Egypt Part IV- Sailing down the Nile

This is Part 4 of probably 6 parts about Egypt. We'll see. Here are links to previous posts about this trip-of-a-lifetime.

Part I: Getting There
Part II: Cairo and Pyramids

Part III: Temples

Part V: The Red Sea (coming soonish)

Part VI: Jeff Climbs a Mountain (coming soonish)

Part IV: Sailing down the Nile

It’s now been almost 3 months since we were in Egypt, but Egypt has been on the minds of many across the world recently, and we’ve been glued to the updates that came out of Tahrir Square. I wrote this a month ago, on a plane, but was too busy to ever post it. Now that I'm on spring break, I actually have a minute to breathe and catch up. 

I hope the months and years ahead yield increased democracy and opportunity for our new friends in Egypt. But we didn’t fly to Egypt to see a revolution, so here is another installment of the other, timeless Egypt, the one that everyone should really try to see once in their lives.

The Nile

“Egypt is the gift of the Nile,” as the saying goes. The longest river on Earth, it brings waters from rainy mountains of Ethiopia and jungles of Uganda to one of the driest places on Earth. In Upper Egypt (southern Egypt, but the upper reaches of the Nile) town of Aswan it is usually several years between rainfall events.  The massive river rolling by the parched desert was really quite a difficult thing for my brain to reconcile. 

Despite being only about 3% of the land area, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta are home to nearly all the arable land and nearly all the people in Egypt, and this has been true for thousands of years, so that is also where the vast majority of the historic temples and ruins are.  This means that cruising the Nile is an essential way to connect with history and see the sights.

Nile cruise boats are the most popular way to see the sights,  with rooms for hundreds of guests are often luxury affairs (floating hotels, really), though I’ve been warned that some are much seedier than they travel brochures promise. No matter.  We wanted something more basic, more historic, more authentic, more…sailboat-y.

Our felucca, before we boarded in Aswan, with our faithful (and possibly not-yet-high) crew, Mustafa and Ramadan.

Rigging.

Glassy water reflecting the felucca and clouds along the Nile.

This is my favorite picture from the full-of-amazing pictures trip. It's now my computer desktop. You can see the Nile, feluccas, a tiny riverside oasis of green, then sandy sand forever.

The felucca is a traditional Nile boat. Broad abeam and with a huge lateen rig (only one sail, like a Sunfish, if you’ve sailed one, but about 3x the size), they are able to pull ashore easily (by pulling up the centerboard), move in the slightest of breezes, and are remarkably stable.  The Nile flows north to the Mediterranean, but the prevailing winds blow to the south, making the Nile a perfect river highway. Today the feluccas are nearly entirely used for recreation, but it’s not just foreign tourists that go. Residents of Cairo (“Cairenes”) and other cities often hire a felucca for a few hours to laze away a sunny afternoon.  Our boat was probably 14 feet wide and maybe 30 feet long. There was storage below deck but no cabins or bathrooms -- just an open deck boat with mattresses to lounge on and a canopy to keep off the sun. 

Chilling on the mattress-covered deck. Shannon had a hard time believing I would want to do an activity this chill.

Hanna and Pei Pei chill-axing.

Hanna, Jeff, Shannon, Pei Pei wading into the Nile.

Our Nubian captain and mate (Mustafa and Ramadan) sailed and cooked us simple but delicious meals on a camp stove, while our job was to enjoy the scenery.  The crew also stayed thoroughly glassy-eyed as they huffed on joints and listened to Bob Marley, but they seemed quite able to do their jobs adequately.

Captain at the helm.

In addition to our Nubian crew there were Hanna, Pei Pei, Shannon and I, our guide Ahmed, a doctor and lawyer from Columbia studying in the UK, and a Scottish retired couple that had lived in Tasmania for decades and this was their 92^nd country visited.   We watched the cruise boats steam up river in a hurry of black smoke while we lazily half-drifted downstream (not much wind, but we weren’t in a hurry). Shannon couldn’t believe that I would volunteer (even ask for) such a low-key component to the trip, but then again maybe she didn’t realize the medicinal effect that sailing has on the soul.

Shannon dangling her feet.

Feluccas tied up in the morning.

We sailed for 1.5 days, from the city of Aswan (by the big Aswan dam), but only made it maybe 50 km downriver (less than an hour’s drive).   We had two nights on the boat, where we beached next to a flotilla of other maybe 10 other feluccas enjoying the same slow travel. 

Doing Yoga in the desert.

