Too Nauseated for Alexandria

Alexandria—The best way to spend your first day in Cleopatra's Alexandria is NOT in a budget hotel, in bed, fully dressed, moaning.

At about 3 a.m. in Cairo I was awakened by violent nausea that emptied my stomach. Three hours later the wave swept in again. A half hour after that I finished packing my things, left the apartment where I was staying, broke the key in the lock, and hailed a taxi for the train station.

Was it the calamari sandwich I'd eaten the day before? (Very yummy.) Did I forget to use bottled water with my toothbrush?

It takes two full days to feel like eating again, but as soon as I do I head straight to a waterfront place famous with local Alexandrians for its seafood. (Sooner or later we're all going to die, and I AM on the Mediterranean!)

I am not disappointed. I take a carriage to the old Anfushi district, around the western peninsula from my hotel. As we turn the corner from the busy corniche the street suddenly turns quiet and pungent with fish on wagons that line the route. The Farag Restaurant is not far, right across a quiet street from a swimming beach that will be mobbed in a few months with Cairenes escaping the city's heat, but tonight there's no one here but a single family playing on the swingsets.

Inside I'm greeted warmly and steered to a beautifully displayed fresh catch of the day: calamari, pompano, red and white snapper, shrimp in three sizes, and several other varieties of multi-colored fish. I choose the large shrimp—grilled in garlic—hold up 4 fingers and assent to a salad. The host doesn't mention that the salad will be enormous and in ADDITION to the 4 other salads, plus 5 loaves of pocket bread, plus the pickled vegetables that I love, that he'll bring right out for me. I'm stuffed before the shrimp (6, not 4) and salad arrive, but they make a good breakfast. I end up paying $16—more than I've spent on any meal so far—but it more than makes up for the day I've lost touristing.

I decide to spend an extra day in Alexandria since I feel so capital now and begin the day at the Alexandria Library, a soaring, ultra-modern edifice right across from the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great chose the site to become the greatest city in his empire, but it was Ptolemy I who executed the vision. The library was intended to be the most comprehensive in the world and books from around the world poured in to be copied and added to the nooks.

It may have included as many as 700,000 scrolls when Julius Caesar reportedly burned it down during a battle after setting fire to his own ships in the harbor, from where the flames spread to the docks and beyond. About 400 years later Emperor Constantine burned it down again in his Christian zeal to eradicate Alexandria's polytheistic past, of which the new library was a part. But in the meantime, scholars from around the world used the collections to piece together discoveries in math, physics, biology, astronomy, medicine, literature and geography. Today, across from where I sit in the library's coffee shop, the large open plaza is full of young scholars with notebooks in their laps, taking a break from their labors in the stacks. Meanwhile two women in sweatsuits and hijabs jog by on the corniche.

I almost skip Alexandria because most of its treasures remain under water. Built in the delta of the Nile whose fanning tributaries relocated naturally over the centuries, the city has sunk at least 20 feet since its heyday. But though divers have been recovering artifacts since the '90s, whole neighborhoods and legendary districts are still coming to light.

Ptolemy (a Macedonian) was a great builder and intended Alexandria to be a bridge between the old pharaonic era and the new Hellenistic one, and evidence of this inspiration is apparent in the many underwater photographs hanging in the Alexandria Museum. When I go to the museum—my next stop—it is these eerie underwater photographs I find most compelling. The artifacts themselves tell only a piece of the story that the photographs hint at.

You can't scratch the ground in Alexandria (or anywhere in Egypt) without turning up some ancient thing, which is a constant irritation to modern builders forced to give the reclaimers time to excavate a promising site. But they rarely get enough time to uncover much before development begins, so more natural means typically reveal new finds.

That's the story behind the catacombs that I visit next, three levels filled with dead over the generations, with the bottom level now underwater. The discovery as told to me via hand signals by the ancient guide is that a donkey stepped in a hole and fell through, revealing the immense caverns beneath. "The donkey die," he laughs.

But that's the same story behind the discovery in the 1990s of the vast necropolis near Bahariya Oasis called the Valley of the Golden Mummies, where I'll go next, and of many sites discovered elsewhere over the years. It's a continuing source of amusement to Egyptians that despite more than a century of hard labor by foreign Egyptologists, it's still the random donkey that's turning up the finds.

My last stop for the day is the Roman Theatre, uncovered beneath subsequent constructions and just sitting there in the midst of a thriving city. The Romans took over officially after Cleopatra committed suicide, marking the end of the pharaonic era. Like the Ptolemys before them, the Romans would blend elements of previous architectural styles with their own. I can see the evidence of this in what's left of the rich people's catacombs, with their scarabs, cobras, and pillars.

It's the end of the day and I have no interest in food, so after finding the train station and struggling through buying a ticket to Cairo for the next day, I return to my hotel and call it a night.

I can't relax completely, though. When I reach Cairo I want to find the nearby bus station and try to book a ticket to the Bahariya Oasis for that day. The train station is in the center of the city—a pulsing, choking mess of vehicles, animals, shouting vendors and pressing people. ("The word "chaos" comes from "Cairo.") On the train I ask someone to write the name of the bus station in Arabic for me, since every single attempt of mine to be understood using my Lonely Planet pocket vocabulary has failed. What works is writing what I need, when I can find a likely volunteer, and just pointing to it.

When I get to the bus station I'm too late to depart today, so I head to a juice bar to kill the afternoon before notifying my Cairo friends that I'm back —again—in town. That's where I am now, listening to very loud, very bad American music.

