Marsa Alam, Luxor
Day 310:
We had decided to take another day of the hectic life of swimming under the waves. There were no alarms to wake us up from the heavenly slumber in the early morning hours either. That gave the sun time to do its normal thing of rising high above the horizon and heating the surrounding desert and water before we braved the outside world. We did eventually emerge before Peter and his fellow divers came back from their early morning escapades, but only just.
As had become our custom, we joined the rest of the gang while they were having breakfast. We feasted on some fresh oranges and bananas we procured from our friendly and honest greengrocer and chatted away while drowning gallons and gallons of freshly brewed coffee. I found it quite strange that in Egypt people paid a premium for Nescafe instant coffee while the good stuff we were consuming was considered second rate…
With breakfast sorted the band of brothers (3 German’s and 2 Poles and one Egyptian) started making plans for their next dives. The Polish father and his son were however waiting to hear from their travel agent before making any decisions. Apparently they had been advised to flee the country and because of the political situation at the time their chosen airline announced that they actually stopped flying to Egypt altogether. We also herd of a few other airlines that stopped flying to Marsa Alam and with that started worrying a little about our master plan.
Although it was Friday again, which in the Muslim world meant “Sunday”, and the protests in Cairo were back in full swing, the internet kept working. The news updates we received all indicated that the general population of the country were growing a little weary of the situation and most people just wanted to return to daily life. For us there was a slight flaw in the plan of normality though. The ferry we had decided to take from Alexandria to Venice was stopped in Syria and waiting for stability to return to Egypt. The suspension of their service was indefinite and we could not even find out how much it would cost us to use it.
We spent the rest of the day doing very little in deed. The Polish booked a flight for the next day, leaving them free to dive again and with that the camp was deserted for most of the afternoon. Catt and I used the quiet time to catch up on some writing and general admin and could not actually believe how that side of life managed to multiply in volume when we simply took a week off to dive. The afternoon on the other hand slipped by in a wink and the beautiful desert sunset arrived with ceremonious splendour while we were sitting in the open sided dining room.
Hassan came by in the early evening with the daily report on the “revolution” as we had started calling it. He told us that the “Day of Departure” as it was named by the locals saw some very interesting uprising in Cairo and Suez, but nothing much in the rest of the country. He told stories of Christian protestors forming a protective barrier around their Muslim counterparts to allow the latter to pray in peace. For the time of prayer all protesting and fighting stopped, but then resumed shortly after prayer was completed. If anything, that should have put an instant stop to the speculation of any religious reasons for the conflicts. In our little hideaway by the southern Red Sea there was no whisper of any unrest or issue. That was not enough for the Polish to change their minds, but we were rested and ready for another few days of intense diving.
Day 311:
It was diving time again and the alarm sounded at 6:00 to wake us up. With a quick gallon of coffee and putting wetsuits on before leaving our room we were ready to take on the ocean again. The decision from the previous day was to dive at the house reef again and we were joined by Peter and two guys from East Germany.
The tide was high and the currents mild by the time we entered the water. The sun was a little above the horizon, but the reef was still fast asleep. The little colourful fish were present everywhere, but the bigger things were just totally absent. We dove down to about 35 meters in search of our friendly dolphin, but had no luck there at all. The ascent was slow and relaxing and as the sun was gaining altitude in the sky, the coral got lit up more and the life in it became more and more visible. It was another fantastic dive that eventually had to end, but only after more than an hour. With the tide subsiding the current was fairly strong as we left the water, but once we got ourselves to about thigh deep it was easy to walk to shore.
By the time breakfast was dealt with the wind had increased dramatically. The waves were breaking violently over the top of the house reef coral and it was blatantly obvious that there would be no further diving there that day. Hassan came by with the news that our next dives would be at the sandy and protected bay of Kilo Tamania, one of only two places diving was possible in those conditions. I wasn’t convinced about the idea of diving when the wind was so strong. I was fully expecting the sand to blown off the beach and into the water, reducing the visibility dramatically, but we decided to have a look anyway.
