The Cave

We arrived at the hotel in Cairo to find a message waiting for us from Bran-chan!!! (by a strange co-incidence our journeys overlapped by two days…!).

We met up with Bran-chan and Shaun that evening, and got lost in the streets of Cairo after an unhelpful taxi driver kicked us out at the wrong restaurant… still, we had plenty to talk about at we hiked across Egypt’s capital, eventually ending up where we were supposed to be!

My impressions of Cairo are that, like any other big city anywhere, it is large, smelly, and over-crowded. Unlike any other big city however, it has the pyramids.

The pyramids - no distance at all from the city - were pretty incredible, I have to admit. They look just like the photos. Big. Pointy at the top. Wide at the bottom. Triangular sides. Yup. No doubt about it. They were definitely pyramids.

Deciding we needed to get another persepctive on these monuments (and just to check that they were the same on each side), we took another camel ride. This time on a camel-made-for-two. A risky business, sharing a camel with Tom, but I held on (to the camel) for dear life, and off we set. These beasts were larger, hairier and scarier (not to mention smellier) than their Jordanian/Mt Sinai-ian cousins. And they had bad wind.

We went inside The Second Pyramid (I don’t know if it has a technical name, but that’s what it says on the ticket), and also took a look round the Cheops Boat Museum, before going on to say “Hello” to the sphynx.

Happily the weather wasn’t too hot, and I suppose all things considered, there weren’t THAT many people there.

I wouldn’t describe it as a life-changing experience (too touristy), but we have had a really fascinating day, and personally I’m very happy to have finally seen the pyramids!

During the afternoon went to the Cairo museum. I’m very glad we had a guide for this part, as there wasn’t much by way of description, and the place is HUGE! Our guide picked out some of the most interesting parts, and we spent a good couple of hours looking round statues, sarcophagai, mumified animals, and some of the mumified pharoes… It was extremely interesting!

We must be crazy… Wasn’t Mt Fuji enough of a struggle? Isn’t 2:30am a time when most sane people are nicely tucked up in bed?

Evidently, No.

We were blearily shuttled from the lovely warm beds in the hotel to the base of Mt Sinai, marched past the imposing fortifications of St Catherine’s Monastery and given the first choice of the morning… Camel or foot?

I thought that meant “take a camel, save your feet”, so we hopped on some not so smelly beasts and began the ascent. It was only when we reached the bottom of the 700 stairs to the top that I realised it meant “take a camel and your knees will seize up and you’ll comically struggle to take even one step”. Bah!

Once we began the climb it eased up however, and we made it to the huts near the summit well before sunrise. The huts were packed with Koreans busy signing the roof (and falling off the benches while doing so) so we were all nice and toasty warm. Waiting for the sunrise outside was made easier too by the lovely rug we hired!

The sunrise itself was stunning, and while Adele pottered off to practice her Japanese on a passing family, we prepared for the “3000 steps of repentance” descent.

The trail back down was beautiful, with each turn producing another fabulous vista. We managed to reach the monastery intact, and resisted the urge to chisel a phrase or two on a handy slab of rock! That Moses chap definitely liked his hiking, that’s for sure!

It was only a few days later that we began to repent - hoping to regain the use of our knees.

The hydrofoil from Aqaba to Nuweiba across the Red Sea was, on the whole, quite uneventful. (Unlike our last boat journey, there was no typhoon, no sick people everywhere, and…most significantly, no bar. The journey was short, however, so we managed to last. Just.)

At Nuweiba there was a lot of waiting around before we were allowed to leave the port. Then it was a substantial coach ride to Dahab. The scenary: varying shades of beige. We saw a couple of camels and some palm-trees, and the Red Sea, of course!

Dahab (or at least the part we stayed in) is a bustling little tourist resort on the Red Sea, and is a very popular spot with divers. Prices are cheap (which is a great relief after Jordan), bars are plentiful, and the seafood is really, really good!

We spent a day on the coast enjoying the warm sunshine, and going snorkling at the coral reef at Blue Hole, which was absolutely fantastic! We’d both definitely like to come back here once we have our diving qualies!