The first night we tied up next to a Nubian village, so there were bathroom facilities (and a bar/restaurant if you wanted) on shore. The second night we were on an uninhabited beach, which meant that improvised latrine facilities were the order of the evening.

Or perhaps should have been the order. A few of the boats tied up nearby were full of 20-something singles on a party cruise, and they did what 20-something singles do. There was a fun (for a while…then this fuddy-duddy wanted to sleep) drum and dancing circle around the campfire, there was drinking, presumably there were trips to the bushes for some nookie.  What there certainly was not was any sort of outhouse or designated toilet area. Hanna discovered just how poorly trained in outdoor hygiene this group was.  After walking the wobbly gangplank from the boat to the beach, and heading out for a pre-bed pee, she came back to the boat understandably angered “Someone shat on the trail. It’s all over my pants.” Nice. Actually, in the morning I discovered the whole beach was littered in human shit-mines.  Hey all tour operators: please install an outhouse or three at your beach landing spots, and/or train your passengers how to dig a proper backcountry cathole.

Campfire with drinking and partying and such.  Us lame-o's left early, in time to find the shit on the trail.

But I digress from the point of this story…which was that just floating on the Nile (vaguely sailing, but mostly not going fast enough to qualify) was immensely satisfying. It was my favorite part of an overall unforgettable trip. “Roughing  it” with no bathrooms aboard might not be for everyone, but if you like camping, you need to try a felucca ride. I only wish we had gone for more nights.

It felt timeless.

This wasn’t much different than how people had traveled 5000 years ago on the Nile. 

We had time to read.

Time to Nap. 

Time to watch the ibises and egrets.

Time to watch the small-time farmers work their tiny plots of irrigated, amazingly fertile Nile valley land.

Time to chat about world politics with Ahmed, who was happily and ridiculously wrong about the odds of a revolution in Egypt happening anytime soon.

Time to wade or swim in the Nile. It is a silent river, but moving quite fast. I had to swim basically full speed to stay put when heading upriver.

Time to play cards, including teaching ourselves an Egyptian game called tarneeb.

Time for Hanna the science teacher to explain to Ahmed, the Columbians, and Scots about the cycles of the moon.

Time to just be.

Like the Nile.

See some more photos below.

Crew climbing the mast in the morning to set the sails.

Sunset.

The big mainsail.

Hanna explaining the phases of the moon to Pei Pei Maurizio, Jaime, and our guide Ahmed (I).

A few hundred meters from the river...on a sand dune that pretty much stretched across the continent.

Traditional farming next to the Nile, near Aswan.

Flashback: Climbing Maroon Bells Peak in Colorado (July 2010)

I have plenty of things to write about in the last few months, but since I already have these pictures uploaded, I thought I'd give you a brief post about Andris and I's little mountain adventure back in July.
If you've ever seen a photo calendar of Colorado, you've probably seen the peak we climbed (pictured above). We climbed the peak on the left (South Maroon Bells peak, or sometimes just "Maroon Peak," that appears slightly lower (but is actually slightly higher).

Andris flew in to Denver (thanks!) Wednesday night, and because we're getting older and wiser, we decided to NOT try to directly climb something really high and stupid on Thursday. We waited until Friday for that.  Last time we tried something similar, in 2005, Andris was also flying in from sea level (different coast then), and got himself a nice little case of altitude sickness.  This time we slept at 7,000 ft the first night, then about 9,000 ft the second night before attempting to summit Maroon Bells peak (14,156 ft) near Aspen.  The excellent route description we followed is available free at 14ers.org, and Andris even had it downloaded as a PDF on his phone. Hilarious.  As a disclaimer for this route, 14ers.org says:
"This route holds some dangerous terrain and plenty of tedious route finding. Attempt the route only if you are in good shape, have ample time, and a favorable weather forecast."  I agree on all counts.