An hour or so later, with full bellies and bodies at normal temperature again we walked back into the amazing turquoise water of the bay. We could see the sea raging with breaking waves over distant reefs, but bizarrely enough, where we were it was totally calm. The sand was as if it was glued to the bottom and we could see for what seemed to be kilometres far under water. Our merry band of 5 spent another glorious dive looking at the amazingly colourful coral, the tropical fish and found an insane number of purple spotter Rays again. At the turn around point we saw a few very big Anemone Fish (Nemo), but had spent so much time getting there that we could not stay for long. When we surfaced again we all agreed that the next dive should be spent with the Anemone Fish instead of taking so long to get there.
Catt and I had cleverly decided to drive Maggie to the dive site as well. That meant that we could have lunch in between dives and even brew some tea while we patiently waited for the sun to bake us warm again. The hour of our surface interval was hardly enough to recover from the cold water, but at least we were fairly dry and excited to get into the sea again. When it was time, we got back into our gear and waded into the familiar waters for our last dive for the day. We found the Anemone Fish where we had left them and spent the bulk of the dive photographing them. We also found a Porcupine Fish nearby, hiding in a small cave while looking at us with its beautifully massive blue eyes. It was the first time we had seen one of them in the wild and loved every humorous second staring at its single big front tooth and comical facial expressions. It was a truly magical and much underrated dive site and we were both really disappointed when the pressure gauges on our air started indicating the end of our dive time. However, buy the time we surfaced again we were freezing cold and visibly shivering.
We got out of out wet gear quickly and after dressing in dry and warm things we actually put the heater in the car on for the drive back. Poor Catt’s lips had turned purple by then and I could actually hear her teach chattering as we bounced over the sandy bumps on the track back to the camp. We quickly rinsed our equipment in fresh water at the camp before racing off to the hot shower for some well deserved warmth. While standing under the streaming hot water we had to laugh at the irony of being so cold in a place people chose as a summer vacation spot.
As the familiar picturesque sunset occurred over the far away granite mountains we found ourselves in the restaurant once again. The internet had not stopped working since the government had unblocked it a week before and the amount of news about the country we were in started dwindling on the popular news websites. The local news still spoke of large scale protests in the Tahrir Square and showed images of tanks and protestors flinging rocks at uniformed officers. Hassan, who had returned from dropping the Polish guests of at the Marsa Alam airport, was visibly stressed out about the situation though. He told us that he was seriously worried about his livelihood. He totally and utterly relied on mass tourism to be able to make a living and what was happening in Egypt at the time was less than killing his industry. He could not care less about who was in power and what the government got up to either. It was incredibly sad to see how outside influences could have such an extreme effect on the normal, tax paying and law abiding citizens.
Day 312:
Our next day of swimming in paradise started in the normal way of the alarm waking us up at the exact time that the sun broke over the horizon. Once again we drowned our usual quantity of coffee before getting dressed and braving the cool outside world. It was the 6th of February, making it Catt’s 30th birthday and I for one could not think of a better way to spend it with her. Once again we entered on the house reef and slowly made our way down into the dark cold water of 30m below the surface. We saw a few massive Napoleon Fish and the usual Lion Fish and Scorpion Fish we could almost call family by then. Close to the end of the dive we found the rope marking the channel 2 exit. All of us had enough air left in our cylinders for another few minutes though so decided to spend that exploring around a huge pinnacle of coral close to the exit. On the shore side of this we found a Green backed Turtle. The old boy was totally uninterested in the five strange things blowing bubbles around him. In fact, he had his head stuck deep into the coral and we could actually hear him munching away at it. We stayed for as long as we could, but with the channel and its currents looming, we had to leave a bigger than normal safety margin for our ascent.
The current was strong! We needed both hands on the rope to pull us along and we had to hang onto rocks to keep us stationary for our compulsory safety stop at 5 meters deep. Above us I could see the waves breaking over the reef and the fish struggling manically to keep their position close to their homes. With the safety stop completed we struggled on until we were shallow enough to stand. We removed our fins and started walking to shore before daring to take our masks off and regulators out of our mouths. A stumble or fall there could have meant some trouble without the ability to breathe under water. None the less, we made it to shore without too much effort and loaded our gear onto the waiting pick up truck for the two minute ride back to the camp.
