Dominoes

DAY 218: With the weekend over, I could finally get the wheels in motion for my pilgrimmage to the Ethiopian holy sites north of Addis Ababa. All my bookings were put on hold until I could confirm with Egypt Air that I could switch my flight from Addis Ababa to Cairo to a later date -- after that, everything would fall into place like a set of dominoes.

It was Monday, the day most working Americans dread more than the day they after, when they also have to go to work. The same Monday morning rush happened in Addis Ababa with its citizens -- and in this case, one tourist. I took a shared minivan into downtown and walked up to the Egypt Air office. I was hoping the whole thing would be a straightforward affair, but as my luck would have it, the system was down. Elsa, the woman at the desk told me I would have no problem getting the flight to Cairo on the day I wanted and would book it as soon as the system returned.

"It will be no problem. Come back tomorrow," she told me.

"But I'm leaving Addis tomorrow to go north," I told her. She had no idea that the flight date change would start a whole set of dominoes afterwards. "There's no way I can get it today?"

She told me the system might be back after two in the afternoon. In the meantime, she handwrote the date of my flight on a correction sticker. I put my faith in the flight change and presumed with the rest of the plan.

I booked the three flights that were available to me at Ethiopian Airlines, and with that set in stone, I could book my guides at the National Tour Operations office. Hamere, the woman at NTO wrote up my guide vouchers, one for each of the four sites I'd travel to either by bus or plane. The whole thing worked out very tightly with no real room for error -- if one appointment wasn't met, the effect would trickle down like another set of dominoes. I pre-paid my tours with American Express; NTO was something out of one of the commercials, it was the preferred card and anything else would receive an extra surcharge. (Visa 1, American Express 1, MasterCard 0.)

The last booking to be made was for a bus from Addis Ababe to the first city, Bahir Dar, a day and a half away overland. (I would have flown if it was available.) A taxi took me to the Merkato, Africa's largest open air market, where a bus company sold me a ticket for the next morning, departing at 11:00 a.m. Ethiopian Time. Suddenly the reason of my encounter with Priya in Dar es Salaam became clear; she had explained to me the weird way Ethiopians tell time, using the Gregorian clock: the day starts at 6:00 a.m. and the numbers of the hours begin after that. So 7 a.m. is actually 1:00 p.m., 8 a.m. is actually 2:00 p.m. -- it goes up to 6 p.m. (12 a.m. Ethiopian) and starts over again.

Confusing, yes. Organizing a taxi to bring me from the hotel to the bus station was something out of an Abbott and Costello routine and I hoped the driver would pick me up at the right time.

BACK AT EGYPT AIR, the system was back on-line and everything officially fell into place. I got the flight I wanted and even bought an onward flight from Cairo to Casablanca to show Egyptian immigration. Immigration authorities are funny; on the notes on Elsa's computer screen, Morocco states that admission might not be permitted if a person has a "hippy appearance." Everything went smooth at Egypt Air and they too preferred the use of American Express.

WITH MY SELF-TAILORED "PILGRIMMAGE" FINALLY SET UP, it was time to get a primer on just what I was going to see. So I visited St. George's Cathedral (picture above), the main Ethiopian Orthodox Chruch in the center of the city, where Arch Deacon Mebratu gave me a personal tour even though the church and museum were closed on Mondays. It was a beginning look into the Ethiopioan Orthodox faith, which according to the arch deacon, was similar to Catholicism in theory. In practice, it looks very foreign (at least to me and my Catholic upbringing), with a different ancient customs mixed in.

The St. George Cathedral, like the similar Orthodox churches in the country were not designed in a rectangular shape like in Western culture, but in circles to represent the Virgin Mary's womb. Services are conducted by a priest and deacon in the center of this circle, while the faithful and the choir sit around them in a ring on a lower tier, one step below from the middle. The choir sings praise to God to the rhythms of prayer sticks, bells and drums -- all of which Arch Deacon Mebratu demonstrated for me. The makda, the sacred center of the church (which is only accessible to the priest and the deacon) is surrounded by walls painted with murals depicting stories of the church. Inside the makda lies a tabot, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, which gives a church its sanctity with God in the eyes of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The museum of St. George Cathedral was especially interesting, further explaining the history of the church and the clergy, from its beginnings in the fourth century A.D. when Chrisitianity was introduced, to the construction of the cathedral with influence of the Italians in 1896 after the Battle of Adwa. Even more notable was the church's ties with the regent of Empress Zaudito, a one Ras Tafari, whose legacy is still seen today in rastarianism. Ras Tafari took the name Haile Selassie in 1930 when he became emperor at the Zaudito's death, and brought Ethiopia into the modern world with its theo-monarchy until 1974.

All the history was sort of overwhelming so I just bought a book from the deacon to read on the long bus ride the next day. I was hoping it would spawn a domino effect of acquired knowledge as I saw the sites in the upcoming week, but they read like stereo instructions.

Get A Room You Two

DAY 219: With everything set up in a tight itinerary, everything was all set on my week-long journey that would ultimate bring me to the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. In order for me to make it in my limited time, I didn't have much room for error -- which was a pretty dumb idea I discovered that day. Had I forgotten I was in Africa where, as a guide in Namibia told me, "Nothing comes easy?"

My first stop was the city of Bahir Dar, which involves a two-day bus journey, including a night stayover in a town halfway. The bus was to leave at 5 a.m. (11 a.m. Ethiopian) according to my ticket, which is why I was in a taxi by 4:30 (10:30 Ethiopian) to get to the bus station. En route through the dark Addis Ababa streets, I witnessed a fairly violent mugging in progress.

"Watch for hard thieves," the taxi driver told me. (As opposed to easy thieves?) He was telling me about what to expect at the crazy bus station which hadn't opened yet when we arrived at ten to five. He let me chill out in the taxi while waiting and led me to a station worker (designated by a quesetionable ID badge pinned to his jacket) when the gates opened. Still dark outside, I had to find bus #2135 in the rows upon rows of buses in no numerical order. Fortunately the station guy led me right to it by walking around and asking in Amharic for me. Needless to say, he asked for a hefty tip for doing so, which I guess I had no choice but to give him.

Two hours went by and we still hadn't left Addis Ababa. The sun had risen already and it seemed like every bus around ours had departed already. I watched people scrambing around for last-minute seats, including the heterosexual men walking customarily hand-in-hand. Amidst the chaos I noticed one white guy taking photos of it all, sticking out like a white sheep in a flock of black ones -- although "black" really isn't a color to describe the skin color of most of the Ethiopian people; most are a lighter shade of brown, like the color of Coffee with Milk, Two Sugars.

Clouds of carbon monoxide surrounded us as we finally departed a little passed seven in the morning. The 2135 bus headed north out of Addis towards the final destination of what I hoped was Bahir Dar -- I couldn't read the sign in the window because it was in Ge'ez. No one around me spoke English either and I didn't speak Amharic -- and trying to learn it with its 231 letters of the alphabet and weird inflections of voice would probably have taken more time than my actual stay in Ethiopia. I kept notice of the position of the sun to navigate our way; we were on track to Bahir Dar after all.

The 2135 left the city limits and up through the northern highlands. With many farming productions in sight, it was a completely different image than what I had seen in a Sally Struthers "feed the children" commercial. We drove in and out of little villages, which were very similar to the ones I'd seen all over Africa and South America, with corrugated tin roof shacks and shops to shelter the many villagers walking around dusty roads.

Behind my seat was a family, including a cute little girl who sang saongs in Amharic to pass thet ime. Across the aisle and two rows back were these two teenage guys that continued the notion that two guys could be ambiguously gay (in the eyes of a Westerner) and still be hetero.

Only two and a half hours had gone by when an all-too-familiar situation happened: the bus broke down, stranding us in the middle of a hill -- quite the damper on my tight schedule where there was little room for error. The driver and conductor tried to fill the radiators with bottled water, but nothing worked. We were stranded (picture above); the conductor hitched a ride on one of the few cards on the road going back to Addis to get another bus. If you can do the math, that's 2 1/2 hours to go back and 2 1/2 to return to us, which equals a pretty long time to wait in the sun. Of course I didn't know how long it'd be when I was waiting; it seemed like days and most people walked to a nearby village to chill out. I just hung out in and around the bus with my journal and book to read, which I finally got to finishing. (Funny, I had been complaining to myself that I had no time to read since all my spare time went to Blogging.) While waiting outside for a bit, I tried to start a conversation with an old holy man with hand gestures.

FIVE HOURS LATER, a new bus, # 2112 came to save the day. In the scramble for seats, I ended up sitting with that Ethiopian teenage ambiguously gay duo, who continued to confuse me with their actions: holding hands, talking to each other seemingly romantically with one hand around the other's neck, sitting on the lap, leaning into the chest, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with it -- although I read that homosexuality is a criminal offense in Ethiopia, subject to prison time and violence. It was just weird for me to be there in front of all the affection. Come on, get a room you two.

The two guys continued their seemingly gay tendencies as the bus continued on. I thought for a moment that maybe they were justvery affectionate brothers, but then realized they were behaving way beyond the boundaries of brotherly love -- at one point the younger guy was standing in between his brother's/lover's (or both) legs and then the guy sitting down leaned over and started kissing the other one's stomach.

Seriously, get a room you two.

DESPITE THE FACT THAT I LOST FIVE HOURS of my schedule, I suppose the good thing that came out of it was the fact that I was now sitting across the aisle from the white guy I saw at the bus station -- a dead ringer for a fellow traveler. His name was Fred, a campy Frenchman from Paris who originally told me he was from the moon. With him was a pretty Ethiopian girl (and possible girlfriend?) named Lishan from the eastern town of Dire Dawa. She, like many other modern Ethiopian woman for the most part, was comparatively attractive with alluring eyes and high cheekbones and that coffee-colored skin. I suppose it was my good fortune to befriend the pair because now I had someone on my team that spoke Amharic. Plus they shared their snacks with me.

The paved road turned into a bumpy road as it went through the rocky valley, around and over the bridge of the Blue Nile River, passed herders with their sticks on their shoulders and women carrying jugs of water on their backs and the unofficial-looking guys on the side of the road holding AK-47 assault rifles. I had read that armed robberies occurred in the countryside at night, which is why most buses stopped in a town to overnight in safety. However, our five-hour delay gave us no choice but to drive a couple of hours through the dark countryside.

We arrived in the mid-point town of Debra Markos safely, but the security ended when the bus stopped. I thought that since the bus company knew we'd all overnight in town, they'd make it easy and bring us to a recommended hotel or something, but boy did I forget that "nothing comes easy."

"YOU HAVE THE COLOR OF AN ETHIOPIAN," Lishan told me as we walked across town to find a decent hotel. She was confused of my heritage; everything about me looked Ethiopian except my eyes.

Having a new friend who knew Amharic made a difficult situation easier. The three of us walked to a decent hotel on the other side of town and checked into a single and a double -- the girl got the single, and I shared a room with Fred since it was bad form for an unmarried couple to share a room.

In the end, it was me that "got a room" with another man.

Change of Plans

DAY 220: On Day 218: Dominoes, I ran around Addis Ababa trying to book flights, buses and tours in a tight scheudle where one thing would lead into the next and to the next like a row of dominoes. Doing so cost more money than it had to be; but I didn't have the luxury of time, and time is money. It was my last month before meeting people in Spain and I really didn't have much of a choice -- or did I?

MY ALARM CLOCK WOKE FRED AND I UP at 5:05, then 5:10, then 5:15 as I kept on hitting the snooze button. We finally got up and ready by 5:45 and walked with Lishan to the bus station across town. Our bus #2112 left at 6 a.m. on the dot to continue the northbound journey to Bahir Dar. The 7 1/2-hr. bus journey was more of the same scene, with small villages full of children selling food to the people on the bus in the aisles and through the window. Most of the kids were in awe of my little spy camera when I revealed it to take a picture, but were in real awe (adults too) when Fred busted out his huge DVCAM video camera with external mic and used it in the most indiscreet way possible -- the exact opposite of my "spy" camera shooting style. I felt a bit weird at him from shoving the lens in people's faces without asking, but at the same time could help but feel jealous that he was getting some awesome footage. (Later he told me he was a professional film and video cameraman working in the Paris advertising scene.)

We only had one major stop on the way to Bahir Dar for breakfast in a small town. When we departed, an old man with an AK-47 assault rifle hanging off his shoulder got on. Um, yeah, so we're just going to let this guy on the bus? Um, excuse me Mr. Conductor, if you didn't notice, there's a man in the back with a huge automatic weapon on him. No one questioned the armed passenger, but I suppose they knew there would be no problem. In fact, when I dozed off for a bit, he must have left because when I woke up he was gone.

BAHIR DAR, ON THE SOUTH END OF LAKE TANA (picture above), surprised me. Like all of Ethiopia so far, it too broke the stereotype of being nothing but a dry barren country of starving people. Bahir Dar was a fairly modern city with many restaurants, hotels and even internet facilities; it was the main tourist hub of visitors to the Blue Nile Falls and the sacred manasteries on or around Lake Tana.

The bus arrived at the bus station after 1:30 p.m. where we were greeted by a crowd of touts who saw how obviously foreign Fred and I looked. Several of them followed us as we walked to a nearby hotel -- it wasn't very promising so we moved on.

"This is Ethiopia. Safety first," Fred said in his campy French way. Lishan agreed and the three of us walked across town to find a nicer place. The street boys still followed us to the hotel we eventually settled on -- the farther we went, the more of them gave up, but one guy named Mulualem followed us all the way, pitching us with a boat tour of the lake monasteries for 600 birr (200 birr each, about $25 USD), which was way under what I had already paid with my American Express card at NTO back in Addis Ababa. When I told Fren that I already had a tour booked ahead and told him how much I paid for it, his jaw dropped.

"100 birr?" he asked.

"No, dollars."

"That's so expensive! Do you always travel like this?"

"No, it's only because I don't have much time." I told him that in my Lonely Planet it said that boat tours were about $25/hr anyway (it was a four-hour tour). Later I read Fred's Bradt guide which made my Lonely Planet really out of date; it used to be $25/hr when the government regulated the tour boats, but that had been scrapped and one could do a boat tour for a lot cheaper. My love/hate relationship with Lonely Planet just turned into hate/hate. I felt like I had a big "L" on my forehead.

No matter, you get what you pay for I supposed, and that "L" stood for "luxury" I guessed. I called my National Tour Operations contact in town who picked me up in twenty minutes to give me the city tour I had booked and paid for in advance with my AmEx card.

"There's a problem," Legasse the tour guide said as we drove to the NTO office in the super fancy Tana Hotel, run by the government at $65 a night. (Contrary to what you may think, "government hotels" aren't basic tenements; in Ethiopia, the government runs the upscale hotel chain and tour companies.) Withing ten minutes I was on the phone with the NTO office back in Addis. Hamere's boss told me there were two problems: 1) that Hamere mad a mistake in my charges; she charged me the rate if I had two people and that I actually owed $50 more being solo and 2) my American Express card was rejected. I wasn't so shocked when I heard that the card was rejected; Egypt Air probably charged on it first, flagging a block on all subsequent overseas charges since I never told them I was going overseas beforehand. What I was in shock was the extra money that I had to pay, especially when I knew from the Bradt guide that paying the government tour price was way too high.

I followed the omen of the AmEx rejection. Perhaps it wasn't coincidental, perhaps it was a sign that since I wasn't technically paid for any of NTO's services, that I should go the cheaper, independent route -- and with new friends (one of which knew Amharic). I followed the sign and canceled the order, surrendering the three other vouchers I had in my pocket for the other cities.

"Sorry about everything," Legasse apologized. No longer would he be my guide, and no longer would we go off to the Blue Nile Falls that afternoon.

"I suppose I have to get my own taxi now, huh?"

He arranged one for me, which took me back to my privatized and much cheaper hotel just in time to tell roommate Fred that I would join him and Lishan on their cheaper boat deal.

CONVERSING IN ENGLISH and a smattering of French, Fred, Lishan and I discussed our plans over a mid-afternoon lunch at a humble little lakeshore restaurant. Mulualem tracked us down almost immediately after we finished eating (he probably just asked people in town "Where did that white guy go?") and brought us to the nice lakeshore hangout, Pelican Park, where photography rights were 4 birr (or free if you're sneaky about it with a tiny camera.) Mulualem and his associate chat us up as we sat with our teas and explained our options: a short trip or a long trip at different prices. Fred played the game of not giving a straight answer or declining offers. "We don't have to go with you if we're not happy" was his basic strategy. "It's not a race. We have time."

Easy for him to say; I only had the next day for Bahir Dar before having to move on since I still had domestic flights to make (booked independently from NTO and on a MasterCard).

Fred waited out the guys and played the game until it was nighttime. All plans to see Blue Nile Falls that day for me were out the door, although Mulualem and his colleague said that it wasn't the season to see it since there wasn't much water. Fred figured it was just a ploy in their end of the game to have us spend more time/money with them.

After wandering town with Mulualem still escorting us for business, we stopped for snacks and shopping and eventually told him to meet us at our hotel in an hour for our answer. When we got back to the hotel and looked in the Bradt guide, it confirmed that the prices for the full-day tour we were interested in were correct.

"I've noticed that most Ethiopians usually tell the truth," Fred pointed out. No one was really out to scam us after all.

The street boys came at 9:00 and we told them it was a go for the next day. They asked us for 100 birr as a deposit, which Fred played again and declined. "It's fine. More important that money is your word," one guy said.

"You have our word."

"Meet us here at 6:00? We're not going anywhere," I added.

And that was that. Lishan went to bed early while Fred and I went out for dinner and drinks nearby. We didn't stay out too late because our full-day boat tour would start very early and go on all day. I'd have to forsake Blue Nile Falls, but as Mulualem said, it wasn't worth seeing anyway. When Fred and I asked a random guy in a cafe about the falls, the guy also confirmed the falls weren't spectacular that time of year. Perhaps they all do tell the truth after all.

Sacred Lake

DAY 221: "Philippines!" the street boy finally guessed correctly. Since the day before it baffled him where my heritage was from and I had him try and guess. He told me that it it weren't for my eyes, I'd probably pass as an Ethiopian with the color of my skin.

The Ethiopian street boys escorted us to a restaurant nearby where we picked up some sandwiches for later and then to a fruit stand for some snacks. We had to have enough provisions for us since there would be no places to get food on our full-day tour of Lake Tana's monasteries.

LAKE TANA, ETHIOPIA'S LARGEST LAKE (there are several in the Great Rift Valley) was the country's most significant, it being the source of the Blue Nile River, which feeds into the more famous Nile. The freshwater lake is home to 29 monasteries dating back to the 4th century, which are still in use today. The farthest one of the four we were to visit was our first destination, situation on a big secluded island in the middle of the lake.

A motorized dingy driven by a young captain took me, Fred, Lishan, a guide named Yalo and two Ethiopian tourists along the water. You may be thinking (like I did), "Ethiopian tourists?" Yes. Ethiopia does have citizens that are well-off enough to go on tours with Westerners. They even had a digital still camera and a Sony Handycam video camera. That Sally Struthers, what a bitch! All this time we thought Ethiopia was nothing but starving kids; perhaps it really was all propaganda for her own personal gain.

WE RODE A LONG FOUR-HOUR BOAT JOURNEY, passed fishermen in papyrus reed boats and flocks of pelicans. The ride was long and tedious and really boring after a while; the big island in the middle of the lake was so far away it wasn't part of the standard tour, but I fell for Fred's insistance of having to see a monastery where you look around and see nothing but water. "It will be wahdahful!" he kept on saying.

When we finally arrived on the shore of Dek Island, it was "wahdahful" after all. What was before me was something I'd never seen before; it was something out of medieval folklore, a tower and dock made of stone with and archway and path that led to the Narga Selassie monastery church, built out of stone and mud in the 17th century and still used today. Resident monks led us around the grounds, starting at its "museum," which is in quotes because it wasn't a museum in a traditional sense; it was more like a "closet" of stuff that two monks brought out to show us, including medieval crosses dating back to the 17th century given to the monks by the royal family of Gondar, the kingdom to the north of the lake. More impressionably, the monks brought out 400-year-old texts with pages made of goatskin that had stood the test of time. Four hundred years old, man; that's old enough for a museum to post signs that say "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH" or "NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY."

"Can I touch it?" I asked Yalo who asked the monks in Amharic.

"Yes."

I felt the texture of the parchment and its ancient inks, feeling history pass through my pores. (Take that, Mona Lisa!)

The church of Narga Selassie was designed in the same ring-shaped way as the other churches I had seen, only this particular one was built without the use of nails; everything fit like a puzzle, which is something to be said in an era of IKEA furniture stores. In the center of the ring was the sacred area that was only accessible to the monks (picture above), where the tabot, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant was placed. We walked around the tabot area with our shoes off, admiring the old murals and tapestries, all of which we could touch and flash with our cameras.

SNACKING ON BANANAS, mangoes and egg sandwiches staved our hunger as we rode back the other way to the Zege Peninsula in the train of the only other dingy of tourists out that far in the lake. The 90-minute ride brought us to the area of several stone-built monastery churches, two of which we visited The oldest of this pair dated back to the 14th century, although it was restored with a corrugated tin room in 2001. The two churches shared a museum, with artifacts shown to us by a shy monk who didn't want his face on camera. But he had no reservations showing us the 14th century crowns worn by the priests then and now.

One of the more significant monasteries, Kebran Gabriel, was our fourth and final holy site to visit of the day, although only half of us could see it; women are forbidden to enter. I'm guessing the reason was to keep the forty monks from forty unholy boners. Such a sacrifice is tame than what they used to do. In the 16th century, monks wore chainmail all day, all night, not as a form of armor, but as a self-torture device; in the day it gets extremely hot and at night it gets extremely cold. The suffering brought them closer to God, which is something to be said in an era of unholy boners.

While Kebran Gabriel's church design was more-or-less the same circular structure with a sacred tabot hidden in the middle away from mortals' eyes behind walls painted with murals depiciting stories of the Bible, the museum was the most impressive of all the museums of the day, mainly because the monk there was very knowledgeable with history -- and he spoke English. He showed us the 14th-century silver crosses designed in the styles of Gondor, Lalibela and Axum, ancient prayer scrolls and more ancient texts dating back to 1555 A.D. Touching the pages was allowed again; I suppose if you can't touch women on the island, you might as well touch 450-year-old books.

Women got their revenge (sort of) back on the mainland when Fred took Lishan to a local hairdresser in town. "You're not allowed in," Mulualem told him. "It's for women only."

I suppose in a town near a lake with sites sacred to men, women should have their sacred places too.

From Guess to Gondar

DAY 222: Before I came to Ethiopia, my American conception of the country crom from images of starving children showed on Sally Struthers commercials asking for money. However this stereotypical image continued to deteriorate the more I "discovered" the "real" Ethiopia. Present day Ethiopia may be developing from a state of famine, but past Ethiopia had already developed into former kingdoms, like the kingdom of Gondar in the Middle Ages.

FOR ME, THE ROAD TO GONDAR was a long one, starting in Bahir Dar. Mulualem who "volunteered" to escort me to a Gondar-bound bus picked me up at my hotel at 5:30 in hopes of getting a 6:00 a.m. bus. I thought he would have come via taxi, but there was non, plus all shared taxis going by were full. (In Ethiopia they are more civil about overcrowded, unlike the other African nations I'd seen.)

"No problem, no problem," Mulualem said. He, like many others, kept on saying that, like it was Ethiopia's national motto. We walked to the bus terminal -- it only took 15 minutes anyway - but in those 15 minutes, all the tickets for the 6:00 a.m. bus were taken.

"No problem, no problem," Mulualem said again. He told me there would be another at 8:00 passing through from a small village and that I should wait in the nearby coffee shop to avoid the thieves lurking in the bus terminal area. In the meantime, he went off on bicycle to try and find if there was a shared Land Cruiser going up to Gondar that perhaps I could hitch onto.

TWO HOURS, TWO COFFEES and a Fanta Orange later, a bus pulled in and people rushed over to it. I thought it would be "no problem, no problem" to get a ticket, but a long line formed. Mulualem led me to the conductor so that I could wave 20 birr to get a ticket. Soon I realized Mulualem's idea of "no problem" was to cut the twenty or so people on line in order to secure a seat -- he said they'd give it to me because I'm a foreigner. I felt bad about cutting the line -- it'd only make me the most hated guy on the bus -- but at the same time I desperately wanted to get to Gondar ASAP since I only had that day to explore it.

The bus left at 9:00 and soon I was on my way with the fifty or so people staring at me for cutting.

THE ROAD TO GONDAR was a long and bumpy one. Above all it was dusty as hell, like hyperventilating into a used vacuum bag. The vacuum bag torture only lasted five hours, passed little villages and a drier landscape that looked more like the dry images on TV. There was hope though; irrigation and farming productions were being made and in fact, the dirt road was in the process of being paved, almost as if the Ethiopian government was gearing up for the time mainstream tourists discovered that Ethiopia has a rich historical past that rivals more touristy Peru.

GONDAR SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING out of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and in fact it is. Known by some as "Africa's Camelot," the kingdom of Gondar was capital of Ethiopia when a family lineage of emperors ruled from 1632 to 1886. While people in the old days may have ridden in on a horse, I rode in on a bus -- and got off too early with the wrong advice of a fellow passenger. I should have gotten off in the town center, but instead I was on the outskirts, having to walk through a crowd of villagers calling "Japan!" or "China!" to me. Eventually I got sick of it and just hopped into a minivan taxi which took me to the Circle Hotel, a mid-range place at $10/night for a room with a view and a TV. MTV's Wade Robson Project was on when I arrived and when I tried to change it, I discovered that my TV would only receive whatever channel they were watching in the bar upstairs.

With my limited time and painfully inadequate Lonely Planet African on a Shoestring guidebook, I aimlessly walked the streets on my one afternoon in the former kingdom. A little kid who was fairly eloquent in English started following me. It was he who told me I was going in the wrong direction to the castle, so I let him tag along.

"Where do you come from?" he asked

"Guess."

"Japan? China?" he guessed, but the answer I was looking for was "Philippines." (I'd given up telling people "America" because whenever someone asks me where I'm from and I say "America" or "The States," they either don't believe me or keep on asking questions until they find out I have Filipino heritage.)

The boy's name was Amanuel and, so his story went, was a thirteen-year-old boy living by himself in a house to support his way through school (currently in grade 8). He told me he met tourists in town -- some taught him basic French, some basic Spanish -- and liked to show them around. He told me how one American tourist was so impressed with him, he took him along to visit the other sites of Ethiopia.

Amanuel led me not too far down the road to the Ethiopian Airlines office to confirm my ticket and then to the entrance gate of the Royal Compound, a World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO in 1999.

"I will wait for you out here," Amanuel said to me.

"Sure."

I paid the 50 birr entrance fee and got a ticket which I showed to the guard.

"Where you from?" he asked.

"Guess," I requested.

"Japan?"

"No."

"Where?"

"Guess."

"Ah."

"Where are you from?" I asked him.

"Ethiopia."

"And what country do I come from?"

"You come from Guess."

I left it alone after that.

FROM THE KINGDOM OF GUESS, I explored the former kindgom of Gondar. I wandered the compound in awe of the castles before me. Middle Age castles? This is Ethiopia? Damn you, Sally Struthers! I took photos of the old stone buildings -- even sneaking in a short video clip on my camcorder by hiding in a little stone house. (Video rights cost an extra 75 birr.)

As much as I was impressed with the architecture, the whole thing was just a bunch of stones without proper historical explanation. Luckily the compound provided free guides (minus tip) which, to my surprise, where extremely knowledgeable, even when I questioned him on loopholes in his lecture. The friendly guide (I forgot his name) led me from building to building, explaining the history of Gondar.

