Happy New Year!

We just finished the Kenya half of our safari tour through Kenya and Tanzania. There's a couple stories to tell about being buried in mud and dragged through a raging river. But for tonight, I'm happy just to get some pictures of Uganda and the Kenyan national parks posted.
Too early tomorrow morning, we set off for Tanzania's Lake Manyara, Serengeti and Ngorongoro national parks.

New photos just in time for XMAS!

We finally got some time on SLOW internet to upload some blogs and pictures for you. Pictures of our quick run through Kenya, Uganda and into Rwanda to play with the gorillas are up. Sudan and Ethiopia pix are still to come. But they're not as cool as the gorillas...

Just in case we don't get another chance to blog in time, Merry XMas and Happy New Year!
Steve and Mary (Kenya)

Gorillas in our Midst

There's something like 400 mountain gorillas left in the world and they all live in the mountains at the intersection of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. The family of 36 gorillas we visited live in Rwanda's Parc National du Volcans. To our surprise, the trailhead for our hike started in a maize field with our guide and a couple AK47-toting soldiers (two days later, we heard about a couple who went tracking on the Congo side of the mountains and were robbed by a band of guerillas.) Fifty feet into the maize field, we passed a stone wall and found ourselves suddenly in a thick bamboo jungle that wasn't even visible five minutes prior. We hiked through the jungle for an hour or so until we caught up with the trackers who had caught up to the gorillas. Our next steps were into a clearing with four foot tall grass and stinging nettle. But no gorillas. Then suddenly we saw a path of grass in the distance being cut down in our direction. Before we knew it, the head of a big gorilla was visible above the brush and heading right at us. He came within 10 feet of us before stopping for photos and then continuing on through us. At one point, only the width of our tracker separated me from this giant silverback. As if to express his disinterest in us, the silverback raised his right hand and gently pushed the tracker out of the way so he could continue on to the good bamboo behind us - just like you'd put your hand on someone's shoulder as you move through a crowded shopping mall. Imagine a 400 pound beast "gently" moving you out of the way.

The range of human behavior they displayed was absolutely amazing. We met the #2 silverback in the troop, who sat calmly and watched us suspiciously. The two year old twins snarled at each other and tumbled around awkwardly like children. We passed a mother holding her four month old infant that could have passed for any human mother and child. Most fun were a pair of male youths who chased each other and wrestled the entire time. It was just like watching any adolescent brothers you've ever met (Nelson, Filipe.) Finally we came across the dominant silverback in the group. And it was just what you'd expect. He sat in his grassy lounge chair and didn't do a thing but eat and scratch himself. He could have passed for Al Bundy sitting in front of a TV.For me, there were two aspects of the visit that really caught me off guard. The first was their humanity and the consciousness you could see in their eyes. The second was the gentleness they exhibited. Any one of these creatures could have easily crushed us at whim, yet I don't think any of us felt threatened or even afraid at any point during the visit.

Not for the squeamish --- EWWWW!!!!!!!

While everyone was sorting over visa fees and entry forms at the Kenya-Uganda border I noticed an odd spot on my left index toe. It was a white spot with a dark center. I don’t remember having a scab there. So I brought it in for a closer inspection. I poked at it with my fingers, squeezed it like a zit, and felt absolutely nothing. It seemed highly peculiar to me so I brought my toe right up to my eyes and noticed a faint dark line pulsating within the white bubble. It instantly felt somehow wrong so while everyone was bustling about the truck I asked Steve for the pocket knife. Yes, I need it now even if it’s buried in our stuff. Using the makeshift scalpel pricked at the spot in the middle but it was futile so I got brave, or desperate depending on how you look at it, and took the blade to my toe. As soon as I sliced it open white fluffy fleshy stuff bursted out of my skin. My first reaction was oops, I'm spilling out. But I figured I wouldn't be able to shove my stuffing back if that's what it was, and I didn't remember having white filling last time I cut myself so I yanked and peeled at it until it ripped away from my insides. I kept thinking I was going to pull a nerve out and was expecting my body to send a pang of pain to convince me to stop. That never happened so I proceeded.
With the white fluff gone I could see a black dot in the midst of some blood red pulp. A little digging and a small amount of dark blood spilled out so I immediately started yanking what turned out to be a small sack. Well, that's pretty gross I thought. My fingers were smeared the fleshy bits I had ripped out so I figured I might as well finish the job. By then someone saw me digging at my toe with a knife and asked me what in blazes I was doing. I started explaining my epic to them and as I was digging out a chunk of tough meat from my incision I told the crowd that had gathered what I had refused to admit to myself, that it probably wasn't a scab or blister. Infact, it probably wasn't me at all. That's when Steve inspects the latest bit I pulled out of my toe and said it looked like the carcass, or the sack of remains of whatever was living off my toe. I poke a little more at the pink spot left under my skin and finally feel a stabbing pain so I decided that was a good sign I finally reached where I started and whatever else ended.
Kat yells out jealousy, 'You got the first parasite of the truck!' Lying to myself that it was a scab helped me through my extraction but it was time to face the fact that there was a parasite living in my toe, growing off my flesh, and that I ripped it to pieces with my bare fingers and the unsanitized pocket knife that we had used to cut salami just two days before. Gary's Africa health book revealed that I had a jigger flea stowaway for who knows how long. If I hadn't accidentally caught it the jigger would have reached maturity in my toe, laid eggs and multiplied into what would look like a big blood blister that would itch madly and have to be removed by a doctor. I still get the heebie jeebies when I think of the bursting white flesh and foreign pulse flood my mind. Now I can check that off 'parasite' and 'self mutilation' off my African experiences list. Done and done.