Hassan was waiting for us when we arrived and gave poor Peter an absolute earful for letting us dive at that location in those conditions. Later Peter told us that they had a fatality at the reef a year before because a client did not have the strength to pull herself along the rope to the shore. She eventually ran out of air and in one last desperate attempt to surface hit her head on a rock and became unconscious. She drowned in a small cave, one meter below the waves in the middle of the channel we had used to get out of the water. I didn’t really think it was all that bad in there, but I could also see why the owner of the business that was already being threatened by unrest in the country would not be impressed with us taking any risks what so ever.
The wind decided to join us for breakfast and while we were still eating we were told about another dive site we would use for the rest of the day. Hassan had two new arrivals to look after and decided to take the group to a place south of Marsa Alam. It was another sandy bay, protected from the elements with an easy entry and exit out of the water. We had dived there the week before and remembered it being really nice, so we did not mind repeating it at all.
As we started kitting up Hassan dropped another bomb on me. When we arrived at the camp we were told a price for diving per day. That included as many dives as we wanted to do a day, making it very cheap to do three dives. Shasli, the deputy manager made us sign some paperwork and gave us the information as Hassan was not there. Apparently he made a mistake. We were suddenly told that the daily diving price was only valid for all inclusive guests and not for money saving idiots like us. On top of that he said that the unlimited diving was for the house reef only and did not include the other places we dived. That would be the house reef that was only possible to dive on in the early mornings… The best was that their “all inclusive” rate was not actually any better than the nearby places we had scoped the week before and they definitely did not offer as much. I was PISSED! I loudly proclaimed that every single business transaction from buying bread to scuba diving in Egypt ended up being unpleasant because the proprietor changed the rules half way through the transaction. I tried very hard to keep my cool and was dangerously close to packing up and leaving by the time we got down to the amounts we were talking about.
All he wanted was a 5 Euro a day per person charge for the rent of the cylinders for the third dive. In diving terms that was nothing, but it did mean a 25% increase in the prices we thought we were paying. It was too late in the day and too close to our diving time to argue about anything, so I just agreed to pay the extra for the days we dived more and left it at that. Catt and I drove Maggie into town and replenished our fruit and vegetable stocks before heading the 12km south to Ras Samaday. Once again the waves were bashing away at the deeper reefs while the bay was totally calm and clear.
I was still a little upset by the change in rules by the time we entered the water, but saw the value in our spending as soon as I popped my head below the surface. The water was crystal clear and it was as if the fish also chose the bay to hide away from the bad weather as well. The diving was spectacular! We spend almost 80 minutes on our first dive and after an hour and a half on the surface we had another glorious 75 minute dive in the opposite direction. When we finally surfaced our bodies seemed rid of any warmth once again and we were in desperate need of heating up. After getting into dry clothes we started Maggie up, turned on the heater and started the half an hour drive back to the camp.
While diving and being unable to speak to anyone I calmed down about our sudden increase in pricing and had time to really think about the options. The solution was really simple actually. With Catt being that ridiculously cold on every third dive of the day, all we needed to do was sleep late and only dive twice. That way we were not paying more than what we had budgeted for and we got to be lazy… Perfect!
After rinsing our gear and spending ages under the hot shower we met Peter at the restaurant for a chat. He seemed quite upset about Hassan’s behaviour earlier and told us that in the eight years that he had spent some months per year there he had never seen him act like that. I made no secret of the fact that he had no tangible excuse for what he did, but that I could also understand the stress he was under. We had much more important things to consider though…. Where to go to dinner for Catt’s birthday being the most important one.
We decided to try a new and fancy hotel close to the camp. The name was Oriental Bay and it looked stunning! The guard at the gate would not let us drive in, but walked us to reception after making us leave Maggie by the gate. The reception man had to first find the manager and then wake the chef to find out if it was possible for us to eat there and as they did not have a single other guest, he was fairly doubtful. So we left. We headed further afield and found the Red Sea Divers Resort we had lunch at the week before. That was so nice the previous time that we decided to have another go. The gate guard asked to see my driving licence again. Knowing that he wanted to keep it until we left I just told him I did not have one. For some bizarre reason that was enough to satisfy him and for him to open the gate for us.
