Cairo, Take one, Luxor take two.

wow, the past 48 have been a whirlwind. we started out our day on sunday morning in a small town in the south of Jordan called Aqaba. when i was growing up in Israel, I was always in a small town in the south of Israel called Eilat for vacation,  and i would always look across the bay at Aqaba, and wonder about it. how big was it? did they have diving as well? how are the views from their side?

well, i'll get to Jordan in another post. this post is about the past 48 hours. (concentrate!).

ok, so, we started the day in Aqaba at a hotel called Hotel Baracuda. i had to repeat that name at least 15 times, since the driver could not - for the life of him - remember it.  once we fouind this 4 star hotel, we checked in, and went about our business. we were told there was internet in the rooms (nope, only in lobby, at the end, by the window. yes, i'm not kidding.), and everyone took cold showers besides me. i actually tried (and failed) to get some warm water going through the front desk.

ok, i veered away from the past 48 hours again. i'll try again. (deep breath here).

at around 5:30pm we crossed the border back into Israel from Jordan after a lovely 3 days. we went into Eilat and hung out in a Cafe for almost 4 hours, drinking coffee, eating dinner, chatting with our table neighbors and generally having a good time.

our official pick up time was 11:30 pm from the "Taba side of the border". no further coaxing could convince Mazada Touirs to give us more information as to WHERE in the Taba side we should meet them.

well, a few hickups later in the border, we had crossed Israel into Egypt, and were waiting in front of the passport window, which (as mazada told us several times), we needed them to get a visa through.

11:30 came and went. luckily for us, there was another couple with the world's cutest baby also waiting for the Mazada tour bus, - misery loves company.... well, we all waited. and waited. and waited.  at some point, i grabbed an official looking person, and gave him the name given to us by Mazada Tours of the guide we were to meet by the name of Khaled. the guy called. and disappeared. so, we waited some more.

at some point, i got bored, and decided this would be a good time and place to practice my Poi. now, if you're never been in the Taba egyptian border you have to understand - this a really small border crossing. it's really just a long and not to wide corridor, with not that many people crossing - especially not at night. so, i practiced. a couple of minutes later sasha joined me, and before you know it, we are performing not just for our friends and the cute baby, but for the ENTIRE terminal. people came out of their offices, and there was a crowd of people taking pictures and vidoes of us with their phones. we did this for quite a while, and made friends in the terminal. everyone was MUCH nicer to us, which, again, if you've crossed at that border, you should know that they are about as friendly as a pregnant mountain goat when you try to steal her food..

so, i had another person call, and this time i got a real answer. he is on his way from Cairo, will be here in 20 minutes. of course, AFTER the past 48 hours, i know that they meant 20 egyptian minutes (similar to burning man minutes, just... longer). so, an hour later, our guide finally shows up, apologizing. the car broke down from cairo, they had to send another one, etc. we finally left Taba around 2:30 am.

yay! we are on our way! sure, even though we were told it's a bus that picks us up, and it's a crappy little van, we don't mind too much. the plan, btw, was originally to sleep on the comfi overnight bus into Cairo so we can tour around during the day.

so, a word here: if you're reading this blog, you should know by now that we are on a long trip. most of this trip involves south east asia and India. and i'm SURE we'll have worse and longer bus trips than that. BUT... we won't make the mistake of booking ourselves the very next day after the bus without a break. the road from Taba to Israel is in what we discovered to be typical egyptian condition, which is to say that it is not what we, in the western world, would call "good roads".so, the trip was full of pot holes, and slow.

by the time we arrived in Cairo and put our bags down at a hotel to store for us until we pick them back up (i'll get to that), and set on our way, it was 10:30 in the morning, which meant we were 2.5 hours bewhind schedule, and TIRED.

