Hello all,

We're taking a break from the chronicling of our Egypt trip because we're pooped. We've been taking a scuba class for the last three days and today we got our open water diver certification. We have a day off tomorrow before starting the advanced open water diver course, and so hopefully we can make a third installment tomorrow. Anyway thanks to all of you who have emailed us comments about our pictures, we really appreciate it.

Note: There is no longer a committee. I am writing this by myself, so expect better grammar.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Upon arriving at the group hotel, we were given what amounts to pure gold in the backpacker world - our very own International Student Identity Cards. No, we haven't done anything insane, like apply to grad school (cough... Bew and Eliot). They just give them to everyone in Egypt. And you get in everywhere for half-price. I was expecting to get a counterfeit ISIC in Thailand, but this one is real, and we're getting it pretty early in our travels, so it has the potential to save us a lot of money.

We chilled out in our room, watched a movie until the power cut out (must remember to add to Netflix to see how it ended), then joined the 14 strangers and one tour leader for dinner at a restaurant nearby. That's when we realized that these trips are mostly composed of Aussies and Brits. However, of the 16 people, six of us were Americans, so we were proud of this unusual showing of Yanks.

The group went back to the hotel for Stellas and shishas. Everyone seemed cool (lots of couples), so we were off to a good start.

The next morning, we awoke early (for us) and I had breakfast while Matt drank coffee. It is important to note here that I ate the scrambled eggs. Matt ate nothing. Everyone piled on the minibus and we headed to the Egyptian Museum with our Egyptologist guide. Getting there early has its advantages, as there are many, many bigger bus groups that visit in the morning. But our guide got us in, and proceeded to show us the highlights, while telling us where to find other cool stuff during our free time. We started in the Old Kingdom and moved straight through to the New Kingdom and the truckloads of King Tut items. Then it was on to the Mummy Room, and finally the animal mummies, which were really cool.

[Note: If you are considering seeing the King Tut exhibit that is currently travelling the US, don't inconvenience yourself to get to it. I can tell you firsthand that the good stuff is still in Cairo. It's not like the 70s, when they sent everything over.]

From the museum, we headed to Giza. Before we were to marvel at the pyramids, we enjoyed the obligatory group stop to a perfume factory. I downed my free Coke and Koshary with no intention of buying any perfume. While packing up the condo in April, I only just threw away a bottle of Lotus flower oil that I bought at a similar Giza shop in 1998 and never used. Matt barely ate, as he was starting to feel a little sick. He kept complaining about having "sulfury egg burps," which was strange, because he hadn't eaten any eggs at breakfast. Once everyone besides us bought their bottles of perfume, we got back on the minibus and headed for the pyramids.

We arrived first at the Great Pyramid and walked around it, wondering how to take pictures, since it was so big. We climbed up to where the entrance was, but we didn't have a ticket to go inside this one as we were going in the second pyramid later. Back on the bus and over to a nice panoramic view. We took our silly pictures, then we got on our camels.

These camels are much bigger than the ones we rode in Morocco, but they had better saddles. I had the best two-year-old camel boy ever. After Morocco, we're kind of over camels in general, so we were just kind of along for the ride at this point. It was a short ride to the third pyramid, which we examined briefly before boarding the minibus for a quick ride over the second pyramid, which we did have a ticket to enter.

They really need to pump a little bit of air into these pyramids. It was pretty chilly outside, but we watched person after person come out stripped down to their t-shirts, sweating, and panting. We started our hunched-over descent of the stairs/ladder/ramp. Once we got to the burial chamber, we had enough air to say, "Hey, look. A sarcophogus." Then we had to head right back out for sweet, precious air. It was really cool, though, because it's not everyday you get to go inside a pyramid.

Back onto the minibus and over to the Sphinx. This area is very crowded, and there is really only one angle you can view it from, so we didn't spend much time here. Got the picture, got out, avoided roaming souvenir boys.

Now, its the obligatory group trip to the Papyrus Temple. We watched as the guy demonstrated how they turn it from a plant to an indestructible writing surface. Then they served us a drink so we could sip and browse. Again, not buying anything. In fact, I was very pleased to see that the papyrus we bought from Fouad was much cheaper, but was just as good quality. Matt, who was still complaining of eggy burps, disappeared to the bathroom for a while.

Finally, we went back to hotel and were to reconvene for dinner before going to the train station for our 13-hour overnight train to Aswan. By the time we got to the room, Matt was pretty sick. He had chills and diarrhea, and we couldn't imagine what was wrong, because he should still have some Cipro in his system from Morocco. He called Dr. Dad, who was without a clue until I reminded Matt to mention the eggy burps. Aha! Turns out the hard-boiled egg he had eaten at the prior day's breakfast was probably a little rotten and had given him hydrogen-sulfide poisoning. Zantac and Tums were prescribed, and I ran out to the nearby pharmacy and acquired them without a problem.

By the time we got on the train, Matt still felt really crappy, but was clearly on the mend.

How, you might be asking, did we come up with that for a post title? And it is "we", even though I'm the one logged in and typing, Heather is sitting here pestering me that I write funny, so technically this is a committee-drafted update, but if Heather were the one typing, the above comma would be inside the quotes around the word we.

