Another early start. We decided today was the day to leave so we went down to the ferry office in town, and bought tickets for the fast boat to Nuiweba in Egypt. These cost JD20, compared to JD15 for the slow boat (one hour or three-four hours). We then made a brash decision to go to the Egyptian Consulate to get our visa in advance. We weren’t sure how long it would take at the other end, and had heard reports that it was more expensive for British passport holders, so we decided we had plenty of time to get it in advance. It was 9:30 and our boat left at 12:00 …. Loads of time (or so we thought). The Consulate was easy to get to and it was just a small building and a courtyard. Our taxi driver decided to stay with us, as we all expected things to take no more than one hour. We filled the forms in, paid the JD12 visa fee, and handed everything over with a passport photo. They told us one-hour maximum, so we sat and waited. After one hour there was no sign of the passports, so we enquired. We were told that the Consulate himself – who had to sign our forms – hadn’t arrived yet! We waited another half-hour and began to panic. At this stage I really thought we would miss the boat. We had one hour left to get our passports back, go to the hotel to pack and checkout, get to the port – 10kms away and get onto the boat. We also realised we didn’t have enough money, so add a trip to the bank on top of this. It was going to be tight. We decided to take the taxi back to the hotel. We stopped at the bank to top up our cash, then returned to quickly pack and check out. We got back to the Consulate at 11:20. Still no passports. I was getting really anxious now. Then, sometime after 11:30, the window opened and we got our passports back, complete with visa. Our taxi driver raced to the port and we dashed up and down stairs getting our tickets stamped, etc. It was complete madness, but due to all the chaos and other people dashing about, we deduced that ferry wouldn’t be leaving bang on time. Eventually we got all our paperwork sorted out and made it to the fast boat. It was a very impressive catamaran – aeroplane style seats, tea and coffee service, TV, etc, etc. It was also only about a third full. We soon located Mark the American and Tiffany Tightwad and settled into the journey. It was smooth and quick – it did only take one hour. On arrival we were glad we had our visas in advance, because it was another complete nightmare otherwise. We haggled with service taxi drivers for a while and eventually struck up a deal to take a group of us to Dahab for E£10 each (about UK£2). Joining Nick and I were Tiffany, Glen – an English lad, and two other Germans (who I think paid more than us for some reason). The service taxi was a beat up old Peugeot 8-seater. The journey along very steep, windy desert roads was amazing, and I think it took about one hour to reach Dahab. Dahab is a real backpacker’s ghetto. It resembles Goa, in many ways, but in a desert setting. It’s very dry, hot, sandy and surrounded by big treeless mountains. The sea is clear and calm and the main street along the front is lined with hotels, camps, restaurants and souvenir shops. We decided to stay in the Shark Bay Hotel. It had big airy rooms, huge beds and a bathroom for E£10 per night (after haggling). It two mins walk to the sea. Some of the others decided to stay in one of the camps, but apart from the fact that they were quite social places, and usually sat right on the sea front, they were pretty crappy looking and very cramped – most of them just concrete boxes. In the evening we bumped into Peter the Aussie (who had left Aqaba a day before us), so we teamed up with Tiffany and Greg and kicked back in a nice seafront "restaurant". Most of the sea front places are the same – you sit on a carpet-covered floor with pillows and low tables – very colourful and extremely relaxing. We ate stuff like Spaghetti Bolognaise – which was surprisingly good and cheap, and indulged in a few bottles of Egyptian Stella beer. Nice.
8th November 1998 We took a "truck taxi" from the hotel down to the "Blue Hole". It took about half an hour or driving along a rugged coastline and our first observation of the Blue Hole is a normal looking cove with a couple of beach shacks. The snorkelling was absolutely fantastic. The reef comes right up to the shore and then after about twenty feet it drops 100m into the blue hole itself. Quite breathtaking. The fish were varied and colourful and the water was very clear – although a little chilly (It was November mind you). We spent the whole day snorkelling and relaxing by the sea. The only bad thing about the place was the hordes of pesky flies. In the evening we returned to the same restaurant as the previous night and did pretty much the same thing – ate drunk and enjoyed a smoke on the Nargileh.
9th November 1998 Another hot, sunny day so we decided to return to the Blue Hole again. We stayed there until 3:00, when the tide starts to get low, making the coral a bit difficult to negotiate. In the afternoon we went to a local Internet café run by a weird hippie bloke. It cost about E£12 per hour – not bad value. More relaxing on the seafront in the evening.
10th November 1998 Another lazy day. We just crashed out on the seafront and read book, ate, drank coffee and coke and relaxed. We bought phone cards to make calls home, which cost E£35. I was told I would get 10-15 minutes for this, but ended up getting less than 5. What a rip off. Still – I suppose we are in the middle of nowhere. Went out in the evening with Tiffany for more good food and beer. Peter left on an early bus to get back to Cairo and Greg has left for Cairo too, to start his African safari. After speaking to loads of people who made the nightime trip up Mount Sinai, we decided to give it a miss. It just sounds like it’s just too much of a tourist trap. Both Tiffany and Peter said it was "standing room only" at the top. I’d imagined that the trip to the top would be a real adventure and a highlight of or tour, but we decided rather than disappoint ourselves, we’d give it a miss… plus by now we were so totally relaxed by Dahab we couldn’t really be bothered!
