Greece part 1

Well, we are out of Egypt now, relaxing on the Greek island of Naxos. We took a flight from Cairo to Athens beside some people who had brought their cats as carry-on. We spent 3 days in Athens, we saw a whole bunch of cool historic monuments including, the Parthenon, Lyvaticcos Hill, Roman Agora, Ancient Agora, and I eat a total of 7 delicious souvlakis.

As I said earlier, we are in Naxos now and we have been for the past 10 days. The first few days were rainy and cold but now it is sunny, although still very windy. Most days we have done very little: read, write or go for a walk in the the tiny alleys of the old village. One day we rented a car and went for a drive through the island's interior. There were many marble quarries and we even passed through a couple of villages where the sidewalks, alleys, even the curbs were made of marble. Another day, (Easter Sunday)we went for a long walk along the coast, when we arrived in town we were so hungry that we stopped at a restaurant and had the special: Easter lamb roasted on a spit, it was delicious. Another I should mention was that we went to the midnight easter service. The church was packed and when the service was over everybody lit firecrackers and the square outside seemed to blow up due to the sheer number of explosives, oh, did I mention that the church bells went crazy as well?

Santorini.

Santorini is a volcanic island shaped like a crescent. It used to be round, but after a massive explosion, the centre of the island collapsed along with most of the west coast, leaving giant black cliffs along what is now the west coast. When we got off the ferry we went to a travel agency and asked what kind of hotel they could offer. They told us about a three star place, on the east coast, close to the beach, with a kitchen and free Wi-Fi for 40 euros a night, it sounded good so we took it. The hotel turned out to be quite nice, and the beach is good too. Because of the islands volcanic past, the sand is black, and coarse. Today we were planning on swimming at the beach, but seeing as the water gets deep fast, the sand is not fine and soft and the waves are absolutely huge, we decided against it. Especially since we had already experienced huge waves in Varkala, India. Tomorrow we will have a rental car, and will look for a beach that is protected from the waves.  

Cairo

We arrived at Ramses train station just before lunch after a night of the bathrooms/smoking area door handle falling off every time someone opened it. And they opened it a lot, especially seeing as they were mostly 2, if not 3 pack a day smokers. There was one guy who must have smoked 3 packs that night! He went in every 10 or 20 minutes, smoked at least 3 cigarettes then came back to sit with his young children. A few times he brought his 2 year old daughter with him and let her sit on a ledge and drink soda pop while he smoked in her face. Did I mention that there are few elderly people in Egypt?

Anyways, when we arrived in Cairo the students who bought our tickets lead us out into the street and got us a cab before saying goodbye and disappearing into the crowds. We got to our hotel fairly quickly seeing as we just missed the noon till 5:30 pm rush hour (those times were quoted to me by a Cairean, I'm not being sarcastic!) although there are traffic jams anytime of day. Once we were settled in our hostel we went out for a walk in Downtown Cairo. Downtown is different from the rest of Cairo because it is full of old, attractive European architecture, rather than boring apartments for miles and at first, you do not notice the smog although when you look down the street at something a few hundred meters away and find that you can hardly see it, it makes you realize whet a great job Canada is doing of keeping old clunkers off the roads. The Downtown is full of cheap eateries that serve the same Egyptian food, at the same cheap prices in modern almost fast food style restaurants. Our favourite was a place called Felfela, you could buy a fuul (bean) or felafel sandwich for between 1 and 2 L.E. (about 25 cents) and anything with meat would put you back about 10-15 L.E. (2-3 dollars). There was also a juice shop where you could get a fresh squeezed orange juice made using the juice of 3 or 4 oranges for 3.50 L.E. (50 cents).

On our first full day in Cairo we started off by going to the Egyptian Museum. The museum was amazing, the sheer number of artifacts is staggering. Tutankhamen s treasure was great, but my favourite section was the collection of Papyrus, some of them had translations which were very interesting, mostly documents about land ownership. They also had limestone rocks found in the valley of the kings which were covered in what were essentially doodles done by tomb diggers and hieroglyphic carvers in their spare time. Another interesting part was the mummified animals exhibit, including mummified snakes, rams, cows, alligators, baboons and birds.

Later that afternoon we visited Coptic Cairo, the Christian area of the city. There were many quaint, unassuming churches and narrow, winding alleys. There was also a cemetary where the tombs were all like little houses, it felt more like a quiet neighbourhood. A little too quiet.

