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08/13/2009

Today we woke up at 7 am and went for breakfast. Food was colorful and delicious as usual. At 9 am, Amir took us to the Temple of Edfu which was located on the west bank of the Nile. This temple belongs to the god Horus and is built with sandstone blocks. It is the second largest temple in Egypt and was built between 237 and 57 B.C. It was very impressively built and well preserved. A man at the temple asked Liz where she was from, and when she answered, he told her how much he liked Obama.

As usual, there were street vendors and children trying to sell everything to the tourists. They also have tricks to get your attention such as throwing a necklace at you and saying it was a gift. Before getting down at every tourist stop, our guides taught us how to ignore the vendors. That way, they lose interest quickly.

The Temple of Edfu was not used after the banning of non-Christian worship in the era of the Roman emperor Theodosius I around 390 A.D. Many carvings of the temple were destroyed (razed) by Christians at that time. Because the temple was not used, it gradually became buried in the desert, with sand more than 10 meters over the highest point. Over the time, people built houses on top not knowing what lied beneath. In the last 1700s, a French expedition identified the temple and in the mid 1800s, a French Egyptologist began the excavation of the temple from the sands.

After we came back to the cruise ship, I was tired of walking in the hot sun, and took the opportunity to take a nap. Afterwards, we had lunch, and Liz and I went up to the cruise deck to check out the view since the ship was moving towards Luxor at this point. At Esna, we went through a lock. Everything was beautiful along the Nile. There were more greenery and the atmosphere was quite different from busy Cairo. We had tea and sweets on the deck in the evening and we stayed there until sunset just chatting and laughing. Since Liz and I had just moved far away from each other due to our new careers, we took the time to chat. We had seen each other almost every day for the past six years. The Egypt trip together was a perfect way to spend time before we started our new lives.

After dinner, we went to the dance area of the ship. It was “Egyptian Night”, and people were dressed up. Our guide Amir had organized a belly dancing competition for the ladies of his group, and we each came to the stage and danced. It was fun. When we came out of the dance floor, the ship had already docked in Luxor.

08/12/2009

Around 5.30 pm, we went to the sun deck on the top of the ship. Liz enjoyed some tea while I admired the beauty around us. It was blazing hot. After all, this was summer in Egypt.

At 6 pm, the ship had arrived in Kom Ombo. We got down from the ship and walked to the Kom Ombo temple dedicated to gods Haroeris and Sobek (the crocodile god). There we saw this huge temple, many depicting on the walls and secret rooms. It was beautiful during sunset since the temple was facing west. The temple glowed in orange.

We then returned to the cruise ship for dinner. The dining room had dimmed lights and had a very romantic feeling to it. Liz and I were given specially made vegetarian food. There were many servings of quite tasty dishes. My favorite was the pumpkin soup they served at the beginning of the meal. After dinner, we went back to the deck. It was perfect weather with a cool breeze. Liz and I chatted about life for a couple of hours. The moon was rising and everything was perfect.

08/12/2009

We woke up at 4 am today, got ready and went to the hotel reception. The person at the counter started speaking in Arabic to Liz because he thought she was Egyptian. Fun times…

We met Yasser at the lobby and then proceeded to the airport. We were flying to Aswan today to board a Nile cruise. The flight was 1.5 hours. I took a nap on the plane, but when I woke up, we could see a beautiful sunrise coming out of the clouds. We arrived in Aswan around 7 am and met our representative of the tour group. He took us to the cruise ship, Nile Admiral.

Soon after we got down from the plane in Aswan, it was apparent that life here is quite different from Cairo. Not very many people or traffic was around. There were more trees, less pollution and calmness in general was visible.

The cruise ship was large and looked like a big building. Basically it was a hotel that floats. We checked in, and went to our cabin. It was small, cozy and nice. We had a view of the shore from the room. I took a nap for a couple of hours and Liz and I then walked in to the lobby to meet our local guide Amir.

Amir’s group included us and about 15 more people who were taking the cruise. We boarded a bus and were taken to the Aswan High Dam. It was pretty impressive how they managed to control the Nile, but also scary of what can happen if something were to go wrong. There were many army officers guarding it.

We then drove, and took a boat to the Temple of Philae which is considered to be one of the burying places of Osiris. The temple is built on the island of Philae. The most ancient remains of this temple were built in the reign 380-362 B.C.E. It was a huge and a magnificent temple. In 1960, UNESCO started a project to move this temple to a higher ground due to the increasing water level of the Nile. Brick by brick, this massive structure was moved to an island 500 meters away.

There were a lot of heliography and drawings of gods. Liz and I were walking around the temple admiring the scripts and magnificent carvings when a guard spoke to us. He asked where we were from and he told us that he liked Obama.

After visiting the temple, we took the boat and came to the mainland, then came back to the cruise ship for lunch. I was exhausted and took the advantage of free time to take a nap.

08/11/2009

The first full day in Egypt, we got up at 7 am despite some sleep I lost due to jet lag. Our breakfast was comprised of very tasty bread, cheese and hummus along with other goodies. We met Yasser around 9 am and he introduced us to Khalid, our tour guide/Egyptologist for the day and the driver Ibrahim.

