Out of Africa

When guide books describe the Sinai Peninsula, they abound in superlative adjectives. Lonely Planet calls it “a place of surreal beauty” if I remember correctly - why does it have to be "surreal"?. From the coastal highway it looks like a string of ragged brown peaks, lacking the slightest trace of vegetation, following without end under the metallic blue sky. I don’t have any pictures from the rest of our stay in Egypt. Deserts have their fascination, but make really lousy picture subjects, unless you’re a pro… or you wake up really early, neither of which applies to me.

The real beauty of Sinai lies under water, and our goal – like the goal of most tourists who visit this place – was to spend as much time as possible in the depths. The Red Sea coral reefs near Dahab are a true delight, a must-see for any diver – the coral is abundant and varied, plenty of colorful fish live and hunt on it, and the visibility is ideal. If you go to places like the resort towns of Dahab and Sharm el-Sheikh there’s nothing else to do besides diving – unless you plan to spend all your day and your money at one of the many restaurants and cafés.

Outside of the tourist areas of those towns, the garbage is scattered everywhere – on the side of the roads, in ditches and back alleys, wherever the wind can drop it. There you can find everything from plastic bottles to animal carcasses. Sure, tourism contributes to the waste problem, but visitors are hardly responsible for littering, if you don’t count cigarette butts. The blame lies with the locals, the restaurants’ management and the government’s garbage collection authority, all of whom seem to apply the “not my problem” rule quite efficiently. The garbage collection truck picks up the trash, but not as often as it should, and it doesn’t go off the main road. The locals leave the trash bags in front of their houses for pick up, but they don’t bother to take it up to the main road. Before the truck passes, the wild cats, dogs, and goats tear the bags open and rummage for food. The wind takes care of the rest. So I guess it’s the cats’ fault after all... Paul, our dive master, a retired project manager from England who has been making a living in Dahab for a while, tells us as we return from the Blue Hole dive site, huddled in the back of the dive shop’s pickup truck: “I swear, sometimes I think… it’s a beautiful country, but these people don’t deserve it!”

As for me, after the weeks spent in Egypt, I was left with one question to answer: would I ever come back to visit this country? It has been, no doubt, one of the most interesting, diverse and safe places we have seen on our trip, but the most exhausting and irritating as well. Maybe I will take a charter flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, arrange for private transfer to a hotel in Dahab, dive day-in day-out, twice a day for a week, and go back the same way I came, avoiding the hassle of Cairo and steering clear of the souqs. If I’m in a good mood I may be inclined to fend off the assault of the camel-ride touts at the pyramids of Giza. And with enough peace of mind left, I may even go down south again, but I’m afraid – and secretly hoping – that I’ll meet Ismael again and I’ll spend all my time playing backgammon and drinking tea rather than visiting Abu Simbel.

A tough decision… but one thing I know: the falafel here is awesome!

Posted from Delphi, Greece.

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Tomb raider for a day

The assault has begun!
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or here to access the Pyramid set

Shoving everybody out of their way, a large group of visitors make their round around the Narmer palette in the first floor atrium of the Egyptian Museum. I stand my ground in front of one of the sides of the display - they will have to tolerate my presence and move around. I pretend to read the display but instead I listen to what their English-speaking guide is saying – in a few words, without wasting any time (he must soon vacate the place for his colleagues who are coming behind, leading other groups), he tells them pretty much what the Lonely Planet Egypt travel guide has taught me about this famous artifact. They look, listen, and then are shepherded away before anybody has any questions. Alone at last, I try to focus on the detail of the fine engraving portraying the pharaoh victorious over his enemies, but I soon become distracted again – on my left, a large group of Russians passes by, following an Egyptian museum guide who seems to speak fluent Russian. The Russians are a sight to behold – quite a few men wear “wife-beater” tank-tops stretching over protruding beer-bellies and the women, young and old, wear high heels and skimpy outfits, their cleavages pushed to night-club limits, their shorts stopping at the buttocks. I wonder if they plan to go in the area of town called “Islamic Cairo”... What sort of mad attention would these girls attract on the streets in this country where the local women only show their faces and hands in public, if anything? But these Russian “nouveaux riches” (who else in Russia can afford to travel abroad?) will probably be swept from the museum back to their hotel in their tour bus, and from there to the pyramids, then maybe into a felucca or motor boat commissioned specially for the group for a one-hour Nile cruise. They probably haven’t ever dreamed of visiting a mosque and wouldn’t be allowed in anyway, dressed like they are.

