"Camel?", "Caamel?", Camelll for you?" Alexandria, Mt Sinai and Dahab on the Red Sea

Coke sign flashing between English and Arabic, Cairo

Cairo traffic

Spencer, Ish and myself set out early for Alexandria, we were uncertain if Ish would be able to get a ticket with us on the 8am train, but we were hopeful, after taking the subway to the train station we found that our train was booked out but Ish purchased tickets for the 8.15 train, which was a slower train than ours and would arrive 45minutes later in Alexandria. Trying to find a seat on a train when most of your ticket, platform signage and carriage snumbers are in Arabic is a little tricky...we managed alright and it only cost us a one pound tip for the station assistant. Egyptian trains are very good, for 35 pound (6 Aussie dollars) you can get a second class ticket, which entitles you to a large airline style seat in a well insulated carriage on a train which leaves on time (yep, like to the second!)

2nd class train seats

After 2 ½ hours we arrive in Alexandria, after the man in front of us has almost killed himself by not placing his bag in the luggage racks properly and it falls on his head mid journey and the foreign lady in front of us has pretended to be asleep when the food and beverage people came back through the carriage to collect the money!

We arrive at a large, colonial style train station and book tickets for our return to Cairo the following day, sit down and have the most overpriced cake and drink to be found anywhere in Egypt and wait for Ish. I stand at the end of the platform as each train arrives, with only one way off the platform we figure we cannot miss him, however we manage to, so by 11.30 we decide that we have to revert back to our original plan to meet at the Hotel Excelledor. Sounds easy doesn’t it?.....hmmm, after one and a half hours of walking, asking for directions, trying to flag a taxi, trying to get a taxi to understand us, finding the tourist information centre and getting the directions written down in Arabic, then asking about another 20 people and back tracking our steps and trying to flag more taxis we get to the hotel only for the manager to tell us that Ish had been there and left. Spencer sets off to the other hotel we had talked about and McDonalds to see if he is there, no luck. He returns to where I am waiting with our gear and we try to book a room, now the lady at the tourist information centre had said we should pay about 100 pounds for a double room, lonely planet had said about 80 pounds, this man tried to charge us 200 pounds! There is something about Egyptians that won’t let them back down on their prices, this man wouldn’t budge from his 200 pounds for his old run down hotel room in the back streets, so we headed towards the waterfront and got a sea view, lovely room for 160 pounds, and we found out later that night that of all the hotels in Alexandria we had booked into the one right next door to where Ish was staying. We caught up with him later that night and compared stories of just how difficult it was to find the hotel and the exorbitant prices the man felt he needed to request for dodgy rooms!

Alexandria train station

From there we strolled along the foreshore, Alexandria is a lovely city on the Mediterranean, we had a look around the library, some sculptures the many mosaics artworks that line the streets and some of the backstreets.  We found a supermarket for some supplies for dinner, thinking that a dinner in our hotel room overlooking the Mediterranean and feasting on feta, sundried tomatoes, gherkins etc would be a great evening, not so, the supermarket was incredibly understocked and all we came out with was 24 hoho roll impersonations, some soft drink and dodgy, bodgy cheese. We then (quite ashamed of this) resorted to a three course fast food feast (hey, we hadn’t had fast food since Australia before hitting Egypt!), first course was salad in KFC (believe it or not, after waiting 10 minutes to actually order my coleslaw I had to wait five minutes for someone to pick it up and put it on a tray and hand it to me!) then second and third courses at McDonalds, where both Spencer and I had our first Big Mac’s, I have just never felt the urge to eat one, he had given up meat before the McDonalds appeared in Hamilton. I will add that we got the Big Macs without the meat patties and there were not great, shall stick to my cheeseburgers without the meat in the future! Third course of a caramel sundae was forced in around the edges of the hoho, cheese, coleslaw, fries, burger, coke! Gee we certainly are looking forward to getting home and eating normally again, I have sworn that’s the last of the fast food for awhile, back to falafel....(yeah we were served up falafel for breakfast the following morning!)

