April 25-27
Wow am I behind! We’ve been so busy, on the move, or just plain exhausted that I haven’t had a second to get on my laptop, except to send a few quick e-mails. Now, however, Kim and I are in the Madrid airport for the next 8 hours, with no internet so I can type and reflect to my hearts content…
April 25- Friday
So Kim woke up and went diving with Salaka and Kathleen and I slept in until 10am. When we got up we headed to the beach and all was fine until Kim came back from her second dive…Since she’d been diving she wouldn’t be able to climb Mt. Sinai with us since you can’t go low and high so quickly w/o fear of Nitrous poisoning and decompression or whatever. So she and Kathleen brainstormed on how to get us all to Cairo together and with enough time so we could actually enjoy Saturday there.
Kim headed off for her third dive and Kathleen and I tried to figure it out. Pretty much what we needed was for Kathleen, myself, and Phil (a guys from AUC) to be driven out to Mt. Sinai at midnight and dropped off, then another car or the same one could bring Kim in the morning and we could all drive to Cairo together. Seems simple, right? Yeah, not so much. So we’d already arranged for a driver to take us from Dahab to Sinai, sleep in the car, and then drive us to Cairo, however this was through our not so nice Hostel Owner…Rather than trying to explain it with him and have him raise the price and become even more angry with him we decided to try and arrange alternate arrangements.
At the dive shop there was this guy James and his girlfriend Vanessa. He offered to go back to the hotel with Kathleen and I and basically be our “muscle” as the owner wouldn’t let us take the stuff with us in the morning, wouldn’t take the key back, and wouldn’t let us pay (I think he was still hoping that we would suddenly want to pay for Friday night). Honestly, if the guy had been nice we would have had no problem, if he’d wanted us to pay half we would have in a second, but the way the guys yelled at us when we said we didn’t need the room…oh boy. With James lurking in the background we actually paid less then what the price was on-line (not by much) and got our stuff and headed out. Back at the dive shop we finally nailed down drivers willing to do what we were asking and only for an extra 100 Egyptian pounds, awesome! or so we thought…
Now I thought Kim had arranged for us to bbq at James and Vanessa’s but I guess I misunderstood him…long story short we bbq’d at James and Vanessa’s house in Dahab. That was fun and interesting. When we went shopping (we paid, he cooked) we got the rump cut of the beef and when we got back ground it up, added bread crumbs, fat, maple syrup, and sun dried tomatoes in some and made patties. For dinner we had burgers, salad, grilled Aubergines, and real potatoes sliced and grilled in salted. Oh yeah and James made his own ketchup AND the sun dried tomatoes were hand dried by him, we also had delicious milkshakes for dessert. We learned a lot and got to eat some really good food. On the outside everything seemed fine but as the night went on it started to get a little weird…
But besides some interesting, entertaining stories it all seems ok, until the driver shows up. For some reason the driver thinks he’s going to drive to Mt. Sinai, sleep there, then drive us back to Dahab and then to Cairo…no way. We’re just going to waste so much time!! Lots of phone calls, raised voices, threats to leave (theirs), and threats to call the tourism police (James), we’re on our way BUT not to Mt. Sinai…to the Tourism Police Office!! As we arrive James is trying to get us to put together a story to lie to the police saying we’re going to lose $2000 and miss our plane if we don’t get to Cairo in time (instead of we don’t want to sit in traffic after being up all night and would have just taken the bus if we wanted to get there later) and Phil, Kathleen, and I glance at each other and I can tell we’re all thinking the same thing, “No way in hell are we going to like to the Egyptian Police!!”
Well we didn’t have to, instead we just had to sit there silently for the better part of an hour while the Chief of Police ripped the two guys apart…in Arabic. In the end he decided what we were paying was too low but that one of the guys would have to pay the driver from his own salary because they had promised us a certain price. Humdee (sp?), the guy that arranged the whole thing, his character was called into question and exactly how much he was getting for arranging all of this (waaaay too much) and it was all HIS FAULT! that everything was messed up. We’re finally on our way and James announce that his Visa’s expired…fan-freaking-tastic, we have like a million check points to go through and his visa’s expired, this is going to be fun.
April 26
Luckily the police didn’t notice so he gets through all the checks BUT we still have to spend a good 20 minutes at each check because the police don’t understand way 3 people are dropping off 3 people at the mountain? yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn’t actually begin hiking until sometime around 3:30 or 3:45 in the morning and our goal was to make it to the top in time for sunrise, which was supposed to be at 5:30am. The fastest Kathleen heard of anyone of her friends making it up, was just over 2 hours and the other took a good 3 hours…great. Well I was the slow poke of the group due to my knee and recent surgery in September but we didn’t take a single extended break and we made it to the top in about 1 hour and 40 minutes! We were passing people (and camels) left and right and we made it up to the top with about 30 minutes to sit and wait for sunrise.
Since it was over cast, sunrise wasn’t quite as spectacular as I’m sure it could have been, but despite that it was gorgeous nonetheless. Once the sun came up and we were done taking pictures, we headed back down the mountain and a camel almost bit me!! I was walking down and there was this camel next to me on the side sitting and when I went by it raised its head and snapped at me twice!! Kathleen saw it and she jumped too. When we arrived at the bottom and headed to St. Catherine’s monastery, the oldest still-functioning monastery in the world or Egypt or something…well what do you know? It’s Easter weekend (for the Coptic Christians) and so it’s closed. We got something to eat and notice there’s a group from AUC that was staying at our place, well the arranged to have a car do the same thing as we were originally going to have…except instead of sleeping the driver hiked up the mountain with them!! Kathleen was not happy that they were on their way before us until they came back…turns out the reason the other guys could get us such a cheap price is because the driver wasn’t licensed to bring tourists into the Sinai!! For awhile it looks like they might be stuck and having to hitch a ride with us, but then the US Embassy pulls through for them and they’re on their way. Not too long after we spot Kim and off we are to Cairo.
We made good time into Cairo and went to Kathleen’s dorm room/the hotel she lives in…Well since Phil lives in the AUC apartments he had to be dropped off first in another part of Cairo, rather than taking the metro we ask the driver if he can drop us off at Kathleen’s, sure no problem, he’s going to charge us regular cab fare from Phil’s to Kathleen’s (about 7 pounds or less than $1.50), no problem we say. So when we get to Kathleen’s Kim accidentally gives him 17 instead of 7 and he gets mad!! He wants 50 pounds!! 50 pounds for an additional 10 minutes, if that, in the cab!! He sort of throw our money back at us and Kathleen tells Kim and I to go inside as she starts arguing with him in Arabic, next thing we know she put 10 in his cab and we run inside. He comes in after us!! But since he stopped to lock his car first he’s too far behind us and the guards stop him, no boys allowed, whew!
After relaxing and showering (I had to wash my hair like 5 times to get out all the salt and sand) we drop our things at our hostel and head to the Hard Rock Café to toast and enjoy dinner. Kim and I got a bottle of wine that was rather disgusting but all of our food was good. We only made it halfway through the bottle it was so gross, and Kathleen tells us we can ask them to put a cork in it and we can take the rest to go (we did, just because we could, but we didn’t drink anymore of it). At dinner we get a call from Jonathon and David, turns out they’re on their way to Cairo.
They had gone to Port something or other and were going to take the ferry to Dahab, a ferry that turns out, hasn’t run in a month…the ticket guys were more than willing to sell the boys tickets just in case it did run! Oh how I love Egypt. So instead they hopped on a bus and were supposed to come in at 4:00am. We told them where we were staying and what-not and then when we get back to our room, we get another call…they’re here! Apparently there was a miscommunication because it was NOT 4am but so they stayed at our hostel and we shared crazy Egypt stories (ours about Dahab and the police, there’s about the ferry). David also updated some of the software on my computer, yea for updated iphoto!! and we all headed to bed.
April 27
Our last day! Kim, Kathleen, and I said by to David and Jonathon as we headed out. We had today planned for exploring Cairo and souvenir shopping! We were dropped off at the “local” side of the market and we wandering around the meat and vegetables section, looking for souvenir stands when an Egyptian student offered to help us out. He took us to the stands that actually make the souvenirs, like pillowcases, scarves, and shesha’s and helped us bargain (even though Kathleen’s very good at it on her own). One really interesting thing was he took us to a stand that sold boxes. They were all pretty we agreed, then he announced they were tourist boxes and had the guy pull out the Egyptian boxes…now they were GORGEOUS! The wood was nicer, there was camel bone instead of plastic, and shinier, prettier, and just more mother of pearl/inside of abalone. In the end none of us could resist buying one of the real boxes.