Race to the Gorillas

Only about 40 people a day are allowed to visit mountain gorillas, so getting permits ahead of time is a must. It turned out that ours were issued for earlier than we had anticipated, so we had been rushing since Aswan. Now we needed to race through Kenya, Uganda and into Rwanda to meet our date. Northern Kenya has historically had trouble with local and Somalian guerillas preying on vehicles crossing the vast empty expanse from Isiolo to the Ethiopian border. We took two armed soldiers onboard for a couple days as we made our journey to central Kenya. Along the way, we picked up a hitchiking Imbili tribesman to complete our collection of soldiers and warriors. Along this treacherous stretch of soft dirt 'road', our driver finally met his match. Within two seconds, we went from bumpy bumpy road to being pitched at 30 degrees from vertical and stuck in over a foot of mud. We spent an hour and a half digging out the wheels and laying in steel tracks to drive on. None of that was enough by itself, and we were saved only by a passing truck who was willing to give us an extra little tug for $80USD. That's all good, except once we were pulled free, he slammed on his brakes and we crashed into him bending our stairway into the truck into a disfigured mess.
The rest of Kenya was a blur. We raced through towns and national parks on our way to the Ugandan border. We did see a group of three giant giraffes right on the side of the road, a herd of zebras and several herds of impalas and various gazelle-like animals that we agreed to call 'deer' for simplicity's sake. Uganda and Rwanda are strikingly lush and covered in farms. Rwanda, in particular is remarkably beautiful with hills and valleys covered in a patchwork of fields. We were quite surprised to find mile after mile of tea planted there, as well.The people in Uganda and Rwanda are great. The children wave and jump up and down yelling "mzungu mzungu mzungu!!!" (means 'white people' in Swahili) as we drive by. I hate to say it, but there isn't much funnier than watching a pudgy little kid with a huge smile jumping around and waving so violently that they fall down. And that happened more than once. Maybe this isn't so different from Kenya on the surface, but there was a sincerity in Uganda and Rwanda that I don't feel in the more heavily touristed Kenya and impoverished Ethiopia.

Is that your hand in my pocket or am I just happy to see you?

I've never been pickpocketed and never understood the stories from people who talk about having their wallet stolen in a crowd. I guess I spend a fair amount of concentration on whose hand is on my butt, so it never made sense to me that you wouldn't notice an extra hand in your back pocket. Well, I finally got a chance to test my reflexes in the Addis Ababa market. The 'mercato' is claimed to be the largest market in all of Africa. Whether or not it is the biggest, it is certainly a monster that extends forever in all directions around you and is well known as a center for petty crime. Down by the live chickens, we were getting pressed through a narrow space between a few henhouses and a passing truck when I noticed something near my pocket that wasn't me. I spun around to find some dude's hand about to go into my pocket. After grabbing him and giving him a good talking to, I wasn't sure what I should do next short of walking a couple kilometers looking for a cop, so I just let him go. I was surprised to turn around and see a crowd had gathered and was motioning that I should have pummelled him. I should've known that vigilante justice would be approved of here. In the end, I was amazed to find that although his hand wasn't getting in my pocket without my noticing, he was able to unbutton my pocket. Lesson learned. Back at camp we learned that of the 5 groups that went out 4 had pickpocketing experiences, but only 1 was successful.

The busiest little whore house in Ethiopia

On this overland trip we get to stay at a variety of budget sites literally oozing with character, which we can sometimes see when the lights work, so we prefer to arrive in the dark. Sometimes towns don't have campsites and it's not safe to bush camp so we end up pitching tents on the premises of hotels. (And I use that term instead of craphole just to maintain some civility). Perhaps the most memorable one was when we pulled into the Bel-Air Pension in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Everyone on the back of the truck was desperately hoping it was just another pee stop, but our guides assured us that when the company last went there 2yrs ago the place was 'okay'. Our eyes couldn't roll far enough to the back of our heads.
The rooms had mirrors next to the beds, condoms on the night stand, and a pricelist above the headboard in Ethiopian. The best was the sticker on the toilet tank in the bathroom that had a cheerful condom in sunglasses pointing to the toilet. During the day pairs show up, the guy hands money to the reception who gives them supplies. Half an hour later the buzzer goes off in the room and the next couple goes in. This went on all day. Steve and I didn't choose to "upgrade" to the rooms and instead opted for the haven of our tents. Many in our group were brave and desperate enough for the rooms and there were endless jokes about making sure your door was locked and knocking before you entered, etc. It was good entertainment but sadly, we can't say that's the worst place we've stayed at.

These shoes were made for the road

This is one of the best recycling scenes I've ever seen. There was a mountain of shoes made from old tires at the market in Lalibela. Some had Goodyear and Michelin tread on the soles but Steve picked a more comfortable pair made from sidewalls off an Ethiopian brand. Even the locals were making fun of him when he was walking around in these farmer shoes. (Steve's note: they were ADMIRING my new 'farmer' shoes)

Searching for the Ark of the Covenant

Little known fact to us was that the Ark of the Covenent passed through Ethiopia and is said to rest in Axum. Before searching for it, we spent a couple days in Bahir Dar at the southern tip of Lake Tana, which makes Tahoe look like a puddle.
On islands and surrounding pennisulas are a bunch of ~12th-14th century monasteries installed to protect the Christians of the day when Islam began to threaten their existance. We jumped into a tiny boat to brave the very rough seas and see a few of these monasteries that have now mostly been converted into churches. The first monastery was on a penninsula across the lake from us. On our way there we passed a slightly larger boat that was heading back into port. Since seas were rough, our guide negotiated a boat swap and we jumped into the big boat. No sooner than we did, the outboard motor on our original boat fell into the lake. We all watched in horror as the driver thrust his hand in after the live motor and pulled it out.
The church was a 50' diameter mud hut with thatched roof. The inside was covered in bright paintings of holy scenes and martyrs with an African perspective. (see Buddy Jesus photo)
The second monastery we visited hides on a tiny island and is still active. That said, the girls were allowed on the island, but had to say at the boat. This monastery boasted a trophy room where a monk showed off their collection of ancient swords, crowns and crosses that kings from around Christianity brought them over the last 800 years. He even pulled a 600 year old bible out into the sun so we could get some nice photos without flash!

Next we headed up to Lalibela known for its 'rock hewn churches'. Back in the 12th century, someone thought it would be a fun idea to carve a few churches straight down into the volcanic rock. There are 11 churches that all follow the same basic architecture: a large rectangular moat carved straight down, as deep as 50 feet. The remaining cube of rock in the middle is carved inside and out as a church of solid rock.
One of them holds an ornate wooden box with long handles and is said to have carried the Ark of the Covenent on it's way through town.
The next church had a carved 'Pillar of Light' at center that is carefully shrowded in cloth. A monk stands watch over it, constantly reciting from a prayer book as he monitors activities. Underneath the 800 year old cloth is the story of the beginning and end of the world. No-one is allowed to look underneath since that would spoil the surprise.