The resort restaurant was almost deserted. We could not help but think that they had also had a mass exodus of tourists but judging from the mountains of food they had prepared, they obviously felt confident that some may return. We spotted at least seventeen different dishes and four different kinds of desert. There was simply no reason to even think about another place. The price for the buffet was about $10 per person, but it was worth every single cent! We even bought a bottle of local wine for the same amount. It was the first time we had found reasonably priced vino since leaving Aswan almost two weeks before and it was delicious!
There was no rush to finish our meal either. We took our sweet time, savouring every bite of the mouth watering dishes and by the time the wine bottle was empty we moved on to local tea with our second helping of desert. In all the time we spent in the restaurant we only saw about a dozen other people there. At least half of that was staff, so the place had to be very very empty. It was quite shocking to think that a place that could probably accommodate a couple of hundred people at a time was so empty that the staff outnumbered the guests.
Three hours after our arrival at the table it was time to pay up and move on. We drove back to our cosy room at our desert camp and headed straight for bed. We selected a movie to watch on the computer but after a full day’s diving and a bottle of wine we both fell asleep before the end.
Day 313:
There was no alarm to wake us up in the morning. The sun shone though the small windows illuminating the inside of the room before we dared open our eyes. By the time we had dragged ourselves from the comfortable bed and braved the outside world the other three divers were already surfacing after their early morning escapades. It was warm in the sun and the wind was almost totally calm. We had a pleasant breakfast of fresh bananas and oranges while drinking many mugs of coffee before planning the rest of the day’s diving.
The house reef was obviously not driveable any more so we waited patiently for Hassan to tell us where to go. His bay of choice was Marsa Igla, some 5km south of camp and as pristinely beautiful as the other reefs we had become accustomed two. We loaded our gear onto the camp’s pickup but Catt and I took Maggie to the dive site once again. We kitted up in the warm sun and were actually relieved to get into the water when it was time. With the absence of clouds and wind the temperature was high and inside the wetsuits it was actually quite hot.
The dives were fantastic again! Our fist dive took us to about 20 meters below the surface and we spotted a mass of interesting and colourful fishes. A school of 3 Calamari came to say “hallo” as we were making our way back to shore. Catt commented later that she will never eat Calamari again. After seeing them alive under water she could not really understand how anyone could veer kill them for food. We saw another turtle swimming in the shallow water on our safety stop and ended dive number one after 80 minutes or so. The surface interval was quite pleasant in the warm weather as well. By the time we went into the water for the second dive we were warm and comfortable, making the dive itself very pleasant indeed. We managed another 80 minutes before needing to surface. In the last few minutes of the dive we saw a Sole. That had to be one of the strangest things I had ever seen under water. The thing was totally flat with eyes on stalks like antennae. It was dull in colour and swam using tiny fins resembling the legs of a millipede.
In the late afternoon we sat at the camp restaurant working through our hundreds of under water photos. Peter had his new Mac laptop there with large and impressive screen making the photos a hundred times more impressive than seeing them on my tiny Nettbook. It was fantastic to see the colours that were all absent under water. Reds normally disappeared at about 8 meters below and by 30 meters you could only see blue and green. The photos were totally different though. With the help of the camera’s flash you could capture it all and seeing it on a fantastic screen after the fact was almost as rewarding as taking them in the first place.
That evening Taha the chef out did himself. He put a massive baking tray of potatoes and roast chicken in front of us and it was almost as if he forgot that the Polish guys were not there any longer. We chatted about life and the universe and the current affairs of Egypt until late into the night. By the time we headed for bed Catt and I were a little nervous about moving on and braving the world outside of Marsa Alam again. We had one diving day left though, so sleep came quickly and undisturbed.
Day 314:
We had decided to dive early that day. When we met Peter at the dive centre at 6:30, wetsuits on and ready for action, I already though that the house reef was not diveable. The wind was fairly strong and the waves seemed quite big. Hassan was around though and said that we cold dive one part of it under certain conditions. Our group had shrunk to three as the East Germans had gotten to the end of their holiday and could not dive that day. We had to reach our exit rope no longer than one hour after entering the water and if the current was too strong, we could float a buoy signalling him to collect us with a boat.
