Advertisement
Published: March 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Day 12 - Day trip to Alexandria
We had 2 new drivers for the trip to Alexandria and got off to a bit of a sketchy start with them. On the way out of Cairo, the road they intended to take was under construction. It was a 4 lane separated highway, and only our northbound lanes were under construction, so our driver cooly pulled into oncoming traffic. His combination of honking and flashing the lights notified the oncoming traffic to give us a lane to drive in until we could cut back onto the other side of the median. We thought we were getting used to Egyptian driving, this took it up another level. Only 2.5 hours to Alexandria... hopefully no more construction.
Alexandria was established by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and was capital of Egypt for over 1000 years, but unfortunately very little of the past remains. We had a woman tour guide in Alexandria, and she took us first to the Quaetbay fort right on the Mediteranean Sea. The fort was built on the location of the famed lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the original 7 wonders of the world. It was completely destroyed from
Pomp's pillar
99 ft high - 88 feet of one piece of red granite earthquakes, but some of it still lies in the sea. A quick photo stop here, and then we walked over to the aquarium, included in our tour. Our guide didn't seem too keen about it, but she didn't make the itinerary, so she bought our tickets and we went in. We quickly realized why she wasn't excited. Melissa described it perfectly as it reminded her of the fish section at Walmart, but not as clean. We politely walked around snickering for a few minutes and left.
We also visited the other main attractions of Alexandria, the Roman theatre, the library, Roman catacombs and Pomp's pillar. Compaired to the rest of the sites we had seen in Egypt, Alexandria didn't really compare. We did get to see the local sidewalk sale, where you can buy anything from car parts to toilets, and a funeral procession heading from a mosque to the cemetary, which was interesting. We concluded that Alexandria would probably have been more appealing had we visited here first, or if it was warmer, as it was quite cool and windy along the sea. But we would have wondered about it if we didn't go, so now we know.
Day 13 - Camping trip in the desert - written by our guest author Melissa.
Our driver picked us up at 7am for our 4 hour drive out to the Bahariya Oasis and informed us that we had to make a quick stop to pick up an escort before we left Cairo. At the time we weren't quite sure what the purpose of the escort was since he could barely speak English and never took over driving, we assumed maybe he was part of the camping trip. Turns out he just needed a ride out to the Oasis to visit family and did so on our dime! When we arrived at the Aplenbick Motel we had to wait for our driver to get the car ready so we sat down to enjoy some tea in the courtyard. After tea we were given a room to use while we waited- a sneak peak at what we would be sleeping in the next night - let's just say the sneak peak left something to be desired. (Needless to say I was not looking forward to coming back to the room that had a pad of concrete as a box spring,
White desert
The mushroom area a stinky bathroom with no shower curtain and lots of mosquitos!). We changed into our warm clothes and then we were off on our desert safari in a 4X4 Toyota Land Cruiser with our driver Magdi.
Magdi enjoyed singing to loud egyptian music and driving fast (160KM at one point)! At one point he put in a tape that he thought we would enjoy because it was for the "tourists", while the singer was English we had no idea who it was and told him he could put the egyptian music back on. Our first stop of the safari was in the black desert to climb to the top of Black Mountain. It was pretty windy at the top, but it provided a good view of the black desert which gets its name from the black basalt rock that scatters the landscape.
Next we stopped at the Oasis Cafeteria for lunch where in typical egyptian style they gave us way more food then the two of us could eat. A quick stop at the squat toilets (thank goodness I had kleenix in my pocket) and we were off to collect firewood with the aid of our waiter from
the Cafeteria, a boy about 18 years old. After searching the small village with no luck we ended up driving out to some trees where our driver and waiter broke off dead branches with their hands and piled it onto the top of the jeep. When we had enough wood we assumed we were headed back to drop off our waiter but instead he ended up coming with us as we headed to our next stop Crystal Mountain, a hill made entirely of quartz.
We were less than impressed with Crystal mountain but really enjoyed our next stop - the white desert. The chalky white rock formations are really cool and come in all shapes and sizes, we even found some that looked just like the snow drifts we left behind in Manitoba! After cruising around to look at some of the different shapes we parked behind a large formation and our driver set-up camp and started supper. The chicken, rice and potato supper was delicious and must of smelled good, because it attracted the attention of a desert fox...something Al had read about prior to our trip and neglected to tell me about! The fox left after it
P2270755
Smoking the sheesha with Magdi realized we weren't going to share our food but when we were finished our driver put the bones out on a nearby rock. During the night I either dreamt that the fox was walking on my back or it really was....I'm still not really sure but in the morning the bones we left were gone!
Althought the night sky in the desert was amazing the evening was a little awkward as we didn't have anything to do and our drivers didn't speak a lot of english. So after trying out the sheesha (a tobacco water pipe - one try for both of us was enough), watching some bellydancing videos on our drivers cell phone (weird) and some small talk we were ready for bed. We lied down on the small mattress and our driver piled on 6 wool blankets. We were definitely warm but it was an interesting night sleeping in the desert beside two Egyptians you just met and desert foxes running around, so I didn't get much sleep!
Back to Alan to take over the blog duties.
Once we got back from the camping trip we had a couple hours to shower up and relax in
the room. Our visit to the oasis also included an afternoon trip around the town of Bawiti, where the hotel was actually located. New driver, but did not speak much english either, so we relied on the itinerary to figure out where we were. He took us on a bit of a desert safari in the landcruiser, which I thought was quite fun. Melissa got hung up on the fact we had no seatbelts so she didn't enjoy it as much. We also visited a hot spring, a salt lake, and finally were to finish the day watching the sunset from the top of a hill where the rubble of an old British castle is. Being that it was quite windy (with accompanying sand in your face), cold, and overcast, we took a look from the hill, and went back down and enjoyed the sunset from our room. Dinner at the hotel was included in the package, and was an excellent meal of tabouleh, noodle soup, rice, potatoes and chicken.
March 1st - Nothing on the schedule today except going back to Cairo. For our last night, I had taken the option from EOL tours of booking the Moevenpick
Moevenpick hotel
View from one of the cafe's at the Moevenpick hotel pyramids hotel for about $100 US. It turned out to be a pretty good deal as the rack rate on the room was $180. We thought it would be nice just to have a western style hotel, with a pyramid view for our last night in Egypt, and after the night at the Aplenblick hotel, we certainly needed it. Our only adventure of the day was to head down to the pyramids area to buy a new scarf for Melissa. We just enjoyed the room, repacked our bags, and got ready for our flight to Rome.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0614s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb