D&K'S RTW Adventure

nairobi

just arrived after night flight from cairo via cartoum........shattered when we arrived. First impressions...very green and quiet compared to cairo!...pretty rainy right now. People are friendly...managed to go to a cinema!...horrah....how sad are we?..... it wasnt too bad actually, bizarre thing is you have to stand up for the kenyan anthem at the beggining of the film, we did the same case we offended anyone!......
we start our 3 week safari tomorrow...goodby cosy beds and comforts, hello truck and tents!....

Sharm El Sheikh

It was a quick 2 hour crossing from Hurghada to Sharm on a fast seacat ferry (instead of a possible 12 hour drive), which a ticket price of about 22GBP each for a one way ticket. We can give a tip for when you get off the ferry (and have your bags x-rayyed), in that the main harbour entrance is a 2 minute walk up a hill and the security don't let the tour operators in to pick you up. This then allows for the local bag porters to try and get some money out of you to carry your bags for you... You might think that your pickup hasn't arrived, but check up the hill as it appears to be a local scam, as taxis are allowed down to try and whisk you to your hotel for a very inflated charge!

According to the tv adverts on UK tv and on CNN, this is supposed to be the Red Sea Riviera....Hmmmm clever marketing, but it still has a long way to go with customer service and quite a lot of it still looks like a building site. The nicest area is called Na'ama bay, which is a perpose built tourist trap on one of the bay's. Here is were you can eat, drink and but the same kind of tat everywhere else in Egypt! I wonder if there is an Egyption translation for the word 'kitch'...

Apart from the above, the weather is good and the diving schools are everywhere, offering some very good trips which Kris has been enjoying.

The main beach area's are 99% carved up by the hotels, with only the odd token 'public beach' here and there, so best stay at a botel with a beach!

We are also still baffaled by the currency carry on - everyhere here seems to give prices in US dollars (Hurghada was mainly Euro's). But when you try and get USD's from the banks, they don't stock them (or so they say) and you can only seem to get them from the Thomas Cook main branch. There is also a carry on with the hotels requesting you settle your bill in USD, which they claim has been sanction by the Egyptian Tourist Authority. When we were in Luxor, they claimed the Egyptian Tourist Authority stated that you had to settle your bill in local currency only!!!!!

We can also recommend one of the many touted outings, which is a quadbike trip out into the desert for sunset. We took a two hour trip, which only cost $40 USD for the two of us, and it was the best place to see the sun set behind the moutains and to cross the dessert at dusk with the bike lights on.

Red Sea

After a stunning 4 hour drive across the Arabian Desert, we arrived in the luvly Hurghada......hmmmmm
First impressions....emm the words "building" and "site" spring to mind......
Kind of like a very unfinished Las Americas on Tenerife........really not our cup of tea. Never fails to amaze me how you can build purpose built resorts and get them so horribly wrong....oh well..
Appears to be an awfully lot of Russian people here, which makes interesting wrestling at meal times in the hotel buffet. The concept of waiting and queing or indeed general manners appears to be a big job.
Not much postitive to say about Hurghada really. Kris went diving today which was quite good, fairly cheap. only 40 euros for a day on the boat, lunch and 2 dives. It was extremely rough and we were both pretty quesy.
We are still trying to find some decent food of any discription, we are daft on oriental food and have tried some restaurants here but they were awful. Even the egyptian food is pretty bland and always very dry.
However the weather is always very hot, so we are bronzing nicely, which is good as we will be starting our doxycycline(antimalarials) soon(for travelling in east aafrica and s.e asia, and hope we are not unlucky enough to get sun sensitivity..
Internet cafes are very cheap, only 40p for an hour.
Currency is a bit mixed up, in our hotel they ask for us dollars for one thing, euros for another and local currency for other things....I mean make up your mind ! They will convert to local currency if asked.
On the plus side, the snorkling even from the beach outside the hotel is really good, lots to see so close to the shore. Food although not exactly fancy is pretty cheap

Templed oot

After our lovely overnight sleeper train journey from Cairo to Aswan (nice drop through toilet even in 1st class!) - tip: use early on in the train journey if you can! transferred to the Nile cruise ship which was pure luxury after the Cairo experience - great service and great views alog the Nile. Plenty of visits to the main temples and tombs (Valley of the Kings etc), with our favourite being the Karnac and Luxor Temples in Luxor. The only problem when doing this as part of a tour company is that you don't get very long at each of the sites - i.e ony 45mins free time at the Valley of the Kings... View image
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and your ticket is now limited to only 3 tombs... If you want to see King Tuts tomb then you now have to pay extra - which isn't worth it considering it is now empty and all the artifacts are now in Cairo musuem.

Luxor has greatly improved over the last few years with more hotels and tourist developments. The most noticeable is that there are armed Tourist Police everywhere, so you are made to feel very, very safe - that does not unfortunatley shield you from the locals, who constantley hassle you in the street and don't seem to take no for an answer. Beware of the many horse and carriage tourist traps... It is also very easy to get lost in the maize of side streets and roads - keep to the main area's and you should be ok.
Also be aware that Egypt is a Muslim country, so watch out for when Ramadan is (it's the whole month that we are here) as you will find that services are very limited, if not unavailable during the afternoon hours - you also need to be very considerate about eating or drinking when out of the hotels etc.

Another tip is to take a felucca (sail boat) trip out onto the nile around sunset, for the most amasing views. Currently you can get one for about 20 egyptian pounds (about 2 pounds sterling) per person for the hour.

Cairo

Well - where to start? first of all Cairo is a bit of a hell hole....it sounds bad, but then so is the traffic, noise, pollution, 18 million people in the city.... A bit of advice: don't stay in a hotel on the Pyramid Road in Giza as it's rush hour 24/7 and car horns beep several times a second, every minuite of the day!
The Pyramids and museum are really impressive - although we thought people were joking when they said that there was a McDonalds at the Pyramids. They are in fact wrong - it's a Pizza Hut and KFC!
Tips for travellers to cairo.....avoid giza altogether, stay in accomodation "downtown".
As for the famous sound and light show at the pyramids...its not really that impressive, our advice would be to barter and get a cab or bus to the pyramids late afternoon and chill out for a couple of hours and them buy your own ticket for the sound and light(costs about 40 egyptian pounds). Dont pay for an excursion which costs abour thirty dollars!!.
Beware of the locals on camels around the pyramids who chase you and hassle you to buy their tat. The pyramids are impressive though View image
, but sad to see that the sprawling city is fast encroaching on them.....

Off to the sleeper train to Aswan now...