Our drive-in forest service campground (Silver Bells, I think) was well located, pretty cheap, and had a great view.  We were up and off to the trailhead before 5 am, trying to get the alpine start everyone loves so much. We hiked in the dark the first hour or so, before seeing the first alpenglow on the peaks near Crater Lake. The hike was uneventful as it stayed on the trail, but after about 1.5 hours, we had to leave the proper trail, as the route from there out was pretty much just UP. Almost 3,000 feet up, up, up the "massive East slope" to the ridge. There was not much of a trail, and all the rocks were loose and occasionally knocked loose. We put on our climbing helmets (SAFETY FIRST!) for protection from loose rock.
Colorado was in the middle of a July high-pressure heat wave. It was over 100F down in Denver, and still quite toasty up in the mountains. There was not a cloud in the sky the entire day, and we were above treeline and exposed to the high mountain sun from about 7 am to 6 pm...we got a little fried.
Once we attained the ridge, the hard part of the climb began. There is not any trail at all up here, just a suggested route picking your way around the rock outcroppings, talus slopes, and occasionaly precipitous drop-offs.  There were about a half-dozen other climbers going our direction at about the same time, and given the narrow/sketchy nature of the climb, we kind of teamed up and took care of each other. A few times we saw some mountain goats flaunting their four legs and hooves, merrily scrambling up and over things we fretted cautiously over.
We successfully attained the summit (the view were amazing...up to 100 miles in some directions), and then, perhaps surprisingly, chose not to attempt the South Maroon Peak-North Maroon Peak traverse. I guess we are getting older and wiser. It would have meant another 14er to "bag", but I couldn't see how the view would be much different (only a few hundred meters away, and a little lower), traverse is considered sketchier than what we'd already done, and Andris was suffering a bit of mild altitude sickness. The mountain will be there next time.  Another day.

On the way down, the technical scrambling was just as hard, probably more so with tired legs. Descending the "massive East slope" was awful.  We could see where we were going for about 2 hours, but just had to pick our way slowly slowly slowly down, trying not to knock too many boulders down on each other off the steep unconsolidated slope. By the time we made it off the slope, we were thrilled to be on a semi-flat ground a real trail again. (See the picture of Andris hugging a tree at the bottom.)  We still had another 2+ hours of hiking left, but it was uneventful trail walking. It was a long day: 15+ hours of hiking, 12 miles roundtrip, 4,800 ft of elevation gain. It was also a fabulous day in the wilderness.  Thanks Andris, and thanks Colorado. See you next time!

My Flickr Slideshow is posted below. You can view it small embedded below, or (recommended) full-screen by clicking the button on the lower-right of the slideshow embedded image, the one that looks like four arrows pointing out to each corner.  From this full-screen view, you can change the speed of the slideshow, and also toggle descriptions ("show info") on/off with the buttons on the upper right.

Photos from Beirut

We just took a crazy, crazy long-weekend trip to Beirut, Lebanon, then Istanbul, Turkey. In Beirut we had a chance to meet up with our friends Prairie and Andris (who live in San Francisco, but are vacationing for 2 weeks in Lebanon) and get a taste of the Middle East from people who have lived there a little bit (Prairie in Beirut and Jordan, Andris in Jordan).  We'll post some stories later, but here is a slideshow on Flickr.

To properly view the slideshow, press the button on the lower right that has four outward-facing arrows to get the photos full-screen. Then click the "show info" button on the upper right of the slideshow to get explantory titles & captions. I suggest the "slow" speed setting on the slideshow (under "options") to have enough time to read the captions.  I'm trying this embedding of a Flickr slideshow instead of manually loading all the photos into the blog, because it's both faster and allows full-screen images.  Let me know if it works for you.

Our National Television Debut

It only took 6 months of living in Bulgaria before we made it on national television! Our colleague and friend, Carolyn, has been writing an excellent and quite popular blog about her life here, and has managed to attract a regular audience of Bulgarian readers, including many she has never met. As part of a social experiment, Carolyn wanted to try, as best she could, to live within a typical budget of a Bulgarian for a month. She had a rather long online discussion on just what that meant exactly (her housing, like ours, is provided by the school, although maybe a 20-something single Bulgarian would still be living with parents, etc etc...you can read some of the posts on this here, here, and here), but she settled on a budget of 400 leva (about $280) for the month. That is almost double the minimum wage, but less than the roughly 600 leva she determined would be a normal salary for someone in her position. Carolyn recognized that there were definite limitations to the experiment, such as her already-purchased plane tickets for a weekend trip to Rome, her ability to put off major purchases for a month that she might not be able to do if this were her actual salary, and her lack of a true local's information network to save money, but she thought it would still be worthwhile. (My apologies Carolyn, if I'm butchering your experiment...it's my best attempt to summarize it.)

Apparently one of her regular readers was a producer at Zdravei, Bulgaria, an equivalent to the Today show on NBC or Good Morning America on ABC. He thought this was interesting, and asked Carolyn if he could record some of her regular life as she carried out this experiment. And so they did...they taped her making oatmeal, riding the bus, teaching class, ordering food in the cafeteria, and (this is where we come in) Balkan Dancing.

