100 camels in the courtyard
“welcome to egypt.” “where you from?” these are the questions posed to me day in and day out roughly 100 times a day here in egypt. occasionally, i become so exasperated by these annoyances (and others such as “you have beautiful smile. can i just talk to you for 2 minutes? just please 2 minutes!”) that i am beginning to make things up just to amuse myself and make things interesting (“i’m from egypt, can’t you tell?”) but mostly it just bugs the sh#t outta me dealing with these aggressive dudes. once in awhile i come across someone genuinely nice and quiet and will have meaningful conversations with that person. i have met such a person here in dahab, on the southern end of the sinai peninsula. this guy walid runs the restaurant across from the hotel where i’m staying and has shown me much kindness and generosity (discounts on food and drink, free drinks, complimentary sheesha pipes breaks, lifts in his 4WD car to the nicest beach, etc.). the conversations have been interesting and he’s taught me a bit about egyptian culture which is, of course, fascinating to the uneducated. he also taught me how to write my name in arabic! if i could do so here i would share this with you people, but i don’t think i can on this keyboard.Â
before arriving in laid back dahab, i spent a frustrating and exhausting 4 days in cairo. cairo is a busy, polluted, loud and crazy place. there are something like 60 million people living there. the streets and sidewalks teem with humans at all hours. after a day or so in cairo i was about to beat a fast retreat outta this place of pervy gawkers. i put on the tough face and endured, however, and thank goodness for the relative calm of my hotel (pension roma – cheap at @ $15 US a night for 3 beds, my own sink, fan, antique desk and bureau and shared bath, but of course you must share the space with a few bedbugs…a small price to pay, i should think) which i escaped to frequently after venturing forth into the fray of humanity.
aside from sampling the edibles and drinking endless glasses of tea, i managed to get out and see some of the sights. you can probably guess which. yep, the pyramids at giza were the number one attraction i couldn’t miss. that and the sphinx, and some tombs nearby as well. my hotel arranged for a taxi for the day for me and my driver, although he spoke maybe 4 words of english, was nice and took me all over the place in about 4 hours for all of $25 or so. the pyramids are as impressive as they are in those photos you see all the time. there’s not much new i can add to that, really, except that i got sorta close to them which was a new thing for me. at giza i took a carriage ride around to the main pyramids, then got up on a camel for a photo op, then took a 30 minute horseback ride into some dunes with a guide. i opted not to ride the camel through the area due to the idea that my ass would be hurty for ages if i had done. i saw how those other tourists walked afterwards and wanted none of that, thank you very much. still, i enjoyed very much watching the slow, graceful strides of these beasts of burden as they made their way through the desert. like the apes in asia, i never tire of watching these fascinating (albeit cranky) creatures and wonder how on earth they have managed to survive with mere drops of water and little food for all these thousands of years and in such a harsh environment. they even seem to be smiling, most of them…when not groaning and biting, that is. and the guys who ride keep them are also quite stunning. they’re mostly either teenage kids in worn out jeans and filthy shirts or older men in red or blue checked head scarves and long robes and sandals. i’ve see these dudes in the national geographic magazines and in travel books but seeing them move slowly past, always staring at me with ancient faces, i could not help but stare back. i could not even smile or say hello. all i could do was stare. beautiful, rough, ancient, weary, Bedouins. these dudes, like the camels they ride, look as if they have not changed or evolved in thousands of years.
gimme the baksheesh, beeeyotch! everyone around these parts wants a littlemonetary somethin somethin from old rendogg. i’ve been trying to hold firm in my handouts, however, and only the most helpful, worthy souls get their meathooks on my money.
the night bus from cairo to dahab left at 12:15pm. a fellow traveler, david, from my hotel and i shared a taxi with not only the taxi driver but also his 12-year old cerebral palsied son who shared the drivers seat with him and whose head the driver had to prop up with one arm around his neck while operating the manual gearshift through the INSANE cairo traffic. it was an exhilarating ride, to say the least. we got to the station in one piece, surprisingly, and caught the bus outta that wackjob town. it was a relief to think that sleep might actually occur on the 7-8 hour ride. alas, it was not meant to be. along the way we must’ve stopped a dozen times at random middle of nowhere military checkpoints to (a) check tickets (and let some others board the bus) and (b) check passports. at one stop, the bus stopped below a guard tower for about 30 minutes and some of us stood outside the bus in the night air beneath the window of the guard tower. i noticed as i looked up that business end of a machine gun was pointing out the window directly at the side of the bus. charming. nobody wanted baksheesh here, just shady people running from the man or the country or trying to pass contraband on to israel or wherever.