It all sounded a little scary, but adventurous, so we decided to have a go. Entering the reef via the familiar channel 2 was great fun! The strong current created a venturi effect in the narrow channel forcing huge volumes of water through a small gap in the reef. As soon as we were submerged we were inside this effect and were simply riding the current into the ocean. The three of us got spat out the other side and as soon as we got close to the high wall of the reef all current was gone. It was like hiding from the wind behind a wall. The visibility was fantastic and the water actually felt quite warm. The reef was alive with life and lit up fantastically by the early morning sun. The three of us did not venture deeper than about 20 meters though and we kept keen eyes on our air consumption. We were told to be back at the exit point with at least half our air left, so the dive only lasted about 45 minutes.
Back at the rope we gripped it with both hands and started to fin hard while pulling ourselves along. I made Catt go in the middle between Peter and I so we could help her if we needed to. While I was struggling against the current it did strike me that she was a much stronger swimmer than I was though. Never the less I was glad to be where I was. That day the current was unbelievable in the channel. We had to turn our heads sideways to be able to breather without our regulators free flowing. Every regulator has a “purge valve” on the front which can be pressed to release a mass of air through the mouth piece. That is usually used to clear water from it or to inflate a marker or recovery buoy. I had never heard of current pressing it before. At some point Catt had to turn her face sideways to stop her mask from being blown off as well. We reached our 5 meter safety stop zone and thankfully managed to find some rocks to hide behind while resting and getting our heart rates and breathing back to normal. I looked down at my pressure gauge and could not believe how much of the remaining air I had used just to get there.
When our three minute stop was completed we made the final assault on the current and within a minute we were walking away in one meter deep water. It was a fantastic adventure in diving and I was really pleased that we were allowed to have an experience like that, but it was definitely not for the inexperienced, easily spooked or faint hearted! Back at the camp Hassan was dutifully waiting for us. We told hi about our experience and the parameters we had chosen and he actually beamed with pride like a teacher whose pupils performed better than expected. He was a hard man to sum up I thought. I was no longer angry about his behaviour of the previous day and I really did understand the troubled times he could clearly see ahead of himself. He was insanely experienced in all things to do with diving and massively knowledgeable about the conditions where we were. I think I started seeing him as a valuable mentor more than anything else and in turn it seemed like he had gained some respect for the abilities Catt and I had showed over the week of diving there.
After breakfast we headed around the corner to the Oriental Bay for our last dive there. The wind was back at full strength and we were all pretty sure that the conditions for diving would be less than perfect. The tide was very low and when we got into the water we could hardly see five meters far. There was no real surge or current to speak of, but the sand had been lifted of the bottom with such force that it almost made the water dark.
Leaving the bay and following the reef north eventually paid off though. As soon as we managed to clear the sandy patches the water became more and more clear. At the point where we knew we had to turn around we could once again see for an eternity. We quickly greeted and photographed the usual suspects there including some Porcupine Fish, Lion Fish and Anemone Fish before starting our long and strenuous return journey. To save some air we decided to ascent to about 6 meters and swim back at that depth. That ended up being a good decision as well as we were much further away from the bay than what we had been before. When we eventually surfaced in the right place I saw that we had dived for 84 minutes total, making it our longest dive up to then. I was in two minds about making that our last dive there. On the one hand it would have great to have a crystal clear and easy dive to remember the place by. The far from perfect conditions however made it a lot easier to leave the place.
Back at camp we washed our gear with great care. The extra salt content in the Red Sea mean that corrosion occurred much faster there than anywhere else. We spent about an hour rinsing and re-rinsing stuff and finally hung it all up in the shade to dry. It was horrifically windy by then and I was really glad not to have planned another dive that day.