Khalid was a VERY talkative and excited guide. We drove towards the Giza plateau. As usual, the traffic was crazy and we saw many carts dragged by donkeys in the midst of thousand vehicles. Although many Egyptian women cover their hair, it was not required for foreign women to do so. However, Liz and I decided to cover our hair in Cairo, out of respect. Liz wore a hijab, while I wore a scarf around my head. Yaseer thought Liz looked like an Egyptian.

We went to the pyramids. We walked on sand to get near them. No tree or shrub was in sight. Plus, it was HOT.

Khalid explained in great detail about the pyramids, who built them and how mummies were not found in the biggest pyramid. Only one mummy was found inside all three, and that was shipped to a British museum. The ship that was carrying the mummy sank in the ocean…

We had to pay money to go inside the three pyramids, so we chose not to go. However, there were three smaller pyramids nearby. They were built for the close female relatives of the pharaohs. We went inside the pyramid where the king’s mothers’ mummy was kept. We had to walk backwards clinging on to a rail. It was a narrow pathway and going in to the ground, so we had to bend in order to not hit our heads. Every step we moved in, it got hotter and hotter. I am sure it was over 120F inside the chamber.

There were many people trying to sell camel rides to tourists. Actually, there were many people trying to sell you anything and everything. They can come across being aggressive, but the trick was not to make eye contact. Just pretend you didn’t see or hear them.

We went to see the Sphinx. It was created to look over the valley to protect the pyramids. Its nose and beard were missing.

After leaving the Giza plateau, Khalid took us to a Papyrus gallery. They thought we were Egyptian and started explaining the papyrus making procedure in Arabic! We bought artwork depicting various ancient Gods found in temples and tombs.

Khalid then took us to a perfume shop, which might be our least favorite experience in Egypt. It was just us at the shop, and a man explained to us in great detail about the essential oils they produce and how they are identical to name-brand perfume (Chanel etc.). Afterwards, he asked us which perfume we usually use. Liz and I looked at each other and told him that we don’t wear perfume. His persona changed, he became upset and very lethargically explained the rest of his perfume story. He then tried to sell us these oils, somewhat forcefully. We felt quite uncomfortable.

We then went to a restaurant for lunch. We were given many different options of tasty, Egyptian food, which was a pleasantly different from the food at the hotel that were made for tourists. Liz and I are both vegetarian, and Egyptian cuisine had many options for us.

Khalid then took us to the Cairo museum. This is where many of the treasures are kept, including twenty mummies found in the tombs. However, we had to pay extra to see the mummies, so we decided not to see them. We saw many treasures and the coffin of King Tathunkhamun, as well as other impressive carvings and statues. I had a disagreement with Khalid about Queen Hatshepsut’s family history since I had read a National Geographic article about recent findings. I quickly understood that he was not up to date on this matter (I don’t blame him since the article only came out the previous month – but still I wish he knew this information for me to have a discussion about it).

It was a day where we learnt many things about ancient Egypt thanks to Khalid. We were quite tired of all the walking, so we went to bed early since we also had a very early morning next day.

08/10/2009

After immigration, we got in to a minivan with Yaseer and our driver, and we drove through the streets of Cairo. It was quite a chaos, just like any other third world country. It reminded me of Sri Lankan traffic in Colombo, but, in a MUCH larger scale. Again, everything I see was in brown. I asked Yaseer why all the buildings were brown. He said that if they were painted in another color, it would be brown in the couple of days because of dust.

It was around 5 pm when we got to the hotel. Yaseer left us since we didn’t have anything planned for the day. Liz and I decided to walk around the city and to get dinner. From the hotel, we walked about 5-10 min to get to a major intersection. On one side, there was a little “park” where people could hang out. We walked across it to get to the other side of the street. Actually, it was a huge roundabout and somehow we had to get to the other side. But, there were vehicles zooming by. Hundreds of them. People were just crossing like they are walking in their living rooms. The vehicles stop literally about a foot away from the pedestrians.

After a while we saw a number of people crossing the road. We joined them despite the vehicles coming at us. Safety in numbers.

We walked around and didn’t see any roadside food places. With the size of this city, there must be places for a quick eat. Or any kind of restaurant for that matter. We walked around more, crossed more scary streets and came across a small food place. On the pavement, they had displayed some of the food items.

Earlier Liz and I (Liz much more than me) had learnt Arabic enough to get by. Liz asked the vendor how much the displayed food would cost. He spoke in Arabic and said three pounds for the rice and six pounds for the curry. Six Egyptian pounds converts to one US dollar. A guy who looked like the owner of the restaurant heard this and spoke in English. Eight pounds for the rice and ten for the curry. We bought it, but I wasn’t too happy with the price raise just because we were tourists. If they want to charge more for tourists, they should have a set price and stick to it. I don’t like when people look at my face and increase the prices.