After a browse through the shops, I announce that one street alone has more shoes than the whole of Malawi and Zambia combined, I purchase a pair of jeans and decide that my figure is just not the same as it was when I was in my twenties, Spencer agrees with this a little too enthusiastically, so I assure him that it’s still pretty good for someone in their thirties. We head back to our hotel, to our sea views, fridge and cable TV (after travelling rough for so long it doesn’t take much to excite us!)

The following morning we walk along the esplanade to the Citadel of Qaitbay which is an incredibly impressive building. Apart from the obnoxious school kids running riot through he place, taking photos of us without permission and generally harassing me; it was a really good visit. Seeing the school kids on excursion made me understand exactly why Egyptian men are so sleazy, they learn it at school. Spencer and I were standing in one of the turrets and about 20 odd kids stood there taking photos on their phones and asking stupid questions and trying to use the only words of English that they know (always the f word), I crack when I turn around and see their teacher standing amongst the kids gawking up at the foreigner! After relentless badgering and sly, smarmy comments that they have obviously heard their fathers use, I tell them they are an embarrassment to their country and to go away, I then tell their teacher to keep them in line and that I am a teacher in my country and would be ashamed to have my kids acting like his were! Unbelievably so, the little bastards are still following me, they very quickly learn exactly how loud my voice will go when required, the added bonus was that I was in a huge stone building which produced amazing echos! About 15 kids scattered on my fist word, the other ten scattered on my second word, a few peeped back around the corner on my third word. From there I went to tell the guards that there were very bad kids in there that needed sorting out, now if I though I had a loud voice, it was nothing on his, we went shouting into the building and we didn’t hear from the kids again! We stroll back along the foreshore, stopping at the coolest little juice shop in the world, thanks to Ish for the tip off on this place! And have ourselves a mixed juice, the best juice I have had since Ethiopia, then continue onto our hotel room, have a quick shower and head off to the train station.

Qaitbay Citadel, Alexandria

Taxi, Alexandria

For 50 pound (about 10 Aussie dollars) we had purchased our first class train tickets and quickly decided it was worth the extra $4, large seats, footrests and very few seats per carriage, before we know it we are back in Cairo! After a quick subway trip we are standing in the foyer of the Sun Hotel discussing what everyone has been up to and what everyone had purchased in the previous days...the significant items purchased were 2 dinky-di real canon batteries for a 5D Mk11 at and incredibly low price (like 40 bucks a battery!) by Kyle, Gab got a tripod for 350 pounds and Mark purchased a new apple laptop and managed to score about $2500 of free software with it, including the newest version of Photoshop. Ish and I decide to do our cook group shopping for the following night at City Stars shopping centre which is a 20 odd pound cab ride away, other people decide they wouldn’t mind the trip, then there is a whole gang of us flagging down a couple of taxis. I remember being in Sudan and being amazed to actually find ice cream, but this shopping centre was something else, it has ever shop you could ever imagine! And a great supermarket (called a hypermart) to go food group shopping! So we decide upon veggie lasagne and cheesecake for desert, surely a sure bet on the lasagne, I had already had two successful lasagne missions in Africa, but I was a little worried about the cheesecake, it needed to be chilled to set, hmm, just need a cold night at Mt Sinai!

1st class train seats

The following morning we are up and out of the Sun Hotel early, I notice that the bed in the truck cab is free and jump in quick, the morning is cool, so the back will be freezing! , it is a Friday and the streets are deserted as Fridays are like a weekend at home, lucky as we manage to miss a turn and end up in a few streets that were really not designed for trucks. Eventually we find our way out Cairo and stop for lunch in the city of Suez, on the Suez Canal. The Suez area just smells like oil, there must be so much oil floating in the air from the refinery, it’s hard to imagine that local residents don’t suffer some health conditions from breathing in such polluted air. Spencer and I set off with the aim of catching a glimpse of a super tanker ploughing it’s way through the canal, with over 20,000 vessels passing through each year we think we may be lucky. After snapping off a few photos we notice the many no photography signs that have rusted almost beyond recognition, we wander along the banks seeing only tug boats but no super tankers (we could sight some ships of a more substantial size further out in the water). After leaving Suez, we pass under the Suez canal in a tunnel, the tunnel seems much longer than the canal is wide, I try to take a photo, but have the fish eye on and really need a flash!.

