Felucca Sailing and Bonfires

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We awake around 9.30 in the morning. It has been such an amazing sleep. The best I've slept in such a long time. The farmers have been by this morning because now there is a donkey and its baby on the grass where we are docked. I try a couple of times to pat the donkey but they don't really like us getting close. Right toilet time, the thing we dread the most. It involves grabbing some TP paper, heading off the boat and popping a squat behind a bush. It's not glamourious but that's the only down side to the felucca.

We have our breakfast which is delicious. Then we sail off. It's beautiful and calming. We dock at a beach for lunch. There are 3 children on the beach with a donkey and a bag each. They are setting up shop to sell us nick nacks Etc. I notice from the boat these big black things moving around the sand. The boys keep flicking them off their shop table (which is a scarf with various bracelets and jewelry, great presentation!). We hop off the boat and check out the black things which are scarabs ! Cool! We buy a couple of things from the little boys basically because they are very cute and wait for the other boats to arrive.

Top deck arrives and the immediately are jumping in the water swimming etc. This beach is a clean area of the nile. by this stage we are finishing our lunch. We wait awhile and decide to paddle around and go for a swim ourselves.

After our swim we take off again and relax on our final stretch. Nadime explains we need to be at a certain point tonight. We go under the Aswan Bridge, in order to do this there needs to be a bit of skill involved. They need to time it with the Zig zag, wind and make sure they lower the sail at just the right time. I snap some photos of this on tillys camera. Pretty impressive. Nadime advises that sometimes it can take around 2 hours to do this because the conditions aren't right, we are lucky this time.

After awhile of relaxing sailing, it's night time. We aren't meant to sail at night but we still need to be at that 'check point' for docking. Heaps of cruise boats are heading up the Nile at night, these create waves so it's rocky for us. But it's nothing compared to home (christchurch earthquakes and all).

We finally get to our destination on a beach. We dock an have a lovely candle lit dinner. It's delicious. Before we know it top deck have arrived. They're drunk and having a good time. After dinner we play some cards to kill time. Then the bonfire is lit. We hop off the boat and immediately enter the bonfire area with the crazy egyptains banging their drums, singing and dancing around the fire. It's so much fun! We end up without permission being pulled into a conga line. They are playing songs like "in the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight" etc. The music calms and the main guy "water buffalo" (named this because he's so big) asks the kiwis to do the haka. So these white boys all take a bit of time and prepare, then 'nek minute' "kamate kamate" .... It's actually pretty good for scrawny topless white guys lol. The rest of the night the top deck girls and boys sing songs like the gambler, teach the locals the Macarena and the locals teach us a song "habebe so ya so" which means "my love is in jail"...So funny as they sway their arms side by side.

I smoke some Seeshaa with nadime and the crew then notice the top deck girls and boys are all clicked up and all really just focusing on 'getting it in' so decide to go to bed. Tilly and I are soooo tired and before we know it, with the banging of the drums, a crew man next to us snoring and kiwi girls skinny dipping behind our boat with worlds like "I have sand In my vagina" is blurred out and I'm fast asleep!

I love felucca sailing.

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Photos

The Felucca Clan
Docking for lunch and a wee swim in the Nile!

Scarabs!
Scarabs, all over the beach they were... very freaky when the crawl on your feet!

Music and Bonfire Madness
Locals played songs such as "In the jungle the mighty jungle..." etc

The Haka
Scrawny white guys, doing the Haka... NZ Represent!