Scenes of life

The museum, if you ignore the crowds and the bellowing guides, makes for a very interesting visit. A large part of the second floor is dedicated to housing the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb; these beautiful works of funerary art are definitely worth your time. The royal mummies are tucked in their temperature-controlled glass cases in an air-conditioned room. You pay extra to get in, but if you have never seen a mummy, now’s the right time – all the famous, identified pharaohs’ remains are there and some of them still smile quite nicely. However the museum can easily put you into “pharaonic overload” mode; most of it resembles a large warehouse where sarcophagi, statues, miniatures and slates covered with hieroglyphs, thousands of years old, are piled up with no explanations, in rooms that have long overflowed their capacity. A couple of hours spent inside will leave you longing for things anything-but-historical, like the restaurants and cafés of the Hilton hotel nearby.

Imhotep's legacy

Once you’re done with the museum, it’s time to head to the archaeological sites around Cairo. Everybody stops at the famous pyramids of Giza, the suburban neighborhood which sprawls almost to the base of the pyramid of Khufu (Cheops). If you’re not on a tour group, you can get there by bus, metro and taxi, but the best way is to hire a driver for the day and also visit the other pyramid sites, which are out of the beaten track – Saqqara and Dahshur. These get their share of visitors as well, but nothing like Giza; and if you get there early enough, you may have the place all for yourself. Sure, the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre will tower over you, covering the sun, and will make you feel like a gnat, but the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, so different and having the privilege of being the oldest of them all, gets a standing ovation. And if you don’t want to pay the extra ticket to get inside the pyramid of Khufu, and wait in line with the crowds, while being hassled by camel-ride touts and guards who want baksheesh, you can clamber down the shaft into Sneferu’s Red Pyramid at Dahshur – if you can stand the strong smell of ammonia in the funerary chamber. Sadly, the most intriguing of all pyramids, the Bent Pyramid of Dahshur, still covered by its original shiny limestone casing, is closed to public and can only be seen from afar.

Queen Hatshepsut's temple
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or here to access the Luxor set

In Aswan, for reasons that I have already mentioned, we did not see any of the famous landmarks. But in Luxor - aka the tourist hassling capital of Egypt - we didn’t make friends with any local people and concentrated on the many famous ancient sites. The heat in southern Egypt is terrible, even in November, and forces the masses of tourists to wake up early and visit the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings as early in the morning as possible, before the sun becomes unbearable. The Luxor temple is smack in the middle of the modern-day Luxor town, and Karnak is a mere 3 km ride along the Nile – easy and fast done by taxi or by one of the omnipresent horse-drawn carriages whose drivers, like most other touts, will try to charge you a small fortune and ask for ‘baksheesh for the horse’ (don’t give, although it’s funny). The Valley of the Kings however, is on the other side of the Nile, and getting there is not a breeze. You can rent a bike, cross the river by ferry, and pedal yourself to death between the sites – not a good idea after 11am, unless you have a secret death wish. You can hire a taxi for the day, which will cost you dearly if you don’t negotiate properly, and you will be the one who decides when and where to go. The most comfortable alternative is to take a tour organized by your hotel (I dare you to find a hotel in Luxor which doesn’t provide this service). It will include a guide (whose English you will hopefully be able to understand) and all the entrance fees. You’ll have to share a mini-bus with other people; ask how many and make sure the bus is air-conditioned – you may still be lied to, but at least you know it. Invariably, you will be taken to one of the many “Alabaster factories” which proliferate in the shadow of the ancient tombs. There are so many of those stone-carving workshops, that one cannot help but ask how they are able to stay in business. There is only one answer: everybody who owns an alabaster factory must have a brother or an uncle who organizes tours of the valley, who in turn has a brother or an uncle who owns or manages a hotel or a cruise ship. This way the tourists are given the whole deal – hotel, visit to the valley, alabaster shopping. Some even buy souvenirs for their living rooms and everybody is happy and the wealth is redistributed along the chain.

Lights at Luxor

If you are ready to fight the crowds and eager for hieroglyphs, if you can negotiate prices and have enough sun-block, there’s one more thing you shouldn’t forget: your international student card – it will be the your wallet ‘s best friend. Every entrance fee in Egypt – and some places aren’t cheap to get in - is half-price for students; the ISIC cards rule in the land of pharaohs. And don’t be bitter when you find out that while you pay a lot, even with your student discount, Egyptians pay 2 pounds. Half if they are students… After a day in the Valley of the Kings you’ll wish you’d rather be Egyptian…

Posted from Nafplio, Greece.

