welcome to dahab!
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Lazy days in Dahab - short and sweet!!!
hello again,
this one'll be short and sweet, i promise. i just needed to bang out those last 3 emails to catch up and get them out of the way!!
I've just spent the last 3 days back here in Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula, soaking up loads of gorgeous warm sun, and diving the depths of the Red Sea, spotting strange and unusual colorful fish and coral.
I'm at a spot called Penguin Village, but strangely enough, i ain't seen any penguins here!! The pace here is marginally faster than snail, and the guy who runs the diveshop/restaurant/hotel complex is this awesome laidback Egyptian fella who goes by the name of Jimmy. The restaurant is an outdoor, sit down on rugs and cushions affair, right by the sea, so that when the tide comes in, just a couple of palm tree logs and some wooden palings seperate you and your food from getting soaked!
Just imagine sitting right at the edge here in the morning, watching the sun rise over the sea, with the desert mouuntains of Saudi Arabia looming in the background, sipping a freshly squeezed mango juice and eating choc-banana pancakes, and you've got me this morning down to a T. This was followed by a short drive down the beach for a nice 40 minute, 32metre deep dive at Blue Hole (bottom depth unknown, but measured at one point at 200metres), one of the most amazing and famous dive sites in the world, then by a leisurely lunch while a local Bedouin girl made a cotton bracelet for me, and then another dive in the afternoon at The Canyon. All of that was pretty hard work, so i just had to have a beer or 2 back at Penguin Restaurant before i started reeling off all these emails!
Its a Full Moon tonight, and it's beckoning me from the window of this net cafe to come and join it downstairs for dinner, so i'm gonna take it up on it offer now.
Hope you've enjoyed the tales - i've got one last mad dash to make to Vancouver later this week, and i'll tell you about that when it happens, but for now, that's my Middle East Adventure over.
Cheers,
Tony
peace love and happy faces
this one'll be short and sweet, i promise. i just needed to bang out those last 3 emails to catch up and get them out of the way!!
I've just spent the last 3 days back here in Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula, soaking up loads of gorgeous warm sun, and diving the depths of the Red Sea, spotting strange and unusual colorful fish and coral.
I'm at a spot called Penguin Village, but strangely enough, i ain't seen any penguins here!! The pace here is marginally faster than snail, and the guy who runs the diveshop/restaurant/hotel complex is this awesome laidback Egyptian fella who goes by the name of Jimmy. The restaurant is an outdoor, sit down on rugs and cushions affair, right by the sea, so that when the tide comes in, just a couple of palm tree logs and some wooden palings seperate you and your food from getting soaked!
Just imagine sitting right at the edge here in the morning, watching the sun rise over the sea, with the desert mouuntains of Saudi Arabia looming in the background, sipping a freshly squeezed mango juice and eating choc-banana pancakes, and you've got me this morning down to a T. This was followed by a short drive down the beach for a nice 40 minute, 32metre deep dive at Blue Hole (bottom depth unknown, but measured at one point at 200metres), one of the most amazing and famous dive sites in the world, then by a leisurely lunch while a local Bedouin girl made a cotton bracelet for me, and then another dive in the afternoon at The Canyon. All of that was pretty hard work, so i just had to have a beer or 2 back at Penguin Restaurant before i started reeling off all these emails!
Its a Full Moon tonight, and it's beckoning me from the window of this net cafe to come and join it downstairs for dinner, so i'm gonna take it up on it offer now.
Hope you've enjoyed the tales - i've got one last mad dash to make to Vancouver later this week, and i'll tell you about that when it happens, but for now, that's my Middle East Adventure over.
Cheers,
Tony
peace love and happy faces
Temples and Tombs Overload on the Nile - the longer version, part 2
Hi there,
So our restful slumber under the stars on the felucca boat is rudely interrupted by a sunrise wake up call. Altho, to be fair, watching the sun rise over the Nile wasn't such a bad way to clear out the sleep from our eyes!