After our exhausting hike around the extensive Petra site, we were ready for a bit of pampering. What we actually received at the Turkish Baths in the hotel was a slightly unnerving but ultimately refreshing experience (you’ll have to ask us in person for any more details than that)…

Once scrubbed up, we headed through a rather scary sand-storm to Wadi Rum, a small desert community on the way to Aqaba.

After a fun evening of music, food and beer, we hid under five layers of rugs and duvets to keep out the cold wind that made it through the walls of our Bedouin style tent.

The next morning we headed out into the desert - atop of some lovely smelly camels… Actually, they weren’t that smelly, but some were in heat and frothing at the mouth!

The scenary was beautiful around the camp, and almost everyone survived intact (one of our tour-group members was thrown off, but managed to land relatively unscathed).

Finally we traded in our frothy camels for pick-up trucks with benches welded in the back for a few hours on safari a little further afield. On this trip we were shown a Nebatian map of the area and a huge sand dune that I struggled to the top of before making the somewhat quicker dash back down.

Tonight we are in Aqaba, bartering away in the markets before heading to Egypt tomorrow.

We’ll both be a little sad to leave Jordan - It’s been a wonderful experience and all the local people we have met have been very friendly and generous. I think it’s likely that we will return to this part of the world sooner rather than later!

See some photos here

Things have been pretty action-packed around here!

We left Amman and drove down to the Dead Sea, where we spent the morning at a resort. The Dead Sea is about 30% salt (normal sea water is about 3%), which means that it’s impossible to sink! In fact, the salinity of the water enables you to float quite high out of the water.

The area around the Dead Sea is quite barren, and the water itself doesn’t support life. We waded out beyond the sharp clumps of salt crystals, and had fun bobbing about (trying - and failing - to sink!). Afterwards, we covered ourselves with Dead Sea mud for the ultimate mud-pack!

A great morning in the sun!

We then headed off to Petra, which turned out to be quite a drive away. We arrived in the early evening, checked into the hotel, and went out for a drink in a really cool bar (in an original 2000 BC cave!). Very atmospheric.

The next day we set off very early to explore the Nebatean Capital of Petra. (If you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you’ll know what we’re talking about!) The whole city is carved out of rock, and there were people living there continuously right up until about 1985, when they were shifted out in order to protect the ruins.

We spent a good 7 hours hiking round the massive complex (and still didn’t see it all). It was really incredible!

See some photos here.

It’s been quite a day today… Our first full day in Jordan was spent on our feet, ambling around various ancient sites in and near the capital, Amman.

First up was the ancient Citadel (also housing the original Dead Sea Scrolls) and the Roman Amphitheater in the city itself.

After a spot of lunch, we dashed out to Jerash - a beautifully preserved ancient Roman city an hour outside Amman. We were guided around the vary large site by Abraham - a fantastic and very knowledgable chap - then serenaded (errm) by some bagpiping Jordanian guards. All a little surreal.

We also had time to experience three very amusing taxi rides around the city. The first was somewhat worrying as the driver decided to pull into a petrol station to fill up - something I’ve never experienced before… We thought for a moment he was going to get it cleaned as well - all with the meter running!

The second driver was much more friendly - letting us in on an apparently well known Amman secret… “Taxi driver makes sweet lover”!

Our final ride of the evening capped it all off as the driver patiently explained to Dean (who also shared our lift from the airport yesterday) how to say “I love you” in arabic (Habibi I think…). Dean looked more than a little worried as he was just as tired as us after the day’s activities and couldn’t cope with an amourous taxi driver too!

All in all it’s been a good start to the travels!

See some photos here

We’re finally on our way again!

Despite my best efforts to delay us by not setting the alarm properly, and the security team’s suspicions that my hiking boots were weapons of mass destruction, we have made it to the departures lounge of Heathrow Teminal 4.

En-route to the hotel last night we were treated by London Underground’s weekend engineeering team to a tour of Western London’s Kebab shops and Grocers by bus. I particularly liked the living artwork they had supplied by the side of the scenic route - my favourite of which was “Woman smoking at a bus stop”.

Next stop… Amman!

It’s been 4 months and 5 days since we arrived back in Britain (and just over 4 months since we made our last post here), and now we’re packing again!

Is it me, or have the backpacks got smaller since we last used them?!

Who knows what the next 4 months will bring…