Our second day in Cairo was devoted to the Pyramids. We took the bus from downtown down the 10 km long Pyramids road. The entire 10 km felt like we were in the city centre. With 25 million people and still rapidly growing, Cairo is massive. When we arrived in the parking lot which was surprisingly low on tour buses, we walked up the road about 200 metres to the entrance, we had taxi drivers telling us it was 5 km the entire walk. It's not as if the pyramids were hidden around the corner and we couldn't see them, they're pretty obvious from anywhere in the vicinity. Once we had bought our tickets and walked the gauntlet of camel drivers we arrived at the foot of the great pyramid, well, all I can say is that it is really big and triangular. The site invokes a sense of awe and mystery. We walked around a bit, saw the Shinx (which was not in as good a condition as I would have hoped) and went inside the smallest of the three pyramids. Going inside was pretty cool, there was not much to see but the steep, narrow passage down was fun and It's an interesting feeling, knowing that you are in the heart of a pyramid.

When we had had enough pyramids for one day, we drove back along the same road. The traffic was so bad we got out halfway and took the metro back. The Metro in Cairo is a bit like the metro in Delhi, although about twice as crazy. Consider yourself lucky if you get on the first train that comes, it reminded me of a wrestling match. When you do get on, the cramped, hot carriage that reeks of B.O. is not much relief from the fighting to get on, and if you were actually thinking of getting off the metro well, good luck.

On our last full day in Cairo we decided to tackle the crazy walk to Khan el Khalili, the medieval bazaar.

The walk starts off easy enough, about 20 minutes through the heart of downtown, but when you cross over Medan (square) Ataba, It becomes completely different. It's not as if you will get lost or anything, you follow the same road the whole way there, it's just that this is the most densely packed area of Cairo. You cannot lose focus for one second while you dodge cars, pedestrians, hawkers and cats. When we arrived in the market we bought a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and headed in. The medival buildings were very nice but the market was all touristy and full of touts so we didn't hang around long. We walked all the way back and I bought some dried dates for 8 L.E. (1.30$) a kilo.

Luxor-Aswan-Abu Simbel

It's been 2 days and an 18 hour bus ride since we left Dahab. We are in Luxor now and have been enjoying the spectacular monuments of Ancient Thebes. On our first day we visited the Temple at Karnak, considered one of the greatest surviving monuments of ancient Egypt. The most amazing part of the temple is the Great Hypostyle Hall. It's pillars are giant, they rise up like redwood trees covered in Hieroglyphics. Because of the revolution, tourism is down and we had parts of the temple all to ourselves. The revolution happened during the high season and now that low season (and it's claimed 50 Celsius heat) is nearly upon them, some people who rely on tourism are getting desperate. The horse drawn carriage drivers will take you anywhere for half the normal price and the taxis are the same. On our second day in Luxor we had planned to make our way to valley of the kings and then do nothing for the rest of the day. While we were walking to the ferry a taxi driver asked if we wanted a taxi for the day for 100 Egyptian pounds (it's normally 150), we said no and kept walking. He kept following us yelling lower prices, we figured that for such a low price we should probably take it and so we agreed on 80 (about 16 dollars) and drove off to Valley of the Kings, where many Egyptian pharaohs were buried. On our way we stopped at the Colossi of Memnon, two giant statues that are all that remain of what was thought to be the largest temple in Thebes. We also had an interesting chat with our driver about Egyptian politics, he pointed out a man on a donkey cart selling live chickens, when Mubarak was in power you could not do this. The Valley of the Kings was not very busy, we even had some tombs to ourselves, we saw the tombs of Ramses IX, Ramses III and Merneptah. The tombs were really neat, the hieroglyphics were very well preserved and the walls still had murals of boats, crops, agriculture and people walking upside-down. The one disappointment was that the tombs all looked identical and not all of them were open. Our next and final stop was Hatsheput’s temple. This temple is interesting because it looks very modern despite its couple of thousand years of age. We had it nearly all to ourselves, our taxi driver told us that there are usually about 50 tour buses in the parking lot, this time there was one.

With one last day in Luxor, Mom and I rented bicycles and took the ferry to the West Bank. We cycled through the fields and through a Nubian village. We were invited in for tea by a local man and ended up having lunch as well, it was a simple but delicious meal, eggs, fuul (fava bean paste) and home made buffalo cheese. He did inform us that he was a Feluca (sailboat) captain and could take us around for a good price but he did not give us the hard sell.