We were off on another mad police convoy, heading north up the highway to Luxor, with a couple of short and sweet stops along the way to ingest some more ancient Egyptian history. Kom Ombo temple was first stop, built around 2nd Century BC, and completed by Cleopatra's daddy, Ptolemy the 12th. It's an unusual double temple as it is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus . The ancient Egyptians worshipped all sorts of animals as well as gods in human form, and this is but one example of this, in particular worshipping the croc god so that the locals wouldn't get attacked by the real things in the river!! Despite being badly damaged, the temple is a beautiful sight as you approach from either direction on the river, particularly as sunset nears and the colours change. We were visiting at the wrong end of the day for that, and besides, we only had 30 minutes tops here!! It was enough tho, to sit in the jacuzzi (empty) where Cleo took her milk baths from time to time - a great little tacky photo op!
Next was the Temple of Horus (again) at Edfu. This is another 2nd Century BC effort, and the best preserved temple of Ancient Egypt, so being because over time it got completely covered by sand dunes, and then, not knowing that a 2000 year old temple was beneath them, the locals built a village on top of it!! It was only rediscovered in the mid 19th Century. My highlight of tyhis place was a really cool passage way at the rear of the temple with enormous elaborate hieroglyphic carvings, depicting a huge battle scene between good-God Horus and evil-God Seth, with Seth being portrayed as a baby hippopotamus (i kid you not). These guys would use any surface available to them to tell stories of conquests, rises and falls of gods and kings, so you could look up at the cieling and it'd be covered with scrawls the length and breadth of it. I'd hate to think of how long it took and back-breaking it would have been. It was exhausting enough spending our 45minutes cruising around them!
Right, so another 2 hour drive north and we hit Luxor. For the history buffs out there, this used to be known as the fabled city of Thebes, and has been in this history books since around 1500BC. All i remember of it now was getting whisked (by horse-drawn carriage mind!, a popular and traditional form of transport in this town) to another temple, Karnak temple this time, where we had an Egyptologist guide us thru it for the next 3 hours. This is by far the largest complex i had seen in this stretch - the site is gigantic, measuring roughly 1.5Km long by 800metres wide (as i quickly consult my facts and figures book!!). To be fair, this was a pretty impressive temple, maybe more so than the others, with loads to see, but by this stage i was one of the walking dead, practically sleeping standing up, and so at the first opportunity, i grabbed a ride back to the hotel to grab 40winks before dinner, as we had another early start the next day.
I'll give the tour organisers full points for imagination. While we had to rise at 4.45am, our next form of transport was by donkey! No jokes, the 7Km between the Nile and The valley of the Kings, we spent trotting thru loval village streets and farm field on board donkeys.
Quite funny really, especially as the girls in the group were advised to wear a sports bra, or two bras if they didn't have one, and the guys were
told not to wear boxers to avoid damage and soreness due to the incessant bouncing - there is no dignified way to ride these brutes!!
The Valley of the Kings is where the great and ancient Pharoahs of Egypt were buried in tombs with all their treasures, in a canyon beside a pyramid shaped mountain peak, this being a symbolic icon for the passage to the next world for these revered characters. Once again, time forgot these tombs as they were buried beneath the sands of time (sounds like the beginning of a dodgy soap opera!), and it's only been in recent history that they have been rediscovered and excavated, 62 in all so far, altho there may possibly be more. In fact it is here where the most recent and most famous Tutankhamen tomb was discovered in 1922, with all his treasures in tact. All the other tombs, much, much larger than Tut's, had all suffered at the hands of ancient grave robbers and theives, and were empty of treasures when discovered.
This is another one of those famous names you get taught about in school and see TV programs about, and here i was standing at the entrance to his tomb, having seen a swag of the treasure in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Nuts! Again tho, minimal time was allowed to take in the whole site, and after an admittedly very beautiful walk in the desert valley, we were back on the donkeys into town, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening shopping in the markets, before boarding a night train at 11pm back to Cairo.
Back in Cairo after minimal sleep on the train, we were given free reign to check this city out again proper.......i slept!!!!
I was just biding my time until our final supper (so to speak), then said our goodbyes, and i was on another night journey, this time back to Dahab, for some decent R & R.