Shannon loves dancing. Shannon hates speaking in front of people. So you can imagine how excited she was to have Carolyn's film crew at our Balkan dancing lesson. Many of the Bulgarians there (mostly moms of our students, actually) also did not want to be on camera, and kept shoving me over to stand next to Carolyn. Things got more entertaining when after only about 10 minutes of the lesson the power went out on campus. No lights, no music. Whoops.
Luckily the light on a professional video camera is quite bright. We did the rest of the lesson with only the light from the camera. Stoyan (PE teacher and the Balkan dancing instructor) carried around his tiny netbook computer for barely-audible sound. It was all rather amusing. After the lesson, Shannon and I were slow to get out the door, and the camera crew cornered us.

"How much money do you spend in a month?"
"Er, I don't know really."
"C'mon, give us a number!"

Shannon and I tried to keep track of our expenses when we first got here, but the bookkeeping was inflated by lots of one-time moving-in type expenses (shoe rack, sheets, bookshelf, etc). We also found that we were spending a lot less than we were making, and found it hard to care enough to keep track of everything. I also was used to paying for most things in the US with a credit card, which gave me a quick and easy record of my expenses, so having to keep track of lots of little receipts for cash just seemed so, you know, annoyingly 20th century. :)

What I said on the video (I spend roughly 50 leva during the week, maybe another 70 leva on the weekend) is probably reasonably close, if I don't count weekends where we travel (and we haven't since New Year's) or do any major shopping (I had to replace some broken jackets last weekend, but I'm definitely not much of a shopper). I probably underestimated (I sort of forgot about the big weekly grocery shopping trips), so maybe my monthly average for day-to-day living is closer to 600 leva. I'm thankful that when your housing is provided and your utilities are cheap ($10 month for cable/internet, $15 a month for my cell phone), your salary goes a long way.

I didn't really mean to come off negative about Bulgaria, but when he asked me "What surprised you the most when you arrived here?" I had to answer with my first impressions. (Dogs and litter). Mostly I didn't really have any idea what to expect here, so the best answer is everything surprised me. I also was unprepared for how much harder teaching here would be than I remembered it being at Westridge, but I didn't feel like getting into that on camera.

At any rate, several of my friends found the video hilarious. Not so many of my students have seen the video (it airs at 7:30 am, when they are likely in transit to school), but they probably will soon with the magic of the internet. I really needed a haircut. Shannon really didn't want to be on camera. But my dancing could have been worse, and I think their stray dogs video clip was nice.

I'll try to get a Bulgarian to translate some of the audio for me, and I'll post it in the comments. You can turn off the YouTube "pop-up video" comments if you want. Go to the lower right corner of the video player, click the "up" arrow, and the top button says "Turn off annotations." The anchors of the show chit chat for a while on this clip, so you can skip ahead a minute or so if you want. This is video #4 of the 5 part series. Other clips can be seen here: Part 2, Part 3 (can't find part 1).

Enjoy!

Bulgarian Birthday

Last week I turned 31 in Bulgaria -- it was my first international birthday. It was a very busy day, and I had many new experiences.
[I apologize for generally unimaginative writing in this post...we just got back from a several day new faculty bonding trip (more on that in a later post) and I'm pretty tired.]

Shannon was unfortunately chained to her computer most of the day, working on edits to her dissertation (she's almost done), so I had to find other partners for adventure. I was feeling antsy in the morning, so decided to go for a run. I headed out the back gate to try to find the base station for the Simeonovo gondola, which services the ski area (and hiking/biking in the summer) on nearby Mt. Vitosha. I had to cross the Sofia "Ring Road" to get there, which I was expecting to be an expressway, but was actually a severely overcrowded (bumper-to-bumper) 2-lane road at the part nearest campus. [I later learned that the Ring Road is also a major prostitute hangout for Sofia, but I didn't notice any of this on my run!] It only took 15 minutes to run to the base of the gondola, where I could have spent 10-14 leva (about $8-10) for a round-trip ticket up the mountain, depending on how high I wanted to go. I had hoped to come back later in the day to do some hiking on the mountain, but couldn't find willing adventuring partners. Instead I found folks interested in going into Sofia, and I hadn't been there yet.

I rode the Metro train with Garth to meet another new faculty member, Carolyn, downtown. Carolyn was in Sofia last year on a Fulbright scholarship (teaching English), and liked it so much she's working at our school this year. Carolyn used to live downtown, so she made an excellent tour guide of the old part of the city.