After lunch it was time to get Maggie into shape again. We had somehow acquired another two punctures that I needed to fix before moving on. By that time I was fairly experienced in all things puncture, so the task did not take long at all. Besides, I had a small swimming pool sized bath to put the wheels in to find the leaks. Both the punctures were caused by nails and I suspected that both of them happened on the cargo barge from Sudan. I also found a massive scratch on one side of the car and that was definitely not there when I handed the keys over. The deep cycle battery for the fridge was also playing up again. We had replaced that one in Malawi some 8 months before. It was however not holding any charge over nights, so I suspected that another replacement was on the cards. We also managed to make a total mess of the inside of the car while we were stationary for so long so that had to be sorted out as well.
By the time the last thing was in place and the last fixable issue was complete the sun was also tired and about to go behind the horizon. We congregated around the big table in the restaurant for the last time that evening and over another fantastic meal prepared by Taha we chatted away until our eyelids became so heavy that it was an effort just to keep them open.
Day 315:
There was no plan to get up early and we didn’t. Apart from Peter, our Swiss conspiracy theorist and establishment hater extraordinaire we were the only guest in camp and none of the staff were too keen on getting up at sparrow’s fart to join Peter on a cold early morning dive. That gave us the rare opportunity to see each other at breakfast for the first time. Catt and I had our usual oranges and bananas accompanied by buckets and buckets of freshly brewed coffee while Peter was entertaining us with theories of mass financial chaos and waiting for whatever Taha conjured up for the breakfast feast.
When Taha made his appearance we got a little surprise as well. Breakfast consisted of pancakes and according to the cook, who we will never argue with, it was impossible to mix batter for one person’s breakfast. So we were served the same, on the house. With the pancakes came some more bananas and huge hunks of Egyptian Feta cheese and jars of jam and syrup. It was fantastically decadent and so tasty that we stayed at the table for an hour longer than what we had planned to.
When the table was empty and the coffee done we rolled our over fed carcasses over to the dive centre to pack away our gear. It was quite amazing to find absolutely everything bone dry after only one night. Diving in the humid parts of South Africa our stuff usually needed about three days to get to the same dryness. The desert and wind obviously still had some advantages.
By 10:00 we were packed and ready to leave. We said a fond good bye to Peter and Shasli who were busy gearing up for their first dive of the day and headed towards the main road north. Although it did not exist on any of the maps we had, we knew it followed it the Red Sea all the way to Suez. All we wanted to do was follow it to a place called Port Safaga from where we could cut through the Eastern Desert to Luxor. Once we passed the few kilometres of roadworks close to the Beach Safari Camp the road was new and smooth and easy going. We passed a huge and fancy resort every ten kilometres or so but also noticed that most of them were closed. I really did feel sorry for all the people who were trying to make a living from the tourism industry. Most of the trouble was still only in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, but it seemed like everyone with a plan to visit the country had decided not to. To put that into perspective: It would be like fleeing England because of unrest in Munich or leaving Cape Town because of riots in Johannesburg.
The first town of substance we came across was Port Ghalib where we were not allowed to enter a few days before. The next was a beautifully picturesque village of El Quesir. It was like the place that time forgot! The buildings seemed old and a little run down and the market seemed clean and neat. We saw people everywhere selling coffee and cigarettes and bread and fruit but we did not see a single curio or souvenir shop. From the safe vantage point of our moving vehicle it looked like an old fishing village which also earned some money from tourism. In the quaint little harbour we saw a few very exclusive and fancy diving boats and on some of the streets were shops selling scuba diving excursions. I almost wished that we could stay there a while to get a reel feel for the town, but alas, we had to keep moving.
At our designated turning point of Port Safaga we passed a naval base which seemed like it was closed. In fact if it wasn’t for the few lazy seamen hanging around the gates and guard towers I would have actually thought that it was shut. As we turned towards the desert road we saw the inevitable roadblock. The man without the uniform, clearly the man in charge, stopped us and asked the familiar question of “where you from?” I gave the familiar answer of “South Africa” knowing that he wanted to know our nationalities instead of where we had travelled from. He looked confused though so I added that we had travelled from Marsa Alam and were heading to Luxor. That confused him even more. When he came closer I spotted the insignia of the Tourist Police on his jacket and once again had to smile at the fact that the country employed people to almost exclusively work with tourists that could not speak a tourist language.