THE GLORY OF GONDAR came when Emperor king Fasilidas came to power after replacing his tyrant ruler father who, in 1622, converted from Ethiopian Orthodox to Catholicism and tried to convert the rest of his domain by violent force. Fasilidas restored the Ethiopian Orthodox church -- kicking out all Catholic missionaries -- in what was called an era of "Closed Door Policy."

During this time, Fasilidas had a huge castle built to honor him (picture above), an architectural blend of Portuguese, Indian and Moorish from the influences of foreign people that arrived via ship. Inside the unique design the influences continued, from the reliefs on the wall to the shape of the windows to the ingenious two-sided fireplace in between two rooms. During Fasilidas' reign, he also had an archive building erected for books and documents.

Unlike European kings who built their own castles or lived in pre-existing ones, the tradition of the royal Gondar lineage was to simply add-on to the pre-existing structure within the compound. Fasilidas' successor, his son Yohanness I had a chancellory building built in his name, in a Moorish design annexed to the main castle. After him was Iyasu the Great, who built a smaller castle nearby, complete with a cleverly-designed counter-clockwise spiral staircase up to the tower so he could take full advantage against his opponent, being left-handed.

Next down the lineage of architecture-loving kings was King Dawit, who added a concert hall and lion cages, and then Bekafa who built a banquet hall before passing the architectural torch to his wife, Regent Miniwab. She built a library on campus, which is still used today.

The guide suggested that I listen to his entire tour first and then go back to take my photos. After tipping him 10 birr, I followed the trail again with my little camera, keeping my video camera in my vest pocket hidden -- or so I thought.

"You have a video recorder," a security guard said.

"Yes, but I haven't been using it."

He wasn't convinced. He said he saw me used it before. Busted.

"Since you have video, that is criminal."

Shit. Was I about to be arrested? Me? A criminal? I played dumb but didn't deny taking video. It ws the one case where recorded evidence actually counted against me. "Oh, I thought you pay afterwards if you decide you want to shoot video."

"No, you were supposed to pay. It's too late. It is criminal."

There went that word again. Criminal. Guess I wasn't so smooth when I shot that footage in the little house.

The guard escorted me to the main security gate. All the while I'm playing dumb with my alibi that I thought you were to pay the extra 75 birr afterwards.

"No argument?" he asked me.

"No, I can pay it." And I did. Needless to say, afterwards I pretty much had a field day shooting every angle of the compound.

MY ADMISSION INTO THE ROYAL COMPOUND gave me admission to the Fasilidas Baths across town. Of course, Amanuel was waiting for me outside and wanted to be my escort. I figured that the hell, I'll give him 10 birr for his guidance like I gave to Mulualem that morning.

Since I had cancelled all my NTO tours when my American Express card was rejected and was now paying everything out of pocket, I was low on petty cash. Amanuel walked me to the bank in town, but just my luck (again); I was stuck and low on cash on yet another bank holiday, Julian New Year. I'd have to get by and wing it for the meantime.

Like during the days of the emperor kings, one thing remained since the days of the kingdom of Gondar: horse carriages. For a tiny fraction of the cost of a horse and carriage ride in New York's Central Park, I paid the $2.50 USD for Amanuel and I to ride to the Fasilidas Bath house down the hill across town. Amanuel, the driver and the horse waited around for me to explore the building, although there wasn't too much to it. Camelot it was not.

On the horse and carriage ride back up the hill into town, Amanuel told me more about his life; it was a sob story to emotionally blackmail me for some more money I figured. He told me that his house's monthly rent was 50 birr/month and that he preferred if tourists gave him books or school supplies because whenever he gets money, bigger guys steal it and the cops don't believe him because he "looks like a kid." I figured buying him a world map for his help would be a thoughtful and significant gesture since all day he was trying to guess the country of my heritage, and he pretty much was tapped out on all the countries he knew in the world. No store had a map however and so I took him out at a cafe for some fresh mango juice. It was at the cafe that his plan of emotional blackmail became more and more obvious, as he kept on asking, "Please, if you can help me pay my rent, I don't want to sleep on the streets." Hmm, I thought you said you didn't want money.

"Okay, don't worry. I'll help."

"Do you have any books? I like to read."

"Yeah, I have a book I can give you." I had finished Zadie Smith's White Teeth and wanted to get rid of the extra weight in my bag.

Amanuel took me to an internet cafe, where we waited in a room for a computer to free up. "Hey look, a world map!" I pointed out. There was one on the wall. I pointed to the Philippines for show him my heritage. All he had to do was read it to get the answer, but he said the type was too small. I handwrote it on the back of my notepad, even phoenetically so he could just pronounce it. He still couldn't get it.

"Philippines." I said. Like to read he says?

"Oh, Philippines."

"Yeah."

After my internet session, Amanuel brought me back to my hotel. I went up to my room to get the book for him. For his guidance, I put in a 10 birr note as a "surprise bookmark." However, he wasn't impressed.

"I thought you would help me pay my rent."

Help you, yes. Not pay the whole goddam thing, you little illiterate bastard.

"I did help you. There's ten birr inside." He saw the note and flipped through the pages to find more.

"My rent is fifty birr. Do you want me to sleep in the street?" he said all sappy.

50 birr, yeah right. Mulualem was satisfied with ten, the Royal Compound guide was happy with ten and this little punk wanted fifty? I reversed his tactic. "I'm sorry. The bank was closed. I have no more cash. Do you want me to sleep in the street?"

"No."

"Then fine. I gave you ten and a juice and the book. If you don't want the book, I want it back." I was really getting pissed off at this kid.

"No, no no. I want the book. I like to read. But maybe you can give me twenty? I don't want to sleep on the street." Again, his rehearsed line of emotional blackmail. He wouldn't leave me alone, so I gave him five more to get rid of him.

The rest of the day and night I just vegged in my room and in the rooftop bar with the comforts of CNN and M Net, a movie channel that played Undisputed and Cecil B. Demented. Later on that night, I just started laughing that after all the effort Amanuel put towards me, he got less than two bucks.

I wondered if the kings of Gondar ever had to deal with this.

Holy Land of Honey

DAY 223: According to legend, in the the 11th century, an Ethiopian king named Lalibela had a divine vision in a dream, which instructed him to building a bunch of churches. And so, eleven churches were built in his name in a mountain town of his same name, and it it amongst the holiest places in all of Ethiopia.

Getting to the town of Lalibela was a much easier affair than getting to Bahir Dar or Gondar; this time I took a plan over the mountains to spare my lungs from vacuum bag torture. After the 30-min. flight over the Simien Mountains I found myself at Lalibela airport where a taxi service drove me through along the curvy mountain roads into town. The salesman in the back seat with me tried to push a tour right away, but I declined with the fib that "I'm waiting for someone first. I don't know what our plans are."

The Private Roha Hotel, as opposed to the luxurious government-run Roha Hotel, was a humble little place atop a hill with a view of the town. The town was more like a big mountain village with only one paved road (to the airport). The rest of the dirt roads went winded up and down hill for the villagers to walk from place to place. According to Lonely Planet "the town is chronically poor and full of ailing beggars and pilgrims," which (for a change) was right on the money. My guidebook also said "You're visit will be a misery unless you hire a guide." Before my Change of Plans, a guide was already taken care of and booked in advance, but now I was back to the drawing board.

Luckily there was a friendly teenage boy named Adam at the Private Roha who offered to show me around at a flat rate of 150 birr, which included seeing the eleven rock-hewn churches, a trek up the mountain to the Asheton Maryam monastery, seeing a soccer game and a religious ceremony. With not banks or money exchanges in town, I had limited cash and had to figure a way to get some more; all I had was a rejected AmEx card, a MasterCard with a small cash advance as far as I remembered (only $18 available) and a $50 travelers check. The fancy government Roha Hotel let me exchange the travelers check provided that I eat there, and after my fancy lunch I asked the hotel manager about my 150 birr prospect with Adam. He confirmed it was a good deal -- an official guide would have been 250-300 birr -- provided that Adam could would be permitted into the churches like an official guide.

"I checked with the hotel manager," I told Adam back at the Private Roha. "He says that you're giving me a good deal if you can get into the churches. But he says only official guides can get in."

Adam argued that they'd let him in anyway, and with not much choice or time, I just went with Adam's deal; at 100-150 birr less than the price of an official guide, I supposed I'd just get what I paid for.

ALL AFTERNOON ADAM LED ME around town, through the Saturday markets, to five of the eleven churches (saving six for the next day) and he was right; he was allowed into the churches as my guide -- well, three out of five ain't bad. For the two he wasn't allowed to enter, he simply explained to me outside the things I'd see inside.

We started off with the most famous of the churches, the St. George Church, the definitive church as seen in a Lalibela postcard. St. George's distinct cross shape (picture above) was carved from the ground downwards with (as legend has it) the help of angels.

Walking through the narrow, carved-out passageways, catwalks and tunnels carved in and through the bedrock on the base level of the churches, Adam led me to the holy places, the Aba Lebena, the Beata Emannuel, the Beata Gabriel and Aba Merkoreos. Inside, priests showed me sacred crosses and centuries-old bibles, letting me touch and photograph them. In Aba Lebana, the priest there even blessed me with the sacred cross like I was being knighted by a king. While that made me a bit holier, I was no match for a holy man who made a pilgrimate to the Aba Merkoreos church and died there. His 500-year-old bones still remain.

I was impressed with the craftmanship of all of the churches; it was like walking through ancient history, untouched by mainstream tourism. Perhaps the mystique of the churches would not last forever; most of them were covered in scaffolding for restoration as funded by UNESCO.

KING LALIBELA, ACCORDING TO ADAM'S STORY, was born centuries ago and was temporarily abandoned by his mother. When she returned, the baby was surrounded by honey bees, and thus his name "Lalibela" was given, for it means "honey eater."

Honey eaters still exist today in Tej houses all over the country. Tej is a fermented honey mead drink served in flasks that a mad scientist might use. The concoction inside can get you pretty drunk fast -- I had a pretty strong one in Addis Ababa that got me pretty trashed after my first sampling of it.

The Askalech Tej House in Lalibela was where I spent the rest of the day, sitting in a corner booth with Adam, sipping on tej. Adam turned out to be a good guide after all, although just not super enthusiastic -- but then again, who was to say an official guide would have been? I tried to buy Adam a tej hoping a little liquor would spice him up, but he declined.

No matter, more for me. Needless to say I got tipsy and I wondered if it was the tej that provided the "divine vision" for Lalibela to build all those churches.

Where Am I From?

DAY 224: Great, another trek, I sarcastically thought to myself as I caught my breath hiking up the mountain, trailing behind my 16-year-old guide Adam. The two-hour uphill trek alongside faithful villagers took us to the Asheton Maryam monastery, carved out of the side of a mountain before King Lalibela ever had the vision to build his eleven rock-hewn ones down the hill.

This was just one of the activities in the "program" Adam had for me on the second day of my two-day unofficial tour of Lalibela. We finally reached the monastery by 9:30 in the morning, and although quite impressive, was sort of anti-climactic with all the UNESCO restoration scaffolding obstructing its face. Inside was less of a let down with paintings old (300-years-old) and new (60-years-old).

"Hello Mister!" one of the five or so kids called to me as we walked down the mountain trail together. "Where are you from?"

"Guess."

"Japan."

"No."

"China."

"No."

"Korea."

"No."

The game went on for the entire one-hour trek back into town (picture above). "Italy? England? Taiwan?" They pretty much mentioned every country in the world that they knew of, but none of them said "Philippines." When confirming my flight, I asked the Ethiopian Airlines guy to guess my heritage and he guessed Kazakistan off the bat. Kazakistan? I never got that one before.

After some Mirinda orange soda and a Pepsi (Pepsi products seem to have dominated Coca-Cola ones in Ethiopia), I took a rest before Adam's first afternoon activity: to watch a football/soccer game at my request. We walked across town that windy day -- gusts blew dust and dirt into our faces -- to the dusty field by the primary school. It was there I met Tesfe, a sports education college graduate and teacher or two years, who had returned to his hometown of Lalibela to organize a soccer league of different age groups to help discipline kids and keep them off the streets. It was a day of 17 and under to play, each team distinguished by their "uniforms." I put "uniform" in quotes because there was no official clothing for most teams, just a common color of hand-me-down clothes sold to them indirectly from the Salvation Army. Yes, the old clothes you donate to Salvation Army isn't just given to poor people, it is sold to them. Old clothes from the States are shipped overseas, which is why I shouldn't have been surprised them I saw a woman in Zambia wearing a Pascack Valley Hospital shirt from a hospital in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Hand-me-Down Yellow played and beat Hand-Me-Down Blue 5-nil and afterwards Adam and I stuck around for the first half of the next game to see his friend play. I sat on the sidelines watching the game with other kids -- most of them were less interested in the game and gave all focus to me, the outsider. Again, the guessing game began with what evolved from a couple of kids to a small mob surrounding me. The usual "Japan!" "China!" "Korea!" were all rejected by me and I wouldn't get them an answer. One funny boy was convinced that I was fucking with them after they mentioned all possible answers. "No, you are from Japan. Come on. Japan," he said.

FIVE CHURCHES DOWN, six to go. Adam led me to the final six, the Tomb of Adam, St. Michael's (the largest church which held the Tomb of Lalibela), Beata Danegal, Beata Meskel, Beata Madenmelen and St. Mary's, the first of the churches to be built. Out of the eleven churches, none of them were used (so I was told) for the religious procession that suddenly came through town.

"It's a faranji wedding," an onlooker told me. Faranji was Amharic for "mzungu" or "gringo" or "foreigner." Soon a caravan of mules, trucks and people escorted a French couple that had just gotten married. The groom was an ex-pat living in Lalibela as a teacher in a French school. While most people smiled at the silly faranjis in their procession through town, one old man, who obviously hated the intrusion of Westerners into his holy homeland, attempted to stone the party with big rocks -- a younger, more tolerant man had to restrain him.

ADAM ENDED HIS TOUR FOR THE DAY. I paid him 140 birr out of the 150 I owed him, with ten to be paid after he took me to a church ceremony early the next morning before my flight. My teenaged guide went on his way, leaving me to finally experience how the villagers would behave towards me without a local escort. There was a lot more calls of "Hello Japani!" which I just ignored, althought it was impossible for me to ignore the boy that followed me into a restaurant and sat near me. He too couldn't guess where I was from and just gave up after twenty minutes.

Back in the streets I walked down the hill to the Private Roha Hotel. An old woman saw me alone and obviously hated my Western presence (or was it Far Eastern?) in her holy homeland. She said something in Amharic that just sounded angry and then threw her cane at me. She missed.

But not everyone was so confused at my presence. One boy recognized me and told me where I was from.

"You were from the soccer game today!"

Corrrect you are, kid.

Passing Through History

DAY 225: According to Hollywood folklore -- i.e. Steven Spielburg's 1981 Indiana Jones classic Raiders of the Lost Ark -- the Ark of the Covenant was taken by an Egyptian pharoah to the city of Tanis and hidden in an underground temple known as the Well of the Souls, outside of Cairo, Egypt. However, if you follow history as recorded by The Bible, the Ark was actually taken from Jerusalem to the city of Aksum by Abyssia's (Ethiopia's) first emperor Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.

Apparently, Hollywood was "digging in the wrong place."

MY TOUR OF THE HISTORICAL ROUTE of Ethiopia would take me to the right place, the city of Aksum, 60 km. south of the Ethiopian/Eritrean border where armed conflict still exists today.

The day started in Lalibela at 6 a.m. when my teenaged guide Adam took me to one last highlight of his hometown: a church ceremony. I had missed the regular Sunday morning services since I went on a trek to the Asheton Maryam monastery in the mountains, but Adam told me that that was okay because the ceremony we were about to see would be better for it was the Festival of St. George, a day of religious observance in Lalibela.

With our shoes off, we made our way through the crowd of holy men and women at the cross-shaped St. George church chanting and singing in Amharic as a slow and steady drum beat and bell chime came from a cave-like room across the way. They bowed their head down and prayed for God's blessing from a sacred cross. I stood there in the crowd, the only faranji, and felt a bit awkward -- but at the same time in awe that a completely different Christian ceremony surrounded me from the ones I had been brought up on.

AKSUM, CAPITAL OF A ZAGWA EMPIRE lasting 100 B.C. to 500 A.D. was once a great civilization that traded and co-existed with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Nubian. As one local man put it, "Aksum was known all over the world, the way America is today."

A taxi ride and 40-minute flight later, I found myself in the former glory of Aksum in a familiar predicament: again I was stuck in another remote town without enough cash on me. If I couldn't use a credit card in Aksum, I would have been totally screwed; I would have come all that way to the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, only to have enough money to just stay and sit in the airport.

After collecting my baggage, I exited to the main airport hall and was approached by a group of pushing salesmen, each one with a sign representing
their respective hotel.

"Africa Hotel! We have private toilet and showers in the room. Only 50 birr!"

"I have no cash."

"We will take travelers check."

"I don't have those either. I only have a credit card."

Out of all the hotel signs, only one, the government-run Yeha Hotel took plastic. The government hotels cost Western prices ($38 USD as opposed to $5-$10) but they were in upscale facilities. Hearing that there was no chance of an ATM or a cash advance in Aksum, the luxury hotel was my only option. Oh, poor me.

As fancy a place as the Yeha Hotel was, it was all in appearance. For four times the prices of staying in a decent (cash-only) private hotel, I didn't even get a TV in the room and the water supply wasn't consistant. However, the Yeha was home to a courteous staff and courteous people that helped me in my time of financial need. while my airport transfer, accommodation and food could be put on my MasterCard, tours could not be -- not even with the in-house NTO office.

I explained to NTO and a group of workers my situation, how I had very limited cash -- only enough for admission fees to the archaelogical sites and maybe one taxi fare -- and had to charge everything else.

"You have money, but you don't have money," one guy said. "It is a paradox."

Thanks buddy, I know that.

Luckily for me, the government-run taxi driver offered to drive me and a guide around on goodwill for the price I would have paid NTO anyway before I canceled. I was to simply wire him the money from his bank's branch office when I got back to Addis. While most people in the world feel sorry for the poor people of Ethiopia, the tables had turned: Ethiopians were now coming to my aid. I knew there would be a reason why I was a part of Hands Across America in 1986 one day! Not even financial woes would stop me from reaching the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

WITH ONLY ONE AFTERNOON TO PASS THROUGH HISTORY with the archaelogical sites of Aksum, my tour of goodwill started right away. The driver Nugusse took me and guide Tedros to the first site, the ruins of the Palace of Queen of Sheba, which was excavated in 1960. It was here that the story of the Ark began.

Queen of Sheba, the regent of Ethiopia journed to Jerusalem pay a visit to King Solomon. As story has it, the two single people of royalty flirted with each other through windows across a garden, which led to a big first date. The dinner was very spicy and the queen wanted some water, but the kind only gave her a little. That night, the queen still wanted water and snuck into the king's quarters where he kept a pitcher. However, the rule was that he could have his way with anyone trying to steal his stuff. Queen of Sheba got caught and he did have his way with her. Nine months later, Menelik I was born back home in Aksum. When he was old enough, he journed to Jerusalem to visit his father and, at his mother's request, take the Ark of the Covenant for the Axumite empire. King Solomon offered the Ark of St. Michael, but Menelik's priests did the old switcheroo: they swapped covers of the two arks so when the smuggled out the Ark of the Covevant it would at a glance look like it was still there in Jerusalem. Before Solomon realized the wrong ark was in the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, Menelik & Co. had been long gone.

AFTER THE PALACE RUINS, Nugusse took Tedros and I to the former palace of King Kaleb of 500 A.D., excavated in 1906. Wandering the underground fortress was something out of an adventure film; we explored the tunnels via torch light and in one room, the former treasure room, we were greeted by the flapping sounds of bats. From there, we visited the reservoir where Queen of Sheba bathed and then the Stele Field, Aksum's distinct postcard trademark. Known as May Hedja, this royal cemetary was the site of many steles, or obelisks, the tallest one still standing at 23 m. high. Underneath the steles were tombs unless, like the case of one stele, it had fallen over.

From the Tomb of King Romhey to the Tomb of King Basen and his royal family, we made our way to Ezana Park, named after the king whose story was engraved on a monolith in three languages: Ge'ez, Sabean and Greek (the language of business back then). For an archaelogical site, the park was pretty commercialized with little outdoor table cafes on its grounds. On the loudspeaker nearby, I heard the Backstreet Boys -- even Tedros was singing along:

"...Tell me why-y... I never want to hear you say... I want it that way..."

HAILA SILASSIE BERHE, a local archaelogical expert who had aided most of the local excavations and worked with the National Geographic Society, led me away from the sounds of boy bands and around the Archaelogical Museum, the latest stop on my tour. A very knowledgeable guy, he led me around the small museum contained everything that had been excavated from Aksum thus far -- tons of known things were still underground, just not dug up yet. Haila explained that, as a "professional," he knew that even some of Ethiopia's history was recorded wrong in books. For example, Lonely Planet says Ethiopia translates to "burned faces," when in fact it means "power and peace."

Haila was excited that a seemingly young guy like me was taking notes of his informal lecture. "We need young people to tell the real history of Ethiopia so people will know." The whole thing was inspiration and made me want to be an archaelogist right then and there. And speaking of archaelogy, next door to the museum was the big archaelogical Axumite finale: the grounds of St. Mary of Zion Church, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

For those who don't know (or never saw the Spielburg movie), The Ark of the Covenant is the chest that the Hebrews used to carry around the Ten Commandments in. Yes, the actual Ten Commandments. The original stone tablets that Moses brought down out of Mount Herub and smashed if you believe in that sort of thing.

Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday school?

Tedros passed me off to a church guide who led me passed the beggars to the two churches on site: the new modern church, built by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1965 in the shape of a former religious crown of Gondar; and the old church built in the 17th century, also influenced by the stylings of Gondar. Inside the older one were examples of the difference in pre-Byzantine and Byzantine depictions of the Virgin Mary: the former had her in dark, Ethiopian-toned skin.

In between the two churches was a small green shrine building surrounded by a gate (picture above; sorry it's blurry, but this was the best of a series of many shots coming from my ailing camera). "The Ark is in there," my guide told me.

"Can we see it?"

"No, no one is allowed."

"What about the priests?"

"No, only one monk is allowed inside." This guardian monk, draped in yellow, made an appearance outside the building, but not outside the gate for he was sworn never to leave.

"Can I talk to the monk?" I pleaded. Perhaps I could persuade him for a peek.

"No. No tourist can talk or take pictures with the monk."

"But look," I pointed out the man talking to the monk through the gate. "Someone's talking to him. Who's that? How come he can talk to the monk?"

"He is a deacon."

"Oh."

There was another person walking within the vicinity of the Ark, inside the gated perimeter. "Wait, who's that? How come he gets to be inside?"

"That's the servant of the monk," the guide said. He told me the servant was allowed in and out of the gate to help the monk and give him food.

"So how come he gets to be the servant?" Perhaps I could go through the servant to sneek a peek.

"I don't understand."

"That guy in there. How did he get to become the servant?"

"The monk choose him."

"Oh, so you have to be picked." Looked like I was hitting a dead end, just like every other tourist wanting to see the famed Ark of the Covenant. I gave it one more shot: "So, there's no way we can see The Ark?"

"No."

Perhaps it was best that I didn't get to see the Ark of the Covenant; maybe if I did, my face would have melted off like the Nazis' at the end of the Indiana Jones movie for gazing upon it. Or perhaps even, what some may considered to be a fate worse than that, I'd be subjected to more Backstreet Boys.

My Life in Airports

DAY 226: I had so many errands to run that day for when I got back to Addis Ababa that I had to make a checklist: get a taxi from airport to hotel, pick up bag in storage to get ATM card, go to privatized Dashen bank to withdraw cash, go to Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to wire payback money to Nugusse, go to NTO office to straighten out rejected AmEx mess, go back to hotel to sort out photos, organize a transport to the airport, go to the internet cafe to upload at least the photos, go back to hotel and type until my airport transport at 1 a.m.

Simple enough. And then my flight got canceled.

Originally I was to fly out of Aksum at 9:55 a.m. and everything was a go when I arrived at the airport by 8:30. By 9:30 we got word that there would be a delay because of plane problems and an hour later we were told the morning flight would not be available until after the afternoon flight at 2 p.m. Normally this wouildn't bother me, but I had so much to do before heading on the red eye to Cairo. With the ETA of Addis now at 4 p.m., it put me in a predicament because the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia closed at 3 p.m. and there went my window to pay back Nugusse for the 280 birr he lent me to see Aksum.

"I need to make a phone call," I told Matteus, the Ethiopian Airlines attendant. I explained my situation and he led me to the office. On a normal day, Nugusse would be at the airport waiting for a fare, but his family was in town and he was probably showing them around.

I sat in the office and thought and thought and thought. "I could leave Ethiopia without paying him, but I don't want to do that," I told Matteus. But there really was no way to send him money given my ETA. Perhaps I could wire him via Western Union or send a bank check via the online checking at my bank later on? -- it'd be okay. Matteus and I called and called the number Nugusse gave me to try and get his bank info, only to get his sister saying he wasn't in. (Later that night I called and called some more with no luck and ultimately just sent him an e-mail to his associated hotel.)

This went on for hours until the waiting room catering arrived (egg sandwiches and fries). Sooner than I thought, it was 2 p.m. already and we were off to Addis, with a quick stopover in Lalibela. I arrived by 4:10 and was in a taxi by 4:20. "Debra Damo Hotel," I instructed. I was reunited with my bag and ATM which had been in storage.

I WAS STILL IN THE PREDICAMENT of not having enough cash in local currency to make it through my last day in Ethiopia. I thought I could just go to the Dashen Bank ATM that people in Aksum told me about; according to them, it was across the street from my hotel, but there wasn't one. The nearest ATM would require a taxi according to reception. Luck was on my side because in my portable safe, I had saved $100 USD in cash -- enough for me to get by. I exchanged $20 at reception and was back in business. I spent the money first on a minibus to downtown and arrived at NTO just before closing.

"Remember me?" I greeted Hamere. "I don't know what happened to my AmEx card. Did they say anything?" I was trying to deflect the conversation away from "Why did you cancel on us?" using the AmEx as a scapegoat. Hamere told me that AmEx couldn't give a reason, only that it was rejected. Meanwhile, I was to pick up my credit receipt to prevent them from charging it, but it was stuck in the cashier's office and she had gone home already.

"Come back tomorrow. Eight o'clock," she told me.

"I'm leaving at four."

"In the morning?"

"Yeah. To Cairo."

It was another predicament which could have easily been avoided if I didn't spend my whole morning and half an afternoon in Aksum's airport. After racking our brains, Hamere just told me she'd mail the receipt back to my address in The States. I took a taxi back to the hotel, and told that driver to come back for me at 1 a.m. to bring me to the airport.

IT WAS SORT OF A WASTE OF MONEY to check into a hotel room, knowing I'd only use it for about seven hours, but those seven hours counted. I sorted out my photos and went to the internet cafe, only to have the power go out. So there went that plan. After dinner I did some Blog work and packed my bags. I got one hour of sleep before the taxi took me to the airport.

Airport check-in was routine and I wandered in hallways (picture above), duty free shops, airport cafes and waiting rooms yet again until four in the morning. In total, I spent more of my waking life in airports that day than anywhere else.

An American in Cairo

DAY 227: Cairo, Egypt is known around the world for its ancient historical past. The ancient Egypt civilization was one of the greatest in the world, attracting millions of visitors around the world to see its pyramids, hieroglyphics and other ancient artifacts. However for me, having been away from the conveniences of American modern life for quite some time, I was looking forward to Cairo's fast food, movie theaters and other things that I took for granted back home in metro New York City.

All this would have to wait, as getting passed Egyptian immigration proved to be my toughest border crossing yet.