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Going postal in Alexandria

By 11AM I had finally nursed the hangover caused by the pub crawl of the previous night. Murad, who had quit Microsoft 2 years ago and moved back to Egypt, had taken us to some of the few shady joints in Alexandria where alcohol could be consumed, and we overindulged, happy to break our travel habit of going to bed too early. Over breakfast the next day I remembered that I had to go to the post office to ship a parcel home – our sleeping bags, so helpful on the Inca trail and during the Africa overland trip, were no longer needed; they were taking useful space in the backpacks, which even now, after many packages sent home, were still too heavy – this time because of the many books we have carried from Africa and have not yet been able to trade or sell.

I went to the post office a few blocks down the road armed with a note written in Arabic by the hotel manager, who translated my intentions: ”I want to send a package to America”. The clerk managed to explain that international parcels must be sent from the central post office, next to the railway station. It wasn’t far; I walked the 10 minutes it took to get there and tried to find my way around by showing my little precious note to people who often spoke back to me in Arabic. Communication was obscure and broken, but somehow I made progress: I was first sent from the postal counter to the next door outside and from there to the third floor. The third floor was empty; a large, well-lit hall furnished with skeletons of cubicles, a few old wooden desks and chairs and, like almost everywhere else in Egypt, covered in mountains of rubble. At first I thought I got to the wrong floor; maybe they were just in the middle of remodeling this one, so I walked back to the second floor where I showed my magic note to some people who were congregating in the hallway. “3rd floor, but closed now” said one of them, “closed today afternoon; tomorrow, open 8 in the morning.” They were all rushing down the stairs to go home. Cautious, I wanted to double-check; back at the reception, the same people who told me to go to the 3rd floor admitted they were just closing for the day.

The next morning, spiffy and fresh, I skipped breakfast so I could be at the post office shortly after eight. On the way I picked up an empty cardboard box from a coffee shop; asking for boxes at post offices had previously been futile (except in Argentina). Once there, I headed straight for the 3rd floor. The large hall was still empty, except for two men sitting at an old desk, sharing some food. I showed them my wrinkled piece of paper and they made encouraging signs that this was the right place, but I needed to wait. Armed with patience I put down my box and bag and sat down on the corner of a desk. One hour later I was still sitting and not much had changed on the 3rd floor. There were more people around; trays with coffee and tea cups were being delivered, cigarettes were smoked, and more food appeared. As I sat there ignored by all, my patience fading, it dawned on me that the office opened indeed at 8 o’clock but people didn’t start coming to work until 9 or later. The person in charge of international shipping wasn’t there yet. Who was to say he or she wasn’t going to call in sick that day?

Finally at 9:30 a woman showed up, took her seat behind a desk, had her coffee, smoked her cigarette, and when the arrival ritual had been completed, they all beckoned me to go to her. She gave me the forms where I had to write the usual shipping data, names, addresses and a description of the contents. Then she proceeded to tell me something in Arabic, which sounded quite vital for the success of my mission; I made a helpless face and shrugged discouraged; two girls who were mailing a small package started giggling. The woman at the counter was now talking slower, as if that was all it would take for me to understand. Somehow, somebody found a man who spoke good English, a customer probably. “She tells you to follow her instructions and then come back here,” he said. “You must now take the papers and go to the 1st floor to get an approval from the department of explosives, then to the 13th floor, to have your books inspected.” Oh well, so this was the customs office, not the post… “And, you know, the key is patience. You’ll be in this for at least one hour. This is how things work in Egypt. Good luck.”

Explosives? What explosives? Of course, they wanted to make sure I didn’t have any. Going down the stairs, I couldn’t help asking myself whether she had meant 1st floor American-style (ground floor) or 1st floor as in the rest of the world. I opted for the rest of the world, but when I got to the 1st and showed my papers - which now made me feel like somebody who had solid, hard-earned credentials – to a friendly man who seemed to work there, he took me with him to the ground floor. The uniformed official sitting by the airport-style x-ray machine (he needed a uniform; he had, after all, to deal with explosives) didn’t bother inspecting my bag before he applied the stamp and his bored signature to the corner of my paper. Point scored, I gloated, making a mental note that the 1st floor had ended up being American-style after all… but purely by coincidence, because soon the 13th floor became the 2nd, where the same very helpful employee took me next. The 2nd was in better shape than the 3rd, and there was no visible rubble in the corners. A woman took my two books and inspected them, talking to me in Arabic. It was safe to assume she couldn’t speak or read English, but she looked at the books carefully nonetheless. The censorship, I started to wonder. This is after all a country ruled by a dictator, and the customs must have a list of banned publications. Maybe Khaled Hosseini’s two novels, which I was foolishly and innocently trying to ship home, were already on the black list, for their being mildly critical of Islam. Maybe she would call the police and I would be expelled from the country after spending a few nights in jail... She passed the books on to another man. That’s it, she sends them to secondary inspection; I’m screwed! But no, he only took some brown paper, wrapped my books, sealed them, and gave the small package back to me. A new stamp was adorning my form. I was feeling like an A+ student.