Once we were done with the explanation that white people could also come from South Africa, the land of Bafana Bafana and Nelson Mandela, we were free to go. Driving out of the roadblock I could once again not help but wonder how that policeman managed to totally miss the concept of decades of apartheid and the reason why Nelson Mandela was famous. I have to admit though: the thing that got me most was that not a single police officer who asked our nationalities even checked our passports or wrote down the answer we gave them. We could simply not work out why they ever asked the question.
Our route took us due west after that. There was a beautiful new tar road right through the middle of the desert and we shared it with a few other vehicles. It was fairly easy gong and if I had to describe the landscape I would have say this: It was like a cross between Meirings Poort in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and the Richtersveld National Park in the Northern Cape of the same country. The desert was stark and absolute. We did not see a single spot of green and the rocks seemed a mix of black and red. The road was almost like a definite dividing line through the rocky hills. The thing that saddened me most though was that the whole place looked like the edge of a land fill site. In fact, the whole country we had experienced at that time was covered in litter. It was incredibly sad to stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere for lunch and before we even managed to open the fridge a selection of plastic bags congregated around the tyres and our feet.
The road was long and empty and our minds started working hard thinking about the place we were in. I mentioned that I was not really enjoying the country at that time and that my reasons were few but well defined. I was utterly tired of the conflict associated with every single simple business transaction. I was equally disturbed by the fact that the local people had an obvious lack of respect for their countries nature and natural resources. I had just spent nine days diving in a pace that should have been totally pristine, but spent the end of every dive collecting plastic bags form the sea and taking them to land. The sad thing there was that I even knew that they would end up back in the ocean…
We reached the Nile in the late afternoon and turned south towards Luxor. The road turned narrow and hard to navigate, but I soon found a truck to follow which made it easier. We passed a mass of roadblocks that did not bother to stop us, but we were pretty nervous about the sheer amount of weapons shown. Every roadblock had at least two watch towers with barrels of AK47’s peering from them. At the start and finish of every one of those road blocks were little huts with bullet proof shields by them and they were all manned by men with guns. Since I had arrived in Egypt I saw the country as the original home of paranoia and that day’s driving only proved my point.
As we arrived in Luxor we were astonished at how empty the streets were. We passed the famous 3km long line of sphinxes but the experience was slightly overpowered by the presence of a dozen or so soldiers standing by the side of their very big tank. Like scared little mice we scampered on until we found the Razeiki Camp and hotel about a kilometre away from the place Track 4 Africa had it marked.
The manager offered us a room for very little more than camping and after we accepted the offer he told us that the en suite bathroom did not actually have hot water. Fucking Egyptians I tell you… I was yet to meet my second honest one. Still, having a room with electricity and an en suite loo was not the worse thing in the world. We shared the whole place with one other family from France and managed to have a quiet dinner for two before retiring to our bedroom for a well deserved night’s rest after our first six hour drive since leaving Ethiopia.
Day 316:
It was a lazy start to the day once again. We woke up to birdsong for the fist time in a very long while and just stayed in bed enjoying nature until we felt guilty enough to get up. We had only one mission for the day and that was to try and extend our visas for Egypt. We had our usual fruit breakfast on the patio before finally packing some stuff into the car and setting off.
Finding the passport office was easy enough as well. The streets were almost deserted and parking was plentiful. We found the right person to speak to and told our story but got a very unsatisfactory answer. We were told that because of the current political situation it took one month to extend visas. The good news was that the lady confirmed that we had two weeks of grace and she actually advised us to over stay our visas by that time. That was all we needed to know. We only needed an extra week or so anyway.
Driving back to the hotel we passed the duty free shop and even though we were not entitled to actual tax free goods, we knew we could buy some wine there. That was a luxury we had not had in quite a while so we did not pass on that opportunity! It took only ten minutes to procure a few bottles of the good stuff and with full stored we decided to visit a museum or two.
