilet to pee. I would have tried standing on the seat Taiwanese style except that the toilet seat looked dirtier than the floor and God forbid if you slipped and your foot went in the bowl. EW!
Actually, because of the Muslim prayer thing, there were plenty of opportunities to get off the bus to pee. In the end it was the stinky loo at Suez that put me off going to the toilet again. That and a fear of losing the bus. When I came back to the bus at Suez, I realized my Mum was missing. When I looked out the window I saw her climbing onto another bus and had to go and rescue her. I wonder where she would have ended up if I hadn't!?!
Other interesting things about the bus trip? The soldier sitting across the aisle from me spent half of the trip staring at me. After what I said about the souk, you are probably all thinking I tried to clobber him or something, but strangely enough, it didn't bother me since he just seemed to be curious, rather than hateful, sleazy, hostile...etc.
A couple of hours into the trip, an Arabic DVD was put on loud enough to make my ears buzz. I was saved from the blaring movie by my MP3 player (I had it turned up really high, so I am surprised I didn't burst an ear drum or something) poor Mum just turned kind of glassy-eyed and put up with it. Every now and then I would open my eyes and watch a bit of the movie, but I stopped after one part I saw when an actress head-butted this guy who was picking on her. That sent me into a fit of giggles which were quickly stifled when a bunch of men nearby all turned around to stare at me, including the soldier who was now sitting half in the aisle for a better view and was thus unnervingly close to invading my personal space. I pulled up my hood, hunched down in my seat, closed my eyes and had evil thoughts about doing some head-butting of my own.
There was one other Westerner on the bus, also Australian, by the name of James. Every time we went through a checkpoint (there were many), the three of us would pull out our passports and try to look respectable. In the end it was an Algerian who was pulled off the bus for a more thorough check. Apparently Australia is still considered a fairly inoffensive country to be a citizen of, despite the wars we have been involved in recently, the number of our nationals who have been arrested, or killed off, for drug related crimes in SE Asia, not to mention the 2 Australians that had been arrested in Yemen a few days before for smuggling arms! Oops.
At one stage the kid behind me asked me for water, which I thought was odd. I said no because I had bronchitis (true, although the real reason was because I was worried about getting bugs from him, not passing mine on) and then was surprised when the soldier next to me asked the guy in front of me for some water. The guy passed his bottle across despite the two of them being complete strangers. I guess it might be kind of mean to refuse someone water when you are in the middle of a desert. In any case the same kid puked in the aisle behind me about 15 minutes before we got off, which might have been my pay back for being stingy with my H2O.
We arrived in Al Milga (the village near the monastery) in darkness and were again descended upon by hoards of taxi drivers. No signs, no maps, no lights, no idea which direction to head in. Taxi drivers wanted 40 pounds for the 5-10 minute drive to the monastery. The 8 hour bus trip from Cairo only cost 37 pounds! Fortunately this time we had a bloke in tow: James. We said no oodles of times, but they persisted. He said no twice and they left us alone. Great shitheads.
A guy going to the campsite offered to walk with us part of the way to the monastery (the campsite is on the way). A taxi driver drove off in a stink, yelling "I think he is lying to you" at us out the window. Fortunately neither Mum nor James seemed to hear this and so it was only me who was plagued by fears of being led off into the middle of nowhere and mugged. Al Milga is in the middle of the Sinai desert. It is surrounded by mountains and is pitch black at night. Not a place you want to be lost in. Considering we had no idea where we were, we were being very trusting by following him. After 15 minutes of walking I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we saw a road sign pointing in the direction of the monastery. The campsite guy told us to drop by for tea sometime and went home. Nice guy, but it was sad that I automatically assumed he wouldn't be.
We trundled on uphill and were stopped by barricade and checkpoint, which was both sobering and reassuring. The monastery has been a refuge for Christians in the Sinai since it was built. In the 6th C AD (maybe), Justinian built a fortress around it for this reason. It is still a centre for pilgrims (and tourists, predominantly Christians) and because of this it is, apparently, still a target. Thus the checkpoint. So the checkpoint was placed there by Muslims to protect Christians from other Muslims. The world is an odd place.
Anyway, 2 guys accompanied us from the check point up to the monastery and asked us for baksheesh, which was a bit rich of them since we actually knew where we were going by then! But despite my fears of getting lost, or losing our reservation because the bus was late, the monastery had dinner ready and waiting for us when we arrived. The guesthouse was full, so these fears were not so paranoid. In fact James had called up the night before to book a room, only to find out the guesthouse was fully booked, so he was going to hike straight up Mt Sinai, sleep on the top and catch the sunrise. Not sure whether this was cool and brave, or just foolhardy (it was really cold out there), But by that time I was too tired, hungry and busting to go to the toilet to care, so we wished him luck and checked in. We saw him at the dining hall the next night, so he obviously managed alright.
After I was convinced we were heading in the right direction, the walk to the monastery was peaceful for me, despite lugging a pack around on my back. I could see stars glittering in the sky above us and feel the presence of huge mountains surrounding us, which told me that the view we would be greeted with when the sun rose would be spectacular. But for Mum, the walk was unpleasant. She was dragging a suitcase on wheels behind her in deep sand, had a back pack on her back and another carry bag. The guy from the campsite asked if she needed a hand. She said she was fine. I got that. Would have caused baksheesh issues. James asked if he could carry something for her. She said she was fine. Okay, pride. I got that too. But when I asked her (more than once) if I could take something for her and she said she was fine again, I admit I was surprised because I knew she was not. I would have just taken the suitcase but I was worried she would have clobbered me. Mum managed to lug all 3 pieces of luggage up to the monastery, which just goes to show, what I said about mules and oxen in our family tree was absolutely true! She was very stoic, but I swear I heard something dirty escape her lips when we realized we'd actually walked too far, past the guesthouse entrance, and had to backtrack!
Suffice it to say we were relieved to escape Cairo and even more relieved to actually make it to St Katherine's.