Back on the third floor, things went smooth. The woman looked satisfied at my painstakingly acquired stamps and instructed another man to wrap the package. We stuffed everything from the bag into the coffee box, and added the books; I wrote the addresses, he taped and wrapped. I now had a fully-approved, shippable package, carrying an imposing lead seal at the end of a rope and I was beginning to think that the world made sense. “Go to the post office down the road, past the mosque,” I was told by someone, and woke up in Egypt again… but I knew I couldn’t go wrong anymore, if I had been able to pass the customs inspection armed with nothing but a wrinkled note on yellow paper.

The office past the mosque wasn’t far. I waited in line for 15 minutes, and the clerk didn’t have to ask many questions when she saw the signed, stamped papers. “380 pounds, please” she said; “air mail, very fast, seven days”. “No, no,” I shook my head; “no air; ship please, I want ‘slow’!” “Slow”, as it turned out, was costing about 300 pounds, and had to be shipped from a different post office. It was 11 o’clock. My concentration was fading; I was feeling as if I was trying to answer the last intricate question of a long and demanding college exam which had gone well so far. I gave up. “Ok, fast.”

Note: 1US$ = 5.5 Egyptian pounds
Posted from Dahab, Egypt.

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Cairo – the glitter, the rubble, the mob

  “Hello mister, what’s your name?” the dark man wearing a white galabiyya asks me from across the street. I ignore him; he runs across and walks with us.
  “Hello, what country?” he asks again, and this time, from an unacknowledged instinct to be polite to people who talk to me, I answer, half-avoiding his gaze:
  “Romania.”
  “Ah, Romania, good country,” he says, clearly overcome by the joy of meeting a Romanian. “Gheorghe Hagi!” he clamors with a sudden burst of exuberance. He stares at me with deep friendliness, as if by naming the one thing he knows about my country, the name of a famous football player, he has established an unbreakable bond between us. “Come to my papyrus shop, I give you good price, for you only, from Romania! Hey, why you leave? you want t-shirt?... Welcome to Egypt!”

Crowds in Khan al-Khalili
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And so it goes… Felucca rides, scarves, souvenirs, henna tattoos, tea and spices, tour guides and taxi rides – all can be had in Cairo at any time of day – and night as well – if you only have the stomach and the nerves to negotiate and deal with the constant hassle every tourist is subjected to. You meet people in Cairo more than you would like to; they talk to you first, and they usually start their attempts at conversation with intrusive questions that easily become tiring and annoying for the tourist looking for a quiet stroll through the anonymity of the crowded streets. “What’s your name?” or “Where you from?” are favorite starters. If the baiting works and you answer, oftentimes you will find out that they have a brother who lives in your town (if you’re from “Amrika”) or a very good friend from your country (if you’re from “Rumania”). And then, almost invariably, they want to sell you something… You have arrived in Cairo fresh and eager to explore the streets and ready to delve into the local culture – soon you become wary, suspicious and unwilling to talk to anybody, and when people who are actually interested in meeting a foreigner talk to you, you spurn them, you become monosyllabic, and you keep your guard up until it becomes clear that they don’t want to sell you papyrus or ask for baksheesh…

Men smoking sheesha in the souq

Never mind that papyrus has all but disappeared from Egypt and all you may get from them is painted banana leaves – they will still ask 10 times more than their ware is worth, but to their credit the vendors are always open to negotiating. Sadly, most western tourists have never bargained for anything in their life and get gypped with style, paying sums that Egyptian buyers would only laugh at. Even with our cunning bargaining skills, honed by the school of six months of travel, we still pay more than Egyptians for certain wares and services; we know it and that’s all right – but we won’t be taken for fools. Yet of all troubles, dealing with taxi drivers in Cairo (and in all Egypt) is the worst. Taxis are unmetered and traditionally fares aren’t negotiated ahead, so you just have to know the right price to pay as you leave – and the cabbie will still yell at you that you owe him double. And if you don’t have change for a 20 pound bill, you’re in it for a long shot – the driver will tell you very convincingly in a mix of Arabic and English that 20 Egyptian pounds is actually the right price for your trip. It’s usually a quarter of that. Better travel by metro if you can.

