Going to the Chapel and.....

Well, actually I didn't get married. But I did buy a ring and have a made-up husband named Charlie. Oh and I have been married for 3 years and sometimes have two sons, named Peter and Jon, or at least that is the story I liked to give those who insisted on harassing us. But, more on that later.

Oh, as a side note, like before there are too many pictures to upload on the blog, although I have speckled a few in there, so checkout the flickr account at the bottom of the page!! happy reading this is a long one:)

So, now I am back in Cairo, after a 10 day jaunt around the south of Egypt, and two days in Petra, Jordan. Diana and Tammy went to Aswan a day and a half before I did, so I met them in Aswan and we jumped on a Felucca (a very small sail boat) for a two day trip down the Nile with six others: two American girls, Molly & Diana, a couple from Holland, Sashka and Timo, and a couple from Melbourne, Emily and Nic. Everyone was great and we just lazed around for two days doing barely anything but lying around and chit chatting. Oh, the first night we were treated to a large warm beer a piece, yum.

We traveled from Aswan to Kom Umbo, to Edfu on the Felucca while making a few stops at various islands along the way the say hi to the cows, donkeys, camels etc. It actually was a lot of fun and I recommend it to anyone.

After our lazy Felucca days we landed in Edfu to check out the temples and ruins. But first let me preface this by saying this type of trip is never done by Egyptians in the dead of the summer. In fact they all looked at me like I was bananas when I told them I was going. The daily average temperature in the south of Egypt at this time of year is about 40-41ºC. So yep, bananas might be right. But we had fun.

After Edfu we jumped on a bus with a tour group of 16 or so 20-somethings from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain and headed for the temples in Luxor. The bus was air conditioned and the company was funny and friendly. Soon we arrived at the temples to wander about, and take about a zillion pictures (honestly when I was downloading everything from this last adventure it looked as if I never took my eye out of the camera's view finder, I assure you all I did).

But we soon got our reward for spending about seven hours blistering hours in the stifling Egyptian sun.... a hotel with a pool and a small price tag, and the group of friendly and funny Australians, Brits and New Zealanders. After another temple and a museum we treated ourselves to nice long showers and dinner on the rooftop patio of the hotel. But nothing goes better with dinner, than the company of new friends and nice big COLD beers. So we treated ourselves to some of that too, and a good swim at the pool.



But here is a word to wise, when a small elevator in a small hotel in Luxor says 6 people max., do not stuff 7 or 8 in there and think it will be ok. But it did make for a funny moment and story.......once we got out.

All in all good fun at the New Windsor hotel in Luxor. The next day was a bit painful, after a short night of sleep and a long night of beers, the sun and 40ºC weather was unforgiving. But 17,000 bottles of water later all was good. The Valley of the Kings and Queens was exceptional, and Queen/King Hatshepsut’s temple was awe inspiring.

That evening we once again joined our new friends for more drinks and night swimming. Good times had by all. I unfortunately did not learn my lessen and had another painful early morning, but we Canadian girls were going to the beach.

Sharm was a short trip, only one day. I have been to Sharm a few times in the past, but it is super touristy now, and more expensive than it used to be, but we decided we deserved a good dinner so we went to the Hyatt and had Fantastic Thai food!!

Then we went off to the strip to do some people watching, shopping (it was here I got my fancy wedding ring, it cost 10 Egyptian pounds, which is about $2CAD)and go to the infamous Buddha Bar. Unfortunately the lack of sleep caught up with us and we didn't make it too long at Buddha bar, c'est la vie.

Sharm was also where we developed the last of our three ways of keeping the harassing men at bay. You already know the wedding ring, the second we developed on our last night in Luxor, which was pretending we were deaf and signing to each other. Now we felt pretty guilty about this; that is until the men yelled out in Arabic "They are deaf!" and started laughing like hyenas. The last of the methods was the fake names, which we gave them those of Josie and the Pussy Cats. It was pretty funny when I heard some guy yelling "Josie! Josie! Josie!" at me from down the street.

The next day we went to paradise, aka Dahab. The great thing about traveling and meeting people is that they are always willing to share info on where to go, what to do and where not to go and what not to do. Thanks to our new friends we stayed at Seven Heaven hotel (and no I did not make a typo, it's Seven Heaven, not Seventh Heaven).