I needed it, i deserved it.
Talk soon,
Tony
peace love and happy faces
So our restful slumber under the stars on the felucca boat is rudely interrupted by a sunrise wake up call. Altho, to be fair, watching the sun rise over the Nile wasn't such a bad way to clear out the sleep from our eyes!
We were off on another mad police convoy, heading north up the highway to Luxor, with a couple of short and sweet stops along the way to ingest some more ancient Egyptian history. Kom Ombo temple was first stop, built around 2nd Century BC, and completed by Cleopatra's daddy, Ptolemy the 12th. It's an unusual double temple as it is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus . The ancient Egyptians worshipped all sorts of animals as well as gods in human form, and this is but one example of this, in particular worshipping the croc god so that the locals wouldn't get attacked by the real things in the river!! Despite being badly damaged, the temple is a beautiful sight as you approach from either direction on the river, particularly as sunset nears and the colours change. We were visiting at the wrong end of the day for that, and besides, we only had 30 minutes tops here!! It was enough tho, to sit in the jacuzzi (empty) where Cleo took her milk baths from time to time - a great little tacky photo op!
Next was the Temple of Horus (again) at Edfu. This is another 2nd Century BC effort, and the best preserved temple of Ancient Egypt, so being because over time it got completely covered by sand dunes, and then, not knowing that a 2000 year old temple was beneath them, the locals built a village on top of it!! It was only rediscovered in the mid 19th Century. My highlight of tyhis place was a really cool passage way at the rear of the temple with enormous elaborate hieroglyphic carvings, depicting a huge battle scene between good-God Horus and evil-God Seth, with Seth being portrayed as a baby hippopotamus (i kid you not). These guys would use any surface available to them to tell stories of conquests, rises and falls of gods and kings, so you could look up at the cieling and it'd be covered with scrawls the length and breadth of it. I'd hate to think of how long it took and back-breaking it would have been. It was exhausting enough spending our 45minutes cruising around them!
Right, so another 2 hour drive north and we hit Luxor. For the history buffs out there, this used to be known as the fabled city of Thebes, and has been in this history books since around 1500BC. All i remember of it now was getting whisked (by horse-drawn carriage mind!, a popular and traditional form of transport in this town) to another temple, Karnak temple this time, where we had an Egyptologist guide us thru it for the next 3 hours. This is by far the largest complex i had seen in this stretch - the site is gigantic, measuring roughly 1.5Km long by 800metres wide (as i quickly consult my facts and figures book!!). To be fair, this was a pretty impressive temple, maybe more so than the others, with loads to see, but by this stage i was one of the walking dead, practically sleeping standing up, and so at the first opportunity, i grabbed a ride back to the hotel to grab 40winks before dinner, as we had another early start the next day.
I'll give the tour organisers full points for imagination. While we had to rise at 4.45am, our next form of transport was by donkey! No jokes, the 7Km between the Nile and The valley of the Kings, we spent trotting thru loval village streets and farm field on board donkeys.
Quite funny really, especially as the girls in the group were advised to wear a sports bra, or two bras if they didn't have one, and the guys were
told not to wear boxers to avoid damage and soreness due to the incessant bouncing - there is no dignified way to ride these brutes!!
The Valley of the Kings is where the great and ancient Pharoahs of Egypt were buried in tombs with all their treasures, in a canyon beside a pyramid shaped mountain peak, this being a symbolic icon for the passage to the next world for these revered characters. Once again, time forgot these tombs as they were buried beneath the sands of time (sounds like the beginning of a dodgy soap opera!), and it's only been in recent history that they have been rediscovered and excavated, 62 in all so far, altho there may possibly be more. In fact it is here where the most recent and most famous Tutankhamen tomb was discovered in 1922, with all his treasures in tact. All the other tombs, much, much larger than Tut's, had all suffered at the hands of ancient grave robbers and theives, and were empty of treasures when discovered.