All the churches (except St. Mary's with the Pillar of Light) had one thing in common. Crosses. Each one had at least one super-holy cross that the supervising monk would bring out for a photo opportunity. But these are smart monks with a good health care provider. After all the serious talk, they'd put on a pair of slick sunglasses to protect their eyes, give us a big Stevie Wonder grin and hold up their cross for photos.

Not to be outdone, other monks living here use tiny cubbyholes in the rock as hermitages. Some sleep in the holes, as well as hang out there all day.

Our new name is Money

...and locals say hello to us all the time. Yes, we've entered Africa proper starting with Ethiopia. Everywhere we go we hear the same 3 phrases, 'hello, money', 'you you you!!', 'gimme money' shouted from kids racing towards us, pulling on our arms, grabbing at our legs. Sure adults do it too but they have an individual approach whereas the young ones have a hive tactic. We're convinced those are the first words they learn. Whenever we stop crowds of dark wondering faces crowd us as they has no sense of personal space. I can't say they're completely harmless because our group has had stones thrown at us after refusing to give a kid something. And there's been countless incidences where our group has been flat-out completely cheated of money for no obvious reason than lying for the sake of greed, but that's the adults. One Ethiopian told us not to give the kids anything because then they grown up with the mentality of demanding money from foreigners in place of a work ethic. And we're strictly not to give anything when we're near or on the truck because then kids run after it and climb on the back, risking their lives. Our driver said two kids have already died that way. Unfortunately traveling around with a large group that is most of the people we end up encountering. There, of course, are very honest, understanding people and they tend to be the ones least connected with tourism so we have to go out of way to find them. That's just how it goes and I'm still trying to find out if anyone here knows the words 'please' or 'thank you'.

The Young Americans...in Sudan

After all the trouble we've been through getting visas and the ferry, we weren't sure what to expect from Sudan, but all worked out well. The immigration and customs were cake and the only problem we faced was the crappy hotel we ended up with and a bit more waste of time and money in bureaucracy to get us "registered" once in the country.The $35 hotel we start at is double the price of anything we stayed at in Egypt and still so bad that we slept with the lights on and moved to a campground on the Nile the next night. (we stayed the first night only because we hadn't slept in 34 hours and just needed to fall down.)

We had 3 days to explore Khartoum while we waited for our bus which finally arrived yesterday (Sat). Friday night, I went to a gathering at a local cemetery of Sufi-Muslims (so we're told) doing an absolutely random mix of whirling dervish, southern baptist gospel and tribal dance to pay respects to the dead. Pretty crazy what people do when nobody is looking.

The people in Sudan are amazing. Most people don't really pay us any special attention unless we say 'hi'. Those who do notice us say 'hello' like we're their next door neighbor. The hard part is talking to people who have been impacted by Darfur or Ethiopia/Eritria. The positive attitudes of individuals I've talked to are absolutely incredible against the backdrop of what they're are going through. The human spirit is truly unreal when put to the test.

Khartoum as a city isn't terribly inspiring, but it shows that a people who care can have a clean city. They have garbage cans around town and people use them in huge contrast to Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and some of Turkey where the city is your private trash bin.
Now we've met up with our friends and are getting ready to head out again tomorrow en route to Ethiopia for our next adventures. The group has promised to get stuck in sand down to the transmission again so we can see what fun we missed!

Mall Rats

Now separated from our tour, we caught an overnight train back to Cairo and booked a 1:30am flight to Khartoum the next day where we'll wait for our group. That leaves us 15 hours to hang out in City Stars, the swankiest mall in all of Egypt. Seriously. It's financed by some Dubai (I think) capital funding group who maintains offices in a hi-rise buried within. The mall is complete with luxury apartments, offices, a big glass pyramid and a Hotel Intercontinental who was kind enough to store our bags all day.Life in the mall is good fun. Mary caught a needed haircut and shampoo from a Parisian-trained Lebanese stylist who fit the Rodeo Drive sterotype perfectly. Nice work for $20. Top that off with a morning cappuccino and snacks and a viewing of "The Departed", we're having a good morning. It's pretty crazy to watch such a profane and violent movie uncensored in a Muslim country. They loved it, with plenty of applause at the end. I thought it was pretty good, too.Needless to say, our couple days were infinitely better than the stories we heard from our friends who did make the ferry. Also better than the other Americans who stuck with their moron "leader". But I'll spare you that story.

"I HATE EGYPT!!!" or "Death Barge from Hell on the Nile"

It's now the morning of the day we ferry across Lake Nasser into Sudan and we Americans still don't have visas. We're stuck with 4 other Americans from another travel group and their idiot "apprentice" leader who is only sticking around to shag the girl.After doddling with them on some scheme to get visas, Mary and I take matters into our own hand at the Sudanese embassy where we meet some very nice people including the mystical head Counsel who speaks in poems and riddles. In the end, everyone does get visas and we all head to the port to catch our ferry.The rest of our group had gone to the ferry port 7 hours before us with tickets they had purchased two days prior. We couldn't get tickets without our visas and find out at the gate that the boat is sold out (later we learn there were ~670 people on the boat meant to carry about 250). Using techniques of confusion, shouting and general sneakery, Mary and the other American girl make it passed the 3 armed guards and enter the dock making for the boat.

--Steve's perspective from the first guard post--
Another 10 minutes later I get a window of opportunity and walk briskly down the path away from the guard post, ignoring the shouts of "Mister! Mister!" Getting close to the dock, I can go left through immigration or right through a gate to what looks like the dock itself. Tough choice. We're being chased OJ Simpson style at this point by a guard yelling at us from 20 yards behind. I advise the guy I'm walking with to ignore and keep walking, but he chickens out and stops to address the guard. This move actually buys me some time, so I pick up my pace a bit more. I finally catch sight of the death barge with our group standing up top cheering. I make it onto the gangplank and have to face just one last guard before boarding. He wants to see my exit stamp from Egypt immigration which I simply don't have and he's serious. Game over.
By this time, the walkie-talkies have sent message of our exploits all around the port and I'm descended upon by the port authority who kindly escorts me away from the boat. This is an unfortunate time to meet the one Egyptian who seems to be honestly trying to just do his job.
While waiting in near-custody for the Arnold Schwargenegger-sized head guy to sort things out, I finally catch sight of Mary on the boat and she decided to come off. This is a huge relief as the boat looks like what you see pictures of bringing refugees over from Asia. It's a floating death trap. It actually sunk 6 months prior and killed 200+ passengers.