It was amazing, the people were sweet, the diving was fantastic, the beach was relaxing, and the water was clear. What more can I say, we never wanted to leave, and Tammy actually went back.

Seven Heaven is a great little traveler’s hotel. It's a bit bohemian, no frills, and incredibly laid back. AKA exactly what we wanted after all our sight seeing. Oh and the restaurants by the beach are amazing! The food is fantastic, and super cheap, but they give you way too much. It might be wise to split meals if you have the option!



Made some good friends there, more Brits, and an American, and a few of the diving staff. I worked on my Arabic quite a bit over the trip, and actually saw some improvement, on the bus to Luxor I taught one of our new friends how to say "I don't want anything" in Arabic. Which believe me is more useful than knowing how to say "Where is the bathroom?" I have traveled a few places around the world, but I have to say the Egyptian venders in the tourist places are by far the most aggressive group! At times it was funny, and others it was more than annoying, it was rude. But such is life.

So after Dahab, we jumped on a bus to catch the ferry to go to Jordan. We left at 10am. The ferry is scheduled to leave at 2pm. But time in Egypt is a whole different realm than time back home. We didn't actually get on the ferry 'till about 4pm. I think because I am Egyptian and have seen this kind of thing through out my travels here I could see the humour in it, but that couldn't be said for everyone.

So when we finally got to the boat they checked our passports three times in the span of 10 minutes and requested that we get into a single file line, this was all too funny and surreal.

So finally after a long day of taxis, buses, ferries, and more taxis we finally got to Petra, which is about a two and a half hour drive from the port in Aqaba.

The hotel was less fantastic, but it had three beds, a shower and toilet. Really there isn't much more we could ask for, we paid about $7.50/ea a night.

But what was fantastic is the city of Petra. We spent about 10 hours hiking up and around the rose coloured stone mountains. It's like nothing I have ever seen. The monestary, treasury and tombs are all carved out of the side of the mountains! There is no putting the stones together to see if they fit, they just carve them straight out. As you will see, I might have gone a bit overboard with the pictures, but it was pretty cool.

Tammy was a bit held up at the beginning because she had to stop at the "Indiana Jones Gift Shop" to dump her photos on a disc.



But when we did find her she had a new friend. A cute 10 year old Bedouin boy named Saleh, who became our impromptu tour guide.

Saleh, was known by just about everyone on the mountain, and they all called him the boy that was half Japanese half Bedouin. We took him for lunch and he stayed with us on the whole 10 hour trek. He took us to the highest pint of the mountain, where we met and had tea with his family. He has two sisters and seven brothers, all of them very cute. After we had tea, Diana, Tammy and I perused through his family's stand and all picked something to buy.



Saleh accompanied us all the way back down and through the mountains, so he could go get his donkey. I don't think we could have asked for a better tour guide. At the end of our 17 million hour trek we sent Saleh home with a bit of money and headed over, nice and dirty mind you, to the Cave Bar, which is the world's oldest bar. It's in the side of the rose stone with tombs in the walls. Very cool and not as creepy as you may think. Unfortunatly it wasn't so happening when we were there, so we left and went to another bar for a drink.

Tammy and I had quite the experience with one of the world's easiest drinks...vodka soda. The waiter brought over two glasses the colour of scotch and water, and I used my excellent Arabic skills to basically say "what the hell is that?!"

It was vodka of some sort, and it was pepper flavoured, aka the most putrid drink I had ever tasted. He argued with us that it was vodka and we asked for vodka and that's what we got. Well after a long hot day of hiking I was not a girl to be messed with and promptly got him to bring us new drinks. I went as safe as possible and had a Heineken.

Surprisingly we still had a little bit more left in us, so we headed over the nice and fancy Movënpick. We went on a bit of sleuth mission (and yes we were still covered in sand and dirt from our day of climbing and walking). We went touring through the 'guest only areas,' aka the pool, sauna and steam rooms, workout areas. It was all very beautiful and if you have a good amount of money you should stay there. Otherwise you can slum it at the Moon Valley Hotel like we did :)

But we did go to the Movënpick for a reason, and reason was ice cream. It was sooooo good. We sat in a fancy bar with a fantastic ceiling and had two scoops each. The perfect end to a perfect trip.



Now I am back in Cairo and have been asked to write about my trip for the magazine, through my eyes. Fancy that, after a year of journalism school telling me to keep myself out of the story, go figure.

!!PICTURES HERE!!