(I'm delighted though, apropos of nothing, to note that of the three people seated near me, all are using Apple laptops.)

Pilgrim's Path

St. Catherine—It's early afternoon and I'm sitting alone on a sheltered stone terrace in the shadow of the Sinai Mountains, at the guesthouse of the St. Catherine monks who have lived here since the 4th century. Seven ratty cats are driving me crazy trying to steal my tea and butter biscuits. The library I've come to visit is closed and I have nothing to do until dinner.

St. Catherine is a government protectorate that includes this Greek Orthodox monastery, several ancient shrines and mosques, miles of canyons and mountains, and the shrine to Moses' burning bush and Mt. Sinai itself. Tourists and pilgrims come here to walk the ancient path and climb the mountain (after paying about $3 to get into the protectorate.) But no vehicles are allowed beyond that last police checkpoint. My Big Red Bag bearing new guidebooks and tons of tourist trash is mighty heavy as I lean into my mile-long climb to the monastery.

I'm still swatting cats away when the first wave of pilgrims returns from their day's walk. There are mobs of them of all nationalities and I wonder where they're all going to sleep. It's not until two days later that I'll note the rows of giant tour buses lined up at the gate. I'm guessing they head back to civilization after their trek.

Some of the pilgrims who took camels into the steep cliffs look none the worse for wear. While the camels lie about as camels do, the boys who care for them play football in the dust. The bells chime for afternoon prayer and I hear the monks chanting from behind the 9-foot-thick fortress wall built in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian. The voices moan that tuneless, minor-key Orthodox stuff that no one raised on Bach and Handel in church can stand.

It still doesn't make sense to me that these monks are Greek Orthodox, an Eastern rite, when Egyptian Orthodox are Copts, an Oriental rite. All the monks here speak Greek and only Greeks are allowed to join the order, while the Copts, all Egyptians, follow a liturgy in a language closely related to that of the pharaohs. This monastery chose sides during the Byzantine era and hasn't moved an inch ever since. The library, containing many ancient texts, is considered next to the Vatican's to be the most extensive and priceless in the world.

The next group of pilgrims includes about a dozen Orthodox priests whose tall staffs and long, black, dusty robes indicate that they walked. None of them looks like he's had a bath in this millennium, much less a shave. One of them is barefoot and has completely black toenails. Even the Fisherman wore shoes.

That night at dinner they enjoy several bottles of the local Omar Kayam wine. I find out the next morning at 3:30 a.m. after I crash their service that they're not monks from this monastery, they're Serbian Orthodox and the people they're with are their flock.

Having missed the group launching early for the sunrise climb, I see women dressed for church and decide to follow them. Through a gate and around some passages we go 'till we get to a heavy wooden door. Inside is a small chapel that looks original to the monastery. I've never been in an Eastern Orthodox church and I swing around 360 degrees gaping at all the brass, censers, and icons. The light is all by oil lamps and casts a warm, yellow glow.

I sneak out when it looks like everybody's about to do something that I don't know how to do. At 3:45 a.m. the bells chime from the large, main church. The resident monks pray a lot—first from 4-7:30 a.m. and again from 5-7 p.m.

At breakfast I meet two Danes on a tour of Egypt's many Christian holy places, including the route the Holy Family took on their flight into Egypt. They both paint icons for a living, and one woman gives me a print of one of her paintings. They tip me off about how to get into the main church, more ancient and foreign than anything I've ever seen.

The next morning when I leave the church's bookstore it's about 9 a.m. and hordes of the pilgrims who got up at 2 a.m. to climb Mt. Sinai for the sunrise are returning. There seem to be hundreds of them today, speaking every language on the planet. I want to climb the mountain but I'm not sure how to do it since I have no interest in walking in the dark—either for sunrise or sunset—much less with all these people.

Just then a Bedouin man asks me if I want to climb today. I like his face and the modest way he approaches me, with a courtly nod of the head as so many Bedouin do. It helps too that his English is very good, since practically no one at the monastery understands a thing I say. With the recent kidnapping of American women here in my mind, we negotiate terms and we're on our way.

I like Suileman's company immensely and he is an excellent guide, pointing out the stone hermitages of the mountain monks high on the ridges that would have been invisible to me. He is a member of the Jebaliya tribe, descendants of the people who have served this monastery since the 6th century when Emperor Justinian imported 200 families from Anatolia and Alexandria for the purpose. After the Arab conquest they eventually converted to Islam, but they retained many Christian observances unique to them. They retain also special privileges at and around the monastery, where they live, and where our paths cross.

The occupants of these hermitages are spiritual descendants of the Christian ascetics, who came here in the first centuries after Christ to meditate, pray, and escape Roman persecution. With the legendary Mt. Sinai above them and the shrine of Moses' burning bush at their feet, they grew more numerous until St. Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, built them a church. Three hundred years later Justinian built a fortress to enclose the eventual monastery, and in 1,600 years it has been continuously occupied, maintained, and free from attack. Even the prophet Mohammed honored these monks, by offering them his protection and sparing them his taxes. A copy of his decree is in the library.

It is not a two hour climb up the mountain as described to me but three, because I have to stop often to catch my breath. Suileman is very agreeable, saying "slowly, slowly." When we rest he patiently chain-smokes. "Something wrong with the chest?" I can't guess his age within decades. Like all Bedouin he is skinny, leathery, and has teeth as repulsively brown as a camel's. I don't know why until later when I get a load of my own teeth in the first mirror I've seen in weeks: The tea will have to go.