WITH RED EYES FROMT HE ONE HOUR NAP on my three-hour "red-eye" flight from Addis Ababa, I looked out the window from my window seat. No longer was I in sub-Saharan Africa, but in the Arabian north, where skin color was lighter and there was sand everywhere. We touched down, rode a transfer bus to the main building and went on line at customs. When I got to the window to have my passport stamped, the guy, after scrutinization, just took it away from me. "Go inside and sit."

Great. But no big deal. There were four others detained too, two Asian guys and two black guys; perhaps we were the only non-Egyptians, and we all raised flags in immigration officers' eyes.

Time went by, and it was "Waiting Time," which always seems a lot longer when you don't know how long it will be before something progresses. Curious and a little impatient, I went to the immigration booth and asked about my passport after the line had disappeared.

"Sit down," was the only answer. The officers had a real attitude with me too.

More Waiting Time. The Asian guys and the black guys didn't have as much hassle as me. Perhaps I was even more suspicious because of my American passport. Soon a plain clothes detective approached me with my passport. He had been assigned my case. He asked me in his broken English for my outgoing ticket and some identification. I showed him my driver's license. Everything else was in my baggage, so he escorted me to the back room where it was waiting for me. I showed him my outbound ticket to Casablanca, but he wanted to see more. In fact, all my tickets stubs since New York. My ticket back to New York. A whole bunch of stuff to prove that I wasn't a terrorist posing as an American since I didn't look typically American.

"Where are you from?"

"The States."

"But where you were born?"

"The States as well."

Again, another person who thought my truth was the "wrong answer." They never seem to believe that I'm American.

"No, your father then. Where was he born?"

"The Philippines."

"And your mother?"

"Philippines."

Furnishing all my ticket stubs since New York was hard to do b/c usually I just throw them away when they're not useful anymore. I searched and searched my bag, but found only a couple of stubs.

"Um, I don't have them anymore. I must have thrown them out."

Red flag.

Together, the two stubs and some old baggage claim stickers didn't quite put the entire puzzle of me together. I was an International Man of Mystery and they wanted to discover my intentions. To be fair, I could see their vantage point. There I was, a non-American-looking American, flying in not from the U.S.A. but from Ethiopia. I had no consistent proof to show my itinerary from New York to Quito, Quito to Cape Town, etc. I didn't have a ticket back to New York either.

I'd call that a big red flag, but come on, it's not like I said "bomb" on an airplane.

Luckily for me, I still had a printout of my bookings from AirTreks.com, which showed the flights I took from New York all the way to Cairo. That sufficed enough for their inquiry, although they probably were suspicious of it being a forged document since it wasn't official or anything. That and the fact that the itinerary ended in Cairo with no bookings to go on. (When I booked AirTreks tickets in July 2003, they could only give me flights from one year from then, which only brought me to Cairo -- the second half I'd have to book later on.) The detective went back to his office to consult, leaving me some more Waiting Time.

Am I going to be deported? Would they send me back to Ethiopia? The States? Oh, wouldn't that be cool; finally all the drama of travel would be over, and I could just veg in front of my old TV and watch DVDs again.

The detective came back with a card and asked me to write my signature five times in a row so that someone could analyze my handwriting. Simple enough; it was the same signature I'd been using on all my documents since I was ten-years-old. The detective took my card back to the office, giving me more Waiting Time, but then came back with another officer.

"Your signature doesn't match your passport."

"What?!" This was a total shocker for me.

"Signature again."

I signed on a blank card again.

"It doesn't match. Look," he said, pointing out the ascender of the first "d" in "Trinidad" was present on my passport signature, but in none of my signature tests. Great, the ONE time I put a line for the "d" and it's on my passport.

"But look, it's not here." I showed him the signature of my New Jersey driver's license. The ascender of the "d" wasn't there either. He believed me.

But then there were more questions. I felt like I was in a federal police interrogation. Wait a minute, I was in a federal police interrogation. The kind you see in the movies. "Why did you take Malaysian Airlines? Did you go to Malaysia?"

"No, from Buenos Aires to Cape Town, they run a flight en route to Kuala Lumpur. They stop in Cape Town on the way. It's cheaper."

"Ah, okay."

Slowly they soon realized that my story was too involved that it couldn't have been made up. The puzzle of this International Man of Mystery may have not been complete, but at least there wasn't anything that made me look like nothing but an innocent tourist.

"Okay. Welcome to Egypt. Go have your passport stamped."

I sighed and smiled a relief.

"Funny huh?" he smirked.

"I don't know what to think."

POUND. POUND. Passport stamped. I had arrived in Egypt officially.

Allow me to interject for a moment, but I am really wondering how many people are actually reading this. Seriously. If you are, please send me a comment below with your favorite color -- i.e. "My favorite color is... " -- even if you are an SBR (Silent Blog Reader), or haven't commented in a while. Thanks.

MY PLAN WAS TO GET TO THE RECOMMENDED SUN HOTEL in Tahrir Square in the modern sector of Cairo. I asked the tourist information desk the best way to go about getting there. The woman told me that taxis were expensive and that I could take the public bus down the road. "Take bus twenty seven, two seven, or four zero zero, four hundred," she advised me. She wrote down "27" and "400" in my notepad. When I got to the terminal, it was pointless because all the numbers were in Arabic numerals.

More Waiting Time. I asked a bus that pulled in if it went to Tahrir Square, and they said it did. I rode in the bus full of locals into town, through the modern streets where I couldn't read any of the Arabic signs to get my bearing. I never felt more lost. We drove by a KFC next to a McDonald's, in a similar position as I saw in my Lonely Planet map, which meant that the nearby rotunda must be Tahrir Square, so I just got off. Little did I know at the time that there were hundreds of KFC and McDonald's in Cairo and I had just gotten off at some random street in an unknown neighborhood not on my map.

A police officer directed me to another guy who could help me, and that guy put me on another bus. That bus drove and drove to God-knows-where, and on a highway too, so it never really had a chance to stop. Farther and farther we went, and it looked like perhaps we were leaving the city. I got off at the first opportunity and just hopped in a cab. I think I ended up spending more money than if I had just taken a taxi from the airport.

I FOUND THE SUN HOTEL and got a single room in the very modern neighborhood. Finally Cairo was looking up. A big modern city (picture above) like New York -- swap Nile for Hudson and put everything in Arabic -- you could walk the crowded streets and just be anonymous. Unlike the other places I had been to recently, I didn't stand out and no one bugged or hassled me. I actually felt safe walking around and didn't feel like somebody's watching me (and I get no privacy). The only time I didn't feel safe was crossing the street; there seems to be lawlessness in the pedestrian/motorist relationship and every journey across a major road (even at a crosswalk) was like playing a game of Frogger.

Having been hassled for being American at immigration that morning, I decided that for the rest of the day I'd just continue to be American. Funny what seven-and-a-half months of travel does for a person. Perhaps if Egypt was my first destination I'd be more into the local customs, but instead all I was looking forward to was Western culture. Cairo was the perfect place for that, influenced by American and Western culture from everything from fashion (baseball caps, jeans and sneakers) to movies (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was actually sold out, opening day) to fast food. I was actually worried about walking into a McDonald's since I still had a mental image from the news back during the anti-American war rallies of 2003, when protesters trashed McDonalds in Cairo for being symbols of America. But when I walked into the first McDonald's, I saw nothing but Egyptians loving the wholesome goodness of greasy American fast food.

Finally, I could satisfy my Big Mac Attack. I hadn't had one in perhaps ten months. Ah, two all beef patties, special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun! Oh what a glorious meal! And McDonald's signature french fries! That's right! "French fries!" No Brits here, they weren't "chips" anymore!

THE REST OF MY DAY was spent being an anonymous person wandering the city, the way I was in New York, and I felt like I was home again -- just what I needed. Above all, just like New York, there was an ATM machine on every block -- and they took MasterCard bank cards! I got really lost though in the maze of streets with Arabic names and ended up having to take another taxi ride. I shopped around for a new digital camera to replace the little spy one that my manual said has "An error that is irreversible," and a very knowledgeable camera shop guy gave me the low down.

"You come from the Land of Cameras. Why you want to buy a digital camera in Egypt? Did you know that one in every six cameras comes from New York?"

"Mine is broken. I need to replace it." I showed it to him.

"Where did you get that? Forty second street?"

He explained that with taxes and tariffs, cameras cost 80% more than what they should, so no one really sold cameras. True, wandering for blocks and blocks, I saw electronic stores, but no one sold digital cameras. He advised that I just shoot film and scan my photos in and just wait until I get back to New York to get a new camera. (He didn't know I wasn't going to be there for another nine months.) I told him about my desperation and he told me that there might be a Sony dealer across the Nile in Giza. When I asked two more people, they directed me to the neighborhood known as Zamelek, which was a cheaper taxi fare. However, when a driver took me to all the digital stores there, there was nothing but web cams and big bulky Kodak Easy Shares.

THE SOUNDS OF HEAVY TRAFFIC was music to my ears as I walked along the Nile during sunset, passed the dramatically-lit Egyptian Museum and back to my hotel's neighborhood. For dinner I splurged on the KFC near my hotel (Finger Lickin' Good!) and then vegged in my room to catch up on writing while listening to the No Doubt MP3s I copied from American ex-pat Tony in Moshi, Tanzania.

Yes, you can be an American in Cairo -- provided that they let you in at immigration.

Then and Now

DAY 228: Unless you've been comatose for most of your life, you already know that one of the greatest civilizations of ancient history was the Egyptian one. You know of the pharaohs and the mummies and the pyramids and the hieroglyphics, which comedian Billy Crystal once theorized where just "a comic strip about a guy named Sphinxy." However, it's one thing to read about all these things in a school history book, it's another to be there in Egypt and see the old artifacts of ancient society juxtaposed to the modern one.

For me, Egyptian history was taught in the sixth grade by my history teacher Mr. Luderer, who had been to Egypt himself. I remember the day he showed us a slide show of his trip to Egypt and remembering how, as an eleven-year-old, I thought Egypt was a far off exotic place I'd probably never go to. That was then in 1986, but now in 2004 I had made it to see just for myself, the artifacts I had seen in textbook and slideshow photos.

Most of these artifacts were located in the Egyptian Museum (picture above), just on the other side of Tahrir Square from my hotel. After a haircut and dining on the backpacker staple shawarma (in its home region finally), I went over to the museum, which was more like a fortress with its small army of armed officers protecting its precious historical valuables inside. You might have thought it was a presidential palace with all the security -- even cameras had to be checked in at the gate since absolutely no photography was allowed inside, only at the statues outside. Metal detectors, bag x-rays and body frisks were common upon entering the building.

Unlike museums in New York, there wasn't much of an exhibition design to the place. I mean, everything was in order in specific rooms, but there wasn't any good signage pointing you to this way or that way or telling you what's what. I'd say a good 90% of the tourists inside didn't need them because they were in big package tour groups with stickers on their shirts, following around a guide with a flag or colored sign to led the herd around. For me, the independent traveler, my option was to rent a digital guide, a little interactive Pocket PC palm computer with a touch screen that led me on self-tailored tours around the century-old museum's 92 galleries and showrooms. At twenty Egyptian pounds, it came with a carrying case and a headset; all the text on the screen was spoken to me in a computerized voice, which made the whole experience feel like a personally guide tour by Stephen Hawkings himself.

The highlights of the museums were two main exhibitions, the first being the mummy room, which required an additional fee to get into. Inside were the well-preserved remains of eleven kings and queens who ruled Egypt between 1552 and 1069 B.C. For fifteen years, they had been put away because of cultural and bureaucratic refusal to show them to the public, they now they had returned to the museum in a cold, climate-controlled environment with very tight security.

According to the voice of Stephen Hawkings, most of the mummies were of men and women who died in their 40s, preserved in different qualities of embalming. The mummy of King Sequenre still had his brain in his skull cavity, the mummy of Tuthosis IV still had his hair. The bodies of the dead pharaohs were incredible; you could even still make out their facial features and what they looked like when they were alive 3,500 years ago. Before me stared the faces of Amenhotep I, Queen Nedjemet and other mummies not bandaged up like the old Hollywood stereotype, but in clothes with their hands folded -- some with skin still on the bone. I really wanted to take photos of it all, but I surrendered my little spy camera as well. It was a good thing I did though, so I wouldn't be tempted; a guy with a cell phone camera was caught shooting photos and was totally busted by police officers.

USING THE INTERACTIVE MAP on my rented Pocket PC, Stephen Hawkings' voice led me to the prized possession of the Egyptian Museum, the treasures of King Tutankhamen (or "Tut" for short), the most complete royal treasure ever found. It may be noteworthy to mention that it was actually found by accident by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, when he was commissioned to excavate something else near the Valley of the Kings.

Stephen Hawkings' interactive map wasn't really necessary because all I had to do was follow the herds and herds of French, Japanese and American tourists marching the hallways to see the exhibition. The centerpiece of Tut's treasures was his famous gold mask (photo of a postcard) -- the definitive image of Egyptian artifacts on the cover of most books -- designed in the exact facial image of the former pharaoh so that his soul would recognize his face in the afterlife. Above his face were figures of a vulture and cobra, to represent kinship and protection respectively. No longer was it in a book but right before me in an encased glass box, lit dramatically in the center of the room. If it weren't for all the tourists around, it might have looked like the set of a Hollywood heist movie.

Nearby where the inner and middle coffins of Tutankhamen (one placed inside the other for maximum protection) -- the outer one and the mummy remain at the site in Luxor -- which were equally impressive. However, the crowds seemed to be a bit too much and it took away from the thrill of being in its presence.

Howard Carter found 3,850 artifacts of the 18th dynasty in the tomb of Tutankhamen, and most of them where on display for people to see (but not photograph), from the royal throne and footrest to shawabtis (figurines) to all the weapons, boomerangs, toys, pottery, chariots and jewelry Tut was taking with him to the afterlife. Very exciting stuff; it was no wonder it was such a tourist draw. I think I might have even heard a slight inflection of excitement in Stephen Hawkings' voice.

WHILE THE MUMMIES AND THE TREASURES OF TUTANKHAMEN were the highlights of the museum, they only comprised about a quarter of the collection, if not less. There were still many other artifacts to see from the other pharaohs of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, the treasures from the Royal Tombs of Tanis, plus some Greco-Roman artifacts. Walking the ground floor I walked passed engraved stone monoliths, a couple of which I totally remember from Mr. Luderer's history class in the sixth grade. It's funny how images of the past can suddenly become vivid again in your mind when you are in its presence.

AFTER AN AFTERNOON IN EGYPT'S PAST, it was time to explore its present. Egypt has come a long way since the days of the pharaohs. Once a great civilization, it eventually evolved into a great modern city -- a few thousand years has that sort of effect I guess. No longer were Egyptian citizens slaving away to build pyramids for their rulers or obsessed with collecting things for their own afterlives. Today they were smoking hookahs at sidewalk bars or running their own businesses or going to the movies.

I joined the locals at an early evening showing of the just-released third Harry Potter film, which was almost like the theater experience in the States. Sure it was full of the usual parents bringing their kids, or teenagers going in groups -- including the one group of teenage girls in teenybopper fashion with teenybopper cell phones discussing how one of their boyfriends think that "Buffy's hot!" (Unlike the traditional Muslim dress for women in which most skin had to be covered up -- one woman I saw earlier that day only revealed her eyes to see and even wore gloves -- more than half women had started to live in modern times with modern clothes.)

The difference in the modern Egyptian theater experience was in the way it was organized. I bought an advanced ticket for a 6:30 p.m. show and got there by six to catch the trailers. However, 6:30 was the seating time, which didn't make much sense since seating was assigned by ticket and row like in a Broadway play. Seating lasted a good half hour so nothing happened until 7 -- then it was 20 minutes of trailers of Hollywood movies (Alien Vs. Predator, Van Helsing) and Egyptian ones (Tito) -- the latter looked like they had just as good production values and storylines as the former. By 7:20, Harry Potter, friend Ron Weasley and hottie-to-be Hermione Grainger filled the screen -- but only until half way since there was a 15-minute intermission in between reels for a snack and bathroom break. Quite a concept there. In the end, the movie didn't let out until about 10 p.m.

Modern Egyptian society goes to the McDonald's next door right after the movie -- well, it was a "family film" -- and so I did as the locals and splurged yet again on American fast food. Man, the taste of those McDonald's french fries... I'm sure King Tut didn't know what he would have been missing if he was still alive, otherwise there would probably be some ancient McDonald's fry box behind a glass case back at the museum. Of course, you wouldn't be allowed to take pictures of it. Not even with a mini cell phone camera.

Taken For A Ride

DAY 229: Blogreader and former "The Trinidad Show" cast member (Ecuador) Navid was in good spirits on Yahoo! Messenger when I logged onto my daily morning internet session to upload Blog entries. Having been to Egypt before, he gave me suggestions on what I should see in my limited 12-day stint in the country of the former ancient civilization: Luxor, Aswan, Dahab and other historical sites. It was good guidance for when I would leave Cairo and explore Egypt on my own.

It was Friday, the holy day in Muslim culture, and most of Cairo was shut down. In and around Tahrir Square, the usual traffic jams were replaced with almost empty streets. I figured if one place would be open, it'd be the places of tourism draw, and no where in Cairo is that draw bigger than the Pyramids of Giza, not too far away across the River Nile.

WITH THE INDEPENDENT TRAVEL SPIRIT that I had when traveling with Navid through Ecuador, I decided to forego a taxi or day tour service to Giza and take the public 355 (or 357) bus since it picked up passengers not too far away from my hotel, behind the Egyptian Museum. However, I waited and waited and waited. Buses went by with Arabic numerals I couldn't understand, but I was convinced that the 355 or 357 would be marked in Western numbers since I had seen a "357" bus the night before. I waited about an hour with no luck. Perhaps it was because of the Friday holyday?

I was about to go over to the side street to hop in a taxi when one stopped right in front of me. "Are you going to Giza?" the taxi driver asked me. He probably figured I was waiting for the 355 that was never to come.

"Yes. How much?"

"Ten pounds," he told me. It was half of the normal E£20 to E£25 from every other cab driver, and he told me why. "I live in Giza. I just want to go home."

"Alright." I hopped in the front seat.

The taxi driver's name was Amma and he was in a good mood. I figured he was just happy to be off duty and to be headed home after a long day. "You're done working for the day?" I asked him.

"Yes, I am going home. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Tonight, my wife is going to have baby!"

"Oh wow."

He was bursting with happiness about his upcoming child (his first) and shared his enthusiasm with me. "When you bye bye Cairo?" he asked in broken English.

"Not tomorrow, the next day."

"You, after tomorrow, bye bye Cairo. Me, after tomorrow, BABY!" He was all smiles and it was infectious.

We made our way down the highway that hugged the Nile and then cross over on a southern bridge towards the touristy neighborhood of Giza. "Other taxi drivers charge twenty, twenty five, but Amma only charge ten because he is going home to Giza because his wife is going to have baby!" He started honking the horn in glee. A guy on the street tried to flag him down, but he waved his hand as a No. "Sorry, Amma is going home to have baby!" He grabbed my hand to honk the horn.

"You tell your mother and father that Amma is good driver!"

"Okay!" I honked the horn again. His enthusiasm as an upcoming father filled me with a celebratory spirit too.

"You, bye bye Cairo. Me, baby!"

When we drove down the exit ramp, Amma told me that he'd like to buy me a tea with his friend really quickly on the way to the pyramids. According to him, his hospitality towards me would give him good luck towards his new child. I accepted. We drove to a small street off the main one and parked the car; I was on guard in case it was a trap, and wary of the tea being tainted or something. But everything was fine.

Or was it?

The teahouse was actually one of the many perfume stores in the area. Amma and I sat at a booth in the corner and ordered the teas. His friend Ababa came from prayer service to greet us shortly afterwards. I thought it was be a joyous occasion of three guys celebrating a new child, but then Ababa started bringing out perfume samples.

Great, here we go.

Ababa had me smell an assortment of scents, from the famed essence of lotus plant to "Egyptian Viagra." All very nice, but I wasn't interested. "No thanks, I'll just have the tea."

"But I'm giving you a good price! Fifty piastres per gram. You know usually it's two pounds!"

"It's true, it's true. I know. I am from Giza," Amma said.

"You know if you come in here without him, I charge four or five times more?" went Ababa's argument. "But you are friend of Amma, so I give you a deal."

"Uh, that's okay. I'm fine. I don't have the room."

"What you mean no room? They are so small!"

"Do you have anything smaller then?"

Ababa had his worker bring out three empty smaller bottles in a giftcase. "Here, these are smaller. I give you three bottles for price of two. Good deal, okay?" He started pouring some essence into one of them.

"No, wait, I don't want three. I don't want any of them."

"You don't want Egyptian Viagra? It's for the ladies! Or how about essence of lotus? You know you can't get that anywhere but Egypt. Not in Philippines or Israel or Italy." I had told both of them that I was from the Philippines.

"He is telling truth. I know! I am from Giza!" Amma said, sipping his tea.

"Okay, okay, that's nice, but I don't want it."

"But you asked for smaller, and I bring you smaller. Look, I sell you three but you only pay for two. See? One, two. This one free. Okay, deal."

"No, no."

Great, I thought. I think I just fell for one of the biggest scams in the book -- or rather not in the book because my Lonely Planet Shoestring guide was so painfully inadequate. It was becoming clear to me that I probably would never get to leave the store without buying anything; I was at the whim of a taxi driver, away from the pyramids in a store I didn't want to be in, with an aggressive and pushy salesman, in a neighborhood I wasn't familiar with so that I couldn't just leave without getting lost. Yup, I'd call that a big scam.

"If I buy something, I only want one," I said.

Ababa got all defensive and almost a little angry. "Why do you only want one? I'm giving you deal for two. Look eighty pounds for two. That's forty, forty and you get one free."

"It is true! I am from Giza, I know!" Amma said. Okay Amma, I get it, you probably-not-having-baby-tonight motherfucker.

"I don't have the room. Really, I only want one." I pointed to the essence of lotus and he poured it from the big bottle into the smaller one. Then he poured some Egyptian Viagra in another.

"No, wait, I said I only want one."

"You are getting a good deal! Eighty for two! Do you know how much I would charge you if you were American? Two hundred or even two fifty!" (Funny, huh?)

"Really I don't have the room. Just one."

It went back and forth: my argument for "just one" (ugh, one up from "none"); Ababa's argument that the bottles were so small and that I was getting a good deal because I came in with his friend; and Amma continuing to tell me that "he knows, he knows, because he is from Giza!" To keep the "friend" story going, Amma and Ababa would exchange words in Arabic and them come back with fake deals like there was some hard negotiations. When I settled on just getting a small bottle of lotus essence for E£50, Amma pulled me aside to tell me something in "private" ten feet away from Ababa. "Okay, since you are my friend, I convince him to give you second bottle for only twenty."

"No, really, I only have room for the one."

"Okay, I tried, but you don't want a good deal. It's up to you," was the gist of his emotional blackmail scam. But I didn't fall for it; at least not as much as I already had been up to that point.

In the end, I didn't even finish my tea, nor did Amma. In fact, Ababa never had a tea himself for the supposed "baby toast," nor did Amma pay any money to anyone, providing the loophole that he was to buy me something for his supposed baby's good luck.

I HOPPED INTO THE TAXI with a small bottle of lotus essence and fifty pounds less, feeling pretty dumb. I even felt more dumb when I paid the ten for the ride to the pyramids when we arrived. "Good luck with your baby tonight," I wished him to see if he'd react appropriately.

"Thank you. You tell your mother and father than Amma is good taxi driver!"

Yeah, right. Mom, Dad... if you ever come to Cairo, avoid that man at all costs; he's a total con artist. I know, I know, he is from Giza.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA are one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Photos of he geometrically-simple, yet elaborate tombs of great pharaohs have stirred emotion and imagination in the minds of many people throughout the world for ages. However, what these photos never depict is that right across the street from the Great Sphinx and the Pyramids lies a Pizza Hut and a KFC.

I was happy to be within the compounds of the Great Sphinx and Pyramids, thinking that it being a tourism place I'd been within a contained area away from scammers like Amma and Ababa. Boy, was I wrong. While there was an entry gate into the perimeter, there was no such barrier for desperate Egyptians looking for a way to exploit tourists. While most tourists were on package tours following a guide holding up a flag, I was alone, hoping to tour the pyramids independently with a Pocket PC guide voiced by Stephen Hawkings like I had received in the Egyptian Museum the day before. No such digital guide existed, nor did any official human guide. Once inside, if you were on your own, you were on your own. Like the Egyptian Museum, there was a shortage of signage and labels for everything, and without a guide, I really didn't know exactly what I was looking at.

There were some freelance guides leading clients on camels and horses out in the nearby desert and I went to check one of them out on the left side from the sphinx; it wasn't hard to do because one of the camel drivers came to me and put a turban over my head. After what I had been through with the taxi, I would have been turned off, but I was genuinely interested in a camel ride (picture above) anyway. It was Egypt and the Sahara after all.

"How much is the tour?"

"One hundred, but for you eighty."

"Oh, I don't know if I can afford that."

"I know you don't have a lot of money, you are not American. The Americans, I charge two hundred or two fifty!" (Funny, huh?)

I asked him about the tour, where we would go, for how long and if he was a good enough guide to tell me all the historical facts about the sites since apparently there were no boards posted up with explanations or labels. He insured me everything would be fine, and for the "cheap" price of E£80. For some reason, I felt eighty seemed reasonable; I anticipated it being a hundred Egyptian pounds.

"Okay, let's go." I hopped on the saddle over the camel's single hump, behind the guide and we started the trek through the desert. I had my video camera out to shoot the scenery from the side; the front was obstructed by my guide's back.

"Do you want to ride by yourself?"

"Yeah, that would be good if I can." I figured he'd get off and walk along the side, but then he passed me off to a younger guy on a horse. "Okay, you go with him, he is your guide."

"And does he know all the history? It's very important to me. I'm a writer."

"No problem. He knows it all."

"Hello," he said to me, proving that he actually did speak English.

"Okay."

"You pay me the money now. Eighty a animal."

I gave him eighty pounds.

"No, eighty per animal. Eighty... eighty," he said pointing to the camel and then the horse.

"Oh, no no. I can't afford another eighty. Let's just do it they way it was going to be. You get back on the camel."

"But you said you want to ride alone!"

"No, it's okay, if it's going to be eighty more. Let's just do it they way before you brought me to this guy."

"Okay, I give you deal. Forty for the horse."

Ugh, it was getting tiring. Doing things in Egypt independently was probably costing me more than if I had just booked a tour. "Fine. As long as the guide is good and can tell me all the history."

"Don't worry, he's good. He speaks English."

And so, with me on the hump of a camel -- whose name was "Mickey Mouse" -- and my new guide on the back of a horse, we rode into the desert.

"SO WHAT PHARAOH BUILT THESE?" I asked my "informative" "guide" Isham as we bobbed up and down the Saharan sands around the pyramids.

He looked at me like I was making up words. "Pharaoh?"

An Egyptian asking me what a "pharaoh" was? What, was he kidding? Every ten-year-old back in The States knows what a pharaoh is. And this guy was my guide?

"Pharaoh. Don't you know? King."

"Oh, king! Cheops, that is Chephren, and that is Mycerinus. Do you know how many pyramids there are?"

"Nine, three big ones and six small ones."

"Ah, you know."

"So when where these pyramids built?" I asked Isham.

"They are made of limestone."

"No, when. What year?"

"Limestone."

What Isham lacked in brain he made up for in not much else. He was a good guy I suppose, always offering to take a photo of me with my camera, although the first time he tried to be funny when I handed him my camcorder. "Okay, bye now," he joked with my camera in his hand.

