Jan 1 - Bushey Redux

A new year and time to head home.

We awaken to an idyllic London morning with the ground and trees covered with a picturesque coating of hoar frost. The Brits are under the impression that it is cold; little do they know.

The only event on the schedule was a second attempt at Bushey Cemetery to visit the grand folks, bookending our failed attempt to visit on the first day of the journey. This time the cemetery was open and we managed to find my grandmother and grandfather's graves, though had to give up on finding my grand-aunt and great-grandparents due to lack of time and a bitter wind.

Twelve hours later we're safely home in Calgary... and HOLY CRAPOLA IS IT COLD HERE. :(

Dec 31 - Grims Dyke Wedding

After two weeks in the Middle East with kosher and/or halal dietary restrictions, we have the temptation of a full English breakfast this morning. On one hand, there’s four thousand years of religious dietary laws possibly passed down from the creator of the universe. On the other hand, bacon.

The afternoon brought the initial reason for starting this trip in the first place, the wedding of my cousin Paul to the lovely Claire. 

The evening was a combined wedding reception and New Year's Eve party. Being exhausted after two weeks of adventure touring, we found that we weren't going to make it to midnight without a rest and ended up sneaking back to our room for a two-hour evening nap, returning at 11:30 though with considerably little spring in our step. I'm afraid that the Canadian contingent were not the life of the party and did not represent our nation well.

Happy 2015 everyone, and congratulations to Paul & Claire.

Dec 30 - Athens (kinda)

Up early to get our freshly-bought, Sinai-dodging flights out of Cairo. Sorry kidnappers, maybe next time!

(The country of Egypt did get some revenge on us: my credit card stopped working later that day, and we discovered that it had been duplicated (most likely by the hotel in Luxor) and $6000 of online charges had been billed against it. No financial cost to us since the card issuer cancelled my card number then marked the charges as fraudulent and reversed them, but I've now got a million monthly subscriptions to update when I get home.)

We had a very tight connection through Athens but managed to make it just in time. I know all cultures are equal and you can never judge others, but in the 15 minutes we spent in that airport we found our first properly clean and modern washrooms in weeks (with nobody sticking out their hand for a payment outside), plus free, high-speed wifi that worked on the very first try. Just sayin’.

(Back in the UK, we were saddened to see Edmonton making international news with a mass murder. Ugh.)

The evening found is having drinks with family and new friends in the Grim’s Dyke Hotel, site of tomorrow’s wedding and home of W.S. Gilbert in his final years. Unfortunately some guests (not us, for a change) stayed up too late to pour oh pour the pirate brandy, then woke up feelings like things of shreds and patches, despite claims that they’re never ever sick at sea. (What, never? Well… hardly ever!)

Dec 29 - Cairo Redux

Just a half-day of touring today, enough to see the Cairo Museum including King Tut’s famous sarcophagus’ and headdress; no photos were allowed but actually what was more interesting to see the square where the revolution took place, right in front of the Museum.

Next was a quick tour of old Cairo, seeing the old mosque, old Eastern Orthodox cathedral, and old synagogue, all within an hour. At the mosque, for some reason Jessica decided it was time to bring out her Lord of the Rings cosplay.

We had an option to a Nile dinner cruise, a camel ride in the desert, or go see the evening light show at the Pyramids, but we decided to call it a day. Back at the hotel we thought we might go for a swim on the rooftop pool, perhaps do some blogging, and maybe watch a movie on the laptop. Instead, we lay down on the bed for what turned out to be a four-hour nap, awakening just long enough to eat and then go back to bed for another eight hours.

It’s been a tiring few weeks.

Dec 28 - Luxor

By coincidence the theme of a lot of our recent travels seems to be that we don't need Las Vegas: we don't need Mandalay Bay, we go to Mandalay; we don't need Caesars Palace or The Venetian, we go to Rome and Venice; nor do we need New York or Paris; etc. Today we render The Luxor redundant.

After nearly ten very busy days of touristing we are starting to get worn out. This morning we’re in even worse shape since the “local wine” we had with dinner the night before was clearly some high-octane home-brew and we woke up with screaming headaches. Unfortunately, we ended up having a seventeen hour day ahead of us.

