life on planetm

tying up loose ends…

I am writing this from Amsterdam sitting on the Prinsengracht on a perfect sunny day.  Life doesn’t get much better than this.  An incredible ending to a wonderfully memorable trip.

I haven’t done anything really noteworthy in the past couple of days.  Just trolling around the city without a map, acting like a Europhile.  Amsterdam offers all the elements of a perfect marriage – security, a sense of humour, mutual attraction and just enough of a naughty streak to keep things fresh and exciting.  I may end up spending so much time here I will be coerced into learning Dutch 😉

Apparently I also need to learn how to make Dutch pancakes.  This is the first time I’ve had them.  Have now had three different versions of varying quality and Peter taught me how to eat them like a local rather than a tourist 🙂  At least I can ride a bike, know how to dance at some passable level, drink beer, am learning to appreciate football and have a sense of humour – so I am partly on my way to becoming Dutch.  I will draw the line at wearing orange however.  My least favourite colour of them all.

The point of this posting though is mostly to pull together the missing pieces from Egypt…

I realized that I had missed Abu Simbel in my temple list.  Built by Ramses II (the longest reigning pharaoh) and moved from its original location and reconstructed as part of a UNESCO project to protect it from water damage after the Aswan Dam was constructed, it is one of the most iconic sites in Egypt.

I am still working on getting all the gods straight – and following their path through the Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire and everybody else that wanted their piece of the famous country on the Nile.  I think Abu Simbel is in honour of the falcon god along with another one or two others… the cow goddess maybe?  What is really impressive are the statues of Ramses II at different ages (he lived into his nineties, a really impressive feat at that time).

We did a few other things that did not involve sand, sun, temples or tombs.  One of the most relaxing activities was a felucca ride on the Nile.  This is how most Egyptians tour the Nile.  We were all a bit concerned we had to wear life jackets for the ride but it was very calm and peaceful so we decided they were more for show.

Our other cultural adventures were less relaxing for me.  On the second night on the boat they organized a belly dancer and a whirling dervish.  Taking photos of both of them definitely a challenge but watching them highly entertaining.  We were particularly wowed by the whirling dervish.  Obviously he doesn’t get dizzy very easily!

I must look too friendly because I was perfectly happy just taking photos of the belly dancer – but, no, I had to be dragged up with her immediately.  I was really impressed by her ability to shake her booty but I was more the comedy act part of the show 🙂

Apparently my lousy belly dancing was easily overlooked because the next night was “Egypt night”and we all dressed up in gallabeyahs and were supposed to be entertained by Egyptian music after dinner.  The tour info DID say everyone would be dancing.  What I hadn’t appreciated was that I would be dancing EVERY song!

I just wanted to get some good photos but that made me obvious so Khalid had me on the dance floor by the second song.  I kept trying to leave but if I managed to sit out an entire song I would be dragged back up.

Luckily for me the guys were great dancers so I just had to try and not step on their toes.  A few times they got a whole crowd on the floor and tried to teach us complicated dance moves.  I imagine it looked pretty funny if you were lucky enough to be sitting on the sidelines.

I had taken advantage of our relaxed schedule that day and actually got more than four hours of sleep.  What I hadn’t realized is that all the gallabeyahs left would be size L and up.  Tito tried to convince me if I had woken earlier I could have purchased something in my size.  I’m not sure… He was very gracious and tried to see if he could make my size 4 garment (I was a size 1 according to him) seem less like a sack… apparently it didn’t stop people from asking me to dance…

The highlight of the night for me was when they played YMCA.  The guys knew ALL the moves – I had forgotten there were so many.  Since I couldn’t get anyone on the dance floor at my party, I finally got to dance to one of the songs on my birthday soundtrack!  And I can still twist!  Almost to the floor… and back up again – without breaking a hip.  The Egyptian guys were impressed!

Tomorrow Egyptians go to the polls for their historic elections.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed they will get a decent government that can steer them down the path that will rid them of that pesky “developing economy” label.  There are definitely parts of Egypt that feel like a developed western economy.  But lots of Egyptians are still struggling economically.

The Egyptians I met were easy to fall for and to use their lingo – it will break my heart if they don’t get the kind of government they so richly deserve and valiantly fought for.

We end on a personal note – a huge thank you to Riccardo, Sonia, Sameh, Tito and Mohammed for taking such amazing care of me in Egypt – my mom really didn’t need to worry – but they all know about her 😉

Will post some more photos over the next couple of days to provide some visual cues for the text.

human scarabs

We started our tour on Friday and arrived back to Cairo from Aswan the following Friday.  As those of you following recent Egyptian history carefully will know, Friday is protest day.  Apparently the pattern was established as part of the Arab Spring.  People  would go to mosque and then spill into Tahrir Square to protest the regime.