needless to say i slept no more than maybe 2 hours, fitfully, in the cramped space and over the 10 hours en route to the red sea. upon arrival at sharm el-sheik, the first stop near the sea, i breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the blue water beyond the brown mountains. the contrast was incredibly stark and more beautiful than i could’ve imagined in my wildest imagination. the mountains are craggy. the sea is a deep blue and calm and there is no sign of life joining the two. there is nothing green here. even the date palms are beige-ish and their fruit more yellowy than verdant green. this is not a place for sissies. it’s a bit like being on mars compared to what i’d experienced thus far in my journeys. although there is water here (duh! we’re on the red sea!!) if you turn your back to it you would think you are in the middle of some desolate landscape with no hope for survival and imminent death from dehydration within hours is a certainty.
in dahab i met a couple nice gals from the states who are living in egypt, studying arabic primarily. one, gina, lived in morocco for a semester and had lots of good info on that country to give me. the other, shelbi, was not shy in bargaining HARD with the douchey taxi drivers who tried to rip us off immediately on arrival. i was grateful for their presence, being as i was sooooo tired and without all pistons firing – let alone with not a word of arabic in my knowledge bank. turns out they were staying at the same hotel as i was, which was a nice coincidence. although we did not spend much time together exploring dahab, it was always nice to run into them. i most certainly cannot say that for very many others i’ve encountered in egypt, so hats off to you, gals!
of course my blog entry on the sinai peninsula would not be complete without mention of the undersea life here. it is just as spectacular as everyone says it is and it’s reasonably cheap to do. of course, thanks to my friend walid everything that is organized on my behalf is cheaper than for everyone else. no complaints there! my guide ahmed took very good care of me and the 6 of us did a shore entry dive at eel gardens in the morning and which lasted about 50 minutes, the longest i’ve ever spent undersea. the water is cool (wetsuit needed) but clearer than i’ve experienced to date. the visibility was about 20-25 meters, pretty good, and the wild sea life spectacular. the best part about eel gardens? why yes, the eels of course! they live in the sandy sea floor and poke their wiry bodies up through the sand a few inches apart so when you look down it looks like a white play dough surface with greyish/beige spaghetti noodles sticking up out of it, waving in the current. very weird and surreal. sort of dr. seuss-ish. of course the snorkeling here is also sublime and i was doing much of that until my butt got sunburnt pretty good. for the time being, i’m on terra firma until the coral scratch and sunburn heal and then i shall return to the deep as is needed for the continued good health of my soul and spirit.
Tags: Egypt
karen_shelver
sounds awesome karen, i loved dahab, if you have the energy and commitment, jump across the sea on the ferry to Aquaba and go see Petra, you wont be disappointed!!!!
karen, i finally caught up on your adventures with this delightful blog. your stories are fun to read…keep up the good work and looking forward to enjoying your next entry.
a bowl of kif in the morning will make you stronger than 100 camels in the courtyard. Sheesh I can’t imagine all those purvy dudes with their dirty eyes prying all the time, glad you made it closer to the water. May the sheltering sky keep you free from a roving encampment of llamas making a home under your window. thanks for the photos and best of luck on this leg. sheik halbertoo
say hello to Paul Bowle’s houseboy for me. and beware of gypsy’s offering laced kif.
I snorkeled in the Red Sea, years ago, and it was effing amazing!!! Sounds like you’re having a great time. Those Bedouins are interesting folks, no?
Karen, i can’t compare travel tales from this locale but we did simultaneously read Bowles way back and you’re fullfiling the dream to go the distance. It’s beyond rock on woman!!! The where you are, what you are seeing, experiencing and retelling just as many thanks and caps waving back to you lady. Your friend at a certain lawfirm cube version of The Office is totally stoked to see the seeds from your garden growing.
keep on keeping on!
This is wonderful, Hon. Glad you’re getting to do a lot of diving. The critters are so different there. I’m glad you’re watching out for yourself. Blondes are probably fascinating to the Arabs.
Stay safe!
Love,
Momma
:O So mush Info :O …This is a great blog… 😀