We started with the Valley of the Kings, visiting three tombs (no photos allowed), and then on to the Valley of the Queens. We encountered our first real crowds of the entire trip here, though our guide explained that this was probably less than one-tenth of what was here before the revolution and that he is only able to work a couple days a month. Unexpectedly (because we hadn't bothered doing our homework before the trip) the real highlight was the Karnak Temple. Neither of had realized that there was anything this large and well preserved left from the ancient Egyptian dynasties.

Next, our guide arranged for a relaxing private felucca sail on the Nile to watch the sun set:

Though weary, we were still not done and were taken to the Luxor Temple after dinner. This was another massively tall and well-preserved complex, this time lit up eerily from below in the clear Egyptian night.

Finally back at the airport for our midnight flight, the proper highlight of the day turned out being finding Luxor International to have free, functional (albeit slow) wifi connection (the first we’d seen since Petra). Emails and blog posts synced at last!

Dec 27 - Cairo

First stop in the morning was the famous Pyramids of Giza, where we were thankful to encounter other tourists for the first time in two days (mostly Europeans and southeast Asians), though crowds we still quite light.

After lunch we were off to the airport for our flight to Luxor. (We were meant to take a night train but were told it was no longer running, though never told why; most likely lack of tourism has shut it down, but given the previous day’s event let’s not rule out drug runners, kidnappers, and alien abductions.)

Still worn out from our grueling drive across the Sinai and apprehensive about having to do a fourteen hour return in two days across what we had dubbed “the kidnap zone” to get back to Israel (we were returning to London from Tel Aviv), we decided it was time to “call an audible” and find different arrangements back to London. Unfortunately, the hotel wifi was broken and the “FreeAirportWifi” at Cairo International Airport wouldn't connect. Luckily I managed to notice that if you stood just outside the EgyptAir Lounge you could steal their wifi signal, so iPhone and credit card to the rescue and I managed to book us some Aegean Airlines tickets via Athens in the spare ten minutes before our flight, and we’d just cancel the Tel Aviv leg of our return journey and eat the costs.

In the end it was probably a zero-sum game: we could have spent that money on airfare changes, or we could have spent it as ransom in the Sinai.

Dec 26 - Sinai

The events of this post don’t actually start on Dec 26; they actually start on the evening of the previous night, and the line between the two is blurry.

After Petra we had a nice lunch then a two-hour drive in a luxury, air-conditioned coach back to the Israeli border. Chatting with other people in our group, we found that most of them were spending a few more days at the resorts in Eilat and they were surprised that we were travelling on to Egypt. This should have been a clue. After all, as mentioned in a previous post we had been warned by the prophets of doom before our trip that going to Israel and Jordan was too dangerous, but we did the research and found that it was reasonably safe. Presumably these fellow travelers had done similar research and were also visiting these countries, but even they were skeptical that going to Egypt was a good idea…

Our itinerary for Dec 26 said something like “Overnight in Taba; drive to St. Catherine’s; two-hour hike up Mount Sinai; continue on and overnight in Cairo”. However, this schedule was written before the latest round of troubles in Egypt and we discovered that plans had changed as soon as we crossed the border into Egypt and met our new guides. Instead, we were driving the 2.5 hours to St. Catherine’s tonight, and it was already 9PM. Also, we would not be starting our hike up Mt. Sinai tomorrow afternoon, we would be starting it at 1:30 in the morning so that we could be at the summit for sunrise, meaning we had time for two hours of sleep at most.

Worse, the security situation in Sinai is not great for tourists and there was a real risk of kidnapping. We had two options: (1) wait around until 10PM for the next scheduled police-escorted tourist convoy out of Taba; or (2) chance it on our own (technically not allowed). Our guides decided to go with option #2 since “it’s not worth it for only two tourists”; I never got clarity if this meant that it wasn't worth it for the kidnappers to grab only two tourists, or not worth it for the police to bother protecting only two tourists. As they were breaking the rules by crossing the desert alone with us, our guides cautioned that if we do encounter any police checkpoints, Jessica and I should hide under blankets in the back of the van so the police wouldn't know we were there. At this point we took some time to reflect on the life choices that had brought us to this moment.