We met Sonia for the first time on Saturday afternoon – and she told us we had brought luck as Friday had been very quiet (unlike the previous week when I was already en route checking the BBC on a regular basis trying to understand precisely what was happening in Cairo.

The scarab is a good luck symbol in Egypt.  There are scarabs everywhere!  There are all kinds of symbols in Egyptian culture.  It adds extra meaning to some of the jewelry I purchased.

Even more fascinating was trying to understand Egypt in 2012.  It’s not too often you see things on a holiday tour that have just been in the recent news headlines.  I think I already mentioned that we saw Mubarek’s former headquarters looking like something from World War II and the bedraggled remnants of the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square.  Apparently the scattered tents are homeless merchants who came to sell their wares to the crowds and now have nowhere else to go.  When we got back from Aswan, they drove us by the Defense Ministry, the site of all the protests I had been following on BBC the week before.  We also saw some live electioneering on the streets.

More fascinating was Riccardo’s account of how they got the A&K tourists out of Cairo the week one million tourists fled the city.  The staff set up camp for five days at three different hotels, including the Four Seasons I stayed at in downtown Cairo, one in Giza near the Pyramids and the Fairmont at the airport.  They shuttled people to the airport hotel as they found them seats on planes.

They ran the gauntlet of the airport staff and walked each tourist through the airport and safely on to his plane as other stranded tourists looked on enviously.  To get the final tourists back home, they chartered a plane and flew them to Jordan where they could secure them connecting flights back to their home cities. What was even more impressive was that Riccardo told us they had achieved all of this despite all communications in Cairo being shut down for 3 of the 5 days!

A&K definitely has your back and the level of service is exemplary even when you are not in the middle of a revolution.  Riccardo practically put me on the plane at the airport and I told him it was going to be tough having to take care of myself again when I landed.

So, really, the least we could do for them was act as human scarabs and help to keep Cairo safe so the staff could get some sleep 🙂  Most of the staff had barely worked since the revolution so the atmosphere during our trip was highly charged with hope and I don’t think any of us will ever forget the wonderful A&K staff who guided us through their home country as though we were on a royal tour and they had cleared away all the pesky tourists just for us 😉

I think we appreciated it best at Philae Temple.  Apparently at New Year’s there are normally about 375 tour buses.  The day we arrived, we were number 2 or 3…

I really hope good luck will continue and the historic elections in Egypt this week will yield a productive government.  If that happens, get there as fast as you can!  Before the other tourists catch on…

wishing we were camels…

I have been writing the posts,  just haven’t been able to get them on the internet…

Day 3 was also full of adventure and scheduled activities.  Our day began with a 6:30am transfer to the airport to catch our flight to Luxor.  There was an accident in Cairo so we were late arriving at the airport and got hustled onto the plane with a minimum of airport security and protocol.

When we arrived at Luxor airport we didn’t even waste time collecting our luggage (it arrived on the boat as if by magic).  We were transferred to an air-conditioned bus and taken to the Temple of Karnack.  I’ve already related my adventures there – but I did get to spend more time on the air-conditioned bus than anyone else!

Following Karnack, we had a delicious lunch on the boat.  That’s when I met Mohammed, who was my personal server for the entire cruise – and always made sure I had the best wine 🙂  It was a brief interval of happiness as we were quickly shuttled back onto the bus so that we could spend the hottest day of the trip wandering the desert looking at tombs.

By mid-afternoon it was so hot you just felt like you were being roasted in a large oven.  I seem to have managed to avoid sunburn despite the heat – the suggestion on the internet to drape yourself in a large shawl and wear a hat has proven to be great advice.

As already explained, my knowledge of Egyptian culture is a little more focused on the charming manners of the cute guys than on any proper understanding of Egyptian history.  I will buy a book – or more – and try to learn more to put all the incredible sites I have seen in context but for now you will just have to focus on the photos – once I post them.

Sonia organized our tour really well and made sure we saw both the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The Valley of the Kings has the tombs of a bunch of famous pharaohs, including Ramses II and King Tut, so is on the top of the tourist list for Luxor.

Because of this Sonia reversed the order and we did the Valley of the Queens at peak tourist time and then snuck into the Valley of the Kings just before closing.  Egyptian tombs are incredible.  The amount of effort and expense put into a coffin!  But if you are coming back again – and will need all your stuff – it makes perfect sense.  It is mind boggling the level of detail in the decorations in the tombs.  What is more astonishing is that originally it was all in technicolour.

We finally got to spend some time on the boat.  My room was palatial.  You only knew you were on a boat because the shower was so tiny you bruised your elbows trying to wash your hair.  And the boat was air conditioned!  A few of us thought about ditching the sites and just hiding on the boat after that day in the Egyptian sun.  One of the Americans had the temperature on his watch – it was 118 degrees farenheit!