Egypt Part V: The Red Sea

Part I: Getting There
Part II: Cairo and Pyramids

Part III: Temples
Part IV: Sailing Down the Nile

Part VI: Jeff Climbs a Mountain

Ahhhh!  Vacation.  We ended our Egyptian adventure with several days in Dahab, a Red Sea resort.  Our hotel was on the beach and we could see Saudi Arabia on the other side of the Gulf of Aqaba.  The water was crystal blue and as we found out in our several days there, was the home to so many different species of fish and coral.  

We arrived in Dahab on January 1st after a painfully long van ride from Cairo.  A ride over the Suez Canal and across the Sinai Peninsula.  Desert.  And more desert.  It was hot and dry and blinding.  Did I mention desert?  Sand as far as the eye can see.  With an occasional palm tree or sturdy desert plant.  We stopped a few times and once even in what could be called a true oasis.  But we didn't really stop for any food or for any movement, so the group of us (Jeff, Hanna, Pei Pei, and I, along with 4 other fellow travellers, Jaime and Maurizio from Columbia, and Catherine and George from Scotland) was pretty cranky by the time we got dropped off at our hotel.  But we had to meet up with Ahmed (II- a different Ahmed than the one who took us to all the temples along the Nile) who wanted to take us on a tour of the 2 streets of Dahab and to some place to have tea before we actually tried to find dinner.  We were all cranky enough that we grudgingly agreed to the tour, but broke off from the group to have dinner on our own.  Jeff and I ended up finding a great Thai restaurant and enjoyed most of our meal (Jeff had to order a second meal because the first was simply too hot (spicy) for him to be able to finish - he was literally sweating).  

Sad Jeff - Can't finish this very spicy meal.

Jeff has a New Year's Day tradition of trying to jump into the nearest natural body of water wherever he is.  For several years he was in Chicago, so Lake Michigan was the body of water of choice - often excruciatingly cold.  In fact, one year, I managed to convince him that jumping in would literally threaten his life - there was ice along the edge and large chunks of ice floating in the water - so we did snow angels next to Lake Michigan instead.  In our bathing suits.  That was cold enough!  Luckily it was not that cold in Dahab.  So we put on our Chacos and started wading out into the Red Sea.  The tide was out, so the water was only a few inches deep.  We weren't sure how far out the coral shelf was, so we decided not to go out that far (it was dark at this point and we were using our headlamps to be able to see what we were stepping on - as I said before, amazing amounts of life!).  Jeff was considering just sitting down in the water when we spotted some movement by his feet.  It was an eel!!!!!  It must have been a baby eel - it was about a foot to a foot and a half long, white body with a black fringe on it's back, and a bright yellow head.  I think it must have been a baby yellow-headed eel (http://www.grizzlyrun.com/Files/Images/Image_Gallery/yellow_headed_morey_eel_pic.jpg).  With it's jaw wide open as eels do.  It was pretty creepy to see in the water only inches from us and only lit up by our headlamps.  Unfortunately, neither one of us had a camera, so no picture.  That's when Jeff decided that a wade in the Red Sea was enough for his New Year's Day tradition.


The next several days were spent snorkeling, reading, relaxing, and enjoying the sun at the beach.  The snorkeling was amazing.  So many fish and the water was incredibly clear - we watched a lot of scuba divers and their bubbles while we enjoyed all the different fish and coral under the water.  Life everywhere!  It was beautiful!  We even saw a lionfish - we were warned not to approach these guys, so it was cool to see it (from a distance!).  After snorkeling the first day we discovered the joy of Bedouin tea.  Yum!  And warm!  Especially after being in the water for some time.  Jeff was so cold he stood in the sun shivering for at least half an hour before he even started warming up.  The tea helped a bit.  

Enjoying Bedouin tea after snorkeling.  That's Ahmed II on the left.

While there we tried all sorts of different international dinners: Thai, Mexican, Indian, Italian (pizza).  The restaurants often offered "American" breakfasts, which were varied and not usually something we Americans would have for breakfast (except for the fried eggs).  Good, but not like home.  

One day, Jeff decided to try windsurfing, while me and the girls got massages.  Hanna and Pei Pei also braved the world of a hair cut and a facial.  I have to admit that I was glad I didn't partake, especially when we saw the facial steamer they were using for Pei Pei and how it was plugged in to the outlet with _bare_ wires.  She said she felt a shock or two.  


Part of our tour package was a camel ride!  We got on the camels and were led along the beach path to an area where we saw what seemed like hundreds of kite and wind surfers.  We enjoyed a beach sunset again with Bedouin tea and Ahmed II did some card tricks for us.  The camels made interesting noises behind us - they're hard to explain, maybe Jeff can add to this.  All of us had sore thighs, stomachs, and backs after the ride.  The camel movement is really exaggerated.  You have to move your spine a lot to keep balanced.  I wasn't going to pay for a camel ride, but I was glad this came with the package so I could experience it.

On our last full day there, Jeff and Pei Pei did a hike up Mt. Sinai while Hanna and I enjoyed a very lazy day at the beach.  Jeff will hopefully write about his adventures in the mountains in the last of our Egypt travel series.  


We changed our plans at the last minute so we could fly back to Cairo rather than suffer through another road trip across the Sinai.  The fellow who picked us up to take us to the Airport was also named Ahmed (III).  Apparently Ahmed is one of the most common names in Egypt.  The crazy thing about flying out of Sharm el Sheikh was seeing the Russians in ski suits and furry boots getting ready to fly back to the cold north.  It was blazing hot outside.  Crazy juxtaposition.


Here are some pics from Dahab to end the post...

The view outside our hotel door.

Dahab at night.

Relaxing on the beach.

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.

Revolution in Egypt?