We spent two days in Aswan in a hotel near near the sou. One of the things we did was sail on a feluca, I even got to captain it. We also took the free ferry to Elephantine island for guests of the Movenpick (5 star hotel), which we were not. We went into the hotel and took the elevator to the top floor cafe, we sat around a bit admiring the view, without buying anything, and then we left. The best thing to see in Aswan was the Nubian (local people) Museum. The museum had tons of artifacts (including mummies) and interesting explanations about the history of their people. Aswan had nice scenery although the hassle about shops and felucas and stuff was annoying. At one restaurant we noticed that on the English menu, everything was double the price of the Arabic menu (we read Arabic numerals) and most restaurants only have Arabic menus and so they just size you up and decide how much they think you will pay before telling you the price. Although I understand the income disparity and the politics of it, it still does not leave you with a nice feeling when you know they're ripping you off on everything. One day in Aswan, while we were walking to a restaurant a 10 year old boy came up to me and asked me my name and country, I told him and then we went in to eat supper. When we came out he was right beside me again, he walked all the to our hotel and then while Dad and I were waiting for Mom and Mhari to buy milk he took out some papyrus bookmarks and asked if we wanted to buy one for 1 pound, we said no and he put them back in his pocket. One minute later he got out 20 euro cents and asked if we wanted to buy that for a pound, we said yes and bought just for fun, another minute and he took out the pound we had just given him and said we could buy it for 1 Euro, we laughed, said no and went into our hotel.

Right now we are in Abu Simbel, a small Nubian village on the banks of Lake Nasser, only a few dozen km from Sudan. Lake Nasser was created in the 1960's when the High Dam was built to provide Hydro Electric Power. The purpose of coming to Abu Simbel is to visit the Great Temple of Ramses II, one of, if not the greatest temple in all of Egypt. It was made even more famous when it was cut into small pieces, and then put back together again on higher ground to avoid the rising waters of Lake Nasser. We arrived today at noon and plan to go to the temple tomorrow at 6 am, when the sun is directly on it. Today we went to the ticket booth to look at the price, and we also sat, drank tea and chatted with a couple of Egyptian guys in a local cafe.

Due to the terrorist threat, if a bus with more than 4 foreigners, or a taxi with foreigners wants to drive to Abu Simbel from Aswan you must must do so in the 3 am police convoy and you must return in the 10 am convoy back to Aswan. Because of this, most people only come to Abu Simbel on a day trip therefore doing not much good for the local economy. In truth, all the convoy does is let terrorists know where and when large numbers of tourists will be. The convoy arrives in Abu Simbel at 7:30 ish, so we woke up at 5:00 am and walked down to the ticket booth at 6:00 to avoid the masses of tourists. When we arrived we were the first visitors for the day, 10 minutes later three more people came but then it was quiet until the convoy arrived. The Temple was amazing, built along the banks of the Nile near the southern most point in Egypt it served as a reminder of the power of the pharaohs to any Nubian invaders on the way up. The four statues guarding the entrance are enormous, their huge feet are covered with a mixture of Greek graffiti and graffiti from 1800s European tourists. The inside of the temple is amazing as well, with eight huge statues guarding the path to the inner sanctum and larger than life pictures showing the the power and greatness of the pharaohs on the walls. It was kind of scary being in there alone staring at the dramatically lit wall carvings of Ramses II slaughtering people.

At 7:20, the tour groups arrived and the temple was flooded. At this time we left and went back to our hotel. We read, slept and eat lots of Borios (local brand of Oreos) before getting on the 1:00 pm bus back to Aswan.

While waiting for our train to Cairo (read all about the story behind the tickets on my parents blog) I left my family at a a pizza place and went in search of something else for supper. The same boy who I wrote about earlier came up to me and asked how I was. He asked me for money and tried to sell me Papyrus but he didn't try very hard. He showed me to a restaurant and walked all the way back with me to the train station. For the next two hours “Rahit” sat with me and shooed away any of his beggar friends when they came to sell stuff to us. Occasionally he would go and talk to an older man (his “Boss”) and then would come back and try to sell us some Papyrus. Eventually we did buy some because we figured it would be a good souvenir seeing as it had a story behind it. At 9 pm we said goodbye and went to catch our train.