The first on the list was the mummification museum. We found parking right by the entrance, which was quite rare. We locked the car and walked across the busy road to the entrance but when we got there a man with a very big gun told us that the museum was closed… until further notice. We had planed to see the light and sound show at the temple of Karnak that evening but in light of that little nasty development we decided to drive past the temple to see if that was open. We learnt that although the temple itself was open to visitors, the show was cancelled until further notice…
On the way back to the hotel we spotted some people carrying the freshest bread you can possibly imagine. We stopped one man and asked about the location of the bakery and the second guy offered to sell us his bread from twenty times the normal price. We declined his “kind” offer and found the bakery by ourselves. I stood in the cue for long enough to see that every man was handing over a single E£1 coin and receiving ten local breads in return. When I hade over my pound though the baker only handed me two breads. I kicked up the expected fuss until he added some bread and even then I had to through a tantrum to be charged the same as the guy who was standing next to me. Although I saw this as part of the game and fairly innocent Catt almost exploded with anger. I could see her point, and so could the baker. He suddenly handed over some change and bread or two so that we left with the right amount of money and dough,
Back at the hotel we had a fantastic lunch of left over roasted vegetables and cheese. Egyptian Feta only cost E£14 per kilogram so we could actually afford to eat heaps of it. We spent the bulk of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel and talking to the local manager but by 16:00it was time to leave again. We waked to the nearby temple of Karnak and were absolutely astonished by what we found: The place was totally and utterly deserted! It took ten minutes to lactate the entrance ticket seller and even then we had to wait for the security guard to turn on his scanners before we could enter the place.
The temple itself had to be the most impressive I had seen in all of Egypt that far. The sheer scale of it was utterly impressive and the fact that we were the only people there actually made it quite eerie. We walked though the halls and tombs and saw carvings and statues that we hardly understood, but we were impressed! In fact, tat had to be the most impressive temple we had seen up to then. It wasn’t only the size of the place that was so phenomenal and the fact that it was so well preserved certainly helped, but it was also not the most important. There was something else there. I loved the massive hypostyle hall with the 134 massive sand stone columns planted there to support the roof. The roof had long been gone, but the grandeur of the columns was still very much there.
It complex was as huge as it was impressive and it took us more than two hours to walk though the place. We had planned to stay there until after sunset and photograph the place when it was lit up at night but our plans were foiled. Because of the total lack of tourists the light show was cancelled and the lights would not come on at all that evening. As we walked towards the exit I could not help but be unimpressed with what the locals had done to the place either. Everywhere you looked you either saw electrical cables to lights of scaffolding that seemed to be left right there. It was almost like it was a complete explanation of the mind set of the people of the land: Every building that we saw seemed to be an incomplete building project ad everything that was complete was absolutely covered in litter from those who were trying to complete their work.
When the sun decided to call it a day we decided to leave the temple and head back to the hotel as well. At the exit we were approached by a lone man with horse and cart, offering us a taxi service back to our humble hotel. I felt sorry enough for him that we accepted his offer, but not before negotiating a suitable rate. It was quite surreal to be transported by horse drawn carriage along the Nile on a tar road lined with police vehicles and military tanks, We didn’t mind too much though as it seemed to be the fastest way back to the compound where we knew we would be safe.
While cooking dinner the head of the household of the only other travellers there came to chat to us. He was a French father of three and told us that his friend, who was journalist, had phoned to tell him that President Mubarak was planning on resigning the next day. The next day was Friday (Friday-Sunday) and we had expected the day to be quite chaotic in the big city anyway. That news however was enough to make us change our plans to leaving Luxor in the early hours and spending the day on the West Bank of the mighty Nile. We ate our fine dinner and drank our mildly disgusting Egyptian wine before finally making our way back to our safe room and diving into the comfortable bed for a few hours of peace before the madness would inevitably start again.
If I had to do it again:
From a purely financial point of view our time at the Beach Safari Camp was exactly what we needed. However, if I had to recommend a place to dive in Marsa Alam to anyone I actually liked, I would have to recommend Red Sea Divers…. I don’t think the diving itself would necessarily be better, but the accommodation and food certainly would be! For overlanders it may be handy to know that it is possible to camp at the Beach Safari Camp for very little money.
The rest of the week: I would not really change anything. Once again it is not possible to predict political turmoil in countries that you travel to and fortunately we have been able to steer clear of any issues. I hope we manage to keep doing just that.
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