We journeyed to the prime vantage spots for photos in and around the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus -- of course, I didn't know which one was which. "If you want, you can go in that pyramid, but there is nothing to see," Isham told me. "Tourists pay twenty to go into a room, but there are no statues, it's just a room." He was telling me it was up to me if I wanted to go, but his advice was it was a waste of money. "We go to that one [a smaller one] and you can climb it with a watchman. He'll take you up for good pictures and then into the tomb to see the statues."

"But you just said there are no statues in the tombs."

"There is in the small one. The watchman will show you."

"And how much is the watchman?"

"Nothing, you just give him tip. Whatever you decide."

Of course.

"What do you want?" Isham asked me.

"Uh... let's go closer and then I'll decide."

"Okay." Isham, the horse, Mickey Mouse the Camel and I went over to one of the small pyramids. The "watchman" came to me. He told me that he could take me up to the top for a photo opp ("Very good pictures from there, see everything, all pyramids") and then into the tomb.

"Only fifty pounds," he quoted me.

"But this guy said it was free!"

The "watchman" thought for a moment and then asked me if I had some sunblock lotion. Granted, it was pretty hot out there under the Sahara sun. I took the bottle out of my bag and have him a dab.

"No, the bottle and I bring you for free."

"Nah, that's okay, I don't want to climb it anymore." Was climbing even a permitted option? No one else was climbing up the side of a pyramid, big or small.

"You give me cream and I bring you for free."

"No thanks. I'll just ride the camel. I like riding the camel."

He asked for a little more lotion ("I have skin problems") and I gave him another dab to get rid of him. Isham led the horse and camel around the small pyramid (of which I didn't know the name of). "Okay, for free you can climb up here," he told me, like he was doing me a favor. "You climb up for good picture. You give me the camera and I take it."

Uh, yeah right. I go up, away from my camera so that you can be alone with it, on a horse no less, while I'm twenty steps up away? I don't think so.

"Nah, really. I don't want to climb the pyramid anymore. I like riding the camel."

"Okay. As long as you are happy. Are you happy?"

"Sure, I just like riding the camel. When else will I ride a camel?"

Isham took me and the camel to a spot in the desert where others were gathered, including a handful of tourists. It was the prime location for a classic shot of the pyramids into one frame. Nearby where two vendors trying to make a buck; one chotchskie vendor that I ignored, and a cold soft drink vendor, which enticed me. "How much for the Mirinda [orange soda]?"

"Five pounds."

Before I could decide whether or not I wanted to pay that much, he opened the bottle and shoved it into my hand. Oh well, I'm in the middle of the desert and I'm thirsty. The syrupy orange liquid went down my throat.

"Okay, one hundred pounds."

"You said five."

He smiled like he was just joking. Ha, ha. "Ten."

"You said five."

"No, it's ten!"

I pulled out a five and gave it to him. Luck was on my side (I suppose) but it was one of the rare ocassions I actually had the exact amount with no need for change from a larger bill (that I usually never get back).

"Ten. Five more." He waited for me to pull out another bill but I wouldn't budge.

"You said it was five! It would be different if you said ten to begin with, then maybe I'd give you ten. But you said five. That's it."

Another tourist on a horse rode into the area and he turned his attention to her and left me alone. All of this happened in front of Egyptian policemen too -- they were stationed all around the area, but weren't providing any sort of peace or justice as far as I was concerned.

"Okay, we go around and to the sphinx," Isham told me.

"Okay."

"Are you happy?"

No response. But I kept my spirits up and enjoyed the ride.

A COUPLE OF MORE PHOTOS AND DIGITAL CLIPS LATER, we were back at the entry gate for me to dismount. Here comes the tip bit, I thought. I figured I'd give him twenty or maybe thirty, then he argued that people usually give him up to one hundred.

"One hundred? That's more than the camel ride!"

"But that's for the animal. What about for me?"

Ugh. It was tiring. I had nothing smaller than a fifty and of course I didn't get any change back. Isham took it and rode off into the sunset as I wondered if "Isham" translated to "I scam."

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON, I wandered the area, walking around the pyramids, and I still didn't know what I was looking at. Other camel touts tried to sell me a ride, but I insisted that I had been taken for a ride already. (Taken for a ride, many times that day.) I walked passed one guy and declined him and he tried to play the friend bit. "Son, come here. Take this for good luck." Good luck? I'd heard this line before.

The perimeter closed at 5 p.m. and I left. The only refuge I could figure to go to to avoid the aggressive and clever touts was the KFC. God bless Colonel Sanders.

Navid told me that morning that the nightly Sound and Light show at the pyramids was worth seeing, so I decided not to go back into the city and hang out to check it out. Tickets and seating wasn't available until 8:00 so I had about three hours to kill -- I spent them quietly in a nearby internet cafe across the street from the pyramids. At my chair was a computer screen and to my left, out the window, stood the pyramids at dusk like it was no big deal.

I arrived fifteen minutes before 8:00 to get a ticket at the designated light show seating area, but like the movie theater experience the night before, seating didn't begin until the announced time. I had time to kill again and I was going to take refuge in the KFC again, but next door to it was a nice looking cafe with a roof terrace. Figuring I couldn't run off to Colonel Sanders every time I was in need, I looked at the cafe.

"Come in. Very good view."

And it was. From the roof terrace you could see it all, the sphinx, the pyramids, the Sahara as the backdrop -- all without a backward KFC or Pizza Hut logo to obstruct the view. The waiter there asked me if I was staying for the show; the norm was that people usually saw the show from there with dinner for E£60-65 instead of paying the E£40 for the official seats (E£35 more for video rights). Sounded like a good deal, and it was -- others paid the 65 while I only paid 60.

An impressive synchronized light show illuminated the pyramids in different primary colors to an outdated sixties-esque orchestral soundtrack, while an outdated sixties-esque narrator explained the history of the pyramids, just within earshot of the restaurant terrace. There were only about ten of us in total on the terrace for dinner, and I sat next to a table of three older tourists traveling on a tour. It was their last night in Egypt and the Sound and Light show was their big send off. They had been on tour for two weeks and saw all the main sites.

I befriended the woman from Miami Beach sitting next to me and she shared her enthusiasm of how Egypt was all a dream for her until she actually got there; it was all "amazing" for her; all that ancient architecture, and above all, all that history.

"In the beginning there were so many facts about this pharaoh and that one, and dates, and wars and it was like an overload of information! So much history! After a while you hear it all and slowly it starts to process and make sense," was the jist of her raves.

"I'm surprised that there isn't much explanation or any signs at any of the sites," I told her. "Usually I can do things independently."

"You really need to get a guide. Our guide has been great! He's an archaeologist and is studying anthropology."

I couldn't help but be a bit jealous. Archaeologist as a guide? Wow. My guide didn't even know what a goddam pharaoh was.

AS I RODE BACK INTO TOWN with a much friendlier and less shady taxi driver that gave me Arabic lessons, I realized that perhaps a guided tour was in order, especially with my limited time in Egypt. As they say, time is money, and in my case, I didn't have much of either -- but I'm sure Amma's "baby" did.

Dates in Egypt

DAY 230: For some reason, a feeling of shame fills me whenever I cave in and sign up for a guided tour. I feel like I'm "cheating" the Blogreader from stories of independent (mis)adventures, or defying the unspoken backpacker code or something. For some reason, this scolding voice inside my head manifests itself in the voice of opinionated Lara ("The Trinidad Show" recurring cast member, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil), who always brought up the distinction of the "traveler" and the "package holiday tourist."

However, after having been taken for a ride more than once the day before, enough was enough. I was too tired, and my Lonely Planet Shoestring guide was no help; it might as well be a door stop. (I don't know why they targeted people on shoestring budgets; you end up having to spend more money on the maps and information they cut out.) Someone, please just lead me around without scamming me.

Fortunately, Tahrir Square, where my hotel was located, had dozens of tour agencies to set me up with a tour. The "standard" tour involved journeying to the southern edge of Egypt to see the historical sites near Aswan, then making one's way back up the Nile northbound, seeing Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and then over to the Red Sea for a little R&R on the beach.

I went to a couple of tour agencies with cheap deals in the windows, but for some reason, they declined my business and told me to go elsewhere. Weird huh? I thought I was in Egypt! Perhaps it was my inability to speak Arabic or my American accent that got to them?

No matter, there were still plenty of other tour agencies. At Baron Tours, an attractive, dolled up woman pitched me in very broken English a Nile cruise that went to all the sites via a luxurious liner for just $180 for five days. Looking at the pictures, it may have been a bit too fancy for me and my stain-clad t-shirts.

DeCastro Tours, recommended by Lonely Planet, was headed by a nice and professional clean-cut man who spoke perfect English. He worked out the dates and details of the classic five-day tour for me on a piece of paper in a polite and professional manner. Bottom line $190, and it would be a private tour, meaning it would just be me and a guide.

"Is that the final price? You can't come down?"

"Yes. You are not going to an unprofessional tour. I make sure all my guides are professional and speak good English. All the hotels are three-star."

"So that's the final price?"

"Yes. I don't play games here," he said. "I am not a taxi driver, I have a good reputation here. If you want to go back and forth, then I'd rather not take your business. I have to maintain my reputation."

Yes, that professional -- and it struck me as a positive. Or was that he wanted? Was this a scam in disguise? You can't tell with an Egyptian I was soon realizing, which is a shame, because you can't really tell who's initially genuinely nice or genuinely a scammer.

I told him I'd return after checking out other deals and he was courteous about everything and let me think it over.

HASSAN, A NICE TWENTYSOMETHING GUY at Citigo Travel had my next pitch. He went over his standard tour with me, which included all the major sites, an overnight trip in a traditional felucca boat up the Nile (highly recommended to me by anyone that's traveled to Egypt) and a couple of days on a waterfront city on the Red Sea of my choice -- he broke down the options to two: Hurghada, the big touristy resort town, or Dahab, the cheaper, more laid-back backpacker haven on the Sinai Peninsula. If I chose the latter, not only would I be able to scuba dive the Red Sea (arguably the world's number one diving destination), I'd go on a hike up to the monastery of St. Catherine's to see the sunrise over the biblical Mount Sinai.

Hassan didn't like playing games either, and set his final price at $170. When I became skeptical, he threw in the application fee for (and transportation to get) a student card from the International Student Identity Card office since I looked young enough to get one without any problems. The student card would get me half off at all the sites -- the fees weren't included on the tour.

It was the most promising deal. It was a compromise of the argument between me and the Voice of Lara; it was a tour, but I wouldn't have to follow a flag around. Instead, an escort would take me from public transport to hotel to public transport -- sort of like doing it the independent backpacking thing without having to consult a book or think about anything. I'd go on sightseeing tours in groups pooled by hotels where other independent travelers were staying, which meant that I could meet have conversations with people other than the same guide for a week.

I told Hassan I'd think it over; I wanted to figure out my diving options with a lost scuba certification card, and figure out all the dates and see if I could squeeze a trip to Petra, Jordan at the end, and still be back in Cairo to take my flight to Morocco. I sent some e-mails and did some reading at the travel section of the bookstore at the nearby American University of Cairo, and in the end, figured I could go to Petra if I canceled my Cairo-Casablanca flight and get a ticket to Morocco from Amman, Jordan instead.

I explored the options with Hassan back at Citigo, looking up all the dates for flights and buses and ferries. My plan as far as he could see, was doable; I'd take a ferry across the Gulf of Aqaba into Jordan and then take a bus up to Petra for a full day tour and then head up to Amman and fly to Morocco from there. Perfect plan. In the meantime, I booked the tour and the ferry to Jordan and was relieved that, for a change, someone would lead me around.

WITH ONE SWIFT SIGNATURE OF THE PEN, it was settled. I'd be off on tour, leaving on an overnight train the following night, making that night my last night in Cairo. At the suggestion of Blogreaders Neven and Amira, both of Egyptian ancestry and living in metro New York City, I called up two contacts they sent me so that, for my last night in Cairo, someone could lead me around too. There was no answer on the first contact number, but the second, the number of a guy named Hesham went through. He was happy to take me around that night after work.

After dining on a McArabia -- two grilled chicken patties, white sauce, lettuce, tomato, all inside a pita bread -- at the American University's McDonald's, I met up with my platonically heterosexual "blind date" in from of the KFC on Tahrir Square. My description to him: "a guy with a beige shirt and glasses;" his: "a white shirt and freckles." Out of all the olive-skinned people roaming the crowded Tahrir Square area, it was actually easy to spot each other with the vague descriptions. I hopped in his car and we drove amongst the red rear lights of Cairo's never-ending traffic.

Hesham was part of Cairo's upper-working class; a sales manager for Sheraton Hotels, he was fairly well off by Egyptian standards. He took me to his upper middle class neighborhood of Mohandiseen, and area devoid of tourists, which was just what I needed. We ended up in C. Mansour's, a swanky cafe (picture above) where the trendy Egyptian set went out for drinks and sheesha, the national pastime of smoking fruit-flavored tobacco through a hookah -- something that I had seen in every level of cafe in town. The waiters in fancy threads and fezzes brought over a sheesha of cantaloupe and a sheesha of peach, each with an individually-wrapped plastic tip for sanitary purposes, and kept the coals burning all night for us as we sat and talked about current events -- his from the Arab point of view, and mine from the non-Republican American.

"You know in Islamic culture, it is forbidden to kill another person, but with two exceptions," Hesham explained to me. "First, if someone invades their country, and second, if they invade their religion. You know there are people from Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, going to Iraq to fight? Why? It's not their country, they shouldn't care. But the Americans insulted their religion. You know the Americans invaded the mosques and humiliated them? That's why they go to fight."

It was intriguing to hear the other side of the story, away from filtered American news media. He continued to tell me things that also might have been filtered out; like the fact that the U.S.-led coalition used many soldiers that are not even American; the government took people from developing African nations and gave them a salary, citizenship and a gun if they went to war for the U.S.A. What was even more intriguing than that revelation was about the video footage of Saddam Hussein's capture in December 2003.

"You know in the back of the video, there were palm trees," Hesham explained to me. "But there were dates on them. Dates don't grow in the winter! Everyone here knows that, but the Americans don't see it."

It didn't surprise me; I always thought it was suspicious that the announcement of Saddam's capture conveniently came at a time to wish America a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I told Hesham all about Michael Moore, his books and Bush-slamming documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Despite the contrast in the nationalities and cultures the two of us came from, I was glad to hear Hesham when he said, "We know it's not the Americans' fault. We like the Americans. What did they do to us? We know it's just the government."

Conversations progressed about non-political things as we sat with our sheeshas, fruit-flavored smoke escaping our mouths.

IT'S A FUNNY THING about the Egyptians. Olive-skinned people like myself -- many people told me I look Egyptian -- they too could probably pass for other nationalities like I have been. From the sheesa cafe, we drove downtown to the After Eight club for some live music. That night's set: latin jazz. It's amazing what a little mambo and salsa music can do to an Egyptian; in an instant it transforms them into Latinos, not just in appearance, but in motions on the dance floor.

"We love Latin music here," Hesham said as the powerful and lively band wailed all through the night, reverberating their rhythmic noise throughout the little club. It was a great vibe and nice place to chill out with a couple of beers.

Hesham had to call it an early night at 2:30 (Caireans go all night) since he had work the next morning. It was fine by me because I was pretty tired anyway. I was just content that I went through a day without many scams, which was more than I could say for my fellow Americans back on the homeland.

A Student in Babylon

DAY 231: I surrendered my passport to the security guard like I did the day before. It sufficed for the lack of a student ID card for entrance within the American University of Cairo's campus, just off of downtown's Tahrir Square. No I wasn't posing as a student (yet); I just wanted access to their American bookstore. Fed up with Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide to Africa, I bought Let's Go's Middle East guidebook so I could further investigate my options for a 2-3 jaunt through Jordan after my Egyptian tour. Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide, trying to pack too much in one sitting, rushed and skipping a lot of things.

After research, I found out that while there were daily buses to go from the border to Petra, they all left in the morning and with my tight schedule, I wouldn't arrive at the border until three in the afternoon. I had no time to wait for the morning bus and would have to take an expensive taxi ride to journey the three hours northbound -- possibly having to take another expensive one to Amman afterwards.

In the end, the three-day Jordanian jaunt was doable, but only with about a twenty-minute window for error. Plus, (the kicker) the flight from Amman to Casablanca was over a thousand bucks, over six hundred than my already-paid for flight from Cairo to Casablanca. With Hassan at Citigo -- a different Hassan from the day before, but just as helpful -- I even explore the option of a connecting flight from Amman to Cairo, but nothing was cost-effective at all in the short amount of time I had. Like Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide, I was trying to pack too much in one sitting. As much as I wanted to see the location of the Holy Grail as seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it would have to wait for another trip -- perhaps when my Jordanian-American friend Sam could take me around.

In the end, I swapped my ferry ticket to Jordan for a bus back to Cairo.

BY THE TIME ALL THIS WAS FIGURED OUT, the Hassan from the day before still hadn't showed. I waited and waited and it was passed noon already. Originally my day tour of Old Cairo and Islamic Cairo was to start at ten, until Hassan said starting at twelve would give me enough time. Half passed twelve, nothing. Hassan #2 assured me that Hassan #1 and a driver were en route, just stuck in traffic. They arrived by one and there wasn't a minute to lose with sites closing at five.

I left the Hassans and rode off with driver Mohammed and escort Michael to the ISIC office so that I could get an official International Student Identity Card (as oppose to the fake ones sold in internet cafes), since everyone said that it would be no problem for me to use one with my young-looking appearance. I was worried that they might run a background check to see if I was actually enrolled anywhere, but they never bothered. And so, without the hassles of bursars, registrars and financial aid, I was instantly a student of Rutgers University once again. Michael paid for the card and sent me off to spend the rest of the day with driver/guide Mohammed.

MEMBERSHIP HAD ITS PRIVILEGES, as I used my new student status to get half off admission of the sites the rest of the day. The first site was Old Cairo, formerly known as the biblical city of Babylon, just south of downtown Cairo, where Coptic Christianity was practiced amongst Jews before the rise of Islam. Evidence of Egypt's Coptic Christian past still exists today with its several churches and a nunnery lining its narrow cobblestone streets. I visited the Churches of Saint Sergio, Saint Barbara and Saint Mary, but the big daddy of them all was the tremendous and spectacular Church of Saint George, built on the former site of the legendary Tower of Babylon. As for Babylon's Jewish past; evidence of it is seen in the Ben Ezra Synagogue, a still-active synagogue for the few remaining Jewish families residing in Old Cairo.

While all this may seem interesting, I pretty much was cranky seeing everything. Mohammed wasn't much of a guide either; he just dropped me off at the entry gate and told me to read the signs -- if only most of them were in English! Plus it was hot and my bag was weighing me down and my pants were sagging since I lost weight since Ethiopia, love handles, beer gut and all. Wait a minute, I'm complaining that my gut is finally gone? Get WITH it, man! Snap out of it!

"How was it?" Mohammed asked me back in his taxi.

"Okay. I didn't know what was what though."

"I told you there were signs."

"But they were in Arabic!"

My driver saw that I was a little perturbed and tried to make up for it; he knew my assessment back to Hassan at the office would determine how much he'd get paid. And so, he explained some of the history of our next destination, the Citadel in Islamic Cairo, the city's medieval Muslim district. Again he just dropped me off at the gate for me to explore the compound on my own for an hour. I was in better spirits this time around -- I "snapped out of it" when I saw the signs were in English -- and I wandered the impressive Mosque of Sultan Al-Nasser and the stupendous Mosque of Muhammed 'Ali (picture above), Islamic Cairo's postcard centerpiece built in 1830 after Aya Sophia in Istanbul, inside and out.

After an hour of mosques and a former sultan palace-turned-museum that didn't permit photography, Mohammed my driver picked me up and tried to earn his keep with Egyptian hospitality. "We go back downtown now?" he asked.

"Isn't there more of Islamic Cairo to see?"

"Where you want to go?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm paying for a tour, so I don't have to think about it."

With that said, he took me to drive by more sights, many of which were closed by the time of our arrival. From the Sultan Hassan Complex, we drove out to one of Cairo's Cities of the Dead, cemeteries populated by poor people when it was their only option to combat overpopulation -- they lived in emptied mausoleums and worked as caretakers. From there, we saw some sites in modern Cairo, from the observatory Cairo Tower to the Cairo Opera House. For a little fun, Mohammed drove through the narrow streets of the Khan Al-Khalili Bazaar, most of which was closed since it was Sunday.

In the end, Mohammed turned out to be a decent guide after all, and I reported to Hassan accordingly.

THE INTERNET HELPED KILL TIME between the day tour and my night train to Aswan, the southernmost city of Egypt, and the first part of my tour of nine-day tour. Peter, the friendly guy at Citigo Travel, escorted me in a taxi to my first class seat on the train and told me his colleague from affiliate Amigo Travel would pick me up in Aswan. This was welcome news to hear; Amigo Tours was recommended by Let's Go. With a row to myself in a big comfy, reclining chair in an air-conditioned car, I rode through the night. A guided overland tour group of presumably all 1981ers on vacation from school got on at one of the stops before leaving Cairo, and I blended in fairly well. I had a student ID card in my wallet after all.

My Nubian Rights

DAY 232: Nubia, the ancient civilization which bridged the Egyptians with the Africans, lies in the region between Luxor, Egypt and Khartoum, Sudan. While most of the ancient sites of Nubia were lost to earthquakes or flooding, several still remain. The starting point for seeing the remains of the Nubian empire is the city of Aswan, Egypt's southern most city, populated by the dark-skinned descendants of the former civilization.

"ERIK" appeared in big black handwritten letters on a letter-sized piece of paper when my overnight train finally arrived in Aswan. Holding the sign was a man who met me as soon as I exited the train station that morning.

Suspicions run high in Egypt after what I had been through already -- and especially since I had been reading Dan Brown's thriller The Da Vinci Code where no one is who they initially appear to be -- and who's to say a con man saw my name on the real guy's sign and wrote another "ERIK" sign to appear beforehand?

The man before me was Monty, and he didn't take me to a private car but to a taxi. He looked over my voucher and brought me to the three-star Orchida St. George Hotel, in a small side street not too far from the main road that hugged the east bank of the Nile. My room with a view was very nice with a big full-sized bed, private bathroom, hot water, A/C and a television that was playing Die Hard With A Vengeance when I turned it on.

Monty went over my program for Aswan and the nearby sites -- I'd visit the two highlights that afternoon -- but he pitched me a half-day excursion early the next morning to the Temple of Abu Simbel, about 300 km. south of Aswan, an excursion I declined in Cairo when pitched to me.

"You can't tell people you've gone to Egypt unless you've seen the Temple of Abu Simbel," Monty told me, showing me pictures in a brochure. "You're the only one in the group not going."

I caved under the peer pressure and slapped over the extra $25 (USD). Later on, my guidebooks confirmed it was a site worth seeing -- but also told me it should have only cost me around $10 if I booked directly with the hotel.

I knew my suspicions of Monty weren't unwarranted.

AFTER A SHIT, SHOWER AND A SHAVE, Monty escorted me to a private minivan where I met two other solo travelers: Sato, an unemployed guy from outside Tokyo on an RTW-trip since January; and Panhi, an elderly but young-at-heart German ex-pat living in California who was also a freelance writer and photographer, having sold a feature recently in National Geographic Adventure magazine. He had just started a three-month jaunt through east Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania) and was going to use that time to research another story for National Geographic. In addition to that assignment, he would take photos to add to his professional series of photos of faces found naturally in rock formations, to be distributed in print and poster stores.

Panhi and I had similar experiences since our arrivals in Cairo. We both had an extensive independent travel history, but he too realized that in Egypt, there is so much hassling and annoyances to a solo traveler that, even though against every instinct to do so, there really is no choice but to book a tour.

Said, our tour guide for the day was in the front seat and turned out to be a really knowledgeable guy, the kind of guide that I got envious at when I saw other people with them before. If Said had a catch phrase to be printed on t-shirts, it'd be "You have the right to know..." because every opening to a new topic started that way. "You are tourists in Aswan, so you have the right to know what Aswan means," he said. "It came from the Sono language and it means 'market.' It was here granite was brought to build the temples all over Egypt."

We had the right for Said to take us to the first highlight, the Aswan High Dam, the world's third largest dam (if you measure in the amount of water it holds back), constructed between 1960 and 1971 when it was determined that the old Aswan Dam (built by the English in 1902) wasn't sufficient enough to control the flow of the Nile or produce enough electricity. An engineering marvel, the High Dam holds back 169,000,000 square kilometers of the waters of Lake Nasser, the world's largest man made lake, created over time as construction workers chipped away granite from the Nile's banks, widening it into a larger body of water.

After a brief photo stop outside the Friendship Relations Monument, celebrating the ties between Egypt and the Soviets -- inside was off-limits by order of the surrounding military for fear of Israeli terrorists -- we ventured off to our second highlight, the Temple of Philae, a highlight that might no have existed as a visitor site when the first highlight (the High Dam) was constructed.

Construction of the High Dam was a controversial one; building it would flood and submerge many ancient historical temples and monuments of the former Nubian empire. In a $36 million effort, UNESCO and a coalition of individual country governments helped salvage what they could from the Nile. The agreement was that a country could bring home half of what they helped save -- i.e. America saved the Temple of Dendera and put it in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art -- while some temples like the Temple of Philae were moved not too far away, out of harm's way. The UNESCO team meticulously cut and moved the temple, piece by piece and constructed it on nearby Agilkia Island, a short ferry boat ride away from riverbank.

RA, THE EGYPTIAN SUN-GOD shone his rays down to earth, so much that Panhi was guessing 107°F -- it was more like 122°F. "Look, the water [of the lake] is steaming," he pointed out. "You can boil eggs pretty soon." The boat didn't stop us from seeing the transported temple, nor did it stop the On The Go tour group of 1981ers that came in right after us.

Said led our smaller group of three and continued his catch phrase, informing us of facts about the Temple of Philae (picture above) that "we had the right to know" about. Built in Greco-Roman style circa 280 B.C., Greek emperor Bartolome I to elevate his social status in the eyes of the Egyptians and Nubians, the Temple of Philae was a shrine to Isis, the "goddess in the truest sense: the mother of nature, protector of humans, goddess of purity and sexuality" (according to my Let's Go book.) It was at the island of Philae that, according to legend, Isis found the heart of her brother and husband (ew!) Osiris, after he had been chopped up into fourteen pieces and spread across Egypt by his evil brother Seth who, pissed off at daddy Geb for dividing Egypt into Upper and Lower kingdoms, wanted to get some sort of revenge. Talk about a need for anger management classes, huh? With brother/husbands, evil brothers and unresponsive fathers, the whole thing probably would be good material for The Jerry Springer Show.

The cult of Isis continued for centuries even when, in 284 A.D. Christianity was forced upon Egypt -- the Christians desecrated the images of Isis & Co. on the temple's walls and even removed her face on some carvings because it was too similar to the Virgin Mary. We saw these desecrations -- and many of the hieroglyphics that survived -- as Said led us around the temple, from the hypostyle hall where priests made offerings, to the guardian lion statues, to the empty pedestal where a statue of Isis was stolen (and not seen since), and the empty spot where an obelisk was stood -- it was stolen by an Italian and given to the U.K. and now stands in London as Cleopatra's Needle. All of these things, according to Said, we had the right to see.

After gazing upon the nearby Temple of Hathor and the Kiosk of Trajan (built with fourteen columns to represent the fourteen pieces of Osiris), we made our way across the river and back into town, but not before stopping briefly for a photo opportunity for Panhi; there was another natural rock face nearby that he shot for his portfolio.

Sato wasn't feeling well, so it was just Panhi and I who chilled out at a sidewalk cafe with some ice cold beverages after Said and the driver dropped us off back in town. We swapped tales of travel and travel writing until the heat got too much for us and we went our separate ways to our respective hotels.

