Blogs from Mediterranean, Egypt, Africa - page 12

All around me I saw the same, featureless, chalky blue void. If it weren’t for the bubbles coming out of my regulator and rising toward the faint silhouette of the boat above me I couldn’t have even told you which way was up. I sank deeper into the gloom with each passing second. As I went, I carefully equalized the pressure in my ears as I scanned the slightly darker blue below me. My depth gauge read just over 10 meters, so I knew that the bottom was getting close. A few seconds later several shadows materialized out of the void below me, slowly taking on the jumbled shape of a boulder field. One of the objects on the bottom stood out from the rest. Its surface was hidden beneath thousands of years worth of crust ... read more

There is nothing much to do in the city of Port Said so we decided to use some more of our "credit" and take a ship's tour to Cairo. Both of us had been to Cairo before but never together. The coach took the desert road from Port Said to Cairo. This was very interesting as the road runs parallel to the Suez Canal for part of the way and if you look towards the canal you can sometimes see a huge ship apparently sailing through the fields (see photo). However, driving through Cairo was not such a fun experience. We passed the Ministry where D worked 25 years ago on the way to the Egyptian Museum where we saw King Tut's death mask and all the other loot from his tomb. We also saw various ... read more

So I finally got the rest of my pics loaded up from the first month of my time here in Egypt. There are quite a lot and the links to reach them are at the bottom of this page. I was in Cairo/Luxor/Aswan last week and had an asbsolutely fabulous time. I will write about that next week once I've got all those pics loaded (I took about 700 - I know crazy but I went to sooo many Pharonic sites it was impossible not to). I'm heading to the Siwa Oasis tomorrow - it's an oasis way out in the desert (about a 9 hour bus ride from Alexandria). There are many famous sites there from Pharonic, Roman and Greek times, as well as both hot and cold springs and, well, desert of course! We're ... read more

My patience has definitely grown thin since entering Egypt, but I have no choice but to bite my lip and smile. After all, the locals won't know what I'm saying if I try to make a logical case for anything obvious. The various inconveniences Rob and I have encountered are worth putting up with. Egyptian locals cutting right in front of us for train and bus tickets is just one example. Another is their concept of time, or lack thereof. Forget about printed schedules of any sort. They are mere myths. Don't cross your legs while sitting down in public either. Showing the soles of your feet in public places is very disrespectful. Most of the time we just laugh rather than get angry when faced with time/transportation/rule-based adversities. We've done quite a bit of walking ... read more

breezing through alexandria Africa » Egypt » Alexandria By freshfromegyptMay 29th 2007jasoni left cairo and im now in alexandria north of cairo, the mediteranean ocean is a 30 sec walk from my hotel, hence the breeze is well appreciated after the heat and intoxication of cairo, dont have muce time the comp is slow, heading to the desert oases of siwa west of hear tomorow, check pics, not sure which view i like more from my hotel window, the cairo 1 or the one im at now, what do u think? concrete or sea?... read more