Christmas in Egypt: Hurghada, Cairo, and Luxor

Happy New Year everyone!

It is hard to believe that it is 2011 already – as I get older time seems to fly faster and faster.  So without delay, I give you the last couple crazy weeks.  My trip started on Monday December 20th where I packed my bags in my little apartment while it snowed outside.  I found it kinda funny packing for both hot and cold weather.  I left my apartment around 4:30 pm and made the familiar walk to the bus station where I jumped on a bus as it was pulling out of the station.  An hour later I was in Donetsk treating myself to McDonalds before the long 15 hour overnight train ride to Kiev.  I arrived in Kiev at 7 am and sleepily made my way to yet another McDonalds to meet up with my cluster mate Cassie.  As unhealthy as the golden arches are, my stomach rarely feels as content and happy as after a good ole Big Mac.  We had a nice leisurely, salty, fatty, and delicious McD breakfast then went to the Peace Corps office to meet up with our other cluster mates.  That night, we went out to a place called Dr. Bar and had steaks and a beer to celebrate the start of our adventure.  The bar was down a dark alley behind some old soviet block housing units in a basement.  No signs, no advertisements, just dark and sketchy but it ended up being the best steak I have had in Ukraine.  It was awesome and all the waitresses dressed up as nurses and handed out shots in beakers.  We may have celebrated a bit too much because we did not make it back to our hostel tell 1:00 am and had to get up at 4:00 am to catch a taxi to the airport.  Lets just say it was a rough morning.  When we arrived in Egypt, we cleared customs, exchanged some money for Egyptian Pounds, then took a shuttle to our "Resort".

This "Resort" is almost worthy of it's own blog.  It was a Russian resort so even though we were in Egypt, we were still speaking Russian.  It was an all inclusive resort though that meant that you could have as many free 2 oz. beers as you would like.  lol  I was just surprised that beer was so readily available in a Muslim country and in fact, Egypt has been brewing their own "Stella" for over 100 years.  Though there is a warning on the can that says every batch of Stella beer in Egypt is different and indeed some were very bitter, some were smooth, so you never knew what you were going to get.  Most of the employees at the resort were confused that there were Americans at the Resort and when we explained that, Yes, we are in fact Americans, but we live and work in Ukraine and that we found out about the travel package because we live in Ukraine  -  It usually made people more confused.  We spent the rest of the day (Tuesday) and all of Wednesday  in Hurghada just chillin on the beach and having a good time.  Unfortunately, we did not learn our lesson the first time and stayed out way too late again then had to catch another extremely early flight to Cairo.  Brutal.  We were on the no plan plan in Cairo and did not have a place to stay or an agenda other than we would like to see the Pyramids. 

It was the morning of Christmas eve when we arrived in Cairo, we took a bus downtown and started wandering Cairo (population 17 million).  I have traveled quite a bit in countries where I did not speak the language and have always managed to get bye just fine but with the Arabic language, even the numbers are different(Arabic Numbers).  Trying to find bus number 390 when the numbers are completely different can be a bit tricky.  lol  Also, I kinda felt ridiculous when we got on a bus in Luxor and I had no idea what my seat number was.  The streets in Cairo were more or less deserted because it was a Muslim holiday.  We wandered around until we met someone (Ali) that was very friendly and excited to meet some clueless and lost Americans.  He took us to a nice breakfast place in an alleyway in downtown Cairo where we had Falafel and some other traditional food.  Ali was a little too nice for me and I was very suspicious but nobody else seemed to think there was any reason to worry so we let him show us around Cairo.  He helped us find a hotel in downtown Cairo, take public busses to the Pyramids, and find a tour guide for the Pyramids.  He did end up asking for money at the end of the day (which in the Morning he said he wouldn't do) but with his help we were able to see Cairo through the eyes of a local and went to some cool places that we wouldn't have gone to without his help so it worked out.  Still, I don't like dealing with people that are not straight up and with clear agendas.  Our experience throughout Egypt was that we were nothing but a dollar sign to everyone.  Even a holy man at a Mosque tried to con us out of our money.  I guess that is what you get when almost the entire economy of a country relies on tourism.  Taxi drivers charged extra, tour guides had surprise expenses, street venders tried to cheat us, and everyone seemed to be out to milk every tourist that walked by. 

Anywho, sorry for the tangent, when we got to the Pyramids our "friend" Ali set us up with a tour guide and some camels.  That was a crazy experience.  Camels are huge!  And they make crazy Camel noises and our camels had very loud gas that would last literally at min at a time.  lol  So we made our way down a sketchy alley to meet the camel dude and started our journey though a back entrance to the Pyramids in order to avoid the touristy crowds.  I will never forget the setting as we started our trek out into the rolling hills of sand.  It was hot and sunny with a slight breeze as we started - I checked my watch and saw it was around 12:30 on Christmas eve.  We purchased some of the traditional Egyptian turbans to protect our winter white faces from a guy that was running next to our camels.  As our train of camels started up the first hill of sand, the sun seemed to intensify with every lumbering step.  At that exact time, we could hear the loud speakers from the Mosques in Cairo start to broadcast a prayer.  It was quite loud and it sounded like all of Cairo was chanting along to the loud speakers.  It was extremely mesmerizing as we all held on to our camels trying not to fall off.  There are few times in life that are so burned into memory as this experience was.  All senses were engaged:  The heat of the sun reflecting off the sand, the slight breeze that was causing my turban to blow in the wind a brush against my face, the smell of dry heat roasting everything,  the feeling of my huge camel breathing in and out as it struggles to carry me up the rolling hills, the taste of sand in my mouth, the view of what seems to be endless rolling hills of sand with the peaks of the Pyramids in the background, and of course the sounds of countless millions of Egyptians preying on this Muslim holiday.  That moment was quickly interrupted and replaced with hilarity as my camel made a series of weird noises then proceeded to run up and bite John on the leg.  I will never forget the look of sheer terror on John's face as my huge camel ran up next to him and started biting him.  John was obviously not amused at the time but I could not stop laughing.  What could I do?  It is not like there is a "stop" button on a camel.  lol  And the noises my camel made sounded like someone was gargling a gallon of Listerine.  Unfortunately, for the rest of the camel trip I am not sure that John was able to look at the Pyramids because he was constantly checking to make sure my camel was not going to attack him again. 