On the way up we pass little shops scrabbled together with stone and straw where treats for pilgrims are sold, but everyone in them is sleeping now because most of their business came by before dawn. I am immeasurably grateful for not having been part of that horde. The experience I'm getting of the Sinai's vast, richly colored desolation belongs just to Suileman and me.

At the top there are two tiny chapels—one Christian and one Muslim—because Moses is revered by both religions. It occurs to me that this valley has been a model of religious toleration and mutual respect for centuries and could teach the world outside a thing or two.

There are blankets strewn about haphazardly for the people who climb and stay overnight, but they leave their trash and cigarette butts everywhere and I think about the hereafter they're going to get.

On the way down my legs are shaking and Suileman sticks out a gentlemanly elbow to help steady my step. We could be an English couple out for a garden walk, except by now he's carrying about half my weight, which is twice his.

One of the tea shops is open and we enter it, dark as a cave, for a hot cup on this cold morning. This time of year it's often below freezing on the mountain and covered with snow. The old proprietor—I'll call him Abraham—lives here alone. There are platforms and mattresses for about 12 people if they're stretched out end-to-end, and stacks of extra blankets. I have no idea how he gets his things up the mountain—bottles of pop and water, candy and cookies, etc. "No woman here," he tells me, which I don't doubt. "Woman keep you warm." I tell Sueliman later that I'm sorry Abraham has no wife. Sueliman finds this funny and tells me he has a wife all right—and five children. The wife is none too happy about Abraham's tea shop.

The next day I am eager to leave the monastery because about 3 million Russians who look exactly like potatoes have descended, shoving me away from the coffee pot in the morning and taking my seat at the breakfast table. They pray en masse in the dining hall, crossing themselves backwards and bowing repeatedly and never—not once—smiling. They remind me of my tour guide in the Valley of the Kings who tried to get several Russian tourists from climbing one of the tombs to take pictures. They completely ignored him, even after several attempts, and without the usual tourist police there was nothing he could do. Later, in Dahab, I was talking about Bob Marley to a restaurant attendant I'd come to know and mentioned everybody's favorite song, "No Woman, No Cry." He smiled and leaned close: "Here? We say 'No Russian, no cry.'"

The next morning with Suileman's help I find and see the icon gallery, which despite my doubts turns out to be a large collection of treasures worthy of a traveling exhibit. Once more we get to experience it all alone.

Besides the very old icons, displayed in a labyrinth of stone caverns like the old wine cellars of France, there are room after room of silver and gold artifacts dating back many centuries that were gifts of the czars. But it's the books I've come to see and didn't expect to find here. Hebrew, Greek—all hand-lettered in original codices. I imagine the hours of work these took to produce, the monks laboring by oil lamp between hours of prayer. There's even a copy of Homer with a hand-stamped gold cover.

I am to go today to a mountain eco-lodge for three days, but change my mind after meeting its proprietor, Sheikh Mousa, who after tea I don't want tells me I'll have to hire a Jeep for 150 EGP to get there, pay about twice what I've been spending to stay there, and pretty much be dependent on him to get back to "civilization" in the village of St. Catherine, which is just a few stone Bedouin houses and a mosque. I do love the silence and the beauty, but there are no other guests and once the sun goes down at 6 p.m. there's absolutely nothing to do.

I decide to stay the night in his Bedouin Camp near the village, which has a variety of accommodations from a mattress on the ground to a very comfortable suite with a full bathroom. I spend the rest of the day reading the last few hundred pages of the Koran that I've committed to, and recovering from what could either have been too many dates yesterday or a touch of Pharaoh's Revenge.

Sheikh Mousa tells me there's a bus to Cairo at 6 a.m. (50 EGP for a 6-hour-trip!), so I walk down to the bus stop to make sure I know the way. The posted schedule shows Cairo crossed out. Well, I've been lucky so far. I go back to my room committed to giving it a go.

Confusing the man at the camp's reception desk, I pay for my room and try to express that I will be leaving before he's on duty in the morning and could he leave the gate unlocked? I have no confidence that he understands a word I say, but he does indeed leave the gate unlocked.

By Microbus with 30 Soldiers
The next morning I walk down to the bus stop across from the mosque, where early morning prayers are just ending. Boys leading strings of camels pass me soundlessly in the dark. Up ahead I see the shape of a mini-bus parked by the mosque, and out pops a man I'd seen the day before who'd asked me if I was going to Cairo. He hadn't told me that he was the bus driver. I can't believe there's a bus after all, and indeed, it's only 50 pounds!

This van is very posh by Egyptian standards, a brand-new Toyota 12-seater. The driver insists that I take the comfy seat up front, and after some futile protests I comply. At 6 a.m. on the dot we're off.

I feel bad for him because 50 pounds isn't much for me and the two passengers aboard for a 6-hour trip. Silly me. At the first police checkpoint 15 minutes later, about 12 very young soldiers throw their gear on top and clamber aboard. In another 20 minutes at another checkpoint, I swear he squeezes another dozen or so guys in fatigues inside. By now I know the wisdom of his having insisted I sit up front. There are easily three times the number of passengers on board than the trusty van was built to carry. The men are in a merry mood and the driver turns up the music LOUD. He leans over to tell me that these are the good guys—not the loathed military police—and they're off to Cairo for a 10-day holiday.