We arrived at our hotel in St. Catherine’s without incident (neither police checkpoint nor kidnapping) to discover it devoid of any other tourists, with just hotel staff and various gift shop owners waiting around for us. (“Is that your wife, sir?” they would ask, then “You’re a lucky man!” But they’re wrong… luck had nothing to do with it.) The recent political troubles have been very hard on tourism in Egypt, doubly-so this far off standard “Pyramids and Temples” tourist zone, so everyone we met was friendly and desperate to do any sort of business with us. I actually felt quite sad for the people here, so far from the political turmoil in the capital but so badly affected by it.

After a quick midnight meal and a scant 90 minutes of sleep, we were up again at 1:30AM to start our hike up Mt. Sinai. Not having realized we would be doing this hike at night we were NOT prepared for this and did not have the appropriate equipment or clothes. I didn't have a single long-sleeve shirt, so had to borrow a scoop-neck women’s sweater from Jessica and hide it under my t-shirt – that’s right, I decided that the backwoods of the Middle East was the appropriate place to start cross-dressing. We also made emergency purchases of a flashlight and gloves at the hotel gift-shop.

We had the help of a young Bedouin to guide us up Mt. Sinai and by 2AM we had set off, trudging up the mountain in complete darkness and shivering cold. On the plus side, the stars were beautiful and when I first looked up I saw a terrific shooting star, the first of a few I spotted that night. There were several huts dotting the trail up the mountain where you could rest and try to get warm, and in one of these about two hours later we saw a small group of loud, brash Americans. These were the first foreigners we had seen since entering Egypt and we've never been so happy to see stereotypical “ugly Americans”, since it meant at least we weren't the only ones stupid enough to venture to this part of the world.

Several dark and cold hours later, 5AM approached we had ascended to the base of the “790 steps”, the rock staircase (using the term “staircase” very loosely here, as it was really just a series of rocks at varying heights of 2 to 18 inches) that leads to the peak of the mountain, and by 5:30 we were shivering in a rented blanket leaning against the 4^th century church at the top wait for the Sun.

After sunrise we set back down, first covering the “790 steps” and then taking an alternate route down called the “3000 steps”. (Very inventive names, indeed.) In the daylight we were able to see the terrain for the first time, and were surprised at just how high up we had ascended in the night.

Nearly 4000 steps and four aching knees later, we were finally back down to the famous St. Catherine’s monastery, but unfortunately we couldn't go in because it was Friday (and too near Christmas).

After a quick shower and lunch at the hotel, we were loaded back into the van for what in theory should have been a four hour drive to Cairo. In reality it was not so simple: the most direct road was closed (in this case “closed” meant Bedouins were using it for drug running and would often fire at vehicles they didn't recognize), as was the second-most direct route (this time “closed” meant that this route was under the jurisdiction of the Northern Sinai Governorate, which had fallen into disarray since the revolution and therefore the risk for tourist kidnapping was too high). The result was that we had to drive the entire southern perimeter of the Sinai Peninsula to get to Cairo. In addition to the long distance, we were delayed as we had to wait for the police-escorted convoy of tourist vehicles leaving St. Catherine’s (which we immediately lost) and then every time we arrived at a security checkpoint we had to wait 20 minutes again for another police escort (again, immediately lost) before they would let us move on. (We were made even more nervous because besides not seeing any other foreigners on this journey, we didn't see a single other woman. Also, we were hundreds of miles and hours from the itinerary we had given to family for safety, so if anything went wrong then nobody knew where we were.) The result was that it took a fatiguing twelve hours to get from St. Catherine’s to Cairo, not arriving there until nearly 11PM, almost 22 hours since we had gotten up.

Upon reflection, someone should really write a book about how difficult it can be to cross the Sinai and what hardships you can get into climbing the mountains there. If they did, I would happily promote it, perhaps knocking on people’s doors to see if they would like to talk about it, or maybe even leaving free copies in hotel rooms.