After the Pyramids, our tour guide that promised to help us find a bus back to our hotel disappeared so we had to wander around a bit until we figured out the public transportation to get back.  We ended up taking a van with some other people to the metro station then a metro to our area in downtown Cairo.  The 5 of us were quite the spectacle – 5 foreigners of which 3 were girls that had shorts and t-shirts on.  Everyone was looking at the girls in our group when we were away from downtown.  The downtown area seemed to be used to foreigners and was covered with "tourism police" not that we every felt uneasy or in danger.  I was just interesting to see that the majority of the police we saw were tourism police.  After we got back to the hotel, we rested for a couple hours then went out for a very nice Christmas eve dinner.  I ordered lamb and got a huge lamb leg on a plate with some rice.  It was awesome.  It was a very good meal and in general, I was very impressed with Egyptian food.  Delish. 

The next morning, Christmas morning, everyone slept in except me.  I woke up relatively early and went out on the balcony of our hotel and had a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise.  Not a typical Christmas morning but it was very pleasant.  I also managed to download a family favorite (or at least a family tradition) Neil Diamond's Christmas album.  lol  It is so ridiculous but after listening to it every Christmas for as long as I can remember, I absolutely had to.  So I woke up my fellow travelers to the sounds of Neil Diamond's Christmas.  lol  Needless to say, they were not very appreciative but I thank them for tolerating it.  It brought back fond memories of many-a-family-Christmases.  We ate breakfast in the Hotel then walked to the National Egyptian Museum.  We spend a few hours browsing the museum.  It was very interesting.  There is sooooo much history that it is difficult to comprehend sometimes.  There are human artifacts in Egypt dating back 250,000 years.  The museum was excellent though I was surprised to see that there was little to protect the ancient artifacts. People went up and touched most of the artifacts.  After the museum we had dinner at a little traditional street restaurant, had a hookah in a random alley, and toasted with Egyptian beer before making our way to the train station.  It was a very pleasant X-mas wandering Cairo with some good friends.  We said goodbye to Cairo and boarded an overnight train to Luxor.  We traveled in a nice train car complete with comfy beds, sinks in every cabin, and dinner/breakfast included.  It was nice though when looking out the window of the train, I saw that this was not the common conditions on the other trains in the station.  Two tracks down I saw a train car with two small sliding doors, no windows, and the car was packed with people standing in the dark with nowhere to sit.  Kinda put things into perspective. 

We arrived in Luxor early in the morning as the sun was rising over the horizon and met our tour guide at the train station.  It was a scenic ride from the train station to our first tourist destination – the Valley of the Kings.  Dozens of pharaohs were buried in the valley and archaeologists are still finding new artifacts to this day.  It was very cool but unfortunately no cameras were allowed in so I don't have any photos so show.  We went down into 3 of the tombs which was very interesting but everything was stripped bare so there was not much to see.  After the Valley of the Kings we visited the Valley of the Queens and an ancient temple.  It was amazing how much history was there, it seemed like everywhere you looked there were ancient statues and artifacts.  We were frustrated with our tour guide because he asked for more money after we were told everything would be included in the original price and because when we asked to stop for coffee, he took us to a souvenir shop where they proceeded to serve us coffee and aggressively try to sell us a ton of overpriced crap.  We ditched our guide early and walked around Luxor, grabbed lunch, walked an Egyptian Bazaar, toured a Mosque, and caught an afternoon bus back to our resort in Hurghada (5 hours).  My original plan when coming to Egypt was to extend my plane ticket and travel alone in Egypt for a few additional days but after the crazy traveling that we did as a group, me being sick, and the costs everything – I decided to go ahead and go back to Ukraine with my cluster mates.  It was a good decision because if I had stayed in Egypt, I would have gone to Alexandria and there was a nasty terrorist bombing there at the same time that I would have been there. 

We arrived back in Ukraine in the evening and we were all shocked with how cold it was.  It was hard to breathe because we were used to the warm dry air of Egypt.  We spent the night in Kiev before saying our goodbyes to our cluster mates and going our separate ways.  I decided to go to Lugansk to celebrate New Years with some of the older volunteers.  We had a great time though I was too sick to properly celebrate New Years and ended up going to bed early.  It was a nice relaxing weekend and a good finish to an awesome trip. 

Conor's Noteworthy Noteables:

1.  Thawing out on the beaches of Egypt.  Ukraine seems even colder now. 

2.  Spending Christmas with my good PC buddies.  Awesome time. 

3.  Watched some very interesting anti-terrorism commercials on Egyptian TV which was trying to stop the youth from joining terrorist groups. 

4.  Riding a camel.  Unique experience though I don't plan on riding another one any time soon. 

5.  I was sick throughout the trip and ended up having a respiratory infection.  I guess that's what you get for not sleeping and traveling so much.  Kinda put a damper on the New Years celebration. 

6.  Listening to the ridiculousness that is Neil Diamond's Christmas album in Cairo.  Awesome! 

7.  New Years in Lugansk.  Nice relaxing way to bring in the New Year. 

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