Awaking in the desert, it was a nice feeling to see our bus, just a couple of hundred metres away. The legs were aching and everyone was more than happy to hop on the bus to be whisked the 2 hours to Dahab where showers and proper toilets awaited.

Dahab is quite a small place, and you can see that it has not had the infestations of tourists that most of the other places we'd been have had. The real telltale were that the shop and restaurant owners were happy, polite and more than willing for a chat. Also, across the board the prices seemed cheaper and no one was going out of their way to rip people off.

The next couple of days in Dahab were set aside for chilling out and saying our final farewells to the group, and we even managed to get some snorkelling in too. It was only my 2nd time snorkelling, but I was told that Dahab ranks in the top 10 places for snorkelling in the world, and I'd definitely believe it. The colours and range of fish were amazing and it seems, as yet, unspoiled by humans.

We managed a couple of nice meals out where the seafood lovers indulged, one to celebrate Ben's birthday and another as a group farewell. A very relaxed pace all in all!

By the end of the trip, almost every single one of us had ‘inconsiderate’ bowel movements due to the local cuisine. Mine hit about 20 minutes before we got off the bus to start our 3 day desert trek. In full fledged sprint off the bus, I headed towards a shack where we were about to have lunch before heading off. Scanning for the bathroom, I realised something was wrong, there wasn’t one! In desperation I turned back to the bus to see our guide stepping off the bus with a grin on his face, three words. ‘Use the desert’. Oh, flipping joy. I found myself a nice sand dune to conceal my indiscretions. Sorry, no photos exist of this particular part of our adventure.

There isn’t much to say about the desert trek; apart from it was hot and dry. Sorry, that is a bit of a copout so let us see what we can come up with. As I said, it was hot and dry, but we knew we were lucky in the timing of our trip. A few months earlier and it would have been an extra 10 degree on top.

Heading out, after a couple of hours we had come to grips with our surroundings. There was no life, only death….oh so dramatic. There are a couple of types of terrain out in the Sinai, a type of sandstone which forms the rocky out crops and canyons, a hard caked sand which seems to resemble concrete as much as anything else. Both of these surfaces were easy to walk on. This brings us to the soft sand, the type at the beach where your feet instantly sink to your ankles. This was to be avoided at all costs, or we would be running on empty very quickly. After only a couple of hours our guide lead us into a canyon, this was a welcome relief from the blistering sun. What we did find with the sun in Egypt was that it wasn’t very strong. You could quite happily be out in it for a couple of hours without the need for sun cream.
The difference is that the sun is out every day, all day; it rains in these parts maybe once or twice a year and even then very little. In the 2 weeks we were in Egypt we saw clouds only once and that was on the coast. So after spending 8 hours in it all day, you could find yourself a tad cooked. The canyons were a spectacle on their own, which we spent a few hour exploring before coming out to an oasis inhabited by a local family of Bedouins which gave a us board for the night in a open hut.

From this point, we had the option of renting a camel for the next two days. At a cost of £130 Egyptian pounds for the two days, it was pretty cheap. Carmen and I decided against the camels although Carmen later hijacked one for some of the more difficult parts of the trek.

The desert trek, like the Felucca cruise was one of the highlights. It wasn’t something like the Pyramids or temples which you simple look at, this you experience, you enjoy it. It was a hoot. On the last night, everyone chilled out. Our guide had some beers which he promptly distributed, no one cared that it was warm.

Jumping off the sail boats, we spent a couple of nights in Hurghada. A small town on the edge of the Red Sea.

Valley of the Kings
We rose at about 4:30am in the mornings to meet and start bonding with our donkeys. Like people, donkeys come in different sizes. I don’t know if it was planned, but some of the biggest guys ended up with the smallest donkeys, while some of the girls ended up with Matt Harding size donkeys.