Tunnel under the Suez Canal

This sign actually reads "No Photography"

Suez Canal

We pass through many police checkpoints on the way to St Katherine (the town at the base of Mt Sinai), at one they check all our passports, this hasn’t happened since Sudan, at the next checkpoint everyone who is sitting in the back has their passport checked, but not any of the three of us in the cab...we figure it’s been a boring night and the police are looking for something to do!

We arrive at the base of Mt Sinai in the dark, it’s a rush to get everything out and get the lasagne cooking, we want to eat and get to bed as we are getting up at three the next morning to climb! The handy thing about being on cook group when you are late into camp is that everyone is hungry and wants to eat so they help with the preparation. Jen and Jules peel and slice 5kg of potatoes, Kenji sorts out the Cheesecake with Ish, Ronald gets the fire on, Mark stirs the Lasagne, Son comes to the rescue in helping make a white sauce after I realise that I have purchased a tin of tomato paste not whole tomatos! Bugger! AK is the can opener and washing up tub filler and everyone else helps with the odds and ends (hope I didn’t miss anyone!) The cheesecake sets, but the pistachio topping doesn’t, ho hum....oh well we will just call it a pistachio sauce and it looks like we have put extra effort in! Lucky that the cheesecake worked, the lasagne was close to a flop, way too rich! Being on cook group means that it’s your responsibility to wash up, clean up and pack up after dinner, again through most people pitch in and it’s an earlier knock-off time than last food group. I warm my hands up by the fire for a bit as it’s way too cold here to be washing many dishes in cold water!

I was in bed for five hours that night, I possibly slept for about five minutes (nah, that’s a little exaggeration, maybe I got an hour!) We were camped in the car park right near a police check point, I think they changed shift at 11pm and made noise, then there were people arriving in busses all night, by three AM the place was a hive of activity with people strolling through our camp and tooting their horns and yelling at each other. We are out of bed and dressed in warn clothes ready to leave at 3.10am, after a thorough search...yeah, to climb a mountain they have to fully search your bags...the man asks me “do you have a bomb?”, I reply “if I had a bomb I wouldn’t bother to carry it up a mountain!” We are then told that we must have a guide and that it will cost us 85 pound as a group, not a big deal of money, only a little over a dollar each, but the injustice creeps in from some people, local people seem to be going up without a guide, there is an argument and we cannot escape the guide. Our guide is useless, I didn’t even know who he was, we all walked individually, and he told us nothing, not even his name and he didn’t even walk up the last 700 steps to the top! The climb is just a walk for the first hour or so, a wide path meanders it’s way up the mountain, the hardest thing is turning down all the offers for camel rides.Honestly, if I wanted a camel to ride I would have accepted one of the first 200 camels offered to me, BEFORE I had climbed half way up the mountain! The last 700 steps are known as the steps of repentance and were slow going...not because of the steps, but because of the pilgrims making their way up slowly. I have never before seen a bunch of people so unworthy of climbing a mountain, and they wouldn’t bother if it wasn’t a holy place, I am used to seeing people climb mountains who like to climb mountains and who wear gear fit for climbing mountains, not dress shoes, handbags and my favourite was the white pants, white sports jacket and white kitten heels! I did also spy a pair of leather pants. We were well and truly ahead of schedule so stopped off for a drink before the stairs; believe it or not there were coffee places all the way along the track! (ours was called Star Buks!) We made it to the top about 20minutes before sunrise and it wasn’t as cold as expected. Time for some happy snaps then AK finds his hip flask in his pocket with a little soul warming liquor contained within! The walk down was simple enough, apart from the issue of not being able to find our guide and not knowing who he is in daylight. We pass by other groups without guides and some with guides who are actually pointing out things of interest to their clients, we get back to camp and see that our guide finds us there; it’s honestly the only thing he managed to do, ask for money! We are all pissed off and make him wait, then offer to pay him 50 as he did nothing and doesn’t deserve any money. He refuses so the problem ends up at the police station where we have to pay the 85 pound. Worst to this is knowing that this dodgy bloke who admitted to not speaking any English will continue to take money from tourists for doing nothing day after day with the help of the local police!