Kathleen needed to catch her flight to Jordan so we said goodbye to her and had lunch with our new friend. Kim and I tried real Egyptian food, meaning we had falafel, bread, and she had beans and pastrami while I had beans and sausage. Compared to the portions we’d been eating Kim and I were suddenly looking at A LOT of food and didn’t come anywhere near finishing it. After lunch he showed up a papyrus shop where the papyrus is good quality and the pictures are hand painted on, instead of printed. They were way better than the ones we’d already bought and way cheaper…oops. After we said goodbye to our friend and Kim and I wandered around by ourselves buying some bracelets and other trinkets and bargaining so well, I know we did Kathleen proud.
For dinner Kim and I had Shwarma and juice!! There are juice bars all over but Kim and I had been hesitant to try them until Dahab, thinking that for sure we would get sick. Yeah well they were AMAZING! and we should have tried them sooner! In the last hour before we headed out to Dahad Kim had three glasses and I had two! yummy.
We got back to the hostel, where we had left our stuff behind the front desk, and wrote out some postcards (which Kathleen’s going to have to mail because we couldn’t find any stamps). The guys that ran the hostel had some food, that looked like dinner, but actually were desserts for Easter. They made Kim and I eat some with them and even though I couldn’t place the flavors, they were delicious.
Then the driver droves us to the airport and along the way we saw some things that are definitely only in Egypt. A car ahead of us had two kids sitting in the trunk with it open and they were holding the top up from slamming down on them! Also as we were headed into the airport we were speeding, just as everyone does here, and the police flagged us down! We thought we were in trouble (wouldn’t have surprised us) but instead the policeman just wanted a ride into the airport.
At the airport we had more only in Egypt experiences. They won’t let you through security without your boarding pass…but you get your boarding pass after you go through security! Luckily Kim had a copy of our itinerary (we had this problem in Luxor too and Kathleen had the confirmation number) and we were allowed in. Next we were in the gift shop looking for golf balls for her Dad, he collects them and he hadn’t found any that say Egypt. Well we found them and they wanted to charge Kim $22 for two! We realize that’s the airport but $22 for 2 golf balls?? Turns out they didn’t know the price and were just saying what they thought it was and trying to charge her that. We made them look up the price and turns out it was only $11. We didn’t get a receipt and they guy didn’t put the money in the register…but that’s not out problem!
April 28
We boarded at 11:30pm and I fell asleep right away. We had three seats for the two of us so we had plenty of room to stretch out and I vaguely remember waking up to eat. As we were preparing to land I guess they asked if anyone had any first aid experience. No one pressed the call light, so Kim did, I was waking up and had no idea what was going on as she headed to the back of the plane. I look back and she’s waving me to come back there. Turns out there’s a guy that’s feeling dizzy, he only speaks Spanish. The flight attendant translated for me and told me he had been pale but when they put him on oxygen his color came back. I took his pulse and it was in the normal range and he wasn’t sweating profusely, cold, or having trouble breathing. We quizzed him on what he’d had to eat/drink and Kim and I decided he probably was dehydrated (he didn’t drink water all day while he was walking around Egypt and he had a whiskey while on board). We stayed in the back of the airplane to monitor him while we landed and the second we touched down he said he felt better and took off the oxygen. We stayed with him until the doctor and medics arrived and took over. The flight attendants took down our names and e-mails and supposedly we’re going to get miles or something for helping, so not necessary but cool anyway. I’m going to have to tell all my teachers when I get back that I got to practice my nursing skills, especially assessment.
Now it’s 5:30am Spanish time and we’ve been in the airport for about 2 hours…only 6 more to go before we get to board! We’re flying to Chicago, waiting for 4 hours, and then heading to LAX and on Tuesday I’m flying from LAX to SFO…back to reality and LOTS of schoolwork.
Kim, Kathleen, and I all had an amazing, wonderful time in Egypt. I don’t care if my grades suffer a bit; it was totally worth every minute of it. After 10 days of close quarters, lack of sleep, and extreme heat we didn’t have any major fights at all! I guess three girls can travel together after all! ☺ I had so much fun I’m already starting to think about planning a trip for when I finish school, after I take the nursing boards but before I start work…anyone want to backpack around Europe with me?
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