The donkeys knew just where they were going, which was a good thing, as controlling the stubborn little oversized rodents was as difficult as it was to get up at that ungodly hour of the morning. The valley was about 7km away and it took us about an hour and a half to get there. There isn’t much to see above ground, and cameras were not allowed down in the tombs. We entered three tombs, each one showed the grandeur which must have once bestowed the Egyptian civilization. Every wall face, ceiling and pillar carved with hieroglyphics, with each hieroglyphic individually painted.
Later, back in Cairo we saw the magnificent artefacts which had been found in Tutankhamen’s tomb, considering he ruled for only a short time and was effectively insignificant in Egyptian history, it is a real shame we will never see or know what treasures were found in any of the other tombs. From there, we climbed a hill (called Magic Mountain), over looking the Valley of the Kings, and the remains of houses where the tomb builders once lived. Then ‘Hi Ho Silver Away’, back on our donkeys for a sprint back to town.

From there we caught a bus up, under the Suez Cannel, and eastwards into St Catherine’s Village. We didn’t actually see the Suez Cannel, although I don’t think we missed much as from pictures, it just looks like a long water trench.

Mount Sinai
I thought we had it bad the night before with a 4:30am get up. This morning it was 1 am! We were off to climb Mount Sinai to watch the sun rise. For those heathens who don’t know what Mount Sinai is, it is where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. The only difference between now and when he did would be:

a) Every 10 metres someone would not have been asking him “Camel, you want Camel, very good price, looong way to top, will take many more hours”.
b) I somehow doubt there would have been this perfectly easy path from the very bottom to the very top. I am not talking about some goat track; it was about 3 meters wide the entire way up the mountain.
c) At the summit, there are about 750 steps which take you to the very top. It must have taken an incredible amount of effort to erect these steps at the top of the mountain.

It was a nice walk, brisk due to the time of night, but quite enjoyable. What I was expecting (due to prior warning) was the hordes of people at the top, all jostling for position. There is a cliff face facing the East, with the West side of the mountain falling quickly away, so there was little depth of space for people to view the Sun rise. There was a small church at the very peak of the mountain, almost half carved out of the mountain. By climbing up and situating ourselves on top of the church, we had the prime location. We were at the very pinnacle of the mountain. It wasn’t an easy position of obtain with so many people around. Warren (my old man) managed to engage in a battle of words with a group of Europeans (which was rather one sided as the Europeans weren’t arguing back, but it didn’t stop Dad from standing on his soap box and having a go);
But to his defence, they were being very arrogant with thousands of people trying to see the sun rise, the group of four had managed to take up enough space which would sit of stand about a dozen. The Sun rise was nice.
I think such things are wasted on me; I enjoyed the walk up more then the actual sun rise. It was nice to be up there with my Dad, a bit of a shame we lost Mum half way up the mountain in the dark.

St Catherine Monastery
Finally, after retreating from the Mountain, gathering our things, we stopped into St Catherine’s Monastery on the way to the Sinai desert. At this point, you should note that I am not religious, and am in everyway a complete cynic. So after having an enlightened walk to the top of Mt Sinai where the 10 commandment were received, we entered St Catherine’s Monastery at the base of the Mountain and were shown the well were Moses meet his wife to be.
I simply yawned and moved on. But, when they pointed out only 10 metres away, behind a small brick wall what was the, yes THE burning bush. Now if my Bible studies at school were accurate, this was meant to happen 1500 BC. Which makes this shrub (no relation to G.W.Bush) 3500 years old. I almost died of laughter. So being the true tourist, I took a photo :+) The piles of rocks at the bottom are where they are going to landscape. Like that sketch out of Monty Pythons Holy Grail, I think the Knights of Ni are going to get another shrubbery to get a nice layered effect. Sorry for the offence, I really must stop insulting other people’s religions. Next…

Kom Ombo
Our last stop on the Felucca was Kom Ombo Temple. Kom Ombo is dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek, and when you see the size of some of the mumified crocodiles in both this temple and at the Cairo museum, you can see why the ancients figured crocodiles were important. It's right on the edge of the Nile and, ironically, after dedicating it to the crocodile, lots of the workers were eaten by crocodiles during the building of it. The other highlight here was - Cleopatra's bath.

Edfu Temple
A bus ride away from Kom Ombo was Edfu Temple dedicated to the falcon god, Horus, which is bigger than Kom Ombo, but not as big as Karnak Temple. It is quite well preserved after being covered in sand for a number of years and, like many temples in Egpyt, has most of the god's faces scratched out by the Christians - quite sad, but all part of history in itself I guess.