"ASWAN IS LAID BACK. No one really bothers you," said the Floridian woman I met at dinner during the Sound and Light show three nights previous in Giza. her comment was fairly correct I was discovering. For most of my spare time of the day, I wandered Aswan, from its small side street bazaars to its scenic promenade along the Nile. Of course the day wasn't completely hassle free -- Nubia is now a part of Egypt after all -- and there were a couple of touts pitching me felucca boat rides, all of which I declined with a wave of my hand, like I was doing a Jedi mind trick. One other guy I saw on the street had a different tactic; he wore a shirt that said, "I'm not a tourist. I live here." in Arabic and English.

At night I used my new student card for half off admission to the Nubian Museum -- the cashier tried to short change me E£10 just like the cashier at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (count your change!) -- which was a far more thought out, developed and modern exhibition than the galleries in Cairo. The main exhibition led me through the history of Nubia chronologically, from its roots of 3500 B.C. to the rise of Islam in 1323 A.D. Amongst the highlights for me were the statues of the Nubian warriors and the centerpiece of the museum, an eight-meter-tall statue of Ramses II, taken from the Temple of Garf Hussein.

Walking passed the big Cathedral of the Coptic Church, I strolled down the Nile's promenade and ended up at the recommended Aswan Moon, one of the many floating restaurants and hotels anchored permanently off the east bank of the Nile. Ordering blindly (a favorite pastime of mine), I got the Escup Baneh hoping it'd be some exotic Egyptian dish, but it turned out to be nothing but veal scallopine and fries. I suppose I had the right to know beforehand what it was I was ordering, but Said had been long gone by that time.

Rush and Relaxation

DAY 233: "So are we just waiting for the sun to come up?" I asked minibus driver Yohannes in the darkness of 4 a.m. I, along with every tourist in Aswan that hadn't gone already, was up by 3:30 in the morning to ride the 300 km. to the Temple of Abu Simbel.

"Sun?" he asked in confusion.

"Why are we waiting then?" Our minivan was just one vehicle in a long line of minivans, minibuses and coach buses lined up in the morning darkness waiting for I didn't know what until Yohannes answered:

"For the police convoy to take us."

The Temple of Abu Simbel, the hidden temple of Ramses II discovered in 1813 by the Swiss, lies just 50 km. north of the Sudanese border in the middle of the desert. With the continual civil wars in Sudan -- and the usual tourist threats of different motives -- the Egyptian authorities weren't taking any chances with one of their main sources of income: tourists. I mean, how else would they get their bakhsheesh (tips)?

About fifteen minutes later, the convoy ventured on like a modern day motorized caravan through the desert, away from the secure feeling of Aswan's street lights, and into the dark unknown.

AS DRAMATIC A BUILD UP as that was, the only real threat to an enjoyable visit to the temple was other tourists. There must have been 500 people arriving at the Temple of Abu Simbel at the same time, and getting any shot of the mountain-hewn temple and its innards was impossible to do without a tourist entering the frame and ruining the photo.

Oh come on guy, move it, move it. Okay, just a little more, little more, almost there, get out of the way... Okay, perfect... Shit, another guy from the other side... Okay, move it, move... More people... Where did you come from? MOVE. Wait, get out the way... Ah fuck it.

Pretty soon it got frustrating to the point that I stopped being courteous by getting out of the way for others and just blatantly walked through their photos.

Panhi, the photographer I met the day before was there too, equally pissed at the impossibility of a good shot, particularly the "no flash in the temple" rule. "It's stone," Panhi complained. "I can understand if it was a painting or something, but it's stone. I have to ask an archaeologist about this." Archaeologist endorsement or not, any flash was immediately followed by a guard's repetition of "No flash! No flash!" One vendor actually capitalized on the situation and set up a postcard stand right next to the "No Flash In The Temple" sign, calling, "Take a look, take a look. Pictures. There is no flash allowed inside." He repeated it over and over in several languages.

JAPANESE TRAVELER SATO, PANHI, hundreds of other tourists and I visited the Temple of Abu Simbel, its front with big self-glorifying statues of Ramses II outside (picture above) and its carved hieroglyphics, statues -- and bats -- inside. Nearby was the Temple of Hathor, built to honor the goddess of the sky and fertility. The whole visit was rushed, only an 80-minute stay after a three-hour drive that early morning. "This is bull shit," Panhi said in his slight German accent. "If they were smart, they'd let us take our time here. They could sell some things even, but instead it's just rush rush rush." Luckily for him, before we were rushed out, he found another natural rock face for his photographic series of natural rock faces around the world.

The police convoy departed Abu Simbel around 10 a.m. so that the fair amount of transport vehicles could travel back to Aswan in the safety of numbers, under police supervision. "You are lucky," Yohannes our minivan driver said as we rode through the desert. "There are only twenty-three buses in the convoy. Usually there are one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty buses and needs four to five convoys."

The rushing continued as soon as I got back to my hotel in Aswan. Monty my agent picked me up in ten minutes and escorted me right to the dock across the street to get to my felucca, the traditional Egyptian sailboat.

THE BEAUTY OF THE TOUR I BOOKED at Citigo Travel in Cairo was that it wasn't one of the big "package holidays" where fifty people follow around a lone guy holding up a flag like a flock of sheep. Instead, they just set you up on a backpacker itinerary and do all the thinking and ticket purchasing for you in advance. Monty led me to a felucca where other independent backpackers (who had the time and resources to figure everything out by themselves) were sorting out their bags to travel on the same boat. Joining me were Canadians Denise and Angie, Aussies Greg, Cheryl and Butch, Brit Jake and Korean J.J. A big mattress covered the entire top of the deck for us to sit, lay, eat and sleep on for the next two days. Mr. Jamaica, the owner of the reputable fleet of feluccas in town greeted us as his team prepared us falafels and middle eastern salads to spread on pita bread.

Soon after, our captain Mohammed and first mate Moustafa manned the sail and took us downstream, northbound in a slow but steady pattern that zig-zagged between the east and west bank in order to catch the winds, instead of straight down like one of the big motorized cruise ships.

"It probably takes four hours [to Edfu], but [with the zig-zagging], that's why it'll take us two days," Angie said.

As if the zigging and zagging didn't slow down our journey enough, our felucca sprung a leak and we had to switch boats two hours after departure. Without docking, we transferred all bags, mattresses, food and people in the middle of the river onto our new boat, named the Steinlager.

WE ZIGGED AND WE ZAGGED. East bank, west bank and back again, all in a relaxed manner. The three Aussies talked about a favorite Aussie subject, beer -- well, that's universal subject -- while the rest of us were in small talk, reading, writing or just relaxing during the smooth sailing down the Nile without the noisy use of a motor. There were several other feluccas zigging and zagging at the will of the winds as well, and Butch decided to play games with them whenever our zigs coincided with their zags.

"I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with B!" Butch yelled over to another felucca.

"Boat?!"

"No!"

"Bridge?!"

"Got it!"

This went on and on for a little bit until the boat we were playing with just sort of got bored and gave up.

Captain Mohammed and Moustafa continued sailing the Steinlager left and right down the river and at one point in the day, we docked for a little bit to wait out high winds. Nearby, a bunch of Nubian boys gawked at us, like we were animals in a zoo. Their attention was only drawn away when one haughty teenaged guy who thought he was their leader made a dramatic entrance, took off his galabiyya and jumped off a crane into the water like it was the biggest spectacle ever -- he only received laughter afterwards from his peers. He received laughter from us soon after, when he started swimming; he had this ridiculous-looking swimming style where he'd reach with one arm as far as he could reach and slap the surface of the water like spiking a volleyball.

WE CONTINUED DOWNSTREAM as the sun set down. We docked at the bank for the night alongside another felucca with a mosquito net put up that made its passengers only appear to us as silhouettes. Mohammed and Moustafa made us pasta and we dined with it over the beers we stored in a cooler. There wasn't much to do afterwards when it got dark, so we all pretty much turned in; most of us were tired from having had to wake up early that morning to go to Abu Simbel. After a rushed morning, a slow and relaxed afternoon and evening was just what we needed. Plus, we could take photos without people scolding us or people getting in the way.

The Special Felucca

DAY 234: "Are your parents retarded?" Cheryl said, telling us the first half of a pick-up line her friend used back home. "Because you're special." Little did we know when she said that, that being "special" was what probably the conception of our little felucca group that day.

AFTER BREAKFAST, the Steinlager was back zigzagging on the River Nile. Two hours later, we docked at Kom-Ombo on the east bank, site of the Kom-Ombo Temple, built in 150 B.C. by Ptolemy VI. Over the years, it had been altered by Ptolemy XIII and Caesar Augustus -- as well as the forces of nature -- but remains as one of the few temples that had no need for relocation during the relocation period that coincided with the construction of the High Dam outside of Aswan. As noteworthy as that may be, it may also be of note that the entrance cashier also tried to shortchange money.

It took less than an hour for our "special" felucca group to wander the not-as-frequented but impressive ancient site, which honored the crocodile-headed Sobek, god of the crocs, and falcon-headed Horus, avenger of Osiris with its hieroglyphics etched into walls and columns. Afterwards, we wished J.J. farewell -- she was only going to Kom-Ombo and took a taxi back to Aswan -- and then climbed back aboard the Steinlager to depart. However, we didn't right away, nor shortly thereafter, nor shortly thereafter that.

We waited and waited. Hours went by, but it flew by with reading, writing, naptime and game time. Whenever we wanted to question why exactly we weren't leaving yet, Mohammed and Moustafa were somewhere in town, and whenever they were around, we seemed to be too occupied to remember to ask. It wasn't just our boat stranded; two others were waiting around and wondering too.

"The winds are too strong," Captain Mohammed finally told us. But shortly thereafter, around four in the afternoon already, the winds died down and the feluccas took off.

MOHAMMED AND MOUSTAFA TOOK TO THE SAILS and cruised the Steinlager (picture above) passed the palm trees, papyrus reeds, big cruise ships and flying herons, only to dock us again on the west bank, only after about forty minutes of sailing. A cell phone call came in to advise our captain that the winds ahead were too strong -- one felucca's sail ripped off. We had no choice but to stay where we were for the night. Next to the Steinlager was one of the other two boats, the Sail Away, that obviously got the same information because they weren't sailing anywhere either.

I went over to say hello and maybe make some new friends. "Where you guys from?" I asked, the new neighbor.

No response. I stood there like an idiot in an awkward silence.

"England and Australia," a woman finally spoke with not much enthusiasm. She looked back down into her book. I sensed that they wanted to be undisturbed and let them be.

Meanwhile back on the Steinlager, Mohammed and Moustafa were preparing dinner while Cheryl was telling us her friend's "special" pick-up line. Butch, the outgoing (and biggest) of the seven of us continued to be his jovial self with more jokes and songs. Earlier that day he'd been singing to the melody of Harry Belafonte's "Day-O": "No flash... No-o-o flash... Daylight come and we go to Edfu..." Sitting around got tired for a bit and Butch, Denise, Angie and I made a second attempt to befriend the passengers of the Sail Away. Butch led the greetings in a polite manner, but it was reciprocated with the same snotty attitude as before.

Butch, headstrong in friendship relations, didn't give up. "That's a nice shawl," he said to the thirtysomething woman on the starboard side wearing a white knit shawl. "Did your nana make that for you?"

She wasn't amused at his "intrusion." "A bunch of celibate nuns made it in the convent," she replied with a stiff upper lip -- it was an obvious poor attempt at humor. Angie's eyes bulged out in embarrassment when hearing this, got the hint and walked away with me to skip stones in the river. Butch and Denise got a couple more sentences out of the woman that I spoke to before, but there wasn't much substantial information. They got the hint too.

"I dare you to ask them if their parents are retarded," I joked to Cheryl as we all hung out on the beach, but she took the hint too and just drew pictures in the sand. I added to the graffiti with a drawing of Pharaoh Homer.

"We should send a message in a bottle," Butch suggested as an activity to break the monotony of waiting around. The rest of us thought it was a keen idea and so our names went onto a note that read, "Please send more beer. This one's empty."

"You should ask the others if they want their names added to the list," I joked.

"You know what? I will." Butch walked over and asked politely.

"You mean you're going to throw rubbish into the river?" The Woman With The Shawl said.

Geez, get a grip lady.

That was our third and final attempt to make friends.

"I have an idea," Butch said to us. "Let's go travel to Egypt and be stuck up and boring." The passengers of the Sail Away continued to keep to themselves. I said it was like "Survivor: Egypt" with two competing teams. We called the others "Team Shawl" after the snobby woman with the shawl that we just referred to as "The Shawl."

To be fair, the behavior of our team (dubbed "Team Barracuda") didn't give Team Shawl much motive to approach us. Not that we were hostile or anything; we just unknowingly behaved "special." Greg discovered that dark silt could erupt out of the sand like a mini volcano if you bounced the top layer of sand around, and in an attempt to make a second volcano, Butch and I started walking around in a small ring pattern like a tribal dance. From afar without any context, we looked like two "special people" going around in a circle for no apparent reason.

What was more "special" than that was when Team Barracuda took a hike up to some nearby dunes (Hi-Res photo) at sunset and had a rock throwing contest -- but without opposite hand as suggested by Greg. If you don't see the humor in that, go out to a field with some friends and throw things as far as you can with the hand you don't write with. I guarantee you'll be in stitches laughing like the way Angie was that afternoon.

As much as a bunch of asses we made of ourselves, we were joined by other asses. No, not members of Team Shawl, but actual asses, or donkeys. Juxtaposed to one of them, Butch posed as Shrek and Donkey with his beer. Nearby, two kids on donkeys bounced up and down down the road as their legs flapped like wings to the sides.

AFTER A DELICIOUS SUPPER of vegetables and rice, Butch and Cheryl reverted to their younger days as scouts in Queensland and made and tended to a bonfire on the beach. I suppose we would have taken Team Shawl in with open arms if they wanted to join us, but that never happened. Instead, they put up a mosquito net over their deck and hid from us while listening to traditional sitar music from a radio. All we could see were silhouettes and it was uncertain if The Shawl was actually wearing her shawl in the cooling temperatures of nightfall.

No matter, Team Barracuda sat around the campfire to chat and sing cheesy campfire songs in our respective accents. Like the night before, we all slept on the big mattress on the deck of our felucca like kids having a sleepover on the Nile. We were smarter this time around, using more bug spray to keep the mosquitoes at bay and, more importantly, sleeping bags and sheets to keep us warm in the freezing desert night. I'm sure if any of us had contacts with celibate nuns in convents, we'd have shawls to keep us warm too.

Now wouldn't that be special.

Follow That Shawl!

DAY 235: Like the mummies of ancient Egypt, seven backpackers lay in polyester and nylon sarcophagi until the sun god Ra woke them up. No, it wasn't the afterlife; it was breakfast time.

The seven of us thought we'd be sailing soon afterwards en route to the town of Edfu, but our felucca wasn't going any farther. We were to go to Edfu overland, by the private minivan taxi that the friendly Nubian Captain Mohammed called in for us. Next to our minivan was another -- one to transport our opposing team, Team Shawl, the snobby English and Australian thirtysomethings from the other felucca.

The two teams raced up the west bank of the Nile, passed villagers working fertile farmlands, villagers with mules, villagers welling underground water, and young villagers running to us from their houses in little towns to wave "Hello!" Rural turned into urban and we found ourselves in an unlabeled town -- well, unlabeled in characters we could understand. Wondering if we had reached Edfu, I opened the window and called out to any Western-looking person, "Hey! Where are we?! Is this Edfu?!"

No responses as we drove by. The Canadians Denise, Angie and I started making kissy pucker noises and hisses -- the sounds that Egyptians used to catch our attention all over the country -- but nothing. The pucker sounds and hisses did catch the attention of a group of young begging boys, who rushed over to our minivan. Greg slipped them a bag with a couple of apples in it through the window, and they all fought over who would get to have them.

We did make it to Edfu after all, and were dropped off at the entrance of Edfu's main highlight, the Temple of Horus, a "must-see" according to my Let's Go guidebook. Completed in 57 B.C. after a 200-year construction by the Ptolemies, it honored the god Horus, the falcon-headed protector of Egypt, son of Osiris and Isis. Our group "Team Barracuda" wandered the grounds for a while, observing its hypostyle hall, its columns, its hieroglyphics and (for Denise and I) its locals posing for photos (for money of course).

After, we wandered into the town market until our meeting time of 11:15 back at the minivan. When our driver Mohammed (yes, another one) didn't show, we thought it might have been a ploy since a cafe owner urged us to eat at his place while waiting since "your driver is there." Soon we realized it wasn't a scam; waiting was legitimate because the road between Edfu and Luxor required a police convoy, one that we were waiting for. Other buses and minivans were waiting along with us, including the one of Team Shawl. Just like they had been waiting on a felucca to move, they didn't look too happy waiting in a minivan.

"I'm happy that they're not having a good time," I said.

THE SOUND OF MULTIPLE ENGINES was the cue that it was time to go. Four coups in a single Toyota pickup truck led the charge for the half dozen vehicles northbound en route to Luxor. Downtown Edfu was bustling with people and mule-pulled wagons, but the cops parted them all like Moses parting the Red Sea, with the sound of a siren. Whrrrrrrrrrr! Whrrrrrrrrr! Wio! Wio! Wio!

"It's a presidential convoy," Jake said, finally in good spirits after feeling under the weather the past couple of days.

Presidential convoy was right. While the sound of a siren usually registers in my mind as "pull over," this time sirens were on my side, working for us, with us. We were finally on the right side of the law and I celebrated by yelping out the window to passersby as the sirens blared. "Wooo!"

Luckily for us, our police escort was a bit more personal; our driver Mohammed was friends with them, so they always drove near us, evidently just as celebratory as I was; their radio blasting sitar music, one officer sang out to the street with his P.A. system. (picture above)

We led the presidential cavalcade out of Edfu and over the bridge to the east bank. Other vehicles fell behind and we stopped to wait up. While standing on the shoulder, a familiar minivan passed us by. "Oh no, it's Team Shawl!" Angie gasped.

With the authorities on our side, there was only one thing for me to say:

"Follow that shawl!"

WHILE A POLICE ESCORT is meant to keep you out of harm's way, in our case it was quite the opposite. Mohammed our driver leapfrogged the police truck; back and forth we'd alternate pole position by overtaking the other using the other lane of oncoming traffic. Each overtake was a game of chicken and with the side of the law on ours, we wouldn't slow down for anyone headed straight for us. What made it worse (or more exciting, depending on how you look at it) was the fact that Mohammed was clapping to the rhythm of the music between swerves.

"Oh my God," Denise said.

"Hey, both hands on the wheel," Greg ordered, but Mohammed would continue to speed -- sometimes in the narrow middle space between the cops' truck on the right and oncoming traffic on the left -- clapping his hands, exclaiming "HA!" to the climactic points in the song.

Needless to say, it was no problem catching up to and passing Team Shawl.

THE SIRENS OF THE POLICE CONVOY whirred and wooed, but it ended about halfway to Luxor, the end of Edfu PD's jurisdiction, conveniently at a checkpoint with vendors selling food and souvenirs at non-competitive prices. We continued about an hour more to Luxor, where Mohammed upped the taxi far from E£15 each to E£25. No surprise there; usually the Egyptian strategy is to state a deal with a client accepts and then found some way to alter the deal or charge me when before the deal is done. The Canadians and Aussies paid up anyway, just happy they had made it to Luxor in one piece.

I didn't have to bother with paying; after Mohammed dropped the six off at the inexpensive yet decent backpacker Happy Land Hotel, he brought me to the destination written on the voucher I got in Aswan: the Windsor Hotel, a nice three-star place with a pool, cable TV, private shower and A/C. You get what you pay for I guess, and in this case it was a good thing. An agent there was waiting for me to pay off the taxi and the hotel room.

"What's your name?" I asked the agent.

"Mohammed."

"Oh, another Mohammed?"

"If it makes it easier, call me 'Mimi.'"

I kept myself from snickering.

AFTER A NICE THREE-HOUR BREAK to read and eat, the baton was passed from Mimi to Akmed, a young official guide who picked me up in a taxi with a random taxi driver from Luxor, Egypt for a tour. With a lack of other tourists that late afternoon, it turned out to be a private one-on-one engagement.

The Temple of Karnak was the first destination of my two-temple east bank tour of Luxor. A temple compound of different elements constructed by many pharaohs over generations who tried to outdo the previous, it was dedicated to honor the ram-headed Amun-Ra, king of the gods, and the holy family. Most evident of this homage was the Avenue of the Rams, a street lined with ram statues, which led into the temple entrance.

Akmed, a very knowledgeable guide, took me around the compound, explaining how Ramses II built the harbor that was connected to the Nile via a canal and how the alabaster alter in the center of the Pavilion of Taharq was used by Seti II to make offerings to the sun god Ra. He pointed out the Obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut (the only female pharaoh), which had been covered halfway by a wall constructed by jealous Tuthmosis III, who believed he had the right to the throne.

The most striking element of Karnak was the Great Hypostyle Hall, a grand pavilion of 134 towering columns reaching up to 22 meters high. A roof used to enclose the hall, but it collapsed in a 10th century earthquake. All that remained of its architectural marvel was its "basilica" windows, which pre-dated the Greeks or Romans.

In the Sanctuary of Sacred Boats, built by Alexander the Great's half brother Phillip, Akmed explained the value of building a temple to honor the Egyptian gods, especially if you were an outsider. Like Bartolome's Temple of Philae near Aswan, parts of Karnak were built by non-Egyptians to honor Amun-Ra to elevate their social status in Egyptian civilization. "How many non-Egyptians ruled Egypt?" I asked Akmed. I struck a nerve.

"You know between 332 B.C. and 1952 A.D. there was no Egyptian ruler," he lectured. "That's two thousand years!" He explained that after Ramses II, Alexander the Great ruled, followed by Greeks, Romans, Christians, Arabs, Asians, British, French -- it wasn't until Muhammed Naguib's election as prime minister in 1952 that an actual Egyptian ruled Egypt. Two thousand years man; in a way it was almost justifiable of Egyptians trying to rip off foreigners as retribution.

AFTER A GLIMPSE OF THE SACRED LAKE and the sacred scarab of Amenhotep II, we walked out the Avenue of the Rams, which in ancient times, continued all the way to our next destination, the Temple of Luxor, a smaller scale compound similar to Karnack, built as a "love nest of the gods" (says Let's Go) mostly by Amenhotep III in 1380 B.C. Ramses II made his contribution afterwards with two big statues at the entrance, built in his own narcissist image, along with two obelisks, one still standing on site at Luxor, and the other given to France as a gift -- it now stands in Paris in the center of La Place de la Concorde.

Akmed took me through the courtyard, explaining the different column designs, some in the shape of a papyrus (to represent Lower Egypt) and some in the shape of a lotus plant (to represent Upper Egypt) -- it was important for a pharaoh to maintain both to show unification and his power in all of Egypt. My guide also pointed out the parts of the temple grounds that were repurposed for Coptic Christianity and the arrival of Islam, both of which never really took away from the original Egyptian grandeur of Luxor as a whole.

I decided to have Akmed and the driver leave me there so I could leisurely explore the temple and town of Luxor alone on foot -- and take another paid photo of a local -- which was a good thing because within ten minutes I bumped into the rest of my felucca Team Barracuda. We wandered around the Luxor compound -- keeping track of each other by use of pucker noises and hisses -- and I gave them an informal lecture on the temple by regurgitating what I had just heard from Akmed. This lasted only about twenty minutes until we got bored and just hung out on the Nile's east bank promenade to watch the sunset amidst the aggressive felucca touts who pretty much said anything to get our business. One guy, after the usual pitches, resorted to the family-event card out of nowhere. "Oh, my sister is having a wedding," I said. "I can take you there, across the river."

"Sister's wedding? When?" I asked.

"In an hour."

"An hour? Shouldn't you be there already? It's an important event."

"I can take you there across the river. You can see dancing and playing music. Very nice. You can smoke hash and drink."

Smoke hash and drink at a Muslim wedding? (He was wearing the traditional Islamic galabiyya outfit.)

Another tout played the romance card and targeted it on Angie, using cheesy romantic pick-up lines like "Please, five minutes to talk to you would make my life complete" and nonsense like that. (To be fair, it was a lot less crass than the line J.J. got in Aswan: "Come on, fucking is better than friends.") After a while we noticed Angie needed a rescue and so we rescued, taking her with us down to the pub away from the touts. On the way, more touts approached us, but Butch figured a way to get rid of them: just act like an idiot and yell random things so they think you're the crazy one that shouldn't be talked to.

The rest of the night was spent at the King's Head Pub, an English pob [sic] that, according to their printed coasters, was for those "tired of temples and tomps" [sic]. With local brew Stella beers, Sex on the Felucca cocktails and a concoction Butch, Greg and I invented that we called the "Barracuda," the night went by. Others we remembered from other feluccas from our journey down the Nile came in and they were a lot more open than the passengers of the Sail Away, i.e. Team Shawl. Angie told me that right after the six of them checked into the Happy Land Hotel, Team Shawl walked in and looked at them with a slight look of disgust. In the end, it was Team Shawl that was following us instead of the other way around like during our mid-day car chase on the west bank -- although I'm sure if they caught up with us that night, they wouldn't be much for conversation.

Valley Boy

DAY 236: While modern Egyptian civilization seems to be occupied with one thing -- making a living by any means necessary -- ancient Egyptian civilization seemed to be obsessed with only one thing: death. With strong beliefs in the afterlife -- and the preparation thereof -- citizens of all classes prepared for life after the living. Pharaohs were no stranger to this custom; in fact, they were the masters of preparing for the afterlife with all their goods, and no where in Egypt was this more concentrated than in Ancient Thebes, on the west bank of Luxor.

My guide Akmed came to me in the hotel restaurant ten minutes before our 7:30 meeting time as I was eating breakfast. He had been assigned me for a tour of the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and other sites on the west bank of the Nile. Since he was a little under the weather, his friend and fellow guide Mohammed (another one) came to help him out.

I wasn't alone either this time; the agency had me pooled yet again with other backpackers that had booked on their own from their respective hotels. Not that I minded; this was how I got to meet new people. I met Shanna, a South African living in England and her English friend Alex, and Chiu, one of the six Korean backpackers that filled out the rest of the minivan. The driver took all of us across the bridge to the former Thebes on the west bank to our first site, the Valley of the Kings which, even in the early morning, was more like the Valley of the Tourists. Hundreds lined up to enter three of the six publicly open tombs of their choice -- the entrance ticket allowed for three. Guide Mohammed lectured and led us on the three most noteworthy ones -- the Tomb of Tuthmosis I, the Tomb of Ramses IX and the Tomb of Ramses V, which was completed by Ramses VI -- all of which were noteworthy because they were built to house some dead guy, a dead guy with power. Each tomb was ornately painted with hieroglyphic stories of the pharaohs' relationship with the gods, stories from the sacred books of ancient Egyptian religion: the Book of the Dead, the Book of Days and the Book of Gates to name a few. (That last one had nothing to do with Microsoft.)

It was forbidden to take photos of the brightly painted etchings and hieroglyphics (with or without flash), despite the fact that mostly everything was behind a protective glass. A couple of us tried to be sneaky anyway; my plan was to hang my little spy camera around my neck and set the timer so I wouldn't have to push the button. However, when I was setting up the timer, my plan was foiled by a guard. "No photos allowed," he scolded, waving his finger. "Give me the camera."

Busted. He took my camera as well as the cameras of others who weren't so sneaky after all, including the one Korean guy who blatantly ignored the rule and had his friend take a photo of him smiling with the painted corridor behind him.

"Wait, what are you doing?" I pleaded. "I didn't take any photos." I closed the lens lid before the timer went off.