We walked back to the “park” and sat down on the curb which was raised about a foot from the ground. This park had a few palm trees, some grass and few benches. I was surprised to see young men and women (obvious couples) sitting close together and chatting. This is common in Sri Lanka, but Egypt is more conservative and I didn’t expect to see this is public.

The rice and curry was somewhat tasty. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel.

08/09/2009
I left Ann Arbor after lunch and arrived at the Detroit airport around 2.30 pm for the flight to New York that was supposed to leave around 4.30 pm. It was delayed until 6 pm, so I lazily walked around the airport, made a few calls and watched people walking around. On the plane, I sat to an Indian physics professor who has been visiting his daughter for in the US. We talked about many things including differences in India and US.

After landing in New York, I met Liz who had flown in from Minnesota. We walked to the gate and boarded the flight to Cairo, Egypt around 10 pm. After having dinner, I fell asleep.

08/10/2009
I woke up and it was time to have breakfast on the flight. Liz and I were chatting while the plane was descending to the Cairo airport. We could see the Giza pyramids and everything; I mean everything was sandy color. The entire city of Cairo (with about 18 million people – close to the population of Sri Lanka!), the pyramids and the desert was a single color. And it was brown. This was our view from the plane.

It was interesting to see the edges of the city and then desert begins. This is not like the Arizona desert where there are cactus plants and interesting geographical points such as canyons. This was just sand. This IS the desert.

After getting down from the plane, we proceeded to immigration and met our representative from the tour group, Yaseer. After waiting in line for about 10-15 min, we reached the immigration counter. Yaseer gave Liz an arrival visa to stick in her passport and the officer let her go through. Not being an American or European, it wasn’t that easy for me to enter the country.

I already had gotten a visa from the Egyptian consulate in Chicago. So I wasn’t really expecting any delays. However, the immigration officer kept my passport and asked if I have any documents to prove that I live in US. My US visa on the passport, the document from US immigration stating my status, my US driver’s license and the letter from my new employer didn’t matter. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to the officer, and all these documents were transported via Yaseer. He was of great help in explaining them how I am part of the tour group etc., but nothing mattered.

So I waited in the sitting area along with a guy from Somalia. We chatted a bit. I waited for about 45 minutes while the officials were deciding whether to allow me in to the country or not. The documents I mentioned earlier were not given to them at once, but one by one when Yaseer told me they needed more documents.

I was not angry or annoyed, may be because I was too tired from the long flight to think straight. I wished they would directly talk to me, so I could explain the documents. I didn’t just spend money on a transatlantic flight and a private, eight day tour to get deported for no reason. Coming from Sri Lanka, I understand the security procedures and the reasons they exist. Then I remembered a news article that I have read two weeks earlier. They have caught two terrorists from Sri Lanka at the Cairo airport who were trying to enter Egypt. I was happy that the officials monitored their tourists carefully. However, I wished I was given a chance to talk to them. I looked over and saw Liz waiting for me on the other side.

Yaseer came over to me again. I had been waiting close to an hour at this point. He wanted to know if I had any more documents. I searched deep in my bag and found a letter from my university that stated my legal status in US, the degree I graduated with, dates etc. Yaseer looked at it and asked me to come with him. We went to see another officer outside the booth. Yaseer showed him the document and said,

“Look, here it says she has a Doctorate”.

The face of the officer lightened up like a back alley in moonlight. He looked at me with a smile.
“You here for tourism?”.

“Yes”, I nodded.

Then he spoke the magical words, with a huge grin on his face.

“Welcome to Egypt”.

Other posts about this trip can be found here.

07/13/2009

Today we left the Pacific coast and back to San Jose. On the way, we stopped for lunch at an ox cart factory. There were many handmade small ox carts and other crafts. After lunch, we stopped at a coffee plantation. We were given a tour of the plantation and they did a little play acting out the history of coffee. That was pretty good.

Micki and Craig wrote a couple of songs to give thanks to our tour director Monica and driver Rafael. It was kept a secret from them. The songs were printed and handed to the entire tour group. Right before we left the coffee plantation, Craig went to the front of the bus, took the microphone that Monica uses and all of us sang the songs. Monica and Rafael were very touched. Rafael had tears in his eyes and said (in Spanish) that this has never happened in the 20 years he has been a tour driver.

This is the song.

Don Rafael “El Haffe drives the bus
La Heffa Monica takes care of us
We are gonna hike, and swim and run around
In every town, on tour with Caravan!

On every one you see a smiling face
Because we always have the “happy place”
We are gonna sing and dance and party down
In every town on tour with Caravan
We love you Monica of yes we do
We are very comfort-table with you
We go to every “happy place” yahoo!
Oh Monica, we love you.

Here, the “happy place” refers to the bathroom, because that’s how Monica calls it.

We then proceeded towards the hotel in San Jose. Micki and I walked around the city a bit, and went back in time for the fancy departure dinner we had at the hotel for the group.

It was a great tour. This was my first tour I have traveled by myself and I really enjoyed it. I made a few friends as well. Costa Rica is a beautiful country and Caravan does great tours for very affordable rates.