i won't bore you with the details of the day. it was a blur, accompanied by a "tour guide" which in egypt is a fancy word for "someone who will gladly set you up with whatever you need for more than what you could get if you spoke to the natives and also barely speaks english". the end of the day had almost arrived, and we haven't even been to the pyramids. finally, at 3 pm, we got there. please remember that the sun sets at 4:30 here. so, we wasted our day going to a bunch of places trying to make our tour guides money (we failed, i'm happy to say), and only got an hour and a half at the last standing wonder of the world. we were... unhappy. at this point, our helpful "tour guide" tells us "this area is almost 19 kilometers, and you won't be able to see anything. you should rent a camel/donkey/carriage to see it all". well, you ARE the tour guide, you would know, i thought to myself, and negotiated us a carriage price. i'll skip here (sorry about the skipping. it's a bunch of poor horse whipping, taking us to one photo spot, forcing us to drink coke, and finding out that because we did the photo op, it's too late to get in the pyramid. yes, grrr.), and go to the end of the ride. which was at the sphinx. which according to our "tour guide" was "too far to walk to". in reality is was MAYBE half a mile. yes, that's right, half a mile. i was pissed. not only could we have walked around for an hour and half and covered most of the pyramids, but we took a carriage, which will give our tour guide bakshish and screwed us over.

i actually confronted our "tour guide" about this, and she pretended not to understand my english, giving me answers that had nothing to do with what i was telling her. after a while, i (we) decided to let it go. we got in the van, picked up our stuff from the hotel and headed out to the train.

again, i have to pause here. the pyramids were AMAZING. really beautiful. growing up in israel, even though it seems right across the border to Americans, it's NOT so for Israelis. so, actually seeing them was awesome. we got some great shots, and by this point were starting to make fun of how bad this situation is... so, it wasn't all bad. i was determined - and succeeded - in not letting the above circumstances spoil the day for me.

ok, train. nice train, not bad. two sleeper rooms - one for sasha and i, and another for tom and penguin. we were all super tired, and after they brought us our yummy dinner of (only) rice (for us, and meat for the boys), we set up the beds early, since we learned that Mazada lied to us by telling us the train was arriving at 8am. in fact, it was arriving at 5:30am. sigh. so, a pair of ear plugs later, we both sank into our respective beds and sleep, only to be occasionally awakened by the smoke coming from the people smoking the hallway (well, it DOES say no smoking in the rooms, outside of rooms is ok, yes?). the good news is  that was all slept MUCH better than the night before, and were actually pretty refreshed and ready to see Luxor when we got off the train. we were told by our friends at the Mazada Tour company to look for someone with a "Hytt Tours" sign. he should be waiting for us when we get off the train. when we asked them in advance for the person's name and number, we were told, in no two words by Muchmud, the guy who picked us in Taba that his boss told him "not to give us the other guy's number, only Muchmuds". well, arriving at 5:30, we understood why. we figured their plan was to lie to us (um, again?), and simply have us waiting at the station until 8 am, or really, until the guy shows up.

thankfully that theory was incorrect. Atef, our new "tour guide" was only 30 minutes late. apparently the train usually comes in at 8am. he doesn't know why it came early today. ah ha.

ok, more good news: Luxor was very interesting, and much better than our previous day in Cairo. the sights were less crowded (especially at 6am, that part was awesome...), and Atef was a much better "tour guide" than the Cairo one. but.. i still us put "" around the words because he also kept trying to take us places that would give him kickback, or when we'd get to a place, he would give us a 5 minute explanation outside of whatever temple we went into, and would "go wait outside under umbrella until we were done.". so, nice guy, not the best tour guide ever.

we had a GREAT lunch, based on a recommendation from the book pegnuin had on India at a restaurant called El Hussain. great vegi stew, and it was nice to actually have food cooked with vegetarian in mind, and not just the side dishes.

several temples, and several hooka smokes with our guide (yes, several. on his insistence every time...), i'm now sitting in an internet cafe near downtown Luxor, typing out this blog.

as i'm writing this, i also realize how angry this sounds. and... we were quite angry. but, although it's been such a rough acclimation for us from the very laid back Jordanian people to the very busy, very dirty, very pushy egyptian travel people, as we call them, we did enjoy aspects of egypt.

i just wish that:

1. Mazada tours would go out of business. they have no business taking people's money.
2. We wouldn't have booked anything with anyone. we could have figured this out on our own just fine.

so, tonight we are catching the train back to Cairo from Luxor, and tomorrow we will be going to the Cairo Museum, and cathedral. THEN, at 11:30 pm, we are getting on our flight to India. we should be arriving at mombai, than wait a few hours and fly to Goa. so, overall, 4 nights with no hotel (or shower!) should put us to sleep like.. well, if you made it all the way down here, you should understand.

i hope to go back and write a lot more about our Egypt experience. but for now, this is it. as they say here in Arabic, Halas.