As the sun comes up the colors change and become more breathtaking around every turn. There is absolutely no one else on the road and I wonder why the driver periodically flashes his lights on and off, punctuating this with a swift sounding of his horn. No one smokes the whole way. I am liking this driver.

After about two hours we reach the shore of the Gulf of Suez to stop for gas, tea, and a smoke. Everyone in the cafe stares at me long and unabashedly. It's good practice for returning to Cairo, where I'm frankly stared at as if I were a giraffe. But a woman in a niquab heading for the Dunn Bros. in Linden Hills would get exactly the same treatment, so I try to be a sport about it.

It takes another two hours to reach the tunnel that will take us under the Suez Canal. I wish I could capture in a picture what it's like to pass right under a giant container ship!

In the meantime traffic has picked up and my calm, polite, unhurried driver starts showing his Egyptian colors. I can't believe he's going to pass a truck going uphill against traffic in a van with a thousand soldiers in it and another one coming straight at us. I am sure we will not make it and seize the dash with both hands. He weaves in front of the passed truck with no room to spare—the other drivers honking and flashing their lights in friendly greeting—but I don't let go of the dash. The driver leans over: "You a little bit afraid?" Everybody thinks this is hilarious.

At the town of Suez he hands the van over to his son, whose English is better but whose driving is worse. He gets a royal charge out of spotting me freak out. "Good driver, yes?" The flatbed trucks we pass bearing the burned-out carcasses of other "good driver" vehicles reassure me, no.

Once we get to Cairo, though, he takes the time to find me a taxi driver who knows the obscure neighborhood where I am going, the guest of my Egyptian-American Friend and his family. (We won't go into the nightmare of actually FINDING that neighborhood: that taxi driver didn't have the first idea where he was going.) But eventually we get home and I enjoy a huge meal from the fish stall across the street and retire—I think—for the evening.

But once my hosts know I'm back in town I am invited to join them for what they insist on calling "lunch," even though it's 7:30 p.m., and so I do. I use their son's computer to catch up on email, where I learn that some Koreans were abducted yesterday by Bedouins on the St. Catherine road (I'm uncharitably pleased because of the trash I know they left on the trail to Mt. Sinai). I also get an email from the US Embassy warning that a general strike and demonstrations have been called for today, February 11, the one-year anniversary of Mubarak's stepping down from power (because nothing has happened in the intervening year, the malcontents say). Americans are advised to stay away from Cairo if possible, or if not, to stay away from downtown—where, of course, the bus station is that I was intending to depart from today. No matter. I'll stay in Cairo another day, take care of some business, and enjoy my Egyptian friends' generous hospitality. Tomorrow is soon enough to continue on my route.

And besides, one of the things you come to love about traveling is that like life, all plans are fleeting.

Dahab II: More Days in Paradise

February 1-4

Dahab—I am sitting right next to wooden trays stacked high that contain rounds of flat dough the size of a tortilla. A young man in flip-flops with a cigarette in his mouth, his pants rolled to his knees and flour dust covering him head to toe, is transferring the dough into a flaming oven about four feet from me. Barely a minute later the dough puffs up into perfect pillows, and he transfers them to the table nearby. Someone gathers stacks of them into plastic bags and hands them to customers who will eat them that day. Meanwhile a runner takes the empty trays across the street and returns later with more full trays. It's about 7:30 a.m. and I don't notice that my sleeve nearest the stacks of dough is now covered with flour.

 
This place is called YumYum and I've been eating here since discovering it two days ago in the district where the Egyptians live and eat, behind the long row of tourist shops and restaurants on the beach. (Don't get me wrong about the beach places: The food there is wonderful and at criminal (low) prices. I often tip more than the meals cost.)

But at YumYum I get more than food. Besides fresh bread, falafel, shashouka, cheese and tomatoes, and tray after tray of all kinds of salads, YumYum offers that up-close look at Egyptian life I can't seem to get enough of. While I sit and stuff myself at a street-side table (about a foot away from a stinky, idling diesel truck that has stopped so the driver could pick up lunch), I notice how everyone greets each other (and me) with such good cheer over the roar of the propane tanks.

There is much discussion and sadness today over the riots Wednesday night following a football game in Port Said between a local team and a popular Cairo club. After the game, the victorious Port Said fans came down to the pitch and mobbed the Cairo players and their fans, and when the fans tried to escape, they found the exits blocked. More than 70 people were crushed to death; as many as 1,000 are injured. Relatives in Cairo waited at the train station for news of their loved ones, and as the bodies started arriving, the angry crowds grew. Many believed the Port Said mob was provoked by Mubarak henchmen in retaliation for the Cairo club's support in anti-Mubarak demonstrations last January.

The government cancelled a game in Cairo scheduled for two days later, and more mobs set fire to the stadium. While at first the Cairo protests were directed at Port Said, soon demonstrators joined forces to protest the lack of security by the military and the police that led to so many deaths, and to call once more for the quick transfer from military to civilian rule.Tensions are still running high in Cairo and violent clashes are continuing. I'm giving the city a wide berth.

But it's peaceful here in the South Sinai where the sun is brilliant and the weather is warm. I join a British couple I've met for two days at an Egyptian protectorate called Ras Abu Galum, a rugged coastline of steep cliffs, lagoons and coves adjacent to a Bedouin village reachable only by camel or boat. The reefs are untouched and I borrow my British friend Richard's wet suit (though I don't really need it here) and spend the afternoons making the acquaintance of more splendidly colorful fish. In the mornings I try to read his copy of Marx's "Capital".

