Blogs from Mediterranean, Egypt, Africa - page 7

So the clinic that I am working at it very new and alexandria is very HUGE (i.e. 4 million people) so not a large number of people know of the free clinic yet. So for this reason we are out in the streets working with mostly horses and donkeys that are passing by the clinic on the street pulling carts etc. Some of the drivers dont want to stop because they are unsure what we are going to do to their animals but we've been lucky and most of the ones stopped the last few days have been great! Their is an extreme lack of common sense among many of the workers in the sense that they dont realize that you should treat animal before it gets too ill! They normally wait until the animal can ... read more

Today was the day I had been waiting for: Cleopatra, The Catacombs, and The Library of Alexandria. We boarded our bus early and was shocked to see a special forces officer, who was packing numerous weapons around his belt, boarding the bus with us. All kinds of questions entered my head. Had a threat been made against us? Was Alexandria this unsafe? I already felt uncomfortable here much like an outsider or a second class citizen. I was able to ask Mayer what was going on in private, and he said when they did not have an assignment, they would escort tour groups because they did not want anything to go wrong with tourists. Tourism is their livelihood here in Egypt. That eased my mind a little. We were off to see Pompey's Pillars. Very little ... read more

He was right: There is no bus to Aquaba so Sharmel Sheik here we come! The guidebook suggests that this is not quite the place for backpackers and we do not plan to stay the night. At nine pm tonight we leave Alex and arrive on the south coast at six am tommorrow - I'm not holding out for a comfortable night's sleep - and we hope to get a boat across to Jordan later that day. I suspect that this will be an ordeal; I suspect there will be a lot of dragging bags around from one dusty carpark to another, that many a helpful man will offer cyptic directions and the boat will be delayed. Boats are always delayed. But we're up for it; we're raring to go. Goodbye Egypt! We have had a ... read more

We arrived this afternoon in Alexandria ('Alex' to Egyptians) after yet another coach journey - having returned only yesterday from the Sahara desert camp where we'd been since Monday. I spent the journey doing ankle exercises as yesterday my ankles had swollen grossly (five sedentary hours on a hot vehicle not known for doing your circulation any good). My precautions paid off and I don't look as though I have the legs of a baby elephant today. Alex feels very different to Cairo, not so big, not so hurried, a bit cooler thankfully. Tomorrow we go to the catacombs and the roman amphitheatre, just outside the city. I wouldn't have thought Alexandria was a city - it feels small, like a British seaside town almost (only infinitely less depressing). Tomorrow evening we leave for Aqaba in ... read more

While in Egypt, we took a day trip out of Cairo to explore Alexandria. We hit all five of the big sites: the Roman amphitheater (which we really just glanced at), the pillar of Pompey, the catacombs, the library, and the citadel. The citadel was a pretty ridiculous experience. The museum of the citadel had nothing to do with the fortress and instead was filled with life-sized dioramas of sea life. It was, however, pretty neat to stand in the belly of a whale. I had never before seen a whale skeleton (at least not that I can recollect). The library was pretty neat. They had a really amazing collection of old and rare manuscripts. The oldest dated to the 10th century AD. They covered a whole variety of topics from math and science to religion ... read more