I can't pull myself away from the newsfeeds of CNN, BBC, and the NY Times. Watching the mass protests on the streets Egypt, dodging tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, all in Tahrir Square and the bridges over the Nile, it's hard to believe we were in Cairo less than a month ago, trying to dodge cars as we crossed the street.

It's not a surprise that the Egyptians are unhappy with their government. That was evident from within our first hour in the country, as our airport pick-up was acidly describing his "perfect president."  Egypt is a police state. I've never really been somewhere like that before.  You can't drive anywhere in the country without stopping at many police checkpoints. It seems to require about 20 police at any checkpoint: one to look at the driver's papers, one to keep an eye on the guy checking the papers, and 18 guys standing around looking bored and vaguely trigger-happy.  Every town has a billboard or mural welcoming you to town and praising the beneficence of 30-year president Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak is often wearing awesome aviator glasses, and sometimes has a bit of a halo in his rendering. I wanted to get a picture of these signs, but they were often at police checkpoints, and it seemed foolish to wave my camera around too much here. This is the only shot I've got, and it's not great (surreptitiously taken from the back of our van as we were stopped at a checkpoint).

"Welcome to Dahab!" This is a less-ridiculous picture of Mubarak than most, as I think it is probably only a few years old.  But it is clear from the propaganda that all good things must start with the President.

Egypt is one of the top recipients of US aid money, over $1.5 billion a year. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe most of this is an obligation arising out of the Camp David accords to bring peace between Israel and Egypt, as the US apparently bribes both countries to play nice. We also have supported Egypt as one of our key allies in the region in the nothing-is-more-important "global war on terror."  The occasional  repression of the Egyptian people was seen as acceptable collateral damage to keep Islamic Fundamentalists out of power (The conservative Muslim Brotherhood, though outlawed in Egypt, is the most organized political opposition, and would probably win any fair elections in the country. "He may be an S.O.B, but he's our S.O.B"  as the saying goes. To be fair, life would probably be even harder for the Coptic Christian minority if the current regime falls. To also be fair, the fear of terrorism is real. Bombings at the Coptic Church in Alexandria on New Year's 2011, bombings at Dahab in 2006, attacks in Sharm el-Sheik in 2005, and the chilling sniper attacks from the hills around the Queen Hatsepshut temple in Luxor in 1997, among others, show that there is a significant violent minority.

Egpyt has problems. It has a young, educated, under-employed population (80 million) that is growing much too fast for any reasonable hope of providing jobs for the populace. The import half their food. The only fundamental solutions are to "create more land, or fewer Egyptians" as an analyst once said (95% of the population lives in the Nile Valley and Delta, which is only 3% of the land area...there is no more arable land.)  The per-capita GDP is $2270, but because of the rich few at the top, that number is fairly skewed; most people get by on the equivalent of $2 a day or less.  There have been more or less only 3 leaders since Egypt became a republic: Nasser (adored), Sadat (mixed), and Mubarak (reviled, if current protests are any indication). Mubarak has been in power since 1981, and the general consensus in Egypt was that this old man is getting ready to hand off power to his son.
UPDATE: This NY Times article that I found after I originally posted this actually has a very nice summary of most of these problems, and backs me up with data. :)

Our tour guide Ahmed and I had some interesting discussions comparing Bulgaria and Egypt while we were sailing down the Nile. There was a study recently that compared "average national happiness" (measured using some supposedly objective survey) to per-capita GDP. In general, richer countries are happier than poorer ones, on a logarithmic scale.  There are outliers...the US is not nearly as happy as other countries with similar wealth; Denmark is much happier than expected. Bulgaria earned a shout out for being by far the unhappiest country in the survey when income level is considered. People here are about as happy as people in Haiti and Iraq. Ouch.  But that actually seems about right...there is a national depression that things are terrible and will never get better. It's the hopelessness that really is infectious here, unfortunately.
Ahmed seemed to think Egypt was just like Bulgaria in this way, hopeless.

Ahmed is about my age, high-strung, and frustrated. I can't begin to tell you exactly why he's frustrated, but there are many reasons.  I think you'll hear/read the same thing from the protesters taking the streets across the country right now. They are frustrated by being poor.  They are sick of sham elections (last fall the President's party "won" 100% of the seats in the parliamentary elections).  Many young couples can't even get married, as the traditional costs associated with marriage (dowry, etc) are beyond the reach of more and more people.  Interestingly, Ahmed thought things would never change in Egypt. "There have been all these problems, but never enough to push us to revolt. I don't think anything could." He said himself he probably wouldn't join in protests if they ever happened, because he would lose his tourism license and then wouldn't be able to eat and support his father (he sends much of his earnings back to his father, as most traditional Egyptians do). I wonder what he's doing now, now that there are actually people in the streets, fighting, marching, getting killed. I wonder if he's with them? (I can't write and find out, as the government has effectively shut down the entire phone/internet service to Egypt, trying to suppress protesters and keep the story from the media as well.)

So when a newscaster tries to explain how significant it is that people are destroying murals of Mubarak, it really is. People have been imprisoned and/or tortured for much less in Egypt.
To my new Egyptian friends: I'm sorry that much of the tear gas and many of the armored personnel carriers being used to crush protests right now were probably paid for with US tax dollars. But I hope you know that the American people (at least this American person) supports your fight for freedom, for a chance at a better life.
I don't really have any wise insight...we were only there for 2 weeks, mostly enjoying the tourist wonders, mostly taking in ancient Egypt. But modern Egypt is interesting too, and I wish them the best.  Egypt has many likely intractable problems that are unlikely to be solved by any government, democratic or not, and a democratically elected government is quite likely to be less friendly to "US Interests" (whatever those are) than the current one, but Egypt needs the chance to solve Egypt's problems, without meddling from us.  Good luck, and stay safe.