"Show me."

I put the camera on playback and he shuffled through the recent photos. "See, that's outside the tomb," I told him. He went through the rotation of the photos until it looped back to photos of Ethiopia and gave the camera back to me. Another guy proved his innocence the same way, but the Smiling Korean had digital photographic evidence against him.

"I can delete it," he begged.

"No. Too late. I keep it," the guard said. "You delete it with the police outside."

I kept my camera away after that, although I was jealous of the couple of people I saw that show some photos and got away with it. On the way out of that tomb, the guard had six cameras with him, including a big heavy SLR.

OF THE SIXTY-TWO TOMBS DISCOVERED in the Valley of the Kings, the most famous was the Tomb of Tutankhamen (picture above), discovered by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. It was open to the public, but at a price: an additional entry for the small, single room tomb cost more than the three tomb deal, and for a disappointing experience too. Every guide and guidebook advised against seeing it unless you wanted to feel ripped off, and so, we skipped out on it. Most of what was to be seen inside was already on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

On the tramcar ride back to the parking lot, I asked the Smiling Korean if he got his camera back from the police. He told me that an angry tourist called the "guard" out on pulling a scam to steal cameras the whole time, which was what it was after all, and returned all the cameras to their respective owners before the police really were involved.

FROM ONE PLOY TO THE NEXT, Mohammed brought us next to an unscheduled stop to an alabaster "factory." Like "museum" in "papyrus museum," I put the term "factory" in quotes because they are not factories or museums in the traditional sense; they are words to feign legitimacy for something else. "Wow, this 'factory' looks a lot like a gift store," I said to Shanna and Alex. Most likely for a quick commission, Mohammed brought us there -- one of the several "alabaster factories" in the vicinity -- where a "guide" rushed us through an alabaster sculpting demonstration before trying to sell us alabaster vases and pots, and even some phallic statues with incredibly disproportionate girth. None of us fell for the alabastards' sly sales strategy, but they did corner us in on buying sodas.

QUEEN HATSHEPSUT, THE WIDOW OF TUTHMOSIS II, became the first and only female ruler of Egypt when her husband died. During her 18th Dynasty 22-year reign, she had a three-tiered temple carved for her out of a dramatic limestone cliff, complete with hieroglyphics and statues of herself with a false beard to up her status as a true pharaoh in the eyes of some. One guy in particular, Tuthmosis III (Tuthmosis II's son from a different woman) thought he should be ruler, and in his contempt for Queen Hatshepsut, defaced the temple's images of the queen.

Nowadays, the only thing that takes away from the grandeur of an otherwise awesome site is the crowd of tourists on its grounds, pointing camera in every direction of its three tiers. (Guards couldn't care less about cameras there.) Our group added to this crowd, but only briefly; Mohammed and Akmed rushed us in and out in a matter of twenty short minutes.

FROM THE TEMPLE OF A QUEEN, we went to the Valley of the Queens, the resting place for the deceased wives and family of pharaohs. The valley is somewhat misnamed because most of the tombs we visited were not of queens, but of princes -- most queens decided to be buried alongside their husbands in the Valley of the Kings. Of the 72 tombs in the Valley of the Queens, we only visited three: the Tomb of Prince Kha-Em Waset, the Tomb of Queen Titi, and the Tomb of Prince Amenkhopshef, which housed the mummy of a baby believed to be the prince's younger brother. All three tombs were brightly painted with hieroglyphics, but again, photography wasn't allowed. The staff enforced this by collecting our cameras up front to return to us after our visit.

After a quick photo stop at the remains of the Temple of Amenhotep III -- only the entrance statues remained after an earthquake -- we rode back to town on the east bank. I only had a couple of hours to kill before my overnight bus to the Sinai Peninsula, and I used the time to take care of the things I couldn't do outside a major city like Luxor, i.e. confirm my flight out of Egypt at Egypt Air's office, and get a Chicken Big Mac at the McDonald's across the street from the Temple of Luxor. (It was the Friday Muslim holy day, and most of the local restaurants were closed, leaving me no choice but to find refuge in "the American embassy.") Before sundown, an agent named Isham picked me up at my hotel with a random taxi driver from Luxor, Egypt and brought me to the bus stop.

The 17-hour bus ride took me through the night, away from the Valley of the Kings (and all its shady "guards") and across the Suez Canal to the Sinai Peninsula. There were movies on the way, but they were in Arabic, so I tried to get some sleep, but there wasn't much legroom. On the bright side, at least I still had my camera with me after the incident that morning.

My New Paradise

DAY 237: Tourism in Egypt falls into two main categories: 1) sightseeing the ancient sites and 2) relaxing down the shore of the Red Sea. Of all the Egyptian shore communities of the Red Sea, nowhere is the scene more laid back than in Dahab, on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. Away from the "package holiday" scene of the bigger cities, Dahab has retained a hippy vibe with an Arabian flavor so relaxed that Lonely Planet states that many travelers to Egypt skip the ancient stuff and head right for the shore.

MY OVERNIGHT BUS ARRIVED in Dahab's bus terminal about ten in the morning and I was immediately approached by multiple guys calling out my name. "Erik! Erik! Erik!" Apparently my name had been accidentally revealed by the true person assigned to meet me, and now four different guys were claiming to be that guy. This is a predicament, I thought, I knew this happen at some point.

One guy who said he was the right guy started leading me to a taxi, but the guy holding a handwritten "ERIK" sign wasn't following. There I was with four options, three of which had taxis waiting for me, glistening in the s morning sun. The fourth guy, The Man With The "ERIK" Sign wanted to lead me to something else: a modest public cross-town bus.

That's the cup of a carpenter, I thought, remembering the climactic scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the famous yet fictitious archaeologist chose a modest looking cup amongst a plethora of shiny chalices as the Holy Grail. Only a public bus would not try and hustle me for a bloated taxi fare.

I went with The Man With The "ERIK" Sign and waited on the empty bus. One of the other guys got on to tell me that I was going with the wrong guy. "Where are you going?" he asked me. "I can take you there."

"Actually, I don't know," I truthfully responded. It was my local agent's responsibility to tell me and take me there upon arrival.

The Man With The "ERIK" Sign saw the other guy on the bus and yelled at him for talking to me -- he ran off -- and the bus took off, taking my apparent escort and me to an undisclosed location.

Isham, The Man With The "ERIK" Sign, turned out to be the right guy after all (I had chosen... wisely.) because when he took to Penguin Village, the entirely all young male staff was waiting for me as a welcoming party. The accommodation was more like a mini-resort for budget travelers, with a hotel, campground, lounge/restaurant, dive shop and -- the key to my new paradise -- cheap high-speed internet right next door. All of this was situated right on the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba, "right prong" of the "fork" north of the Red Sea.

LET'S GO'S MIDDLE EAST GUIDEBOOK describes Dahab has "one of those places that has grown larger than life in the minds of travelers... a resort for backpackers and budget travelers, a kind of Club Med on US$10 a day." Yes, it was a backpacker paradise, complete with a modern stone promenade that hugged the shoreline filled with stores, bars, cafes and dive shops. Nearby, people on horses and camels rode down the shallow surf, while others snorkeled at a deeper level.

Dahab didn't have much of a beach in terms of fine white sands, but it made up for it with what lay in between the promenade and the water: pillow lounges (picture above). For as far as the eye could see, Dahab's coast was mainly comprised of these lounges where apparently no one told the owners that the chair had been invented. Instead, soft woven carpets covered a deck and pillows and cushions were everywhere for people to veg out in. The pillows were placed to form little sections for groups, with tables in the center of each one for food or a towering sheesha (hookah).

Surrounded by pillows, I laid out to admire the deep blue waters of the Red Sea with the mountains of Saudi Arabia just across the way, while listening to the chilled out vibe of electronic lounge music and sipping on a fresh strawberry and mango lassie with the gentle sea breeze blowing by. I knew I had found my new paradise. Up until that moment I thought that Kendwa in northern Zanzibar was the most laid back place in the world, but evidently there's just something about pillows that goes a long way. It's no wonder most travelers did the ancient sites before heading to the shore; if they had gone to Dahab first, they might not have any desire to see anything else.

THE SUN SET DOWN THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS OF SINAI and the relaxed vibe of Dahab continued. The promenade lit up with sparkling colored lanterns, flickering candles and Christmas lights -- and why not? It was like Christmas in June. I didn't know if it was because of the decline in Middle Eastern tourism since the conflicts farther up north, but there weren't many crowds around -- or rather, not many big package tour groups, which was a good thing. (Most tour groups go to other shore towns catered to their travel style.) Whatever the case was, those who weren't there were missing out, which was I thought was just fine -- that means more paradise for me then.

Moses For A Day

DAY 238: "Uh, there's a camel behind you," I told Michelle in the darkness of 2 a.m. It sounded like the beginning of a practical joke, but lo and behold, fellow hiker Michelle turned around and saw a massive moonlit camel right behind her. She flinched back in surprise. Apparently, camels are quiet walkers in the desert sands and can really sneak up on you.

Michelle, an Australian traveling with her boyfriend James, and Matt and Brenton, two Americans from outside of D.C., were my companions on the one excursion worth leaving chilled out Dahab for: a trek up Mount Sinai in the early morning in order to see the sunrise. We had all left the night before at 11 p.m. in a minivan that took us the ninety minutes to St. Catherine's Monastery, at the base of the holy mountain peak, 2285 meters tall.

ACCORDING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, Mount Sinai was one of just two places God revealed himself on earth, appearing this time in front of Moses at the top to give him the Ten Commandments. Following in the footsteps of Moses, the savior of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt, we walked up the less steep of two designated trails that went up the mountain. With only the slight luminescence of a crescent moon, we tried to follow the path by use of James' flashlight -- the only one we had.

The night sky was incredibly clear -- I dare say the clearest I'd seen to date -- with thousands of stars, planets and Milky Way clouds visible, plus the occasional shooting star. The plethora of stars made up for the lack of people; it being a Sunday, the monastery was closed and most package tour groups didn't do the Mt. Sinai trip. The nearby Bedouin camel touts tried their best to get business from us, the only tourists around. We refused and they didn't bother us much more afterwards.

"WHICH WAY?" we asked Matt, who had done the nighttime trek before. We had come to a fork in the path, a wide way that went upwards gradually towards the lights of a Bedouin encampment, and a second that steeply went up through the darkness. Michelle and I had the inclination to go to the left, wider path. Matt couldn't remember which way to go. James shined the light ahead on the path, until we saw the flicker of a lighter from the narrow path.

"Which way is it?" he called to the shadowy figure.

No reply.

"Is it this way?" James asked again to the figure on the right, pointing the light beam towards the wide path to the left.

"Yes," the man finally answered. "Come." His request to go him on the narrow upward path was contradictory to the first part of his answer. James went up to investigate.

"He's bluffing," I said. "I think we should go left." Michelle seconded my motion, but Matt and Brenton followed after James. The shadowy Bedouin man turned out to be a guy with a camel, trying to see up a ride up the mountain.

We refused again. Moses didn't use a camel! The narrow uphill path was the correct way after all; Matt's memory was jogged. However, he never forgot how tiring the trek was. "Why didn't Moses tell God to just meet him at the bottom?"

Being just the five of us walking up, it felt nice that for a change, crowds weren't ruining an otherwise touristy destination. "At least it's just us out here," Michelle said.

"There could be hundreds of guys watching us right now," Brenton pointed out. True, we were in the middle of a vulnerable valley, surrounded by many perfect hiding places in the dark.

"Great, just when I was feeling secure," Michelle said. "Ali Baba and the forty thieves."

THE PATH FORKED AGAIN and we didn't know which way to go. Luckily, we heard the foreign voices of two others behind us and they walked towards a lit house that Matt said wasn't on the way. With them was some sort of a guide, and as they approached the house, their shadows were cast on the mountain in larger-than-life fashion. Soon, the shadows and the voices disappeared into the house.

"Should we follow them?" Michelle asked. "It looks like they know the way to go without thinking." Matt originally though the lit building was just a residence, but was starting to change his story. James led the way with his flashlight towards the area were the three shadows disappeared.

"If we hear gunshots, we're going the other way," Michelle said. We walked up as I wondered if Moses had to put up with the same thing.

THE HOUSE TURNED OUT TO BE a rest house where one could get coffee or tea or sleep in the floor. The voices we heard belonged to an Israeli couple, who were on their way up too. We hung out at the house until about 3 a.m. and then head up the final leg to the peak; on a stone staircase with over 600 steps. Our combined group with the Israelis and their guide started the ascent with plenty of time to kill and gradually we divided into two groups: forerunners and stragglers. Being part of the latter, stopping often didn't hurt us, but it slowed the others down.

"Go ahead," James said. "I have a torch."

"It's okay, you can go ahead," Michelle said. "You don't have to wait up."

"Just save us five commandments," I added.

NO STONE TABLETS OF ANY COMMANDMENT stood at the peak of Mount Sinai when we arrived there. Instead more touts greeted us, this time pushing blanket and mattress rentals instead of camel rides. Cold temperatures and the winds did warrant the rentals, unless like me, you brought a fairly heavy fleece jacket. Needless to say, with the warmth of that jacket and the lack of sleep, I passed out right away.

By 5 a.m. the "show" started and we were all up with our cameras to capture the moment on film. Since my nap began, several others made it to the peak as well; there was about twenty of us in total. A colorful aura of the coming sun made the distant mountains appear as a warm color palette, and soon the rotation of the earth revealed the sun itself, traveling up over the mountains with a powerful God-like splendor. Perhaps God really did show himself to Moses here? In the distance I finally saw why the blue Red Sea was given its name; with the early morning sun it appeared blood red with the haze and the sandy dust particles in the sky.

AFTER WALKING PASSED THE CURVACEOUS MOUNTAINS OF SINAI, we took the shorter path down the 3750 Steps of Repentance, built by one of the monks of St. Catherine's. The stone staircase led me passed more towering mountain faces (picture above) and back down to the monastery, which although closed, had one door open for me to take a peek inside. Supposedly on its grounds was the descendant of the Burning Bush -- the shrub that spoke the word of God and guided Moses on his mission to save the Hebrews -- but I didn't see it. I was told it's nothing special anyway; it wasn't exactly on fire and most of its tendrils had been torn off by tourists.

WHILE MOSES MAY HAVE CROSSED THE RED SEA by parting its waters clear away for he and his people, I traveled through the Red Sea in a more modern way: with a wetsuit, fins and an oxygen tank strapped to my back. A complimentary Egyptian breakfast of tahini, beans and pita recharged me back at the pillow cafe of Penguin Village, which was a good thing because I was to start the first of five training dives for my PADI Advanced Open Water Scuba Diving Certification. Jake from the Nile felucca ride told me getting the advanced certification was worth it; most of the prime diving spots out of Dahab required it, and the certification cost just a little bit more than paying for all five dives separately anyway. I signed up at the Penguin Village dive shop and had they no problem accepting my non-official prerequisite credentials -- a paper trail of e-mails between me and my dive school SSI trying to get a replacement card since I lost my card in the mugging in Cape Town.

Dive instructor Walid took me and my dive buddy, another soon-to-be advanced diver named Oz, to the bay in the northern part of Dahab, at the entry point of a dive site known as "The Lighthouse." We geared up and dived the tropical reef environment of coral and fish, paying extra attention to what we were seeing as it was our Underwater Naturalist Dive, a specialized dive in the eyes of the PADI. We did things according to the PADI Advanced textbook chapter we had to read beforehand, complete with homework study sheets we had to complete. The dive was amazing -- we saw peacock groupers, a flathead crocodile fish and plenty of pretty lionfish -- and came back with one dive down, just four to go.

LIKE THE HEBREWS FOLLOWING MOSES out of the deserts of continental Egypt and into the Sinai peninsula, other travelers that I had encountered before followed me to Sinai. Back at the Penguin Village pillow lounge, I ran into Greg from the felucca ride; by coincidence, he and the two Canadians from "Team Barracuda" had followed me not only to Sinai's Dahab, but also to the same accommodation, Penguin Village, for some R&R. (Aussies Butch and Cheryl of Team Barracuda stopped over in shore town Hurghada for a day before they too followed.) We sat in ocean breeze under the afternoon sun and pretty much just chilled out with deliciously thick chocolate milkshakes for the rest of the day until afternoon became dusk and dusk became nighttime. Nearby, I noticed that Shanna and Alex (from the west bank of Luxor trip) had also followed me to Penguin Village.

Angie was relaxing in a state of no worries when another familiar face appeared, attached to the head and body of someone walking down the promenade.

"Oh my God, The Shawl is here!"

The Shawl was here too? Still following my people around? "Shawl... Let my people go!"

Apparently the snobby Team Shawl also knew of Dahab's relaxing neo-hippy scene and arrived after wandering the deserts of the west. For some reason, the happy hippy vibe rubbed off on them because when we made unavoidable eye contact with them, one of them actually waved back hello. It was good thing too because if not for their change of heart, I might have had to bust out that whole Pillar of Fire trick.

My Three Dives

DAY 239: Dahab was once an oasis for the hippies of the 1960s, where bohemian travelers sat on cushions and sucked up the haze of marijuana through the pipe of a hookah. But as Let's Go states, "Now, Tommy Hilfiger is more popular than tie-dye and cell phones more prominent than the joints... More than any other factor, the diving industry has driven the changes in Dahab." Nowadays, travelers come to Dahab to suck the oxygen from a tube out of an air tank.

Dozens of dive shops are located in Dahab, all competing for the tourist dollar, with fairly descent prices when compared to the rates in other places. When I was in the Galapagos Islands, a dive ran $50-$60 (USD) per dive, whereas in Dahab it's only $15-$20. I'm guessing the price is significantly cheaper because there isn't much overhead; no gas-powered boats are needed in Dahab's mainstream diving community since most dives begin right off the coastline. The Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea must have been a canyon in prehistoric days because the beach doesn't slope down gradually; instead, at a certain point it just drops off like a water-filled cliff.

With low, low prices and the promise of being one of the world's best diving areas for tropical fish and coral, it's no wonder diving is booming in Dahab. I jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for a PADI Advanced Open Water Certification course, a five-dive course of different educational goals. I had done an Underwater Naturalist Dive the day before and would continue on with three more dives that day.

"CANYON" WAS THE NAME OF THE FIRST DIVE SITE of the day, located about a twenty-minute drive north of Dahab, along a dirt road between mountains in the west and blue waters in the east. With me and my dive instructor Walid was fellow advanced student and dive buddy Oz, and two already-advanced-certified divers Judy and Lisa out for a recreational dive. Walid gave us the briefing for our Deep Dive (another one of PADI's chapters in their text book and study sheets) and explained the dive plan to us. Deep Dives are somewhat of a risk because the additional pressure on the body may cause nitrogen narcosis, a physical condition with noticeable mental symptoms. To establish that we hadn't gone "funny" underwater, Walid told us that he'd give us math problems to figure out at the bottom -- we simply had to figure out the sum of the amount of fingers he'd flash at us. Underwater math? I can't even do some arithmetic on land, let alone at 90 ft. deep underwater. Oz shared the same sentiment.

A couple of minutes later, after gearing up and a safety system check, the dive plan was upon us. We submerged into the water and sunk to the bottom of the floor at a depth of about 50 ft. until we found a hole in the reef beneath us. One by one, we sunk even deeper through the hole and regrouped at the bottom. It was there, at the depth of just over 90 ft., that Walid started his math problems.

Concentrate Erik-san. You can do simple math if you concentrate!

Walid flashed ten fingers. Five fingers. Four fingers. Hmmm... ten, five -- no need to carry the one -- add four more... got it. I flashed Walid ten fingers and then nine to show him nineteen and he shook my hand. Oz on the other hand, didn't get his sum correct right away and had to do it over again. I didn't know if that test really determined nitrogen narcosis or just determined you were really bad at math.

With that all said and done, we just enjoyed the rest of the 35-minute dive, swimming through narrow spaces of the Canyon adorned with colorful coral, looking up and seeing the glass and lionfish in an area known as the "Fish Pool." Visibility was good -- good enough to see the nearby octopus squirming about -- and if I had a decent underwater digital camera, I might have been able to take the kind of scenic photographic compositions you see in diving magazines.

A CARAVAN OF FIVE CAMELS WALKED BY as we sat at a nearby pillow cafe for a decompression stop in between dives. After the required break, we traveled northbound to the site of our Drift Dive, a technical dive where you let the flow of the current take you from one place to the other, sort of like the turtles in Finding Nemo. We would begin at a site known as "The Bells" and float southward to "Blue Hole," Dahab's more famous dive site. Like captain of a platoon, Walid gave us a briefing on the rocky shore to explain our approach as the waves crashed beneath us. Nearby stood memorial plaques of the dozen or so divers that lost their lives there -- mostly for pushing their limits of the very deep environment.

Like paratroopers out of a plane, we dropped off the shore individually into a narrow chimney-like area that dropped down The Bells. Each of us descended down to about 90-ft. deep to an opening on the bottom, and from there, we followed the reef wall southbound, gradually coming up at more shallow depths. Below us, the sea went on like a bottomless pit -- Walid claims it was thousands of meters deep -- and I wondered about the bodies lost beneath. The current took us to an opening into the Blue Hole, a play on the phrase "Black Hole" because it too was a virtual bottomless pit, with a recorded depth of over fifty stories -- although Walid said they keep on finding entrances to even deeper sections. We swam through the deep blue lagoon environment until we arrived at the dock near the pillow cafes.

BUTCH WAS AT THE INTERNET CAFE chatting to friends on MSN Messenger when I arrived back at Penguin Village to wash and dry my gear (picture above) -- he and Cheryl had just arrived from the continental shore town of Hurghada. I had all afternoon to rest and relax before my third dive of the day, a Night Dive. I laid out in Penguin Village's pillow lounge to just be lazy with lassies and iced coffees with the rest of Team Barracuda, until the sun went down.

It was PADI's rule to never do a Night Dive at a site you hadn't done in the daytime, and so we drove off to our first dive site, "Lighthouse." After a briefing, Oz and I geared up with Walid -- this time with a flashlight in our hands, and submerged in. Diving at night is a totally incredible experience; different marine creatures come out at night -- there were more lionfish around hunting, plus a crab on the ground scurried around. Our light beams attracted the attention of a moray eel hiding in the crevice of some coral, who was curious enough to pop his head out -- which wasn't as far as another eel that we saw, swimming freely nearby. Some kinds of coral that spread out during the nighttime shrank when light was shined on them; they confused flashlights for daylight.

I thought it was inappropriate (or just ironic) that we did a Night Dive at a site called the Lighthouse, but Walid showed us just where the light came from. After turning off his light, he waved his arms around and the plankton in the water glowed in the dark -- all around us it looked like sparkling glitter. Wow, I thought, with an amazing natural sight like that, it was no wonder the diving industry had gradually taken over the marijuana one.

Last Day In Paradise

DAY 240: It was only about 7:45 in the morning when I was out of bed and back in the comforts of the pillow lounge on the beach of Penguin Village. Reason (other than the fact that pillow lounges rule): I had to finish all my written homework for my Advanced Open Water diver certification course to turn in later that day. Apparently my classmate and dive buddy Oz had the same idea because he was out and at the pillow cafe by eight to do the same. I had finished most of my homework by the time Oz arrived -- it was fairly easy; the homework was open book, and the book was written at a fifth-grade reading level -- and so I did the courteous American high school thing by letting him copy.

FOR MY LAST DIVE -- coincidentally on my last full day in my new paradise -- we rode in a truck to a bay area known as "Golden Blocks" (picture above). Golden Blocks was south of Dahab in an area passed a police checkpoint where the driver of each car had to have a pass filled out -- or, in the case of our driver, three cigarettes to bribe the officer with.

Our fifth and final dive was a Navigational Dive, where we had to pass a simple test underwater by swimming in an (almost) perfect square, by use of an underwater compass. More math was involved with this one -- I had to face the difficult task of adding 90 at every turn -- but in the end, everyone in the class passed. We spent the rest of the time underwater admiring the coral and the big sea turtle feeding on some bottom sea grass just five feet away from us.

"GIVE ME YOUR WRITTEN REVIEW," dive instructor Walid requested of me when we got back to the Penguin Divers dive shop. I stalled for time, pretending I had it back in my room, buying some extra time for Oz, who was in his room still copying my answers. He rushed through it and turned it in -- not that it mattered because it was just a formality; I'm sure Walid never even read it. It wasn't until afterwards that I thought to write, "Are you really reading this, Walid?" as one of my answers.

With everything turned in, log books signed and stamped and payment made, Oz and I were finally PADI Advanced Open Water Certified Divers, qualified to go diving anywhere in the world at depths up to about 100 ft. Oz was so excited about being a diver in Dahab that he decided to prolong his trip and stay another week to do more diving since he had no pressing obligations back home just yet. He had to run his plan by the wife of course, but she, a tall, easy-going Spanish woman named Rosa was okay with it; in fact she would have stayed another week too if she weren't starting a new job in the next two days.

MY LAST DAY IN PARADISE was pretty much just like my first and every other time I wasn't diving: lounging out with a book or notepad in the Penguin Village pillow lounge along the beach with an ice cold lassie or milkshake. The rest of Team Barracuda gradually poured into my little cushioned alcove after waking up at different times in the afternoon -- they had all done the early morning Mt. Sinai trek earlier and slept in all day. Still a bit drowsy, they too just lazily sat amidst the pillows for another day of complete rest and relaxation -- that is, except for the occasional annoyance of a little girl tout trying to sell hand-woven friendship bracelets ("I don't want one!" I'd say) or one of the many street cats scratching up stuff or meowing for food scraps (one actually vomited on the carpet).

By dusk, our group was fairly substantial, including all members of Team Barracuda and some newcomers, including a young hippy-type that Angie and Denise referred to as "The Human Shield" because he over exaggerated about traveling to "dangerous" Jordan where he'd have to use a human shield to defend himself from flying bullets. Sitting around the table, we passed around the hookah pipe to inhale apple and honey goodness until Butch and Cheryl busted out the bottle of cheap Red Star vodka they bought in Aswan -- so cheap that it tasted and smelled like it was fermented with feet. Denise and I went out on a mission to get lemonade and soda to mix it with, but it was no help; orange soda and Red Star just tasted like orange feet.

Giving up on the cheap but nauseating home-mixed liquor, we decided to go out for a celebratory pub-crawl. The reason for celebration: my last day in Dahab. We walked down the promenade to where the other bars were and ended up in one shaped in the fashion of an old schooner. It was a session of gelatin shots, daiquiris, beers, other cocktails and conversation until we ended up next door at another pub with a pool table. Angie and I held the table all night with equal skill levels, and to mix things up we played with our opposite arm, just like we did in our rock throwing contest on our special felucca ride. For some reason, it just wasn't as funny this time around.

IT WAS ABOUT 2:30 IN THE MORNING when Denise, Greg, Angie and I were back at the Penguin Village courtyard, standing around for an awkward goodbye. I hate goodbyes, particularly with people who develop into friends, but there I was again in the familiar situation. Actually, I was too tired to be emotional at all, so it was just handshakes, hugs and spoken phrases like "Keep in touch," or "See you next year." I went back to my room and packed everything up; I was to leave for Cairo in a minivan with Oz's wife Rosa just three and a half hours from then.

Angie was apparently a better person at goodbyes because when I opened the door at six the next morning, she had left me a farewell and "keep in touch" note on my doorstep. Next to the note was one of the woven friendship bracelets that the little girl tout was trying to sell me that afternoon in the pillow lounge. I may have not wanted it when she was trying to sell me one, but under the new circumstances, it was a welcome and appreciated gift -- a reminder of my times with Team Barracuda, Team Shawl, and above all, the pillows and cushions of the paradise known as Dahab.