--Mary's perspective from the first guard post--
-to be filled in when Mary is able to finally speak of 'the ferry incident'-

Back together on the dock, the port guy is trying really hard to figure out how 7 people made it through various parts of the port without tickets or going through immigration and how on earth Mary got onto the boat. He starts grilling Mary a bit about how she got so far and she finally loads the shotgun and fires a big "I HATE EGYPT!!" his way before turning her back and walking away.
In the end, the guy has too many upset people on his hands to get any good answers and finally just gave up and freed us to roam Egypt some more.

After all is said and done, it is best we did not get on the boat. There was apparently quite a rigorous verification of tickets and baggage customs tickets on board and also at the Sudan port after our little stunt. That and the boat was not only a filthy hell-hole that stank like a sewer, but the group spent 17 hours on deck exposed to the elements.

Sailing down the Nile

Once in Aswan, we needed to burn some time while everyone's visas (except ours) were being sorted out. What else is there to do but run a little 'felucca' sailboat down the river for a couple nights. It's incredibly relaxing to do absolutely nothing for 2 days but brown under the Egyptian sun as the Nile rocks you to sleep. That's actually the morning's second activity. First is Mary leading yoga class on the boat.

The only downside to this voyage was that after all this wonderful relaxation we needed to wake up at 3:15 the next morning to jump on a bus to Abu Simbel to see the pretty amazing temples of Rameses II.

new toys

Since we won't be around as much to blog for you, I thought I'd have some fun and give you a googlemap to track our trip. I don't pretend that it works well, but click on the "interactive map" link to the right here or got to www.prefectlife.net/prefectlife/walkabout/mapus.htm and you can follow along with maps when we aren't here to entertain you. It only shows our trip since Turkey, but I'll get around to the earlier parts when I can track down all the latitude and longitude coordinates for cities in the other countries..

I also got photos for Dahab, Cairo and Luxor up.

Enjoy.

Week 1 on the Tonka truck

1 week down and camping has been easy because it’s been at campgrounds with showers and lights. The truck converts into a kitchen so our meals have been spaghetti bolognese, chicken stir fry, fajitas, curry, stew, omelets, banana crepes, and French toast. We’re fortunate that one of the passengers used to be a head chef. The guide is a firefighter and experienced independent traveler. The driver is a trained mechanic and has traveled extensively through Africa. Neither one however has gone through Sudan or Ethiopia so they’re new to everyone. Everyone is friendly and full of laughs, but it is only the first week. Passing time on the truck has been more challenging than expected. It’s hard to read because of the bumping and wind so we’ve resorted to word games, napping, and of course watching the world go by. There’s already a soccer ball and cricket paddle on board so we picked up some balls to play dodge ball. The majority of people are single and either just finished university or taking a break in between terms. There are those similar to us in age just taking a break from work and a couple more aged travelers so we’re somewhere in the middle.
We’ve driven through the western desert in Egypt, which is the eastern end of the Sahara. The black desert wasn’t much to look at. It looked like rocks covered with ash. The white desert was neato, but really bright under the desert sun. It looks like it’s made from chalk (CaCO3). We passed through some oases which were just villages covered in dirt. We climbed to the citadel of Mut which is just a pile of mud now. On average we’ve been on the road 5hrs a day. Now we’re in Luxor and will be taking it easy from here for a few days. We’ve even upgraded from tents to rooms.

The world is our toilet

Seriously, when you're on a truck with 25 other people you're bound to need a potty break every 2 hours or so. And when you're driving through the barren landscape of the Sahara desert the potty is the side of the road. This is how it goes: Someone pushes the buzzer to signal driver to stop. Then people pile out the back. The girls hike over whatever cover there is, usually some mound of dirt if any, and do their business while the boys walk 30 feet from the truck and empty their bladders with their backs to the truck. You very quickly learn that a bum is a bum, some are just whiter than others.

Happy trails

This morning our big, yellow, 16 ton semi truck converted to transport 24 tourists and 2 guides showed up. It's surprisingly spacy and has all kinds of hideaway compartments, an area to lay down for naps, and a "beach" on top to tan. They're going to break us in slowly with a 6hr drive today. We still have to form our cooking teams and learn the rest of everyone's names. We're the only Americans on board with most others from the UK, Ireland, Germany, and 1 Aussie that we know of. Good thing english is the language of choice here... but I'm afraid we're both unconsciously converting to the queen's english. Oy!

Tonight we're be camping in the Sahara desert and doing everything for the first time. No more internet tho for a few days so we'll try to keep up the blogs as much as possible.

Wish us luck, we'll need it.

End of our Freedom for a while

Yesterday was the end of our vacation. Today we started our safari truck trek through northern Africa. It was obvious already that our lives are no longer our own. Here's the basic trek:
We leave Cairo tomorrow morning for the Western Desert and then head South, crossing into Sudan around Nov 14th. I expect we'll have email twice more before then. After that, I can only hope that we get a little bandwidth in Khartoum and Addis Ababa before we roll into Kenya.

We're following the trip until it reaches Nairobi around Dec 24th and then we'll hang out on our own for 6 weeks in Kenya and Tanzania before rejoining a different truck to finish the trip to Capetown.

Speaking of the truck, here's our new home:
We'll try to keep in touch, but I think we'll probably not get many photos up for quite some time. But who knows... The way we post, you probably won't even notice :)

In the meantime, you can check out the itinerary and more about the truck at:
http://www.oasisoverland.co.uk/truck_expeditions/africa/nile/index.html

NOW we are ready for Africa

Sure, malaria pills might be enough for some people but when you’ve had over 150 bites more than once you need something with a little more oomph! That’s where the hand held bug zapper comes in. It was a thing of beauty to see it hidden in the pile of crap displayed in a store window on a busy street in Cairo. It looks like a toy tennis racquet but has a metal mesh and runs on two AA batteries. The store was kind enough to show us how well it worked…I was overjoyed when I saw the sparks fly. Genius!