Karnak Temple
Karnak Temple in Luxor was the most impressive, both in scale and vast array of things to see, of the temples we visited. We caught horse-drawn carriages from outside our hotel and met a guide there. Unfortunately, we were pretty much 'templed' out by this stage, and it was late in the afternoon, but memorable sights were where the roman soldiers used the temple to sharpen their swords and just the sheer size of the pillars.

There were 18 in our group; it was actually a good number of people. It gave a good atmosphere when going out for meals/drinks or sitting around chatting. Finishing up in Aswan, we split into two groups, with 9 on each Felucca sail boat.

Initially I was sceptical about sailing on a river, struggling to imagine how it would be big enough if you needed to tack going up wind. But, the Nile is far the biggest river I have seen. It is about 100 meters wide and apparently up to 50 meters in depth in places. The power of water that is flowing down it makes for a swift current to swim against. It also allowed us to actually make group drifting with the current. The winds were not excatly in our favor while on the Nile, light winds meant we didn't make the full distance we were hoping for. So on the last day we pulled into the closest town to jump on a bus to continue our journey.

The sail boats were large enough to accommodate the 9 of us comfortably, even at night when we were sleeping on deck. The cruise was really one of the highlights of the trip. It was simply relaxing, refreshing and a bit of a laugh at times. Early morning swims in the Nile to freshen up, local kids appearing out of the sand dunes on the banks to wave, and tying up at shore over night to sit around a bomb fire simply made
it a good time.

We stopped on day two to Kom Ombo temple, you can see about Kom Ombo and Luxor (the ancient city of Thebes) in the next post. All up we spent 3 nights sleeping on the deck of the Felucca.

That night we caught an over night train from Cairo to Aswan. It was actually a lot better than we had imagined. The seats were like being in first class in an aeroplane. We didn’t miss much sleeping all night, as out the windows was only desert. We got our first taste of a packed breakfast. It was a boiled egg, a couple of buns and a small packet of fig jam. This packed breakfast set the scene for all of those to follow. Although adequate, it doesn’t really inspire.

Arriving in Aswan we checked into the hotel, and set off to explore the city. The city moves along at a comparative snails pace in comparison to Cairo. That day, we choose to do a day trip to Nasser Dam. The next morning we rose at about 4am for a convoy to Abu Simbel, a temple built by Ramses II. The temple carved out into the side of a mountain would have been consumed by the Nasser Dam which creates the largest artificial lake in the world. To preserve it, engineers diced the mountain into blocks and reconstructed on higher dry land. The temple is very impressive, the towering figures over look the entrance to what was our first look at hieroglyphs, and ancient Egyptian statues. This was also our first real understanding that Ramses II had an ego the size of Jupiter, in the fact that there are massive monuments to him all over Egypt. What really surprised us, was that none of the hieroglyphs, paintings or statues were protected in any way. They are so magnificently preserved over the last few thousand years, due to the dry climate of Egypt. But are now just asking to be ruined by thousands of people’s hands running all over the walls.

That night we went for dinner at a Nubian village. The Nubians are the inhabitants of the southern regions of Egypt. They are much darker, and African looking; while further north into Cairo, the people are more middle eastern and lighter skinned. It was a nice little village, with the buildings colourfully painted and closely packed in. The dinner was basic, but nice. Some locals bought out some homemade trinkets that we could buy and provided a Sheisha to smoke on. One of the local woman also provided Henna tattoos for those who wanted them

No trip to Egypt would be complete without checking out it's most well known landmarks and one of the 7 wonders of the world. I kinda expected the Pyramids to be out in the middle of no-where, but Cairo has expanded so much that they seem to lie just on the cities edge.

You can't deny the fact that the Pyramids are impressive! Anything that is still standing after 5000 years has to be! It makes you wonder what sort of a world it was 5000 years ago that rulers could demand a Pyramid like this to be buried in and actually get it, you couldn't see the same thing happening for Tony Blair or George Bush!

The Sphinx is also pretty cool, a lot smaller than the pyramids, but when you realise that it is all built out of a single block of stone, then once again, you can't help but be impressed.