It's just the three of us enjoying the hospitality of Abby—short for Abraham—who cooks octopus caught that day (delicious) and a whole assortment of his own dishes, including a kind of roasted nuts and molasses jam that you spread on bread. He serves these meals on low tables on the beach, or if we need a break from the sun, under a straw umbrella he's built for the purpose. 

Abby is one of those Egyptian characters you meet everywhere. He's well educated, speaks perfect English, and is living alone in a straw hut at the edge of a camp of Bedouin not known for their placidity. He was married to an English woman once, had two children, and after seven years moved at her request to England, where—according to him—she tried to make him over into a "perfect Englishman." Hence the straw hut on the beach. He stays connected with his daughters via Skype.

I have my cell phone with me and get a call from my Egyptian Friend back home wondering if I'm OK. I haven't heard anything yet about the two American women kidnapped that day by Bedouins at St. Catherine Monastery, just over the mountain, where I'll be tomorrow. It's a balmy star-filled night and I'm enjoying myself
with Abby, Richard, and Sally around a small fire, talking about the CIA plot on 9/11 to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Abby thinks that Masons are behind everything and that the CIA is all Masons. Some of the stuff he says is so cracked I can't tell if I'm hearing his Egyptian humor or the ravings of a kook.)

It's not until I get back to Dahab that I learn that the two women not only weren't frightened of their Bedouin captors, they enjoyed their company, were treated very hospitably with tea and dates, and were even spared their smoke when one woman asked her captor to douse his cigarette. He politely complied.

Besides good manners and hospitality the Bedouin in the Sinai have a reputation for lawlessness, but they have some complaints of their own—including unfair treatment by the government and limitations on their way of life. These men were attempting to get attention for the plight of some family members who were imprisoned. I don't know if they succeeded in getting their relatives released, but after an hour or two they DID release the two women, who continued on their holiday with no complaints—and some stories to tell.

- Posted from my iPad

Welcome to the Good Life

Dahab—There's a vibe in this small town on the Red Sea, long inhabited by Bedouins but discovered in the '60s by hippies from Australia and Europe who surf and scuba dive: It's laid-back, desert-Californian, anti-capitalist, generous and respectful. No one seems in a hurry to do anything or be anywhere. Nothing opens early (at least not enough for me, who likes her coffee with her sunrise), and no one worries about the packs of dogs and cats that roam and breed freely being more or less cared for communally. The sun is brilliant even in January and the air can be cold with the wind coming in from Saudi Arabia. You never know whether to wear a wool coat or a t-shirt on a given day, so it's best to carry both.

I took scuba lessons last fall intending to complete my open water dives in the Red Sea, but since I flunked the last two dives before coming, it would have taken me FIVE dives and most of my time here to catch up. I decided no one should have to work that hard here (Moses notwithstanding), so I decided to forget about it and just enjoy the beach.

But when I went to the dive shop in Dahab intending to tell them I was bagging it, out came the tea and the Bedouin cushions and I knew I was in for a long night. By the time the three master divers were done with me, I was nauseous with nicotine, sloshing with tea, and had agreed to review three chapters of the scuba course I'd already done back home—overnight—and be back at 9 a.m. the next day, ready to dive.

It was a GORGEOUS, warm, sunny morning that day, and the sea was several shades of a blue you only see in movies. I arrived on time and Richard my teacher started me reviewing the three hours of DVDs I'd already bored myself catatonic with last fall. Then there were HOURS more reviewing the tanks, the regulator, the BCD, etc., etc., before it was time to don the wet suit. (Think full-body girdle five sizes too small.) After all this—the tanks and everything and we were ready to go—I changed my mind AGAIN and told them I didn't want to go through with it. They tried kindness, gentle prodding, and hugs, but I was sticking to my guns: This girl was NOT putting that stuff on her face and going 40 meters down. So they suggested I just snorkel in the bay for awhile since I'd already gone to the trouble of putting on that flipping wet suit.

So ok. I felt bad and they felt bad, so I walked off the beach right at the dive shop, put my face in the water, and there I was: the Little Mermaid.

The most astonishing fish and coral are right beneath the surface on this shore of the Red Sea. The coral is so shallow you have to be careful not to bump into it and damage it; the suit is so buoyant I didn't have to swim at all, just let the current take me along with the fish. When I found a school of particularly brilliant neon-type fish, I followed them into the coral and watched them feed. The coral is alive and very fragile, and it's pristine here with almost no damage. Commercial fishing has been outlawed so fish and humans alike are free of the dangers of gear tangles. I kind of adopted a solitary needle-nosed cobalt-blue guy about the length of my hand that seemed lonesome with no school of its own.

On the way back to my hotel down a promenade of open-air restaurants—now practically empty because tourism in Egypt is practically zero—I was snagged by a particularly persuasive chef and had the most amazing tagine (crock thingy) of different kinds of vegetables roasted in a spicy sauce—with rice, puffy Bedouin bread and several kinds of dips. OOOF!


Then I rolled myself the rest of the way to my hotel intending to just lie on the beach and watch the sunset, when the owner there told me they were roasting a goat that night Bedouin-style (buried in the sand surrounded by coals and cooked for hours) and to be sure not to eat dinner. Oh my, roasted goat. I've never tasted anything so good.