The big 3-2 at the pyramids

There’s not much more you can ask for than to spend a birthday at the pyramids in Giza. We walked around the pyramids taking photos, paying baksheesh to climb on the smaller of the 3 (we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to climb a pyramid), and braved the stuffy interior to crawl into the big and 2nd big ones. The interiors were very simple, and short. Not only were the walkways 3 feet high so you had to crouch almost the entire time, but the endings were bare rectangular rooms with a single empty quartzite looking sarcophagus. The only real interesting part was in the big pyramid where there was a tall, narrow passageway that reached 30’ over your head.

I did find one opening above the path that wasn’t blocked off. I climbed into the shaft which went up a level and found a dark dusty space behind a ladder to the generator. With nowhere to go I jumped back down to a group of stunned tourists wondering why people were falling from the ceiling. But that was about it for excitement. Before we left Giza we stopped to see the Solar Barque and of course took more photos of the Sphinx, which is much smaller in person.

The Pyramids are the only remaining ancient wonders of the world and were amazing but it was much different than I expected. For example it isn’t out in the middle of the desert but rather in a suburb of Cairo. I bet you could get a great shot of the pyramids and sphinx from the Pizza Hut across the street.

Narrowly escaping the Cairo museum

We thought the Cairo museum was supposed to be one of the great museums of the world. You’re in the land of civilization, Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent, everything here is thousands of years BC. The place was packed, not just with tour groups but with wall to wall artifacts, as if they had too many objects and not enough room. It was completely cluttered. None of it was organized and only a small percentage had any descriptions. Some areas looked like store rooms and there wasn’t enough floor space to walk. There were signs posting no touching or photos on all the walls but the ugly tourists were using the statuary as footrests, coasters, and armrests. They would knock on the statues to make sure it was real granite or wood. Even the guides were laying their hands on the lids of the sarcophagi with his troops following the example. It was disgusting. None of the museum guards or crew seemed to care as people blatantly used the exhibits as furniture. The whole situation was so vexing.

There was so much to see and we did our best to enjoy it. Our favorite was the treasures of Tutankhamen. They had all five of his gold gilded tombs, the 3 golden sarcophagi, and all the funerary objects such as beds, canopic jars (where they put the mummy’s innards), statues, furniture, and jewelry. It was unbelievable the quality and quantity of gold and previous stones he had wrapped up with him. His famous gold burial mask was incredible. The mummy exhibit was neat but once you’ve seen one, the rest all start to look the same. We had seen a few people take pictures inside so we got a little brave with taking some discreet video. Right as the museum was closing for Ramadan Steve got caught using the camera at the papyrus exhibit by one of the guards. We managed to give the guard the slip, quickly swapped bags, separated, then regrouped outside.

The 30th Day of Ramadan

This song went on too long. But it's finally over and it ended with a bang. We're in Cairo now for the final night of Ramadan and the streets are just a zoo at night. Everyone is out shopping, eating and crowding the streets. It is literally like New Years Eve in Times Square. The shops are covered in balloons and festive paper in preparation for the three or four days of partying that take place at the end of Ramadan.
How did we celebrate? The same way we started Ramadan: with a Big Mac and a coke...and a chocolate sundae.

We learned a good travel lesson here. The Middle East isn't so bad during Ramadan. Everyone still does their best to get things done, even if it means they need to stop in the middle of the day for a nap. We never had a real problem. But these few days of partying are causing all kinds of trouble. Shops and museums are closed most of the time and even our hotel is barely staffed while everyone either parties or sleeps. I hope they don't close the door on the pyramids for us tomorrow!

Transported to Thebes

After the mobs at Luxor’s west bank we expected Karnak to be another valley of buses. We hoped our lesson the day before would hold true so we went to the entrance around lunchtime and were well pleased. Bus after bus drove past us on their way out to fill their hungry bellies. Karnak was empty. This was the city Thebes, the epicenter of the Egyptian dynasties during the reign of pharaohs dating back to 3000 BC. The scale of the temples, monuments, and statues were grandiose. It seemed every available wall, column, ceiling, and obelisk were covered in hieroglyphs. There likenesses of the deities Amun-Ra (the god of gods), Orisis, Anubis, Horus, and Hathor as well pharaohs such as Rameses, Thutmos, and Hatshepsut surrounded us. Amazingly, some still retained their original painted color high above tourists’ reach. Somehow we found ourselves in a temple off the tourist path and it was the most intact and best preserved that we had seen, eerily so. The carvings were crisp and alive as if it escaped the thousands of years of wear that other monuments had suffered. We felt as if we were transported to ancient Egypt, far away from any other living thing where only the shadows stirred. There was an overwhelming feeling like the hieroglyphs were going to walk out of the walls. I practically jumped when I came around a row of columns and nearly ran into a statue of Hatshepsut. That temple was undisputedly the highlight of our Egyptian experience thus far. As we walked back to the mapped attractions we saw the waves of tourists crashing amongst the main thoroughfare and it brought us back to reality.