Light

Being out in the streets of Cairo for too long can feel oppressive for many first-time travelers to Egypt. The crushing mass of humanity pushing and shoving from all sides, the permanent hassling by the store touts, the gratuitous requests for baksheesh coming from adults and kids alike (even in places where there are obvious “no tips” signs in English), and the mad, uninterrupted car traffic may easily get very stressful, and can turn a day out to town into a stifling ordeal, leaving the hapless tourist longing for their dark, air-conditioned hotel room. Lonely Planet guide book authors seem to love the worn-out cliché “bustling city” – if this adjective applies to Cairo, then its use should be banned in any other context.

Roofs and rubble

All life in this metropolis seems to unfold in the streets. Its buildings look too dilapidated to entice anyone to spend any time inside their walls. The suburbs are made of rows upon rows of brick and concrete multi-story buildings that look half-built and forgotten. Some floors have windows, some do not, and their gaping holes peek sadly at the street. It seems as though everybody is building their own floor to their liking and the flats are in different degrees of habitation. The old, historic section of town, known as “Islamic Cairo,” a major stop on the tourist circuit, is nothing but one giant pile of rubble. Except for a few thriving mosques, every other building seems to be falling apart, and most top floors have already crumbled. The garbage is piled up high on the walls of the side-streets and in gutters along the road, and seems to have become a permanent fixture of the neighborhoods, to the point that some tourists will not hesitate to label Cairo the dirtiest city they have ever seen. The modern downtown, built from the beginning of the 19th century onward, doesn’t fare much better – its once glitzy and gorgeous office and residential buildings, a blend of European and local architectural styles, now stand in a forlorn state of disrepair, dirty and peeling, a mere shadow of their former glorious looks. Some enterprising flat owners - like the hotel we stayed at in the busy heart of downtown - have taken matters into their own hands and did some façade painting. Most often, the effect is comical and accentuates the poor state of the building – a ribbon of fresh yellow paint, with clumsily hand-drawn edges, between two darker, dirtier floors. The new coat only goes as far as the hand and the tool of the painter could extend from the balcony. Beyond that… it’s somebody else’s business.

The Al-Azhar mosque

But as things invariably end up when one travels, I found that the most interesting side of Cairo is its people. There are few words that could describe the furious coming and going on Talat Harb street at night. People cover the long boulevard from one end to the other and seem to consider cars as just another sort of pedestrian, neither yielding in front of them nor completely acknowledging their presence and the permanent honking. Many young men stroll leisurely arm-in-arm, a very unusual and confusing attitude for the American visitor, not used with such close, friendly contact between males, except is some particular, unequivocal context. “Walking ‘engage’ is very, very low-class,” says Murad, my Egyptian friend that I went pub-crawling with in Alexandria, a few days later. “It’s sad that I have to use the word ‘class’, but that’s what we consider it here.” I don’t know where they all go; there aren’t any bars around, so they must be just enjoying a walk in the city, getting some cheap eats, drinking coca-cola and ogling the girls.

Fast and slow

Women of all ages walk around showing no other skin than their face and hands, covering their heads with scarves matching the colors of their outfits, their makeup or their cell phones. The covering of the hair is apparently a recent phenomenon in this secularized but overwhelmingly Muslim country, likely a combination between a social turn to a more religious life (some say, sponsored by the unofficial “godfathers” of the country, the Saudis) and simple peer pressure. Either way, this makes the few women who are not veiled (non-conformist Muslims, local Coptic Christians or foreigners) look even more conspicuous. Walking with Angela is a permanent invitation to unsubtle stares and dim-witted, ever-repeating childish jeers: “beautiful wife!”, “lucky man!”, “how many camels?” (trading camels for a woman is a Bedouin custom) they shout while we pass them hand in hand. They are annoying but not threatening. In fact, I have never felt safer than in Cairo - day or night - since I left home.

The mornings are quiet. They have finally all gone to sleep. From my hotel room balcony on the 5th floor, I look at the deserted street. There are few cars, and honking is unnecessary. The city is mine, at last. That’s when I think I’m going to go take a walk.

Published from Luxor. At last, I'm posting stories from the country I'm in.

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