After dinner we sat up on cushions in a tent on the beach, and while I listened to about six languages around me (Swiss-German, Italian, Swedish, French, Arabic, and Bedouin), the owner brought out an Apple laptop and speakers, put them on a low table, and inserted Lawrence of Arabia Part II for us to watch! The breeze off the sea was intoxicating; candles flickered from plastic water bottles filled with sand. Most of the Europeans discreetly drank beer and spoke softly. The Egyptians were drinking tea and smoking shisha pipes. Meanwhile, I translated some weird British expressions to the north-Sinai Bedouin who was sitting next to me. (A lot of English—particularly spoken BY the English—just can't be understood. We had a good laugh anyway.)

When the movie was over I got into a great conversation with a British couple my age who live in France and Egypt and know a lot about religious and Middle Eastern history. (We're having dinner together tonight.) A VERY drunk Chinese-looking woman with a London accent kept butting into the conversation, yelling about that FUCKING Lawrence and what a FUCKING "knob" he was (I had to ask my British friends to define "knob" for me) at the top of her lungs in this tranquil, international atmosphere of peace and harmony (not to mention toleration of western drinking). Man, humans can be buttheads (another word for "knobs"). The British man gently suggested she tone it down. She did.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:SOUTH SINAI PENINSULA

Taxi Madame? Carriage? Egyptian Husband?

Luxor—I'm still in Luxor because I missed my flight to Sharm El Sheikh after failing to look at the departure time on my ticket. The taxi that brought me to the airport cost $7; the one that brought me back cost $14. I guess I deserved that—no excusing stupidity.

No chance for another flight for three days so I'm back at the Nefertiti Hotel. I love this place and it feels like home. I have met so many fellow travelers here (the joke is we'd be 'tourists' if we were less pretentious). It's absurdly cheap given the location, the amenities and the warm service. I live on the deck below; that's the view across the Luxor Temple to the Nile.


Among my many new friends are two lovely Finns (one who lost her patience with a relentless tout and shouted "Fuck off!" to him, only to get her face thickly and disturbingly spat upon) who come here to see some sun. A solitary motorcyclist from London, traveling from Alaska down the West Coast to Chile and across to Africa, has been on the road for three years after selling his fashion business and "retiring." He has been blogging and studiously avoided for his mother's sake mentioning that in Guatemala he was surrounded by a gang and held with a gun to his head while they robbed him, but someone he met along the way mentioned it on HIS blog and linked to the British biker's, so his mum found out anyway.

I have the most fun with a crazy 60-something Canadian backpacker who has been all over the world many times since her hippie days in the '70s, always traveling on no money at all. She summited Kilimanjaro three years ago (she is my hero) and is on her way to Tunisia and Morocco with a backpack as big as she is. My company keeps her away from the cigarettes she's trying to avoid (ill-advised: EVERYone in Egypt smokes); her company does not keep us away from the alcohol I've avoided for more than two weeks. (That's another Canadian guest with her.)


At first we both like the big, booming Welshmen who join us on the roof-top deck in the evening...until their cigarettes come out and she starts to shake. I ask them if they can not smoke around us, and they do, until they pull out the gargantuan cans of Egyptian Stella beer, then the bottles of wine, and soon they're too inebriated to care about the cigarettes. We move.

I don't like their lack of discretion about the alcohol in this hotel run by Muslims where no alcohol is served, but I don't start to really dislike them until I find out they're revolution tourists—the Europeans who've been inserting themselves in the national political scene for its entertainment value. They happened to be in Cairo last year for the big demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and they're intending to be there again for the expected rallies and demonstrations that will mark the opening of Egypt's new Parliament on January 23, and the first anniversary of the revolution on January 25. One of them, Peter, is so proud of himself for having dodged rubber bullets last year (while Egyptians were being killed by real ones). I should've known that as Parliament Day approached he would not move his abundant self from the couches here on the roof, much less head north to Cairo on the train to join the first anniversary demonstrations.

Meantime the U.S. Embassy has emailed me to be aware of the possibility of trouble in Cairo and other cities as the anniversary approached, but the atmosphere here in Luxor is cheerful and celebratory. NOBODY has a good thing to say about Mubarak, and I'm teased good-naturedly for being from the nation that was so good to their despot. I hear the cheering from my upper deck and walk to the big central square opposite the main mosque and old Luxor Temple to watch the celebrations. Vendors are selling roasted nuts, candy and falafel; happy men old and young wave Egyptian flags. Children are circling around the "dangerous" demonstrators on rented electric mini-cars. I know from the TV in our hotel lobby that the parades in Cairo have shut down the streets (the military government declared January 25 a national holiday), but here in sunny Luxor it's a quiet, ordinary day.




I'm glad I'm still here because it's the first day in the 15 days I've been in Egypt that's been WARM, so I walk along the corniche on the Nile with absolutely nothing to do. Since there's so little tourist business EVERYBODY wants to stop me and either sell me something, book me for a carriage ride or a trip by taxi, or just chat about why no Americans come to Egypt. (I've noticed this too; I'm the only American I've met.) I'm starting to enjoy their ingenuity in getting my attention (note the headline, above) as I march past their stalls with my purposeful Egyptian stride. All I can think of is that the American news media have focused so much on the demonstrations in a few square blocks of Cairo that Americans fear they'll never get home.

It was too late when I got up today to join a tour; the cafe beneath the window of my new room went ALL NIGHT LONG. Tomorrow I'll be on one of the hot air balloons that float over the Valley of the Kings at sunrise for a view of these miles-long temple marvels from the air.