-- Mary

Biking Luxor's West Bank

After a torturous 18 hour bus ride from Dahab to Luxor, we were ready to stretch our legs. Luxor is the place to do it. Across the Nile from our hotel sprawl out temples and tombs and colossi. Needing the exercise, we ferried across the river and rented clunker bicycles.We've driven cars and ridden bicycles in some pretty crazy places, but I think that Egypt is possibly the scariest road scene I've experienced. And here we are riding down crummy roads in farmland dodging horse drawn carts, kids begging for money, giant tour buses, and goats. This is what we call fun. Well, fun until Mary pointed out a cool bird to me and lost her balance instead of watching the road... But it was a pretty bird.
After cruising through the Colossi of Memnon and the Temple of Hebu, we headed out for the Valley of the Kings to see the tombs of the pharoahs. Ancient history is nice, but diving a couple hundred yards into a little hole in the side of a hill is way more fun.
I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but the tombs are generally square tunnels cut downwards into the side of the mountain leading to a room with the sarcophagus. Most have carvings or paintings covering the walls of the tunnel. Some go way into the mountain, some don't. A couple had "well rooms" that suddenly drop 20 feet down apparently as a trap to tomb raiders. There is nothing left in any of the tombs beyond the huge granite sarcophagi left in a couple. Everything of interest has been stolen for museum collections. Even though we heard it was quite boring, we went to see King Tut's tomb. It's small and boring.
There are all kinds of rules about no touching, no pictures, no video and so on. But there is a very well established practice in Egypt called "baksheesh", which means some combination of the words "tip", "gimme money" and "bribe". With a little baksheesh, you can do just about anything you want in Egypt. Sometimes it makes sense to do it, and sometimes it is just a pain to have a guy following you around asking for it. It is just a little sad that the guardian of a priceless ancient artifact will let you abuse it for less than a dollar and nobody cares. In protest, we took most of our photos the old fashioned way: we snuck them.
Almost as interesting as the tombs was how predictable the tour groups are. We showed up at about 12:15 and the valley was overflowing with tour groups. By 12:30, they were ALL gone. We had the whole place to ourselves and other people like us until 2:00 when the big groups all showed up again.

What the heck is that!? or Diving the Red Sea

We had a great time diving the Red Sea in both Jordan and Egypt. The coral is in pretty good shape and there is a variety of life that we haven't seen before. Check out the pictures of Aqaba, Jordan and Dahab, Egypt on the website for some of the really cool stuff we saw. By the fourth dive, we had seen so much that when Mary pointed out a group of rare (to us) lionfish, I just waved my hand and swam on. Picture here is a Red Sea Walkman. The wings open when it's real angry. Ooops.


Saudi Arabia is considered the holiest of the holy lands in Islam and non-Muslims are not terribly welcome. We wanted to check it out, though, so we did a dive called the "Saudi Border". It's a wall dive that starts almost directly off the border checkpoint between Jordan and Saudi. Now we can't say for sure that we made it across the line, but it was close enough. Lots of lionfish on this dive.

We did a couple wrecks, one of them a WWII British cargo ship that was full of tanks, trucks and motorcycles when it was sunk by a German bomb south of the Suez Canal.




We did a dive at the southernmost tip of the Sinai penninsula where warm and cold currents from the deep come together and draw some of the bigger fish out of hiding. After we passed a regular old blue spotted stingray, we came across a handful of gigantic eels. The biggest was at least 7' long and had a neck that seemed about 1' across at the widest. It was an absolute monster with a big gash along its body from some battle that we were lucky enough to miss. These are so big that they are just not afraid of anything - three of them actually came out of their rocks and free swam for us.

Our final dive was at night in Dahab. There's a lot of plankton in the water that glow when you disturb them. We must have spent 15 minutes on that dive just dancing and moving around to watch the phosphorescent trail of plankton that looked like fairy dust. In between, we saw some interesting night action. It turns out that parrotfish spend half an hour every night to build a protective cocoon with their saliva before they sleep. How cool is that?
OK, so I forgot to rotate and zoom this picture, but look close and you'll see a thin white membrane around the fish. kinda gross, actually.

Steve's Soft Side

Wadi Rum in Jordan is inaccurately known as the land of Lawrence of Arabia, a famous English officer turned author who traveled thru and wrote about southern Jordan. It is, however, where the movie was filmed. The land is rose and golden sand interrupted by hills of sandstone that stick out of the sandy sea like marshmallows in rocky road ice cream. Here we finally rolled down a sand dune, only to realize there were no showers at the Bedouin tent we were sleeping at for the next two nights. The first day was spent bumping about in a 4x4 through the various terrain, taking in the sites, napping after lunch, and climbing on top of rock bridges. It was a full moon so the valleys were lit with gray shadows which made it a little easier to sleep in the great wide open given the animals echoing all around us. The second day was spent on camel back. These dromedaries were a taller than the ones in Morocco but their humps were a tad smaller. Through a series of unfortunate incidences Steve ended up being unbalanced on the saddle and therefore wore himself out by the end of the first hour on a five hour trek. By the sounds he made and the agonizing expressions on his face I don’t know how he managed to stay on the hump. The guide tried padding his saddle more but Steve’s built-in cushioning was getting a good beating. Nothing could be done to improve his situation, it was only getting exponentially worse. In the end Steve caught a ride back to camp in a 4x4 and the guide decided "maybe he is very soft." I nodded in agreement and urged my camel back to running pace.

--Mary

Petra

There's nothing to be said about Petra that isn't already done better someplace else on the web. I'll leave it at this: there's a lot more to Petra than what we see in the usual tourist pictures. And it's all good.
We spent three days in Petra seeing the famous stuff and hiking out in the middle of nowhere to see the less traveled ruins. There's very little in Petra that you can't walk on or climb up.
Only twice did we violate signs saying "no climbing", and one of those was with permission of an 'official guide' I had met. Mary gets to tell the story of the more egregious violation.
We succumbed to our touristy inner selves and even went on a candlit stroll to the treasury at night. It takes something like 1500 candles to lite the 2km path to the Treasury and then another 500 light the treasury itself up. It's corny, but actually really cool.

Climb now, ask later

Our second day in Petra we hiked up the 752 steps to the Monastery which is another huge fascade in the rock. It’s well worth the effort and of the tourists that decide to make the trip almost all take pictures then head back without much pause. But Steve isn’t just any other tourist; he wants his picture at the top next to the urn. He casually walked around the No Climbing sign when others are distracted. I stayed on the bottom to drink my soda and because someone has to take the pictures. A short time later I see him sneak out on the top ledge then hide. Minutes later I see him scamper from behind one ledge to the next like a duck in a duck hunt. He repeats this dance a few times before I release he’s trying to take pictures at the top using the timer on the camera while trying to avoid being caught. Unfortunately one of the locals caught site of him during his last pass and warns me that he should come down before the police finds him and takes him away. There’s nothing I can do so I just nod and return the look of stern agreement. Bad Steve, but good picture.