Birthday Self-portrait #1

Downtown Sofia is quite nice, and pleasantly very different from the Mladost neighborhood where I live. Mladost is on the outskirts of the city, and must have been a planned Soviet-style development (the sub-neighborhoods are actually numbered, Mladost 1, Mladost 2, Mladost 3, and Mladost 4). In Mladost there are lots of high-rise Soviet-type block apartments, interspersed with vacant, weedy/littered lots, interspersed with pastures (complete with cows/horses), interspersed with brand-new development. Quite a mish-mash. Sidewalks are inconsistent when they exist at all, often interrupted, abandoned, or parked on.

Mladost streetlife


Mladost View: The two towers are part of the police academy on the land that used to be my school campus (before communism). Both were abandoned mid-construction around 1990. The right tower is still derelict (and is the view out my bedroom window), while the left tower is finally being finished, and is now almost done. The buildings to the right of the towers are the under-construction "Russian School", which is less than a 1/2 mile from my "American School" oddly enough. Vacant fields in front, and Mt. Vitosha in back.

Downtown Sofia, on the other hand, is a smallish, low-key version of many of the other European cities I've visited. There is plenty of streetlife, and it is all very walkable. Streetfront shops, streetcars, street vendors, grand old churches and stone buildings with nice architecture.
After a tasty "modern Bulgarian" lunch, we took a stroll.

This is Carolyn showing us a big bowl of french fries covered in local cheese.


Artfully aged building on the street in downtown Sofia where Carolyn used to live.


We passed lots of booksellers (a few things in English) with tables under tents, a nice park across from the National Theater (with some guys playing backgammon), and several churches, including the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, the "largest Orthodox Christian cathedral in the Balkans." It was built to honor the Russians (mainly) that "liberated" the Bulgarians from the Ottoman Turks, after 500 years of Turkish rule (around 1878, but I don't have my dates down exactly). It was my first time in a Orthodox church. [The Russians were mostly acting out of self-interest, trying to have a friendly pawn instead of a foreign empire controlling Balkan/Black Sea transit routes, but that's a different post...]


Booksellers downtown. Customer service is spotty in Bulgaria, especially in Sofia. I picked up a Chemistry textbook to show to Carolyn and the saleswoman ripped it out of my hand to shoo me away. At another stand, the guy was more friendly, and wanted to chat in broken English. He talked about how "America is great country, but with terrorism, many people hate. You are rich and free, but don't want others rich and free. You need export your standard of life."
Interesting, and I wish we could have spoken each others' languages better for a more in-depth conversation.


Street life.


The National Theater in Sofia


Fountain in the park across from the National Theater.


Russian Church


Nevsky Cathedral


Flower ladies in front of Nevsky

Inside the church you first notice the burning incense, and the prayer candles. It's a good vibe. It is big, and ornate, but felt more actively used and spiritual (and somewhat less of a tourist point, though it certainly is one) than many of the large Catholic cathedrals we toured last summer in Italy. In Bulgaria the custom is to buy gifts for others on your birthday, so I bought Carolyn some gelato (Garth didn't want any) by the National Theater and Shannon some flowers by the cathedral. The flower ladies probably picked these flowers from their garden, and this might be their only source of income, so I didn't mind too much as they somehow talked me _up_ in price. My language skills are certainly still at the "I'm a tourist, please take advantage of me" stage.


I returned to campus (about an hour travel, including the metro ride and walking back from the station) in time to head out to dinner (Pizza, Bulgarian style) with most of the international faculty who had arrived so far.

Pizza in Bulgaria has a thin crust and light sauce (similar to Italy), but the toppings can get pretty weird: corn, peppers, pickles, eggs...some are good, some may be an acquired taste. There's a typical pizza place right outside the campus gates, but this was an "upscale joint" about a mile way. Tasty, and it was a fun crowd for dinner conversation.

Birthday Dinner with Shannon

The remaining 7 new international faculty were set to arrive in Sofia around 11 pm. We wanted to welcome them to their new home (it made the first night so much better for us when folks came over to our apt) so we had a bit of dance party while waiting for them to arrive. I got to dance really white to birthday themed songs in 3 different languages (English, Bulgarian, and Spanish). It was a good time.

When the van carrying the new arrivals rolled onto campus around 11:45 pm, I don't think they knew what hit them. About 10 people accosted them out of the dark, carrying bottles of beer for them and shouting "Welcome to Bulgaria!"
We shared beverages and stories until close to 2am on our porch.

Whew...this is sort of a laundry list of happenings, but it's all still a little too fresh for a more interesting reflection. Hope you enjoy the pictures anyway.

Lastly, thanks to all that emailed, called, left messages, or Facebook posts with birthday greetings -- they were much appreciated!