Later, my Canadian friend Gail and I stop at the famous Winter Palace Hotel on the corniche, a five-star hotel built in 1886 Victorian splendor. We have been told we can enjoy a cup of coffee amidst the acres of fabulous gardens behind the hotel.

Cutting through the vaulted lobby I see the gardens beyond. Groomed lawns, palm trees, an aviary, fountains, a swimming pool, several restaurants and a pool-side bar. Around a clay oven under some trees several veiled women laugh while they pound mounds of bread dough. We walk under a tree dripping yellow trumpet flowers and I notice that it's covered with hummingbirds.

The last occupant of the Winter Palace was King Farouk (or FFF, as his subjects called him: "Fat F...... Farouk"), overthrown in the 1952 revolution that launched six decades of military rule. (His queen ousted him too for his other "f": philandering. She remained unmarried and a happy commoner for the rest of her life.)



We ask to sit at a lovely outdoor restaurant and watch the nearly naked guests pool-side while we drink our coffee. It becomes clear that Mohammad the server wants us to move on, so we order lunch we don't really want yet. Then he starts taking our plates before we've barely touched the food. He does this about five times and I'm getting pretty testy at the worst service I've ever had anywhere, much less at a five-star hotel. Then when he says he can't take Gail's Visa card, when we've seen the sign for it coming in the hotel, she gets up, goes and gets the bill from him, and marches off inside to pay the bill. He comes to me expecting sympathy.

I spend a good hour that night blasting him and the hotel on a travelers' web site I like (TripAdvisor). May Mohammad learn better manners—or pass his job along to someone who already has some.

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Note on Egyptian Humor

Luxor—This is Aladin, writing the date in hieratic figures on a granite slab in Hatshepsut's temple. I had sneaked into his small tour to the Valley of the Kings and learned not just how much a well-educated Egyptologist can pull out of his brain, but how funny the famously funny Egyptians can be.

We are an American, two Finns, two Belgians (I think), and a Canadian. As we bump along on the way to the sites, we chat about how few other tourists we see. Aladin takes the opportunity to rank tourists in terms of relative numbers and identifying characteristics, as follows...

1. Russians: A bottle of vodka in one hand and naked except for a bikini.
2. Germans: Sunburned and carrying big bags of souvenirs.
3. French: Face-down in a French guidebook whose name I can't remember.
4. Canadians: Great big backpacks.
5. Americans: Great big backpacks with Canadian flags on the back.
6. English: A drink in each hand. (I can vouch for this.)
7. Dutch: A beer in one hand and a plastic bag of drugs in the other.
8. Koreans: Two kilos of makeup.
9. Japanese: A camera, a mask, and an umbrella. (I can vouch for this too.)
10. Chinese: Plastic bags FULL of food.
11. Egyptians: Four women, two in each hand.

That's the only story I remember. Next time you're in Luxor, check out Aladin Tours, Nefertiti Hotel, and ask him for more stories. Laughing 'till you choke is a good way to approach the riches of the ancient world. You won't be disappointed.
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Location:Valley of the Kings, Luxor

By Felucca to Luxor, Inshallah

Aswan—I'm feeling smug about having arranged my three-day felucca trip down the Nile ahead of time until the driver who picks me up at my hotel shows me to the boat. It's a lot more rickety than Captain Abdullah's felucca of a few days ago, and THIS one I'm going to be stuck on for three days. There is no one else yet on the boat.
The first thing I notice is there's no head. None.

The second thing I notice is there are no life rings or anything other than the boat itself that floats.

The third thing, and the one I'll be paying for at least a week beyond the trip, is that we'll be sleeping on just the wooden deck with a blanket on top. My ex used to call me "the princess and the pea" because my broken and abused back prevents me from sleeping on anything less than a royal mattress.





I don't mind waiting a long time for the other passengers to arrive, but they turn out to be only one—a Canadian from near Toronto who has been traveling for three-and-a-half years. He's 30-something, handsome, and completely filthy. He cadges an extra toothbrush off me and neglects to say thank you.








While we wait for the others we chat about where we've been and what our plans are. He has been on every continent, often without visas and covering his costs by working illegally. He is a chef by training but mostly he gets carnival work in Australia and France—hugely well-paid because he works on commission, earning as much as $4,500 for a couple of weeks. He sleeps by the side of the road, hitchhikes, buys junk cars in some countries and sells them when he leaves, and apparently gets laid—a lot.

He has an ugly cough from sleeping on a cold train stopped north of Luxor. Between coughs he mumbles through a scarf and I can barely hear him, but we're not together long before he starts slamming Egyptians ("They'll look you right in the eye and lie to your face.") When the Nubian captain and mate arrive it's clear their English is very limited, and Steve the Canadian starts talking to them in mocking monosyllables like they're Chinese coolies in an old American movie. I'm embarrassed for every white person these men have to tolerate.

At one point he demands that they speak in English because he's sure they're talking behind his back. He says things like "We pay good money. You work." And when he asks for lemon for his tea while they're struggling to relight the gas stove, he holds out his cup and huffs, "do you understand LEMON? Do you care about any of us at all?" He will keep this up for three days and I'll get royally sick of him. I can't imagine how three-and-a-half years of world traveling can do anything but humble you, but this guy is an asshole and has the social skills of a rock.