My how one can get sidetracked... Back to the original question; Egypt Encompassed is the name of the tour we took with Oasis Overland and we just couldn't think of anything better, so there you have it. Perhaps its best to begin with an overview of our itinerary and then we'll move to minutuae, OK? Mashi-mashi? Right, let's proceed.

Preface

We arrived in Cairo three days before our tour officially began. Then our tour began with a day at the sights in Cairo, and an overnight train to Aswan. We spent two days in Aswan, and left Aswan by a Fellucah on the third day. We spent two full days floating down the Nile and on the morning of the third day, we got an early start and went to Luxor where we spent three days. From Luxor, we had a bus to Hurghada, and then a Ferry to Sharm-El-Sheik and finally another bus ride to Dahab. After four days in Dahab, we returned to Cairo via overnight bus and our tour officially ended. We spent three more days in Cairo before returning to Dahab by ourselves to get scuba certified, which is where we are now.

Ok, so clear on the general itinerary? Excellent. At this point I would like to point out that the committee structure has dissolved. Heather is on the phone with her parents and is basically useless, so I'm not giving her full credit for the assignment.

Chapter 1

We landed in Cairo just after midnight local time and had a transfer arranged from the airport, which I think is a pretty classy service for a hostel to offer. After a scary elevator ride in what can only be described as a perforated box on a string, we got settled, made a quick post to let everybody know new pictures were up and fell asleep for 18 hours. The next afternoon, we rolled out of bed and attempted to turn in our laundry six hours past the deadline. I really wanted to get our laundry turned in, so I tried pretending that "tomorrow morning" was not a real phrase in English, I didn't get very far, so we had a wee wander around our street, found some Kentucky Fried Chicken, and made our way to Giza to watch the Pyramid Light and Sound show.

"Made our way" is being a bit glib. One might think that two tourists hailing a cab in Cairo and saying "Giza Pyramids" would get to THE PYRAMIDS in fairly short order. Unfortunately, our cab driver did not know the word Pyramid, did not speak a lick of English, and on top of that, seemed to have a significant amount of difficulty communicating in Arabic with the people on the street he had to flag down and get directions from. About the fifth guy we flagged down was able to explain to us that the cab driver didn't want to take us to the pyramids because it was late and they would be closed to visitors. This presented the new challenge of trying to explain that we were going to the Light and Sound show, which, for obvious reasons, takes place after dark. So it turns out that nobody who actually lives in Cairo knows anything about the Light and Sound show, so after some rather alarming pantomime that I think nearly got us arrested, our cabdriver of all people seemed to get the message. He said something in Arabic to the poor guy translating, and with a confused look he asked us:"You want to go to a show of sound and light"? Never in my life have I said "yes" more emphatically, which the driver seemed to understand and we were off like a shot.

We arrived at the ticket office and then played dodge the pushy shopkeeper for half an hour before we found Frank Bazaar. We decided Frank Bazaar might be a safe harbor because he had a t-shirt in the window that read: "I came to see the pryamids, leave me alone!" and there was also a sign advertising no-hassle shopping. We browsed unaccosted for about 20 minutes before Frank, actually Fouad, approached us and offered us drinks. We talked for a while and he told us about a bunch of stuff in his shop, and we told him we would return after the show.

The show was cheesy, but worth it. I especially enjoyed the bagpipers. After the show, we returned to Fouad's and engaged in retail revenge. Which is a little like retail therapy, but the motive involves more spite towards all the shopkeepers that have been a total pain in the ass up to that point. (Technically this was partially pre-emptive retail revenge)

Basically, we bought a ton of shit. We also bought some wood so Fouad could have a crate made for all of it. During the purchase and shipping process we were supplied with Stellas to keep us sedate. By this point we had been at his shop so long that all the Sound and Light shows were finsihed for the night, all the shops were closed, and hence all the taxis were gone, so Fouad offered to drive us back to our hotel once we were all finished. Sensing we had found a generous soul (Before we had even bought anything he had provided us with turkish coffees and sodas and he got me two falafel sandwiches, after we made our purchases, the beer came out.) So, we asked him for help with another detail on our todo list. We are traveling without sleeping bags because, well its just the way all the hardcore backpackers do it, but we found ourselves in need of them for the upcoming Fellucah ride. We decided instead that thick blankets would serve just as well, with the idea that we could donate them to some Sudanese refugees (known to our tour company, we didn't just pick Sudanese refugees out of the blue) after we were done with them. We asked Fouad if he knew of a place we could buy blankets. Not only did he know of one, but he drove us there on the way to our hotel, and went in with us to help us with the cryptic Egyptian Wal-Mart processes. In short, we're big fans of Fouad. His son also deserves special mention as he was along for the ride and didn't seem to mind. ...that makes him sound like a toddler, which clearly wasn't the case as he had a law degree.

We managed to get up in time to turn in our laundry the next morning, and promptly went back to sleep. We slept and read our overpriced English language fiction from the Barcelona airport for most of the rest of the day until the Egypt vs. Ivory Coast game of the African Cup of Nations came on TV. Egypt won, there was much rejoicing, and by this time, Heather was hungry. We went right back to KFC, and then back to bed. The next morning, we ate breakfast, collected our laundry, checked out, and headed to our new hotel to start our tour.

...Stay tuned for Chapter 2