Into The Arabian West

DAY 241: "Where are you from?" the nameless taxi driver asked me from the driver's seat. I was in the back row, behind my carpool companion Rosa.

"New York," I replied.

"Ah, New York?" the jovial portly man said. "My brother lives in New York!" He told me that he had planned to visit his brother in the Big Apple, but when he applied for a visa at the American embassy in Cairo, he was rejected. The embassy said he didn't have enough bank documents to show that he could financially support himself there -- even though he claimed he did. The taxi driver thought there was a different reason.

"I have three thousand dollars American, but I think they reject me when they saw my name," he said. "My name is Osama."

Talk about having the wrong name at the wrong time.

OSAMA DROVE HIS BLUE AND WHITE STATION WAGON TAXI from Dahab westbound through the desert mountains (picture above) across the Sinai Peninsula. His passengers were just two: yours truly, and Rosa, the tall Spanish wife of my Australian dive buddy Oz who had decided to stay a week longer in paradise with his newly-acquired advanced diving certified status. Rosa couldn't stay any longer because she started a new job in London the next morning. She left unwillingly, wishing her husband a good time.

Both Rosa and I had flights out of Cairo later that day and so the only goal of the day was to go west from Dahab to Cairo. The cheaper but more time-consuming way was to take an overnight eleven-hour bus ride, but since both of us extended our stays in paradise for as long as we could, we split a six-hour private taxi ride for $96 (USD) at the latest possible time: the morning of the day of our flights, at six in the morning. However, I should have remembered the adage I learned in Namibia -- "Nothing in Africa comes easy" -- because just after two hours of napping in the back seat, a strange sound started coming from the engine.

I don't know much about cars, but hearing the rumbles and feeling the decrease in speed, I knew enough that the problem was with the transmission. No matter what gear Osama put the car in, it wouldn't engage, leaving the car to do nothing but coast and gradually slow down to a halt. When the car was parked on the shoulder under the hot desert sun, Osama took a mat out of the trunk to lay it underneath the station wagon to play around with the parts. Rosa and I sat in the warm air of the car interior as the stick shift danced around like it was possessed by the Devil.

A worried look appeared on Rosa's face. "I really need to get to the airport by two."

"Did you confirm your flight?"

"Uh, no."

I think I got her even more nervous.

THERE WAS NOTHING OSAMA COULD DO for us except apologize and get on his cell phone to call every one of his taxi driver friends in the area. The problem was that "the area" was in the middle of the desert, an hour away from a town in either direction. Passengers vans whizzed by, most just off the ferry from Saudi Arabia, that wouldn't pick us up because they were already full.

Osama kept a positive attitude and was all smiles when he said that his friend would be coming in "two minutes" from the Suez Tunnel and that that friend would take us through tunnel to the other side, where another taxi driver that he arranged for would to take us to Cairo. (New regulations only allowed taxis in their proper jurisdictions.)

It gave Rosa and I hope, but "two minutes" turned about to be about an hour (which made sense because the Suez Canal was still another 90 odd kilometers away). In the meantime, a police pick-up truck driving by stopped to accompany us while waiting -- they really had nothing better to do. Being in the middle of the desert without an armed companion wasn't advisable -- especially for a portly man with a broken car and two tourists -- because of nomadic Bedouin bandits.

A RED MINIVAN APPEARED with a man and a boy inside by around 11:00 a.m. Rosa and I transferred our bags into the new vehicle, which took us westbound through the desert to Suez. The time flew by because I pretty much slept through the whole thing. Once out of the Suez Tunnel and back onto continental Egypt, a plain taxi took us the rest of the way, 90 minutes to Cairo. The new driver took Rosa straight to the airport so she could check in on time. I on the other hand, still had over three hours to kill, and decided to take advantage of it.

THE EURAIL PASS, the unlimited (within a designated period of time) train travel pass valid for 17 western European countries is the way most American backpackers get around Europe, in the almost traditional post-college "rite of passage" trip. Eurail Passes aren't just for college kids, but are available to anyone (at varied prices) -- unless you live in Europe, Morocco or Algeria. With that said, I needed to get a Eurail Pass before my entry into Europe at the beginning of July, and between where I was in Egypt and where I would enter in Spain, there was only one place to get it according to the Rail Europe website: at the Thomas Cook Travel Services Office in Heliopolis, an affluent suburb of Cairo.

Getting to Thomas Cook was another pain because my taxi driver was from Suez and not Cairo and didn't know the area, let alone its suburbs. Plus he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Arabic. We must have stopped for directions eight times at three-minute intervals and after about 45-minutes of driving in and around a radius of only about two or three miles, I finally spotted a Thomas Cook billboard with the address written in Arabic. Ten minutes later I was dropped off. Forty minutes after that, I had my one-month unlimited travel train pass -- after racking up $960 (USD) on my MasterCard. The hassle to get to Thomas Cook and the hefty price would pay itself off in the next coming weeks.

CAIRO HAS TWO AIRPORTS and luckily, I picked the correct one by chance, despite the confusing fact that I had an international flight from Egypt to Morocco and it departed from the domestic terminal. In Egypt, "domestic" means "within the Arab world." I had hours to kill at the airport, and I spent them wandering the newly built shopping and eating pavilion, writing in my notepad and taking advantage of the free (but slow) internet services provided by the airport authorities. Sooner than I thought, I was on the Egypt Air westbound flight across the African continent, high above the Sahara Desert, to Morocco, the westernmost country of the Arabia. I slept for most of the flight, a five and a half journey that took me three hours back in time in the time zone game.

IT WAS ABOUT ELEVEN AT NIGHT when I arrived in Casablanca, Morocco's largest city. The streets, although in a modern environment, were dark and empty. I bought a phone card from an airport shop and tried to call some of the accomodations listed in the Morocco section of my Lonely Planet Shoestring Guide (Let's Go only covered the "Middle East" and not Morocco), only to have every phone tell me "Numero interdit". It was a reminder to me that French -- not English -- was the backup language in Morocco if you didn't speak Arabic.

I exited the airport doors -- and the comforts of speaking English -- and hopped in a taxi that took me the 30 km. into town. I automatically reverted to the high school French I hadn't spoken in years with a surprising fluency and told him where to take me: the youth hostel in the old city neighborhood of Medina.

"[Medina is not good. The roads are too narrow; I can't drive around there,]" he told me in French. "[What do you want, a two star, three star hotel?]"

"[Two star.]"

"[I can take you to Hotel Casablanca. Three star.]"

"[How much?]"

"Three hundred dirhams," he answered in English, quoting me the equivalent of about thirty American bucks. I supposed when it comes to money, they will speak any language you want.

"That's too much." The youth hostel was only about five bucks.

"[This is Casablanca. Everything is expensive.]"

"[Just take me to Medina.]"

"[It's not good at night,"] he said.

Okay, safety first -- it was late already, and even later in my mind and body, which was still three hours ahead. I looked up other hotels outside Medina in my price range. "[Do you know the Hotel du Palais? Near the Consulate of France?]"

"[It's not good. That's downtown. I'll take you to Hotel Casablanca. Three stars. It's good,]" he said, obviously trying to sway me there to get some sort of commission from the hotel.

"[How about the Hotel Colbert?]" I asked, pointing to it on my map. "[Do you know that one?"]

"Oui."

We drove through the night and into the city. It was only about 11:30 Casablanca time, but most everthing was closed, giving the streets an empty and vulnerable feel. At least the signs were in some language that used the Roman alphabet. Oh, how I'd missed the Roman alphabet.

We pulled up to a hotel, which I was hoping was the $8/night Hotel Colbert, but it wasn't. It wasn't even the $30/night Hotel Casablanca. It was the $32/night Hotel Sully, which I just decided to go for being late, disoriented and exhausted from jet lag. "Breakfast is included," the manager said. When the taxi driver charged me $37 for the ride from the airport, I was too tired to complain and just paid him off. Part of the drama of travel is getting ripped off.

After dropping my bags off, I went out to find a store to buy some water, walking to the right of the hotel entrance. The manager called out to me, "S'iI vous plait," shaking his head and hands for me not to go in that direction, but towards the left since it wasn't safe. Thirty two bucks, and it's not even in a safe neighborhood? I found a shop to the left, got my water and Cokes and went back to my room to unwind, write some Blog, and watch French television. I pretty much passed out from exhaustion with the television on and laptop on my lap. After being in transit for about twenty hours straight -- with car breakdowns in the desert, lost city taxi drivers, and nighttime flights -- I supposed it was well deserved.

Now in Color!

DAY 242: Casablanca, the Moroccan oceanside city made popular by movie quotes from the 1942 Humphrey Bogart movie, has come a long way since then. For one, it's no longer in black and white.

With the sun out and people about, it was a much safer environment to explore than the late night I had arrived before. My first order of business in big modern metropolis -- Casablanca is Morocco's largest city with a population of five million -- was to switch to a cheaper hotel in a livelier section of town. Using my Lonely Planet map and more than a smattering of high school French (Morocco is a former French colony), I checked out the two other hotels the driver wouldn't take me to the night before. Both seemed fine -- the airport taxi driver was obviously out for a commission at one of his hotels -- and I ended up moving my bags to the Hotel Colbert in the center of the city, a neighborhood of internet cafes, restaurants, a cinema playing Van Helsing and various shops.

Of course that meant a KFC and McDonald's was down the road; I checked out the latter to see how Ronald the clown did things in Morocco. Basically, the menu was the same (just in Arabic and French), except for a sandwich called "Le 280", which is a mouthful to say as much as it is to eat.

"Le deux cent quatre-vingt menu, s'il vous plaît."

Le 280 describes the 280-gram weight of the halal meat patty -- "They have the metric system, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is" -- served with lettuce, tomatoes and lots of onions in a dense square roll.

I SPENT MOST OF THE DAY exploring the streets of Casablanca by foot and "petit taxi" (cheap little red Fiat Unos that zip around town), from the traditional Moroccan drum band playing in front of a crowd at the modern-looking Hyatt Hotel, to the Moorish architecture of the governmental Place Mohammed V, named in honor of 20th century sultan-turned-king Mohammed V. I walked from the wide-open sights of the deep blue Atlantic Ocean, to the store-lined narrow streets and alleyways of the medina, the old city. (The Hostelling International youth hostel did exist there, on a car-accessible road even, despite what the airport taxi driver told me the night before.)

But of all the colorful things Casablanca had to offer, nothing matched the grandeur of its latest architectural masterpiece, the Hassan II Mosque, the third largest house of religious worship in the world, after the mosques of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. However, a Turkish tourist told me that he had seen all three mosques, and Casablanca's Hassan II was definitely the most beautiful, with its colorfully decorated walls and shiny marble floors.

CONSTRUCTED OVER A PERIOD OF SIX YEARS between 1987 and 1993 on a 24/7 work schedule, the Hassan II Mosque was built under order of King Hassan II, successor to Mohammed V at a hefty construction price tag of about $800 million (USD). King Hassan II was a progressive modern-day thinking ruler because he actually commissioned non-Muslim, non-Moroccan French architect Michel Pinceau to design it. Pinceau was also an out-of-the-box thinker; instead of the usual round domes of traditional mosques, his roof was rectangular and flat, with an electric-powered retractable sunroof.

"You are lucky," tour guide Ilham told me and the three dozen American, Dutch, French and Turkish tourists behind me. "The roof is open. Normally it's closed."

Ilham, a friendly trilingual Moroccan woman took us on the 2 p.m. Thursday guided tour (the last one before the Friday holy day), which was also an unorthodox thing to do; all the other mosques in Morocco didn't permit non-Muslims inside. Ilham took us around the mosque, an incredible religious facility with a capacity of 25,000 -- 20,000 men on the floor, 5,000 women in the cedarwood-fenced platforms above. She pointed out the 200-meter tall minaret (picture above), the impressive Italian chandeliers and the underground ablutions area where Muslims performed the traditional daily bathing customs. Nearby was a Turkish hammam (bath), which would be available to non-Muslims too -- that is, as soon as the mosque's management found a private company to run and maintain it.

Above all, Ilham pointed out again and again the bright colors of the elaborate decorations all over the walls and the floor. It was just another example that modern day Casablanca had come a long way since those old black and white days. For my first day in Morocco, it looked like it was the beginning of a colorful friendship.

Next Train to Marrakesh

DAY 243: If there's anything that the French influenced on the Moroccans during its occupation in the mid-20th century other than language, it's the idea of a fast and efficient modern railway system. Morocco has one of the most modern train networks in Africa, linking most of the major cities via rail, with trains that actually depart and arrive on time. The only drawback to the Moroccan railway is that you have to be at the correct train station for you to appreciate its efficiency.

I HAD BOUGHT A TRAIN TICKET the day before at the Casa Port station, near the port in Casablanca, the only train station demarked on my Lonely Planet map. Lonely Planet wasn't to blame in this case; if I had just read further, I would have known that the bigger train station was 5 km. out of the city center. If I had just read my ticket, I would have seen that the departure gate was at the Casa Voyageurs station, not Casa Port. Silly me, I just assumed that the train would leave from the station I bought the ticket at.

"Est-ce qu'il y a le tren pour Marrakesh?" I asked a guy on the only train that was departing around my designated departure time. (I read that part correctly.)

"Non, pour Kenitra," he answered. (Kenitra was about two hours in the wrong direction.) Luckily I got off the train just in time, right before it took off.

Confused, I asked the station manager and it was he that pointed out my error. "[Where is the train for Marrakesh?]" I asked.

"[It's gone already,]" he said in French. "[There is another at fifteen past one, at the other station.]" He directed me to a train at Casa Port that would stop at Casa Voyageurs, where I could wait for the next train to Marrakesh. It wasn't much of a crisis because I had all day to get there, and the ride would only be three and a half hours. Leave it to the efficiency of the Moroccan railway to have a train every two hours.

A TEN-MINUTE RIDE TO CASA VOYAGEURS and about another hour of waiting, I was finally on the correct train bound for my next destination, Marrakesh. Train cars come in first and second class, and the second class was just fine with air-conditioned individual compartments that seat up to six in clean, cushioned chairs. There were only three others in my compartment, each of which were Moroccan and kept to his/herself.

The landscape whizzed by through the windows, revealing the varied landscape of the Moroccan countryside. At times it looked like Arabian urban sprawl, other times there were mountains or tropical palm trees, and other times it looked like it might have been a dry European countryside. The time flew and before five o'clock I was at Marrakesh train station, the end of the line. A friendly petit taxi driver took me across the modern new town and into the funky old medina where all the action was.

"TOTALLY GEARED TOWARDS TRAVELERS" is how Lonely Planet describes the Hotel Ali, right near the famous Place Djemaa el-Fna, the center stage for Marrakesh's tourist scene. "Totally geared" was right. For about fourteen US dollars, Hotel Ali gave me a private room with a comfy bed, private bathroom with hot water, and air conditioning with a view of the central courtyard. Two stories up was a roof terrace and restaurant which overlooked all the action at the Place Djemaa el-Fna and two stories down was a cafe, restaurant, gift shop and (most importantly for me) an internet cafe with unlimited use included in the price. Going once, going twice... SOLD to the Filipino-American blogwriter traveling the world for sixteen months (or until money runs out, whichever comes first)!

After settling in, I was off to explore the Place Djemaa el-Fna at sunset (picture above), the prime time for most of the street performers to come out. Walking through the plaza was a sensory overload; acrobats, snake charmers, belly dancers, shops, food stands and thousands of people walking around in a space about the size of a parking lot of a Walmart. Wide-eyed and smiling, I assumed I felt like a country bumpkin who was in New York's Times Square for the first time.

So much to see, so much to do. Where do I begin? I wondered around aimlessly, in and out of the buskers in the plaza, the shop-filled side streets and the cafe-a-plenty pedestrian malls. Dusk turned into nighttime, the time when all the plaza food stall vendors got into gear, with aggressive (but not too pushy) waiters urging prospective diners to eat at their establishment. Presentation was key in their pitches, and a seafood stand with everything laid out nicely caught my eye -- it beat out the mutton place nearby with grilled sheep heads as their centerpiece. Calamari and couscous filled my stomach before I set off again to explore the nighttime scene again.

While wandering around, I noticed that among the thousand or so tourists in the medina, most of them were French or French-speaking, another testament to France's legacy in Morocco. Whether or not those French tourists got the correct train en route to Marrakesh I don't know, but I'm sure upon arrival, they didn't much care.

Splish, Splash, He Gave Me A Bath

DAY 244: Most of Marrakesh's main points of interest are within a 40-minute walk of the Place Djemaa el-Fna and without the comforts of a package tour's air conditioned tour bus coach (complete with a guide holding up an umbrella for people to follow), I took to the streets to run errands and see the sights on foot.

The ville nouvelle (new town) was just outside the old fortification wall that surrounded the median. A leisurely walk took me through the commercial district, passed sidewalk cafes, shops and the obligatory presence of the golden arches. My morning mission was to find a bookstore to get some English reading material, only to find that the only one in town just had novelizations of Hollywood movies targeted for 8-year-olds. Back in the medina (old town), I booked a three-day tour of the Dades Valley and the Dunes of Merzouga that came recommended to me, and then wandered the souqs (markets). I ended up skipping out on touristy souvenirs and went for functional everyday items I needed -- new sandals to replace the Malawian ones that broke the day before (they lasted a lot longer than I thought) and a new storage bag to replace the one that broke just a couple of days after I bought it in Zanzibar.

All errands aside, I walked and walked with the energy of a meat and couscous lunch, getting lost in the maze of Marrakesh's streets. Motorbikes zipped by on roads and sometimes sidewalks without any sense of traffic organization. Muslim woman walked by, many wearing the traditional Moroccan hooded galabiyya, which made them look like multi-colored jawas in the Star Wars movies from afar. Tea vendors served tea on the street while wearing traditional garb as snake charmers teased their cobras and adders amidst other street performers entertaining the masses in the Place Djemaa el-Fna. I managed to take in a couple of the sites of historical interest, including the Koutoubia Mosque, the oldest mosque built by the Almohad people in the 12th century; the picturesque ins and outs of the Palais de la Bahia, the 19th-century palace of Bou Ahmed, the Grand Vizier of Sultan Hassan I; and the Tombs of the Saadian people that used to dwell in the region.

After a hot, sweaty day of walking, only one thing was in order: a bath.

THE HAMMAN, THE TRADITIONAL BATH of the Arab world, is more than just a soak in a tub of water with soapy Calgon bubbles that take you away. Different regions of the Arabian world have their own spin on the hammam -- i.e. Turkish baths, Persian baths -- but the common denominator to them all is that they get your clean in a most aggressive way, sort of like having a WWE wrestler give you a sponge bath. As my guidebook said, "a hammam can be intimidating for first-timers."

The Hotel Ali where I was staying couldn't make getting my first hammam any easier; its basement was fitted with a clean and sanitary hamman facility (picture above). For just about $4 (USD), one can get a hamman and massage without leaving the building. French-speaking Mohammed, one of the hotel staff that usually manned the restaurant's homemade pizza stand, was trained not just in pizza making but in the art of the hammam and led me down to the changing room.

"[This is my first hammam,]" I told him with my basic high school French.

"[Do you have soap?]" he asked me in French.

"[Yeah, in my room,]" I replied, again in French. I went up and got my complimentary bar and returned. Mohammed led me into the hamman, a square steamy room of ceramic tiles on the floor. On three of the sides were faucets where three buckets were placed, to be continually filled with warm water.

"[Are you going to take off your swimming trunks?]" Mohammed asked in French, wearing a pair of boxer shorts.

Funny, suddenly I didn't understand French. "Je ne comprend pas." ("I don't understand.")

AFTER A PRELIMINARY RINSE (WITH MY TRUNKS ON), the hamman process began in three basic steps:

• 1. Lather. Mohammed laid me on my back on a mat in the corner and proceeded to soap me up by hand. I thought a bit weird about the local Muslim of men holding hands or the Arabian hetero male kiss-on-both-cheeks greeting, but there I was, voluntarily having another man give me a sponge bath. Mohammed, in a professional, non-erotic manner, caressed my chest, arms, legs and feet with soapy hands.

  Okay, relax, relax, I thought. Man, this is awkward -- and yet somehow it makes me feel like royalty. Wait a minute, how come a hot Moroccan chick isn't doing this? Right, right, the book said that same gender washes you. Whoa, hey that tickles! Okay, when in Arabia, do as the Arabs. Fine. Hey this isn't so bad; Mohammed is a professional after all. Yeah, a professional. Whoa, hey, a little too close below the belt there buddy.

  After Mohammed's soapy, non-erotic rubdown, he flipped me onto my stomach and did me from behind, no pun intended.

• 2. Rinse. Like a master of plate spinning, Mohammed somehow timed the filling of the three buckets in a way where he'd splash me with one and replace it under the respective spigot just before the water reached the brim, before moving onto the next bucket. This went on in cycles throughout the later process and it made me feel like a car in a car wash.

• 3. Repeat. Back on the floor, the lathering began again, this time with a mildly abrasive mitt for exfoliation of the skin and a lot more pressure. The masseur and pizza maker squeezed out the tension in my muscles like he was kneading dough.

  Oh, oh, whoa. What a minute, I thought this was supposed to be relaxing. Hey careful down there, my feet are ticklish. Okay, relax Erik, you're getting pampered with a massage like a sultan. Okay, settle down. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one, settle. Whoa, hey, he dropped the soap! Bad things happen in prisons when someone drops the soap! Okay, he's picking it up like it's no big deal. Okay, fine. Hey, this is sort of nice. Hey, I'm in a sauna getting a massage, check me out. Whoa, get your hand from under there!

  Mohammed smacked me up, flipped me, rubbed me down until I was the cleanest I've probably been in my travels so far. He rinsed me off with a the big buckets of warm water as I stood upright. He lathered up my hair with shampoo in a manner that I could have just as easily done myself, rinsed me again and then turned off the faucets. My first hammam was over. I went to the changing room to towel down feeling clean, refresh, but somehow a little bit tenser than when I started.
  

"IT'S SO WEIRD TO HEAR ENGLISH," some American girl was telling her friends in the Hotel Ali courtyard. She was referring to the English coming out of my mouth as I was talking to a Canadian from Vancouver named Sebastian. The American girl hadn't heard English in a while outside her circle of classmates since they were students studying Arabic in Morocco's capital of Rabat -- and anything else she heard other than Arabic was usually French.

"How long have you known each other?" one of the college girls asked the Vancouverite and me. Perhaps she noticed that Sebastian and I had an instant rapport with our mumbling sarcasm.

"You saw when I sat down here?" I said. "That was our introduction."

"It's been about five minutes," Sebastian added.

Sebastian, a political science student studying in France was on break, traveling through Spain and Morocco. I had approached him when I saw him flipping through Let's Go: Spain, Portugal and Morocco and not the usual Lonely Planet. I told him about my gradual conclusion that Lonely Planet books weren't perhaps the best guidebooks on the market (at least not the "Shoestring" line).

"Lonely Planet, ha," he said. "That's bourgeois." (My kind of people, huh?)

I told him about the valley and desert tour I booked earlier that morning, which included a classic camel trek, and he was intrigued. I talked it up like a tout without a commission in hopes that I'd have at least one companion on the tour that I could relate to, and he said he'd think it over.

SEBASTIAN HAD SOME INTERNET BUSINESS TO HANDLE, so I went out to explore Marrakesh at night again. The American college girls told us about some music festival at the Palais Badi not too far away, so I went to check it out and meet them -- only to discover that no such performance existed or that I had the time wrong. No matter, there was plenty of street entertainment back in the Place Djemaa el-Fna. Plus, the nearby food stands were in full swing and I partook in a plate of mutton meat at one of the several mutton stands that had sheep heads on the counter so they could stare back at you as you ate their roasted flesh.

"Guess what I got," Sebastian said, handing me a piece of paper in the internet cafe. "A receipt." He had been convinced by my tout-like pitch and was slated to come long for the ride on the back of a camel. This meant both of us had to call it a relatively early night since we'd have to wake fairly early the next morning. I was pretty tired anyway from all the walking I had done that day, although I'm pretty sure it was the hammam that took the most out of me.

Rock The Kasbah

DAY 245: "It's amazing there are no French people," Australian Lucy said. She was referring to the fourteen people that had amassed into a small minibus tour group with the Imagine Le Voyage budget tour company based in Marrakesh. Despite the fact that a huge majority of the tourists in Morocco were from France, we were a rainbow coalition, all English-speaking, from other nations: Lucy and Steve from Australia, Russ from the UK, Maider and Serbio from Spain, Miguel from Portugal, Mazza from Japan, Kim from South Korea, Tina and Hendrik from Sweden, Coral and Waddah from California, USA, Canadian Sebastian and me.

"It's like the United Nations in a minivan," I said.

Driver Hassan (from Morocco) took us south out of Marrakesh through the Moroccan country side, up and down the winding roads of the High Atlas Mountains, stopping once at a cafe with a view of the valley for photo opps, tea, coffee and small talk with the new faces of the group. Englishman Russ and I sat at a table on the terrace, contemplating our refreshment options for the next two nights away from the tourist-catering mecca of Marrakesh. "Do you think we'll be able to get some whiskey?" he asked me.

"Maybe we'll stop somewhere."

"Beer would be fine too," he said. "I'm from England."

The debate was spawned by the fact that in Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, most people didn't drink. Breweries existed primarily to cater to the foreigners within the country borders. "I'm sure there'll be a place on the way," I tried to assure the fortysomething-old Englishman.

We continued on our way through the countryside but stopped again shortly thereafter due to the all-too-familiar occurrence of a vehicle breakdown. People suspected the carburetor because the tail pipe suddenly exhaled as much smoke as out of the mouth of a Parisian chain smoker. Hassan pulled over the minibus conveniently in the village of Taddert (convenient for the shop owners of Taddert), a chilled out strip of cafes and shops for us to wander and keep us entertained while Hassan fixed the car. I partook in the local Pom's apple soda (my new simple pleasure). Kim took photos, Coral browsed through trinket stores, Sebastian made Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches and Russ sat at another cafe to pass the time -- he still found no signs of whiskey or beer.

"YOU WANT A BRACELET?" a young vendor asked Sebastian at another High Atlas mountain lookout point. We had started to suspect Hassan was stopping not-so-coincidentally at vendor areas so his friends and/or relatives could make a couple of dirham off his tour groups.

"How much?" Sebastian asked.

"Twenty."

"Twenty? Oh, twenty cookies?" he said, holding a bag of cookies he bought in Taddert.

"No, twenty dirhams."

"Twenty cookies? Okay."

"No, twenty dirhams!"

"I give you cookies, you give me the bracelet."

The kid wasn't too amused and moved on.

Through the mountains and into the valley we rode in our just-fixed minibus to Aït Benhadou, one of the best-preserved kasbahs in the region with a population of just five families. Aside from being protected by UNESCO, most of its preservation funding came from Hollywood as it served as the location for the filming of Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth and more recently, Gladiator. Nearby was the desert where scenes of 1999's The Mummy was shot, as well as the big movie production studio lot that catered to Hollywood's needs on the other side of the Atlantic.

Hassan dropped us off outside the kasbah, leaving us to be guided by a guy in traditional garb of the regionally nomadic Berber people -- who just so happened to be listening to a minidisc player underneath. With headphones out, he led us into a house and around the kasbah. Spaniard Serbia walked in the footstep of Russell Crowe's "Spaniard" character in Gladiator, although he and his girlfriend Maider would tell you they were really from the Basque country.

"IF YOU GO TO THE SUPERMARKET, can you bring back a couple of beers?" Russ asked Sebastian at the rooftop dining table at a restaurant in the town of Ouarzazate. Sebastian was toying with the idea of saving some money by skipping out on a sit-down restaurant meal, but discovering the supermarket was a kilometer and a half across town, decided to stay and "be sociable." After dining on traditional Moroccan tajines, couscous and harira soup -- and no beer -- we continued our journey to a land where Russ still had the hope of a couple of cold ones.