-Mary


Editor’s Note: I actually was never close enough to read the words on the sign. I cut a path far from the sign and up a slightly more dangerous hill so I could truthfully say “sign, what sign?” It worked out in the end. Mary took all the heat and nobody said a word to me. Heh. Of course, all I get for my efforts is this silly picture of the urn on top.

Leaving footprints on antiquities…priceless

The only thing better than breaking the rules and getting away with it is when it is facilitated by the rule maker. In Petra there is the remains of a Byzantine church with ancient mosaics dating back to 600 AD, very well preserved and kept behind a simple barrier. We are the only ones there and the guy watching this place asks if we would be interested to walk on the antiquities provided we took our shoes off. The offer caught us by surprise so we had to clarify that we heard him correctly. Seriously, we can walk on these thousand year old works of art by peoples long since gone if we go barefoot? We said this of course while we were taking our sandals off. It’s kind of nerve racking to trod on artifacts because you just don’t know if the next step is going to pull up a tile or crack a motif. Then he brings the wet sponge out and starts rubbing some of them to show the brilliant natural colors under the layers of dust. While he’s doing this I thought I noticed a tile actually roll off and he quickly picked it up into his palm. We tiptoe about feeling the tiles beneath our feet taking pictures and video. Talk about trying to take gentle steps. I really wanted to bust out a cartwheel but thought that might be over the top. In the course of our half hour conversation he made a quick comment about losing his job if anyone saw us doing this but we didn’t push him on the details. Apparently this guy had been working with the excavation team for a decade and knew all kinds of interesting facts about the work being done in Petra. He gave us the sales pitch just as we were about to leave so we bought a jar of sand art and a set of postcards from him. We figured the price for walking on the priceless mosaics was well worth the $2.50.

Sunk in the Dead Sea

Oceans are 3% salt, the Dead Sea is 30% plus a bunch of other minerals. With such a high salt content nothing lives in it except highly specialized bacteria. The tourist draw is the incredible buoyancy the salt content affords and the health benefits from the highly enriched water and mud. Being in Jordan we were so close to it that we couldn’t resist the detour. We were tentative to dip in because the water was murky and slimy to the touch. It was the exact temperature of the air which was in the mid-80s. Once in the heavy water kept us effortlessly afloat. Between the warm temp and thick water I wondered if that’s what it was like to being in a womb. Yes, a weird thought. It was just that soothing and relaxing…until we started testing the buoyancy with various attempts at acrobatics. It started out with trying to sit upright then spinning and balancing on our stomaches, all the while keeping our heads out of the water for fear of effects of the salt. And like the old idiom goes, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Steve gets a little too comfortable with his balance and loses it, tumbling backwards into the water with his feet reaching for the sky and his head submerged in the soup. This whole time we were only in two feet of water so I lead him blind onto the beach and douse water over his eyes which are bloodshot. If you’re curious what it feels like to have the Dead Sea in your eyes you’ll have to ask Steve, but the water tastes like dirty salt, what I would imagine licking the bottom of a hiking sandal would be.

-Mary

Jordan Pictures posted

Click on the 'Jordan' link to the right or go back to the website for photo albums for the Dead Sea, Petra, Wadi Rum desert and scuba diving in Aqaba

The 30 days of Ramadan: Day 10

On the 10th day of Ramadan, my true love gave me heartburn.

We learned a big lesson a couple days ago. We were spoiled with the good life in Turkey. Our arrival in Jordan marked a turning point in our travels. In one 2 hour flight, we went from "vacation" to "trip". Istanbul is Europe. Jordan is the Middle East. We saw little evidence of Ramazan (as it is called in Turkey) in Istanbul. There was no interruption in services, people were eating, drinking and smoking all day long. We ate McDonalds in public.

Fly to Jordan. For two days we held sympathy Ramadan by fasting until sundown with EVERYONE else. This wasn't because we're wonderful and considerate people, but because finding an open restaurant or market in our part of Amman just isn't that easy.

But today was different. After washing the salt out of my eyes and nose at the Dead Sea, we were lucky enough to find a restaurant catering to tourists. We ate so well that I was going to skip dinner, if you can imagine that. After a few hour drive down the King's Highway through a few Crusade Castles (time to pick up the history book...) we arrived in Petra where the brothers that run our hotel offered us some of their "break-fast" meal (they all think that twist in meal naming during Ramadan is funny). Well, there is only one thing for us to do when a huge family-size portion plus two deserts are brought out for us. Gorge.

But now I don't feel so well...

I think we've also seen an end to good internet for quite some time. There are rumors of DSL here and there, but we're living the dial up life for now. I want to scream it's so slow. I don't know how you live like this, dad!

The 30 days of Ramadan: Day One

Rama-what? No really, what are the rules here? I admit my circle of friends and acquaintances at home has never included many muslims, that I’m aware of. Therefore it was surprising to me to learn that one of the pillars of Islam is the observance of Ramadan. The dates change every year, but it’s always 30 days. This year it’s Sept 24 to Oct 23. Lucky us we get to experience it while we’re traveling through Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt. What we’ve heard is that during this time good muslims cannot eat or drink ANYTHING from sunrise to sunset. This year that means from 6am to 7pm no bread, no tea, not even water, nothing means nothing. After sunset there are gorging parties all over town. Also, they must pray 5 times during the day, including at 4am, and all efforts are to be exerted to do so at a mosque. This not only scrambles a lot of public services like transportation and office hours, but also puts people in bad moods since they thirsty and starving all day. And they have to go cold turkey with alcohol because it is strictly forbidden during this month, more so than the rest of the year when some of the rules are more loosely interpreted. There are other particulars like the sacrifice of a goat, etc. that we haven’t been able to get all the particulars on. So we weren’t sure what to expect in Istanbul since it is very much a modern city with enormous western influences but is nonetheless muslim. In the morning my belly was already on empty so we walked around trying to spy if any non-tourist was eating or drinking. As it was a Sunday, their only day off, the streets were quiet. I was getting pretty desperate and ready to buy snacks to scarf in the hotel when we did catch some local looking peeps sipping in cafes. There was nothing that indicated that this was day was any different from the last. So on the first day of Ramadan my true love gave to me, a McDonald’s hamburger.