Our boatmen are Sayid and Captain Mustafa, who's been working the felucca for 20 years and seems serious about his work. Though the captain is only in his 40s he has practically no teeth from years of chewing sugar cane. In fact even Sayid, age 27, has black and decayed teeth. I will learn later that Egyptians not only suffer large-scale premature tooth loss, one in five has diabetes. Nonetheless, though I've never had a sweet tooth and never put sugar in my coffee, I'm loading up while I'm in Egypt and damn the consequences.



Steve the Canadian and I are the only passengers as we debark from Aswan. By midafternoon we have more tea in our hands and I'm feeling pretty special. We spend the day in the bright sunshine and it is GLORIOUS. At dinnertime as we cruise, Sayid and the captain light the gas stove again and begin cooking dinner. Tiny onions, fresh tomatoes, beans, bread and pasta—a surprise. They spread out a tablecloth for us but don't join us for dinner. I guess it's a good thing for their sakes but I feel a little bit like the old South with the "help" eating in the kitchen.






Before we're done eating darkness falls and so does the temperature—by about 30 degrees. We can see our breath and I'm freezing. I ask for a blanket and get one. Steve has a down sleeping bag plus a blanket and still finds more to complain about.

I put on everything I can think of and climb under my blanket with my iPad to read. It's still awfully early but there's nothing left to do. The boatmen tie up for the night and bunk down under the bow deck.

It's about 10 p.m. and very dark under our deck-mounted tent, but outside the stars make night into day. I realize I hear snoring and it's not coming from the side of the boat where Steve is. I roll over to relieve my back—I'll be doing this all night—and land right on someone's hand. It doesn't stop the snoring.

By now I really have to pee. What was I thinking with all that tea?

All night I roll—one side to the other, on my back, on my stomach—all the time trying to avoid whose-ever hand that is. I have no idea how long I hold my bladder hoping for someone to wake up and give me a hand getting to shore, but then I hear the gentle trinkle of someone peeing off the boat. I'm really pissed not to be a man.

Eventually I hear the distant call to prayer and know there'll be enough light soon for me to get off the boat. When the light is up but no one else is, I can't stand it anymore and despite my back I lift the two-ton plank and slide it along a mast-line to steer it toward the shore. This takes some doing because the boat has drifted out to the end of the bowline. I pull the boat closer and purposely run it aground.

I say my prayers and walk down the rickety 8-inch-wide plank to step ashore. I find some bushes...and relief. The relief, however, comes at a price. That was a lot of tea I drank. My cuffs are soaked.

I get aboard with a lot more back pain and effort, and I've brought some sand on the clean deck with me. When the boatmen get up they're obviously not happy about this, or about pushing the boat out of the shallows. They point accusing fingers toward sleeping Steve and I smile hoping they'll put something in his tea.

Kwan and Maria
Thank God today we will pick up two new passengers—Kwan, a Korean student who just finished a semester studying in Budapest and is traveling for the rest of the year—and Maria, a "much older" Korean researcher who had quit her job and is almost finished with a year-long journey through Africa and the Middle East.

The first thing Maria wants to know is what the facilities are like. It's funnier now than it was last night, and I tell her with restored humor what to expect. The absence of accommodations plus the increasingly frigid weather have her doubting the wisdom of the journey. I want the company and persuade her to stay.

She is great company. Her English is excellent and she insists with gentle good manners on getting what she wants—like landing on shore at reasonable interludes for hunting out facilities, meaning bushes.

One such landing is at Elephantine Island where Sayid's village is.



We walk around the village, which is pretty tidy and surrounded by produce fields. A boy throws dirt clods at a donkey that's pilfering clover. Two boys run up and say "American?" When I nod they give me a thumbs-up and shout "Obama!" Everybody says that when I admit I'm American. At least Egyptians like him right now.







Sayid takes us to his house and introduces us to his family. He is unmarried and lives with his parents, his little brother and sister and her husband and baby. The house is made of mudbrick covered with brightly colored stucco, and is built around a large open-air courtyard where cooking, meals, prayers—everything takes place.

During our walk Sayid asks me softly if I would like to join him on the felucca alone after our journey is over. I have heard that middle-aged female sex tourists come here looking for just such an invitation, but I'm a little surprised to hear this from him. About the third time he tries it I yell, "What are you, nuts? Go get a wife!" I know he can't afford one—they cost money up-front here. I'd tell on him to the captain but I know he'd lose his job and his whole family would lose the only income it gets.

In a very tidy, dark parlor we meet his family and look at terribly stiffly-posed wedding photos. His mother brings us tea and his sister lets me hold the fattest baby I have ever seen. The little boy can't be older than five or six months but he weighs as much as a toddler. A HEFTY toddler. His face is so black all I can see is his eyes. I hand him back when Sayid's mother brings us the tea. More tea.






That night around 10 p.m. Maria and I decide we'd better pee once more before crawling under the covers, but the water is shallow here and we can't get anywhere near close enough to put down the 10-foot plank. The boatmen do their best to pull the boat in, even standing barefoot in the freezing water. She looks at me laughing and asks how I feel about peeing off the bow. A wild wind is rocking the boat.

What the heck, part of the experience. But I'm hanging on for life. With all that tea we both have to get up once more during the night. These jeans will never be the same.

On my last day, thank God, the wind is too wild to sail (we'd taken on water a couple of times yesterday as we tried tacking through it). Mustafa uses my Egyptian cell phone to call for a van to pick us up. It takes us all the way to my hotel in Luxor and I'm one happy traveler.


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