"ALRIGHT, LET'S GO ROCK THE KASBAH," I told Sebastian as we started westbound from Ouarzazate through the Dades Valley, the valley between the High Atlas mountains to the north and the Jbel Saghro range to the south. The oasis of this valley provided for farming in an otherwise arid region, resulting in many fortified houses, or kasbahs (picture above) to be built for people to live in -- thus giving the route the nickname the "Valley of A Thousand Kasbahs." We stopped not at every kasbah, but every so often for a "photo stop," which I put in quotes because Sebastian and I thought that a "photo stop" was just a stop anywhere along the way when Hassan wanted a "smoking break." As Hassan puffed away, it was sometimes hard for us to take photos of the women carrying bails of hay on their backs; they'd always make a fuss if we pointed a camera, so we'd have to take pictures from afar or from behind.

The Dades Valley led to the Dades Gorge, an area that initially didn't look fit for postcard pictures. Heavy Caterpillar construction vehicles rocked the kasbahs with their vibrations, and it looked more like a big quarry.

"There are no tourists around," Serbio noticed.

"Looks like we're being driven to work as slaves," Portuguese Miguel said.

Luckily for us, our minibus made its way through the construction quarry and on the other end it turned out to be a bit more conducive for photos. During another one of Hassan's "smoking breaks," we marveled at the jagged rock formations jutting out of the earth like massive and sharp orange incisors. At the base of the gorge was our accommodation for the night, Le Vieux Chateau, a relatively fancy place for a budget backpacker -- although no one was complaining.

"Nice, I never stayed in a place like this," young Japanese Mazza said, smiling with enthusiasm. "Usually I'm in a youth hostel."

"This is swank," my minibus seatmate-turned-roommate Sebastian said. However, being a swanky hotel with a view of the Dades River was nothing special if it didn't have one thing.

"Do you have beer?" Russ asked someone at the hotel.

"Yes."

Russ dramatically grabbed me by the shoulders with uttermost excitement. "You hear that? They have beer!"

Dinner in the dining hall was equally impressive as we feasted on harira, chicken, vegetables, couscous and beer as some local guys donned Berber clothes and played the bongos for us. Dusk morphed into night and with only the illumination of a crescent moon, the sky was dark enough for an awesome stellar display above.

"Welcome to the observatory," Miguel greeted me when I arrived on the roof terrace. After a long and tiring 12-hour day on the road -- including a breakdown and numerous "photo stops" -- a peaceful night on the roof of a "swank" hotel under the stars was just what we needed. More importantly for Russ, we were in a place were beer was readily available.

Hey, for full effect, read this entry again while listening to this.

Carpets and Camels

DAY 246: I once read a story about how persuasive Moroccan carpet salesmen can be, using not a tactic of aggressiveness, but the strategy of feigned friendliness and hospitality to guilt one into buying a genuine Moroccan rug. That day in Morocco, I finally got to see these salesmen in action.

"DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I THINK?" the good-natured Palestine-Californian Waddah said as we packed up the minibus that morning at the hotel. He always seemed to start a conversation with a rhetorical question that was either reciprocated or not, this time not. "I think we have a good group."

Waddah had a good point there. As I've discovered in my travels, a travel companion can make or break a trip, and so far our group dynamic of fourteen seemed to be a pretty good one, a cast of unique characters. Before deciding to join the group, Sebastian was wondering if we'd be stuck with a bunch of old timers but in fact, our two oldest members -- both forty-five, a decade the senior over the next highest age -- were young at heart: beer thirsty Englishman Russ and Korean Kim, who was blessed (or cursed) with Asian genes that make one appear far younger than he/she actually is. (I thought he was 27.)

Hassan the driver drove our "good group" on the continuation of our three-day tour. I passed the morning time in the third row laughing and joking with Sebastian about how funny it'd be to travel around the world while wearing a Spiderman costume -- Spiderman, sitting at a Parisian sidewalk cafe with a cafe au lait and a newspaper, or riding on the back of a camel. Classic. However, cons existed, like explaining the costume at a border crossing.

No one else in our vicinity was into the humor of our conversation; perhaps some things didn't exactly translate in big group dynamics.

"WHAT'S HIS NAME?" I asked Miguel the bearded Portuguese in our group. I was referring to the new guy leading us on foot around the crop fields of the Todra Valley that Hassan our driver brought us to unexpectedly. (We didn't know we were supposed to stop at such a place.)

"It's either Mohammed or Hassan," he told me.

"Or Moustafa," Aussie Lucy added. True, essentially every Arab I met so far went by one of those three names, like there was some sort of shortage of other ones. Then again, I couldn't picture any Arab named "Herb."

The new guy was Hassan (another one), and he took us through the fields of the valley where individual families were allotted a plot of land to grow their vegetables and fruits: olives, grapes, pomegranates, dates, wheat. We walked through the fields towards the village of Irem Naït Haja Agi, a neighborhood of the larger Tinghir city, passed cameraphobic women washing their clothes in a nearby river. Irem Naït Haja Agi was a former Moroccan Jewish town, complete with a central synagogue that still remains today. Since the exodus of its Jews in 1945, the synagogue wasn't used often, but still exists today for the occasional Jew passing through town.

Nowadays the town is populated by many of the Berber people, the indigenous people of the High Atlas Mountain range, who live in the town to lead normal lives. For some of the people, normalcy includes showing tourists how they weave carpets. Our new guide Hassan led us to one such house where carpets were weaved, and left us to be guided by a guy in traditional Berber garb who went by the name of (guess) Mohammed, who said that if the former king of Morocco was "Mohammed V," he was "Mohammed 0."

Mohammed 0 had us sit on the floor of a big multipurpose room -- the "living room, dining room, sleeping room and guest room" as he put it -- where he served us the usual hospitable mint tea while his sister processed wool into yarn on one side. One by one, Mohammed 0 explained the patterns and symbols of the different carpets of varied sizes and colors that he brought out to show to us (picture above). "This is for peace, this one for hospitality, this one for history," he told us, pointing to the colored symbols woven into the sheep wool, camel wool and vegetable sink fabrics -- the colors came from natural dyes of saffron, henna or indigo.

"I know these are definitely handmade and do you know why?" Waddah said, scrutinizing the craftsmanship of a carpet. "There are imperfections. If it was made by a machine, it would be consistent." He also noted that we weren't just there to learn about the carpet making process; a sales pitch was inevitable.

"Oh, I see it coming like a freight train," Russ said.

Sure enough, the subliminal sales pitch became more obvious as Mohammed 0 brought out more and more carpets and flat out said that they were for sale if we just so happened to be interested. Over time, the sales pitch got even more obvious, but in the charming, non-aggressive way I had read about:

• "If you can find a place in your heart, you can find a place in your home for one."
  
• "If you buy in Marrakesh, it costs more because there are five middlemen. Here, you get to meet the women who make it and the money goes straight to the families."
  
• "You can trust me that is a good price. If there is trust, you have everything. No trust, you have nothing."
  
• "If you don't want it, you keep your money, I keep the carpets and we're still friends."
  
• "If you don't have the money in dirham, we can take plastic."
  

He really tried to sweet talk the ones in our group who were even just remotely interested, but as much as he tried to use charm to win our money over, he was no match for charming retort of the Swede in our group.

"Don't you want a carpet for your beautiful Fatima?" Mohammed 0 asked Hendrik, sitting across from his girlfriend Tina.

"No, she is beautiful without the carpets." His reply was greeted with applause from the rest of us.

In the end, everyone in our group left happily empty-handed.

THE TODRA GORGE, a tremendous fault in the plateau between the High Atlas and Jbel Saghro ranges, was our next stop on our way down towards the desert. We were dropped off at the bottom of the chasm for photo opps and to explore its deepest part on foot, where a cold, flowing river ran through. Vendors were there of course selling the usual souvenirs of jewelry, fossils and ceramics, as well as a guy with a mule who sold rides back and forth the canyon -- Kim took a ride and appeared as happy as a kid on a pony. Some vendors, unlike Mohammed 0 the carpet salesman, actually tried harder to buy things from us (rolling papers, cigarettes) instead of the other way around.

There was a deeper section of the little river where local guys were swimming in, and it looked really inviting, too good not to pass up. "I'm going in," Miguel from Portugal said, leading the charge into the cold, refreshing swimming hole. Japanese Mazza and I followed and soon after Spaniard Serbio, Waddah and Russ couldn't resist but join in on the fun as well -- all of us swam around in our underwear. Waddah's wife Coral couldn't resist either and approached the bank of the river, only to hear that it was forbidden for women to share the same pool as the men.

"Do you know what it felt like to be in the river?" Waddah said at the lunch table at the restaurant just outside the gorge.

Spanish Maider, having been forbidden for being female, reciprocated, "I wouldn't know."

"It felt like when you put hot metal into cold water." He raved and raved about the refreshing dip as we ate lunch, unintentionally making the girls even more jealous for not being able to enter.

"Give the [last] melon to the girls since they didn't get to swim," I said.

"NEXT STOP, THE DESERT," Coral said as we boarded the minibus again for our final leg towards the edge of the Sahara. Hassan drove us a couple of hours more, passed small sand storm tornados twirling in the distance. Mountains were replaced by dunes the farther we went, and right before sunset, we arrived at a hotel in Merzouga, on the edge of the desert, where the presence of locusts was more prominent. Fourteen camels were waiting for us there, so we left our big bags in the hotel for storage and mounted the one-humped beasts. Wearing a Berber turban that he bought the day before, Sebastian rode the lead camel like Lawrence of Arabia. As much of a leader that made him appear, it may be of note that his camel was named "Bubbly Wubbly."

The sun set as our caravan marched about a mile into the true Sahara desert, far enough that we were surrounded by nothing but dunes, but not so far that we would have ended up in Algeria, just a few miles more. We were guided by a guy named Mohammed (surprise, surprise) and another named Omar (no way!) who led us to a camp of bivouac tents in the middle of the desert, far away from anything else in an almost completely silent environment (if not for the occasional grunt of a camel). Nightfall came upon us as the guides prepared dinner. In the meantime, a few of us went to climb to the top of the big dune nearby, a much more tiring experience that sitting in a car all day. Mazza and I struggled to the top and sat on the ridge with Steve and Lucy. "Sebastian of Arabia" made his way up too, and tried to take advantage of the soft sand dunes by doing flips.

A tajine dinner under the stars was followed by theological discussions led by Waddah, as two domestic cats roamed the area to look for scraps. Mohammed and Omar entertained us with songs on the bongos, and afterwards we transformed the middle of the camp into one big desert slumber party. Lying down amongst the occasional crawling dung beetle, I stared up into the sky with others, admiring the shooting stars, the planets, the constellations and the clouds of the Milky Way.

What a way to end a day, I thought, staring up at the heavens. If Mohammed 0 promised me something like this, then perhaps I would have bought a carpet after all.

Profit Mohammed

DAY 247: The Sahara, the world's largest desert sprawling all over northern Africa, gets extremely hot in the daytime. (Perhaps that's why they call it the desert, huh?) To combat the heat, our tour was set up to avoid the hottest part of the day, by first bringing us in at sunset the day before, and leading us out at sunrise that morning.

The fourteen of us were all awake in our desert camp and ready to go by 6:30 in the morning, just as the sun was making its way over the dunes -- all us us except for Mazza who had a slower start than the rest of us with stomach problems. Eventually, he mounted his camel as did the rest of us. Omar and Mohammed led us back to Merzouga in two smaller caravans. The angle of the sun elongated our shadows as we trekked across the dunes (picture above), bouncing our prostate up and down on the hump of a camel. A couple of hours and a sore groin later, we were out of the Sahara and back in the minibus headed back the way we came.

THE RIDE BACK TO MARRAKESH was a long and tiring one, and not so exciting since we had seen all the sights already on the way to the Sahara. In the town of Erfoud, we dropped off Steve, Lucy and Miguel, who all hopped on a transport to the northern city of Fez, while the rest of us continued, stopping in a familiar place.

"Where are we?" Coral asked me.

"In that town where they tried to sell us carpets." I answered. We were back in Tinghir for an early lunch break, which wasn't so early because our food took over an hour to be prepared.

"That guy's probably going to come back," Coral said, referring to Mohammed 0, who tried to sell us rugs during a "weaving demonstration" the day before. I put "weaving demonstration" in quotes because it was more like a subtle sales pitch for his business.

"He was probably wearing Levi's under his [traditional Berber] clothes," Hendrik said.

"YOU OKAY?" I asked Mazza. He was lying on a couch in the corner looking like he was in a lot of pain from his stomach illness. He managed to raise his head up for a brief moment to say, "Yeah, yeah," and then went back into his uncomfortable looking state.

The rest of us just waited around, wondering when our food would come, or when Hassan would come back to pick us up. Kim asked around and found out that our minibus needed servicing and that the reason for our extended lunch hour was to kill time in town while the necessary repairs were made for the long drive home. Or was that the real reason?

"Hello, remember me?" a man said as he sat down on a cushion in the rooftop dining area we were in. The stranger was wearing a collared shirt, jeans and sneakers. His face was a familiar one; it was Mohammed 0 after all, the sneaky Moroccan carpet salesman trying to make a profit again. Hendrik was right about the clothes.

According to Waddah, who spoke with Mohammed 0 in Arabic, Mohammed 0 just so happened to get wind that our group was back in town, took a shower and changed into plain clothes thinking that a more Western appearance would convince us to buy a rug. "I told him that since I am a guest in his country, he should give me a gift," Waddah explained to me after Mohammed 0 had given up after a continued lack of sales and gone downstairs. "He said he would give me a gift if I buy a carpet from him. I said that's not a gift, that's a trade."

EVENTUALLY WE LEFT TOWN of the sneaky carpet salesman and continued our way back through the Valley of A Thousand Kasbahs. Mazza continuned to wallow in pain despite my several offers for medicine, always remaining positive with his apparent catch phrase, "Yeah, yeah." We passed the time not doing much of anything but sleep or stare out the window. We stopped for pee breaks and one grocery store stop back in the town of Ouarzazate, conveniently for Russ so he could stock up on beers before the beer availability deadline of eight o'clock in Marrakesh. "The driver stopped just for me," he joked.

The only other highlight of the day (if you could call it that) was when we were stopped by a cop at a regular routine checkpoint. The cop suspected our handbrake lights didn't work, so Hassan had Waddah press down on the regular foot brake to keep the light on while Hassan argued with the police outside that the light did in fact "work." I suppose the police were just doing their job, inspecting vehicles for safety; when darkness fell, we witnessed the results of two car accidents: one truck was flipped over, presumably by a tourist driver who fell asleep at the wheel; and another had been driven off the side of a bridge and into a river, when it swerved to get out of the way of an oncoming person. (I'm told the driver survived.)

It was about nine o'clock when we arrived back in Marrakesh. Mazza was still feeling pretty ill and just went off to his hotel to rest, while the rest of us wandered the town at our own leisures. Back at the Hotel Ali, Sebastian and I were all set to get a hammam bath from the pizza man after sweating in a minibus all day, but it got canceled when they couldn't find the key. Instead, we wandered the always lively Place Djemaa el-Fna with Russ. Walking through the aisles of food stands, we were treated like marathon runners at a finish line by vendors all around us in order to get our business -- Sebastian and I just raised our arms in the air like we won something and moved on.

I suppose every Moroccan in the tourism industry does what they can to make a profit, whether it be from food, carpet or otherwise.

Animated Ascent

DAY 248: "If there was any one song you could have in your head while riding the camels, what would it be?" Sebastian the 20-year-old Vancouverite asked me. I drew a blank.

"I don't know."

Sebastian revealed the one he had in mind, a song from his childhood when he was ten and I was in college:

Prince Ali, mighty as he, Ali Ababwa...

(from Disney's animated feature Aladdin)

This was just one of the many references to cartoons throughout the day as we hiked up Djebel Toubkal, north Africa's highest peak at 4167m. ASL.

We had a pretty late start in the day -- blame The Blog for eating up most of the morning -- but by 12:30 we were in a shared grand taxi (a beat-up old Mercedes that transports six) to the smaller town of Asni, 50 odd kilometers to the south. After stocking up on uncooked couscous, bread and Laughing Cow cheese wedges (a backpacker staple), we were in another shared grand taxi to ride the additional 17 km. to Imlil, the starting point of treks up Djebel Toubkal and other trails in and around the High Atlas range. We were approached by the usual touts, asking to be our guide up the mountain, but most of them stayed clear when Sebastian pointed to me and told them that he already had a Moroccan guide. Ah, the advantages of dark, sun-tanned skin.

THERE WAS AN EPISODE OF THE SIMPSONS in its first season when Marge considered having an affair with a Frenchman named Jacques that Sebastian and I reminisced about. We kept on quoting one conversation in particular:

Marge: What's brunch?
Jacques (in thick, French accent): It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but you get a slice of cantaloupe at the end.

It was this constant reference to this conversation that inspired a purchase on our way out of Imlil and onto the trail. "Hey, they have cantaloupe!" I said as we stood near a fruit stand.

Having the cantaloupe actually excited us (it didn't take much to do that), and our brunch would come in time.

USING NO MAP BUT A DECENT WRITTEN DESCRIPTION of the trail in Sebastian's Let's Go guide, we made our way southbound through the valley on a well-marked, low-impact, gradually ascending trail (picture above) that followed a river upstream towards its source. There weren't many people hiking along with us since we had a fairly late start -- we started the average six-hour leg to the refuge at 2:30 in the afternoon -- which was sort of a welcome change from the craziness and crowds of Marrakesh. I had Sebastian set a timer on his digital watch to count down six hours from then, with the nonsensical but wishful thinking that the more time counted down, the closer our destination would get nearer, even if we spent most of the time taking breaks.

About a third of the way up, we stopped under the shade of a tree for a lunch of Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches and to dry out our sweat-drenched shirts in the sun. It was the sort of time and place where one could look at the tall surrounding mountains and the distant waterfalls and truly have some deep thoughts.

"Here's one for you," Sebastian said. "What's the first cartoon that started to know it was a cartoon?" Cartoons swirled through my head from old Disney cartoons to classic Warner Bros. cartoons, but I was drawing a blank.

"Darkwing Duck," he said, citing an answer from his generation of early 1990's after-school cartoons. "I remember watching it once and thinking, something's not quite right here." (Mind you, this was coming from a guy who read Sartre in the minibus during the camel trek tour.)

And so, our deep conversation about the self-aware post-modernist style of Darkwing Duck and other cartoons led us up the peak. I think it's safe to say it was the first conversation of its kind in the High Atlas mountains, or perhaps Morocco, or the entire continent of Africa. (I'm sure there are some Fan Boys in the U.S. who've had it.)

ABOUT HALFWAY UPHILL (in terms of distance, not our timer countdown), we reached Sidi Chamarouch, a small collection of houses surrounding a Muslim shrine not open to non-Muslims. the tiny village was everything the guidebook said it would be, with price-inflated drinks and guys telling us to spend the night (and our money) there because the refuge "[is far, four hours away.]" We politely declined the man's pitch -- the refuge was only three hours away according to the book -- and skipped out on the expensive drinks by filling our water bottles with fresh mountain water, right from the source.

We took our time as we leisurely continued up the trail with our conversations of cartoons. "I'm actually really excited about the cantaloupe," I said.

"Did we get that because of The Simpsons?"

"Totally."

THERE WAS SOME TRUTH IN WHAT THE GUY SAID at Sidi Chamarouch; with our casual pace, four hours to the refuge seemed to be about right. We walked up and up, passed herds of goats and beautiful waterfalls showering down from above in the distance. When Sebastian's watch alarm beeped signaling that we should have reached the refuge already, the refuge was still an hour away. The temperature dropped considerable when night fell and we only had a slight moonlight to illuminate the trail for us -- just bright enough for us to stay clear of the horse turds peppered on the trail. The lights of the refuge at 3207m. ASL guided us like a lighthouse does to ships in a fog, and by 9:30 we arrived and checked into the fairly modern refuges, a hostel on a hill, and into one of the big communal dorm rooms that held up to twenty people.

For dinner, Sebastian attempted to make a fire with his portable gas stove so we could make Marmite-flavored couscous (talk about improvisization), but it sort of went out of control and started to melt the plastic covering on the picnic table we had it on. The uncontrollable flames of the mini-stove continued when Sebastian put it on the ground with no success of taming it. We drew quite a crowd of staff members, including the young ones that couldn't have been older than twelve.

In the end, we just used the stoves provided by the refuge's kitchen.

SINCE WE ARRIVED RELATIVELY LATE AT THE REFUGE, most people were already asleep for their early morning rise to trek the rest of the way up to the peak. One of the few remaining people awake (and the only other person whose first language was English) was an Australian woman named Jess, who was quite happy to hear English from our voices. Eventually she went to bed while Sebastian and I had dinner. We tried to eat in the living room of the refuge, with its cushioned couches, but one of the kid staff members scolded us almost immediately. "Can't you read the people?" he said in broken English while pointing to a sign we didn't notice. (We figured he could have dropped the "the.") The sign stated that no eating was allowed there, only in the designated dining hall. We moved away from the cushions, but not away from the grumpy stares of the two boys apparently working at the refuge with their families. Whenever we asked a simple question, the boy would start off with an attitude, like we were intruding on his house.

"I don't like taking orders from infants," Sebastian joked to me. Perhaps the grumpiness spawned from a lack of sleep, but it didn't matter; we called it a "hostile hostel" anyway.

Disgruntled adolescence? These guys really could use a couple hours of cartoons...

Heels On The Hill

DAY 249: One of the dangers of mountain trekking is mountain sickness, caused by the lack of sufficient oxygen to the brain in high altitudes. Mountain sickness (or "altitude sickness") affects different people in different ways at different levels of severity. For example, when I climbed to the altitude of 5681m. up Mount Kilimanjaro with a Japanese guy named Kenji, the thin air caused me to vomit three times and it put Kenji into a delirious, near-vegetable state.

The effects of mountain sickness were bound to happen again as I continued the second day of a two-day trek up to the peak of Djebel Toubkal at 4167m. ASL, this time not with a Japanese vegetable but a Canadian named Sebastian.

A SLICE OF CANTALOUPE CAME AT THE BEGINNING of our estimated two-hour trek from the refuge to the peak, up a steeper trail that sometimes passed through snow patches. Two hours was the estimated time according to the book, and when we ran into Aussie Jess already on her way down, she said it took her two hours too. But for us, we took twice that amount of time, reason being we always managed to follow a trail that we thought was the right way but discovered that it just diminished into nothing. What made it worse was that all these fake trails went up slopes of loose rocks and the entire ascent was a balancing act. One step up sometimes took you one step down in rubble. What made it more worse was when we got up to about the 4000m. mark and the air really began to thin out, mild mountain sickness took its toll on us in different ways.

"You alright?" Sebastian asked me from time to time. He was always about twenty feet ahead of me.

"Yeah," I said, catching my breath. I grunted as my thighs started to burn.

"You're walking like a drunken zombie!" he said, laughing hysterically.

The thin air was affecting us in opposite ways, making me sluggish and tired and making Sebastian all giggly like he was a dentist abusing his supply of nitrous oxide after hours. During one of our numerous breaks for Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, I attempted to sit on a nearby rock in my stupor, missing it entirely. My ass didn't even make any sort of contact with the stone and Sebastian laughed his head off at me (not with me).

Episodes like this continued as we took our time up to the peak, and it epitomized after we took a break in a area where we could finally see the very top -- up until then the peak was hidden from us with a steep rock face. I got a second wind, sprung up from my seat and started a funny power walk up the trail, my arms swinging side to side like Popeye. Sebastian started laughing so hard that he couldn't move and just crouched down, clenching his stomach in hysterics. I kicked it up a notch when I ran and kicked my heels in the air like in an Irish jig, and he almost died laughing -- literally that is; he was laughing so hard he might have fallen backwards down a steep drop.

We reached the peak around 10:30, after most groups had come and started their approach back down the way they came already. One group of about a dozen French remained, but kept to themselves with their guide and fancy food. Sebastian and I just rested a bit at the top with our Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches, inhaling the thin, but fresh mountain air, enjoying the view, climbing the peak marker, pissing off the side of the top and -- our new simple pleasure -- goofing off with Irish jigs (picture above).

"AH, THICK AIR," Sebastian said. "Should we set a timer?" In the few days that I had known him, Sebastian was notorious for timing things on his stopwatch for fun.

"Sure."

"How much time?"

"Three hours."

"How about three and a half?"

"Three twenty."

"Okay," he said, setting the timer. "So what happens if we don't make it in three twenty?"

"All of Morocco will blow up," I said. This was an amazing goal to set because those were the same stakes when we set a timer the day before over and over, and apparently, Morocco had already blown up three times.

Coming down the mountain from the peak to the refuge wasn't as hard a chore as the ascent, although it was much more of a balancing act walking downhill on the loose rocks. Our knees absorbed the shocks of our weight bouncing down -- except for when we passed through a couple of snow patches and slid down.

After some more Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches and swigs of my obsession, Pom's apple soda, we were back on the gradually descending trail back down to the base of the valley with our big backpacks on. The gradual increase of oxygen only made us go faster than any one else and we overtook about fifty people all the way down, one of which was annoyed with us when we tried to pass her.

"There's something called manners you know," the elderly British hag said with her stiff British accent. "Must you be on my heels!"

"I'm sorry, I'm just trying to catch up to my friend," I said, pointing to Sebastian far ahead of me around a bend. I ditched the old hag and caught up, thinking that perhaps a little Irish jig might have raised her spirits.

"I guess we're obligated to not have her catch up," Sebastian said to me.

WITH OUR OXYGEN-POWERED SPEED, we made it back down to the village of Imlil in two hours, one hour ahead of the average time, saving all of Morocco from total oblivion. We walked across the village, passed its villagers and their livestock -- Sebastian got busted trying to a photo of a Muslim woman, her kid, her sheep and her cow -- and arrived at the parking lot where all the grand taxis picked up and dropped off passengers. We met two French women there waiting for more people to fill the six-person quota for a taxi to Asni, or if it would take us, all the way back to Marrakesh.

"[There are no more taxis here,]" a guy told us as one taxi was filling by some trekkers that reserved it in advance. The shady guy was trying to lead us to another part of town. The French women and I skeptically believed him until Sebastian asked a third party if it was true.

"[He just told me there is another taxi coming here,]" Sebastian told the guy.

"[You are from the toilet,]" he said. Meanwhile, another guy nearby whipped out some Moroccan bracelets and daggers from under his galabiyya cloak trying to make a sale, but we declined.

TWO TAXI RIDES LATER, two Moroccan men, two French women, one Canadian and I arrived back in Marrakesh. "Let's go rock the hammam," I said. After a muscular strenuous day of trekking up and down north Africa's highest peak, a steam bath and massage was in order, no matter how awkward it was to feel the touch of another man's hand near my privates. For my second and Sebastian's first hammam, we decided to rock the hammam not at the Hotel Ali, but at the public hammam in town in attempts to get a more authentic experience. Its authenticity couldn't be more perfect, with wrinkly old guys bathing us in a much more thorough and rigorous manner than Mohammed the Pizza Man at the Hammam Ali. More scrubbing, more lathering and more kneading of the muscles and body contortion "relaxed" us as we lay on the ceramic floor like animals. I put "relaxed" in quotes because it was less like a bath and more like a steamy hot workout.

"I don't know if I'm more tired from the trek or the hammam," I told Sebastian, staggering through the Place Djemaa el-Fna the way I did at the high altitude earlier that day. We went out for dinner at one of the many food stands in the main square. Regardless of my sore body muscles, I was still pretty content with the events of the day and showed it by kicking my heels in the air once again. After all, Morocco was still in one piece.