Spencer, summit of Mt Sinai

Me, summit of Mt Sinai

Ish, summit of Mt Sinai

We load up the truck and cruise towards Dahab with Kenji still saying “I f&8king hate Egyptians” After two nights of little sleep I am starting to feel pretty ordinary and wrap myself up in a blanket and fall asleep, by the time we reach Dahab, I am feeling less than ordinary and then manage to miss dinner that night as I have a roaring headache, backache and feel feverish. Spencer arrives home from the restaurant (called AlCapones, on the ocean, lovely setting and place!) and tells me how good the food was! The next morning I am still feeling a little poo, but by that afternoon I am back to normal, it’s amazing what 20 hour sleep can do for a person!

The following morning we take a huge walk into Dahab City, errr...not really a city! We walk way too many miles in our thongs, jandals, slops, pluggers or flip-flops and both have very sore feet before we reach  our hotel Seven Heaven again. That afternoon we head out for a swim and are very pleased to see a school of Moorish idol fish cruising by, ( I now think these may have actually been banner fish which look similar to the Moorish idol) and this was without even having my head underwater or wearing goggles. The next morning we head out in search of mask, goggles and flippers to buy. Although you can rent hire gear which is crappy for about a dollar a day, we are sick of constantly hiring substandard gear which doesn’t fit and leaks and decide to take advantage of having been robbed in South Africa and not having much gear to lug home! After quite a few shops we find some good stuff and beat the crap out of the original prices, our flippers started at 200 pounds, we got them for 130...good deal! We then head to Eel garden to test them out, only problem is that the wind has picked right up and the current is so strong that it is close to impossible to actually move too far off the beach. Gear goes well and my rash vest kept me nice and warm, whereas I’m usually freezing my ass off. I really should have got one years ago!

Dahab

No Camels! Dahab

Fisheye view

Later that day we wander down to the lighthouse area, a hundred meter walk from Seven Heaven, we are still not sure why it is called lighthouse, there isn’t one to be found! (I’m assuming there must have been once!) The snorkelling off lighthouse was amazing, a huge drop-off about 3m from the beach with amazing array of untouched and undamaged coral and every great fish you ever aspire to see, se saw clownfish (nemos), parrotfish, puffer fish, triggerfish and three lion fish within the first 10 minutes. It’s the first time I have seen lionfish apart from photos, they are very pretty, but I was trying to remember just how venomous they actually are (not great trying to do that whilst close to the fish and bobbing around in rough water!) I later asked Mark our driver who is a keen diver, he says that they just give a nasty sting...hmm that only leaves the sharks of Sharm el Sheik to worry about! (There has been a few people attacked by sharks in the red sea in recent days, down at Sharm el Sheik which is about 100km south of us here, it has caused a lot of people who are staying there to move up to Dahab for their diving and snorkelling)

That night we set out to book a snorkelling trip to the Blue Hole, rated as the fourth best diving site (hope I’m right saying this, I just overheard someone say it!) It has also claimed a heap of lives of divers, both inexperienced and very experienced. We are at the point of booking one when we see Son, who has been doing her advanced diving course, her and Ish are heading out to Blue Hole diving and Jen and Jules are going out there snorkelling, excellent! We use the conversation with Son as a good escape hatch from the man trying to sell us the trip and head back for a good nights sleep.