11th November 1998 Did virtually nothing all day. Relaxed on the sea front (again) and chatted with some students down from Cairo on holiday. Life is hard!
12th November 1998 Walked down the coast for a couple of miles until we reached some quite posh resorts where we stopped to snorkel and relax on their plush sunbeds. It was very quiet and the snorkelling was pretty decent. Lots of anemones and sea cucumbers, plus some big square’ish’ fish. Did much of the same in the evening and afternoon – relaxed! I really enjoyed our six days in Dahab and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get away from it all and do some quality snorkelling, without paying too much.
Took an 8:00 minibus to Cairo, changing once. The journey took just under 8 hours. After following the coast and passing over the high mountains, we travelled through barren desert and small desolate towns. It was hot and uncomfortable. The highlights of this boring journey were passing under the Suez Canal and getting stopped at a checkpoint (all the locals got searched but they just smiled at us and told us to stay seated!). It was also quite amusing watching the lad in front of me continually fall asleep – his head was bobbing around all over the place. When we arrived in the centre of Cairo we jumped onto the metro at Sadat station. I had heard stories about how Cairo was so unclean, yet the streets seemed Ok and the underground was superior to say the London underground or New York subway – very clean and efficient. It cost us 50 Piastres for our journey a couple of stops to the Museum. We were pretty knackered and just wanted to down bags and have a good feed and some drink, so when a tout approached and offered to take us to his hotel, we just accepted. The hotel was called the Dahab, and although Nick wasn’t too keen, I was too tired to be bothered, so after some haggling we decided to stay. I realised I’d made a mistake as soon as I noticed that the place only had about three toilets between all the room. They were pretty grim. The tout who took us to the hotel wanted us to go to the duty free shop to get him some booze. We’d been warned that although this practice was common and not illegal, it was a real pain and took forever. We resisted his offers (Nick was stronger willed than I was and I fear I may have given in this time if it weren’t for him), but he kept trying. In the end he was offering us a free student card, free taxi to and from the Pyramids and cash – just to get him a load of booze and cigarettes. Obviously there was good profit in this sort of business for him, but we just refused and left. This was the first of many approaches by touts in Cairo, but we soon got "hardened" to it! We dived into the nearest fast food place we could find – McDonalds, and stuffed our faces. It was cheap - £2 for a large meal. Afterwards we wandered around the downtown area of Cairo. Most buildings have a French feel to them – with big old "open" lifts running up and down the centre of them. We checked out a few more hotels but found them to be only slightly better and much more expensive - double what we were paying at the Dahab. The streets in Cairo are extremely busy and crossing the road is a nightmare. Brings a new meaning to the words "walk like an Egyptian"! Complete Pandemonium. 14th November 1998 We got eaten alive by mosquitoes last night and didn’t get much kip at all. We were both pretty well pissed off, but had to laugh at the state of the room walls in the morning – splattered with blood from the overnight "squat a rama"! First chore of the day was to go to the Air France office to reconfirm our tickets. Good job we chose to do this because our return flights had been cancelled – due to the fact that Paris Charles de Gaul airport Was on strike during the days we were due to arrive/depart. All flights around those two days were consequently packed full. In the end, Air France booked us onto a direct flight to London with Egypt Air – which was nice of them. This meant that our one night stopover in Paris was off, but we weren’t too bothered. While I was sorting our flights out, Nick checked out another hotel – the Hotel Tulip, which turned out to be pleasant and have rooms available, so we checked out of the shitty Dahab and moved into the Tulip. After more hassle on the street from the "I’ll give you a student card if you buy me duty free" and the "How would you like to be an extra in a film" brigade, we headed for more fast food junk and gorged ourselves at KFC. You just can’t beat fast food sometimes. In the afternoon we went to the Egyptian National Museum, which was excellent. It was e£20 to get in and full to the brim of interesting stuff, including Tutenkamen’s mask, tombs, etc. We spent quite some time in there and then took a leisurely stroll along the Nile. It looks a bit like the Thames. We wandered through the Garden district and then found an Internet Café to spend a few hours. Had a fairly quiet, early night.