-Mary

Ode to the Sea

So much time amongst the rock,
Hence we yearned the sea to frock.
Sent off by the flaming Chimera,
To sail pass the land of Lycia.
Here a city given to fish,
And lived jolly saint Nicholas.
Aboard the gulet waves we ride
To nap, idle, and tan our hide.
No cares, worries, nor questions why,
Four days thus sailed by.
-Mary

The Blue Cruise as it’s called sails across the southwestern Turkey coast from Olympos to Fethiye. In 4 days, 3 nights it goes the distance that it takes a bus one and a half hours to cover. And that’s pretty much the pace of life on the 78’ wooden gulet. Your day is your own and although there were 16 other passengers and 3 crew there is ample space to spread out and enjoy the peace. Each day the vessel would stop in a couple of locations to see the sites, stretch the legs, and have a swim. Three warm meals a day, plus a snack, were prepared by the cook who looked like a cheerful surf bum. He made all kinds of good stuff like stuffed peppers, French toast, and fish-head soup from the captain's morning catch. The soup wasn't much to look at because it stared right back, but it tasted good. The cabins were spacious doubles each with their own shower and head that flushed. The last night we opted to sleep under the skies on the deck. The gulet is really nicely set up for lounging with cushioned beds for laying out, canopies for the whities, and even a hammock at the bow. To break up our napping, Steve entertained with cliff jumping.
We were very pleased with the quality and experience given the price was half what it would cost in the States. We would highly recommend doing this for anyone going to Turkey and looking to relax under the sun.

-Mary

Editor's note: we had lunch in Demre, which is the home of one Saint Nicholas they claim as the inspiration for modern day Santa. No presents dropped through our porthole, though.

McDonalds Playland - Turkish Style

Cappadocia is a region of central Turkey that is covered in bizzare rock formations, some of which are visually similar to Bryce Canyon in Utah. Millions of years ago, a bunch of soft tufa was covered by some hard lava. Once the lava cracked up, the tufa wore away much faster and the result are cones or cylinders of tufa protected by caps or mushrooms of lava.

Atleast that's what the geologists will have you believe, but the locals have another theory. They want to believe.
What makes this area even more interesting is that the Hittites living here a few thousand years ago used all this soft stuff to carve themselves some homes and hiding places so the area is blanketed in three major types of sites: cool shaped rocks, rocks with homes or Christian churches carved into them, and underground cities carved into hills.To the modern tourist, it is a playground for hiking the valleys, climbing higher than you should to see frescoes in the churches, wandering through the remains of ancient apartment complexes and getting lost and dusty in dark winding caves. We stayed here 7 days in a town called Goreme and balanced a few big hiking and scootering days with some naptime. The first big hike day, we did some good off trail climbing through a couple canyons, up through vineyards and pumpkin patches on the plateaus and down through a valley of absolutely phenomenal fun.

Digging their way to China

The undergroud cities are possibly even more impressive than the sites up top. The locals claim there are hundreds of cities of varying size and excavation in the area. The largest we saw claimed to be excavated to 8 levels below ground with some 5000 rooms discovered. This first city at Kaymakli is very clean and setup for tourists. There's even lighting run through most of the rooms. Of course, we spent a fair amount of time off the beaten path with only our headlamps for light. I think most impressive is the little stuff. There are ventilations shafts running up and down further than our lights can see. The round stone doors that roll in place to block passageways from enemies.

After this big one, we headed on our scooter out to the country to a speck of a town called Mazi with a less touristed underground city. A guy by the side of the road flagged us down and offered to show us inside with his gas lantern. There actually were lights put in when a group of archeologists started excavation, but they seemed to have stopped rather abruptly and ripped out the lighting and most of the wiring when they left. Our guide tells us in some mix of Turk, English and French that this city was built for 10,000 people to hide out. This one went six levels below surface and six up into a mountain, but only the upper ones were open. In near darkness, we followed this guy around this dirty group of chambers until he says "Now surprise. follow slowly" and runs off down a narrow passage with the big light. We follow and a minute later I see his light - and Mary screams. I turn to see two arms sticking through small holes in the passageway hovering over her. Another great trick to pummel your enemies.Next we have to ascend four levels through 3 foot square 'elevator' shafts that rise along the wall and straight through the ceiling as far as our lights shine. (The brightness of the lighting in these pictures is boosted by Photoshop - which wasn't much help to us at the time!)





There are footholes on each side every foot, so climbing up is just a matter of wedging your self in and going up. Fear of heights isn't much of a problem because there's nothing to see when you look down.
This adventure was just missing the Indiana Jones theme song in the background. After a few shafts, a knee height tunnel or two and the promise of no more "surprises", we made it safely outside again. Now we just need to find a laundry service.

Meet the Flintstones

Our first big hike in Goreme took us through Pigeon Valley where we came across a 4 story building carved into the hill that we couldn't resist. We wandered the first two floors which are completely covered in pockets such that the place looks like a library. We later learned that people here raised pigeons to eat, make fresco paint from the eggs, as message carriers, and used their guano for fertilizer.
A bit later we came across this building which is a giant tufa cone of swiss cheese chambers and passageways. It is some kind of apartment or group dwelling that we called the Penthouse. The real beauty of this whole area is that there are no park rangers or signs that say "don't go here". Everything is open to be explored if you can get to it. That said, we wandered through hundreds of rooms going all the way to the top eight stories up, but still saw maybe only a third of it.

Full of hot air

At the end of the day, we're tourists. And the #1 tourist thing to do in Cappadocia is to wake up at 5am for a hot air balloon ride. There are about 15 balloons that take off each morning in neighboring fields carrying three or four hundred people. The crowds are forgotten very quickly as we watch each balloon fill up with its massive bunsen burners. What can we say, we're both fans of flame and we got our fill this day.
Once in the air, we saw the expected incredible views of Goreme and the surrounding valleys and towns. We quickly moved right up next to one of the couple hundred foot tall tufa cone apartment buildings and then ran up to about 4500 feet above ground level.
Then we drifted over town and out towards a few valleys and our landing site. The pilot had some creative ideas about landing, though, and three times sent the ground crews running across vineyards only to take off on them and drift across another valley. Bad for them, good for us!