Our first stop was The Canyon, about 30m deep. We were the only people snorkelling there but there were hundreds of divers. Luckily we went one way and the divers went the other so we actually didn’t see them until the end. Son and Ish said that it was very overcrowded inside the canyon. Jen, Jules, Spencer and I were super impressed with the range of fish that we saw and also the coral formations. We were lucky that Jen and Jules had their underwater camera for a few happy snaps. The fish in the Red Sea seem more relaxed with snorkelers than in other places, they are happy to swim right in and around you and even let you swim in their school. After we finished at The Canyon we drove a little further up the coast to the Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole is a sink hole about 10 meters off the shore north of Dahab and is 120m deep! It just looks like the end of the earth! There is a tunnel in it that connects the blue hole to the outside ocean, it’s at about 60m depth. Many people die in this tunnel that is about 20odd meters in length. We waited for Son and Ish to get in the water before we did, we were a little nervous for them as they were descending down ‘the bell’ (we had listened into their dive briefing) first part was feet first, second part was head first, little light and sections where it was so narrow only one diver at a time could descend. Bloody hell it’s got it all, underwater, confined places and darkness! Son looked pretty nervous just before she submerged and I don’t blame her!  We’d had to walk past the wall of memorials of divers who had died there, one of whom was a dive master...apparently for the 40 odd reported deaths, the Egyptian Government has covered up twice that amount (again, this is hearsay!) We were thinking that it was an enclosed tunnel as that’s how it looked from the surface; it was in fact a gorge, with a small opening. We snorkelled along the ocean wall, the coral formations sit under a meter from the surface of the water, then you look down the ledge and can just see a straight drop as far as the visibility allows, it’s amazing (yeah, I know, I know I say that EVERYTHING is amazing! He he) We sighted many different varieties of triggerfish,bannerfish, groupers, parrotfish, surgeonfish, clownfish, wrasse and lots of others at any one time you could see al least 200 fish, usually many more than this. With the bubbles from the divers below bursting around you it truly felt as though you were in an aquarium. If you were to snorkel only once in your life, it must be here at Blue Hole!

Me, snorkelling at Blue Hole

The bubbles around me are from the divers beneath

Divers bubbles rise from the depths of the Blue Hole

Coral reef, Blue Hole

Myeslf infront of divers, Blue Hole

That night we went to Chillax for tea, very pricey and overrated burgers! We ran into Jen, Jules and ish there and so sat with them. There were only two vegetarian burgers on the menu Jules told us that the tree hugger burger was not very nice, we asked the waitress about the Fungi burger, she said it wasn’t very nice! Hmmm, which of the bad burgers to choose....the tree hugger it was, the outside bits were OK, but way too many red kidney beans died in the production of that burger!

The following morning we have a bit of a sleep in (after the 4.50am call to prayer has almost blasted us out of our beds (yes beds...all hotel rooms in Muslim countries appear to have twin beds) We take a stroll along the waterfront for some photos, the wind is picking up, we decide to leave a little earlier for The Island diving site where we intend to snorkel. The couple of kilometres walk up there was defiantly worth it, the fish that we saw were comparable to other sites, but the coral formations and the seascape were very impressive, whilst making my way back to shore I floated over a snake spotted eel, which scared the poo out of me as I initially thought it was a sea snake, as the water was very shallow I was only about 40cm above it’s body with the waves pushing me along. Once I saw that it had a pronounced spine I breathed a little sigh of relief into my snorkel! That afternoon we snorkelled again at the Lighthouse, again it was great. This time we were lucky enough to see two clownfish families in their anemones with juveniles, the juveniles are black and white and remind me of our oscellaris’ at home (well at Dean and Katies home)

From here we head towards Jordan, we take the ferry into the country and I believe that it’s just not a simple process! We are starting to count down the days to returning home and have also been trying to get a few things organised for our return to Australia on the tenth of January and work on twentieth of January....

And just for a laugh for those Aussie readers....In Alexandria I noticed a big poster in the front of a bank, in Arabic, something to do with interest rates by the look of it, it had a photos of coins on it....”strange that they would use cold edged coins on a poster here, the coins don’t even look Egyptian” I think, on close inspection I see they are in fact a stack of Aussie $1 coins!, some silly person must have purchased the photo from a stock photography agency without looking very closely! My other amusing sighting has been the Fighting Kangaroo restaurant, which shows two vary large photos of what someone thought was a kangaroo.....uh um...no they are in fact wallabies!

Reef life, Blue Hole