This is another one of those famous names you get taught about in school and see TV programs about, and here i was standing at the entrance to his tomb, having seen a swag of the treasure in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Nuts! Again tho, minimal time was allowed to take in the whole site, and after an admittedly very beautiful walk in the desert valley, we were back on the donkeys into town, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening shopping in the markets, before boarding a night train at 11pm back to Cairo.
Back in Cairo after minimal sleep on the train, we were given free reign to check this city out again proper.......i slept!!!!
I was just biding my time until our final supper (so to speak), then said our goodbyes, and i was on another night journey, this time back to Dahab, for some decent R & R.
I needed it, i deserved it.
Talk soon,
Tony
peace love and happy faces
Temples and Tombs Overload on the Nile - the longer version, part 1.
Hi again,
Okay, so it's 3am, and i'm snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug... until that damn hotel wake-up call jars me from my peaceful slumber. There's no such thing as a 10-minute snooze on this tour, it's just up-an-at-em. We've got a 3 hour 300Km bus ride ahead of us to Abu Simbel, in a police convoy no less. About 7 or 8 years ago there were some shootings at a popular tourist site in Luxor by some radical Islamic terrorists, killing a number of foreigners, Ever since then, in certain parts of Egypt, the only way to travel between certain tourist destinations is to get all of the group tours and individual travellers together in one big convoy, and speed down the desert highway. For those of you with your heart in your throat at the mentioning of this, don't worry. Ever since this system has been in place, there has been zero trouble.
Abu Simbel is about 40Km north of the Sudanese border, and there's not much there in the village, but just a mile or so outside of town are two of the most amazing temples with a pretty incredible story behind them. Back in 1274-1244BC, Pharoah Ramses the 2nd, built two enormous temples for himself, and his beloved wife Queen Nefertari, to honour the Gods Hathor and Amun, carving them out of the mountain on the west bank of the Nile. Over the centuries, the Nile and the desert sands shifted, and the temples were lost to human memory, until they were discovered again in the early 1800's AD. In the mid 1960's, the Egyptian Government decided they needed to dam the river to create more farming land to cope with the expanding population. Unfortunately, the newly created lake would flood over and destroy a good number of ancient monuments forever. So, they thought they'd move them!!
Not an easy task to uproot and relocate 3000 year old temples of monumental size, but with the help and funding of international governments (a cool US$40million) and UNESCO, they spent the next 20 years undertaking a huge engineering marvel and miracle of sorts, carefully deconstructing, block by block, storing, preparing, and reconstructing the temples, on higher ground, also specially prepared, with the exact same dimensions, facing the same direction to the exact millimetre. Abu Simbel's Temple of Ramses and Nefertari was one such temple. Honestly, to visit this site now, it has been recreated so faithfully, you would never know that the original site was 210metres away, under 65 metres of water in Lake Nasser dam. They're pretty speccy, to say the least, and well worth that damn 3am wake-up call and 600Km return journey.
Upon returning to Aswan, we almost immediately hit the banks of the Nile to jump on a felucca sailboat to cruise around the islands for the afternoon, and sip a coupla cold ones. This was a welcome respite from the hectic schedule we'd been keeping, to just lazily sail around, mingling with all the other felucca's, just gliding across the still, calm waters, with nary a breeze on the air, and the sun shining down a pleasant 20-something degree temperature. Come dusk, we disembarked on one of the islands where we would spend the evening with a local Nubian tribe in their village.
The land of Nubia occupied a large swathe of Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. They're generally a nomadic group of people, and while not ever having their own country homeland so-to-speak, the frequent border disputes affected them greatly over the centuries. The final border agreement after World War 2 between Egypt and Sudan finally relegated them to the stauts of a people without a land to call their own. Then, there was the first dam built on the Nile in the 1920's, with the directive from the Government that they had to leave their villages and relocate to Sudan or to slected towns in Egypt, as they were going to be flooded forever. Then, the 2nd dam was built in the 1960's, bigger and greater then the first, and again they were forced to leave and relocate thier homes, truly displacing them from their homeland. Aswan was one of the options given to them, and many of them set up home on the islands in the middle of the Nile.