I think for me, I wasn't going to believe that the Sphinx and Pyramids existed unless I saw them for myself, and now I feel I've ticked another box. Definitely something to be seen, though surprisingly, not my highlight in Egpyt.

Not wanting to do things by halves, the Egypt trip actually started with an all-nighter on Friday night to go to Aaron's work do, a river cruise on the Thames, before catching a crack of dawn flight to Cairo. The flight wasn't too bad, a brief stop in Vienna to get a few more stamps in the passport on the way and arrived in Cairo late afternoon to meet Aaron's parents at the hotel and tour starting point.

First impressions of Cairo as we drove in the mini-van weren't too bad, however as we got closer to the city centre, it was obvious that the city is in need of repair, with falling down and half-finished apartment buildings every where. The first evening, we (Aaron's parents and us) headed to a tourist bazaar, but managed to get a bit lost on the way and end up in a local market. When we made our way out and to the tourist bazaar, we wished we'd stayed in the local bit. The level of hassle was far and beyond that of anything I'd seen in Bali or Thailand, with people constantly in your face to the point that it was exhausting.

Day 2 in Cairo, we headed out to wander the street and head up the Cairo Tower (which was expensive and obviously out to get the tourist dollar) which gave views over the sprawling city of Cairo even out past the buildings, and green belt which tracks each side of the Nile to the Giza Pyramids in the distance.

Warren (Aaron's dad, for those that don't know) also managed to make friends with a number of locals that told us about a big football game on that night, the 2 top teams in Egypt, so we figured we may as well, and grabbed a taxi out to the game. Getting tickets was far easier than we imagined, but the thing we didn't bargain on was the riot police surrounding the stadium, the area, the field, the seats, etc etc. I would say there was 1 riot policeman for about every 4-5 fans. The other thing I didn't really consider til we got there was that there wouldn't be any females there, Doreen (Aaron's mum) and I were of a very select few. We were all sitting in the Ahly (home team) section, and it was a good game, with the second half being much better than the first, but I'm definitely glad that the home team won as I would hate to think what leaving the stadium would've been like otherwise.

It is October; winter is well and truly on its way on this side of the world. It is dark when we get up and it is threatening to frost each morning now. It is time for an update.

Things I cannot live without, the internet. Since we moved flats we have been net-deprived. Lack of email exposure, no posts on Slowlane.net, no checking the train timetables, no theaa.com for car directions, no keeping an eye out for cheap trips/house goods, no ebay.com and no news of the outside world. It truly is a primitive world we live in.

Carmen slipped the last two posts in just to keep things ticking over. But, we have been quite busy of late. The main events are listed below in a little more detail. I finished my first year of accountancy exams (bean counter extraordinaire), we bought a house, been floating around and are planning on going to Egypt in one weeks time.

House
Some had been wondering if we were sick of travelling by our lack of adventures of late. Fear not, we just needed to save hardcore for a few months in order to save enough for a deposit on our little semi-detached maisonette apartment. It is in Redhill, the same town we were flatting in, this still allows both Carmen and I easy travel to and from work.

So what did we get? It is a newly converted apartment i.e. It was a house and the last owner split it into a top and ground floor apartment. We are on the top floor, 1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 bathroom and finally the kitchen. It is clean, simple and in our price range (£130,000). It is very tidy and only need a few cosmetic alterations, like curtains and a mirror in the bathroom. (more photos: Front door, Living room and bathroom)

A1 Grand Prix
After having our own race to get to the circuit on time for the start, we were highly impressed with the A1. Great atmosphere of everyone supporting their home country team, flags waving and lots of chanting. The cars looked great on the track and there were even a few crashes to keep things lively. Ended up with a small group of us camped with a very good vantage point giving us view of about ¼ of the track. Will be a series to follow.

Steve and Jane’s Engagement party
Steve and Jane got engaged a few months ago and have finally had their engagement party. We made the small trip across to Wales to the mostly family event. We do have photos, but they are at home, where we are internet-less. So they will come later. It was a lot of fun and good to see the two of them happy and relaxed. The best to both of you.