15th November 1998 Slept much better last night – only one solo mozzie in the room, which didn’t bother us too much. We caught a local bus (No 900) to the Giza Pyramids. It took about one hour and cost 25 Piastres – excellent value and a much better way to travel than on tourist buses or taxis. It’s quite amazing how close the Pyramids are to the city. In fact they are smack bang next to it. One minute we were driving through busy city streets, the next we were in front of the Great Pyramid – surrounded by hotels, souvenir shops and the usual KFC and Pizza Hut! The hassle from camel drivers, horse owners, touts, souvenir sellers, etc, etc is overwhelming, but we fought our way through a "side" entrance and paid E£20 each to enter on foot. The Pyramids are huge and very impressive – just as I had imagined, and after we walked through more touts and pestering kids to the far side of the site we were able to sit and take everything in. Marvellous. On one side is desert and a few more Pyramids, whilst the other three sides are surrounded by the city. It’s quite shocking that they allowed modernisation to creep so near to these ancient monuments. We spent a few hours wandering around luckily, due to entering from the side, managed to miss the bulk of tourists which flooded in after 11:00. We took a taxi back to town after some hard bargaining – the traffic was chaotic and being a passenger was quite frightening. We decided to go for a beer in the evening and managed to track down a cheap bar – only to find out it was "dry" night. No one could really explain what this was, but we couldn’t get a beer for love nor money. We ate some spicy chicken kebab at a place called Kyros, which was nice.
16th November 1998 After a basic hotel breakfast we walked the streets to the "Khan al Khallili" – the old souq in the Islamic part of town. It’s a fascinating warren of stalls, mosques and small "factories". We were "befriended" by an English speaking man who took care of all our shopping needs. We told him what we wanted, and he took us to a stall. Ok – we probably paid more than we could have (although we did bargain hard), but at least we had everything purchased quickly and easily. I bought loads of stuff, including a Nargileh and a lamp. Our friend gave us an excellent tour of the spice souq, which was very interesting - huge quantities of all the herbs and spices you could imagine. The smell was quite overwhelming at times. On our tours to various stalls we drank various interesting teas and coffees and chatted to loads of people. It was a great experience. I think at the end of the day, we had a good attitude and this resulted in good friendly bargaining and hardly any hassle – unlike some parts of the world. We took a taxi back to the hotel with all of our clobber, and chose fast food again – Pizza Hut this time, followed by a well-earned siesta. In the evening we ventured to the Windsor Hotel to have a few beers at their bar – "The Barrel Lounge". Quite an atmospheric place, with chairs and tables made out of barrels and a real colonial feel to it. The beer was good value and cold. We ended up drinking quite a lot and staggered home around midnight. I was pleasantly surprised with what I had seen in Cairo. Not as dirty or dangerous as some people say and in general a very pleasant city to spend a few days.
17th November 1998 We took a taxi to the Citadel. It’s a huge place with good views over Islamic Cairo. The mosque inside is of a Turkish style – a bit different from ones we had seen so far. The place was rammed full of schoolchildren on day trips and we got quite a lot of attention. As soon as I sat down I was mobbed by youngsters wanting to speak English, shake my hand or have their photo taken. One of the teachers asked me a question: "In England you say you are ‘Sending someone to Coventry’. Why do you say this? Why Coventry? Is it a bad place or something?" I didn’t know the answer, but agreed that it probably wasn’t the nicest of places. (What else could I say?) After the Citadel we visited two huge mosques nearby. The huge 9th century Mausoleum of Imam ash-Shafi'i is one of the biggest in the world. We saw the tomb of The Shah of Iran after paying baksheesh to a guardian and soon realised that baksheesh was required for anything. Even the bloke who watched out shoes (you have to remove your shoes to enter mosques) wanted paying. It gets a bit too much sometimes. We wandered back through Islamic Cairo. You can get a feeling how densely populated this city is when you walk around and it feels like people are crammed in so tightly that hardly any space is left unused. There are alleyways and small mud houses next to awkward looking tower blocks. Shops selling everything overflow onto the pavements and even donkeys and goats are used for moving things about. Some parts probably haven’t changed in centuries. Walking rather than taking a taxi or bus allows you to get a real feel for the place. I even managed to buy a mosque alarm clock (a mosque shaped clock which has the "call to prayer" as the alarm) – something I’d been looking for the entire trip. We walked for miles. We briefly popped back into the souq for some last minute shopping, but soon got tired of the heat, the hassle and the sheer amount of people, so we jumped into a taxi and headed back for a siesta. In the evening we returned to the Barrel Lounge where we proceeded to drink lots and lots of beer. It was our last night and we’d had a fantastic trip, so we were in the mood to celebrate. We talked about the trip and reminisced about past times. We talked about the future and we probably had a few more beers than we should of. We couldn’t even walk back to the hotel so we took a taxi. I just about managed to fit everything in my rucksack before hitting the sack.
18th November 1998 Got up early for our pre booked taxi to the airport. The airport was quiet. I wasted money on some awful food and read a recent edition of the Daily Mirror. The flight was fine and EgyptAir get the thumbs up from me. We passed through customs easily and after a quick goodbye to Nick I jumped on the tube to St Pancras. I just made it in time for my train. It was cold and wet, but I was happy to be back.
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