They are very distinct from Egyptians, looking very much more African than anything, with much darker skin, and generally taller and skinnier. It is a credit to them that they have managed to maintain their own cultural traditions, which we got to see a little of when we stayed for dinner. We did a short tour of the village, and visited the school that Imaginative Traveller sponsored, then sat down to dinner with them as they showed off their crafts and clothing and culinary delights. It was a very enjoyable evening, one of my favourite parts of the trip.
We then said our goodbyes and hopped back on the felucca, spending the night moored on the banks of the island on the Nile, sleeping under the stars in Southern Egypt....Nice!!
more in a bit.
Tony
peace love and happy faces
Okay, so it's 3am, and i'm snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug... until that damn hotel wake-up call jars me from my peaceful slumber. There's no such thing as a 10-minute snooze on this tour, it's just up-an-at-em. We've got a 3 hour 300Km bus ride ahead of us to Abu Simbel, in a police convoy no less. About 7 or 8 years ago there were some shootings at a popular tourist site in Luxor by some radical Islamic terrorists, killing a number of foreigners, Ever since then, in certain parts of Egypt, the only way to travel between certain tourist destinations is to get all of the group tours and individual travellers together in one big convoy, and speed down the desert highway. For those of you with your heart in your throat at the mentioning of this, don't worry. Ever since this system has been in place, there has been zero trouble.
Abu Simbel is about 40Km north of the Sudanese border, and there's not much there in the village, but just a mile or so outside of town are two of the most amazing temples with a pretty incredible story behind them. Back in 1274-1244BC, Pharoah Ramses the 2nd, built two enormous temples for himself, and his beloved wife Queen Nefertari, to honour the Gods Hathor and Amun, carving them out of the mountain on the west bank of the Nile. Over the centuries, the Nile and the desert sands shifted, and the temples were lost to human memory, until they were discovered again in the early 1800's AD. In the mid 1960's, the Egyptian Government decided they needed to dam the river to create more farming land to cope with the expanding population. Unfortunately, the newly created lake would flood over and destroy a good number of ancient monuments forever. So, they thought they'd move them!!
Not an easy task to uproot and relocate 3000 year old temples of monumental size, but with the help and funding of international governments (a cool US$40million) and UNESCO, they spent the next 20 years undertaking a huge engineering marvel and miracle of sorts, carefully deconstructing, block by block, storing, preparing, and reconstructing the temples, on higher ground, also specially prepared, with the exact same dimensions, facing the same direction to the exact millimetre. Abu Simbel's Temple of Ramses and Nefertari was one such temple. Honestly, to visit this site now, it has been recreated so faithfully, you would never know that the original site was 210metres away, under 65 metres of water in Lake Nasser dam. They're pretty speccy, to say the least, and well worth that damn 3am wake-up call and 600Km return journey.
Upon returning to Aswan, we almost immediately hit the banks of the Nile to jump on a felucca sailboat to cruise around the islands for the afternoon, and sip a coupla cold ones. This was a welcome respite from the hectic schedule we'd been keeping, to just lazily sail around, mingling with all the other felucca's, just gliding across the still, calm waters, with nary a breeze on the air, and the sun shining down a pleasant 20-something degree temperature. Come dusk, we disembarked on one of the islands where we would spend the evening with a local Nubian tribe in their village.
The land of Nubia occupied a large swathe of Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. They're generally a nomadic group of people, and while not ever having their own country homeland so-to-speak, the frequent border disputes affected them greatly over the centuries. The final border agreement after World War 2 between Egypt and Sudan finally relegated them to the stauts of a people without a land to call their own. Then, there was the first dam built on the Nile in the 1920's, with the directive from the Government that they had to leave their villages and relocate to Sudan or to slected towns in Egypt, as they were going to be flooded forever. Then, the 2nd dam was built in the 1960's, bigger and greater then the first, and again they were forced to leave and relocate thier homes, truly displacing them from their homeland. Aswan was one of the options given to them, and many of them set up home on the islands in the middle of the Nile.
They are very distinct from Egyptians, looking very much more African than anything, with much darker skin, and generally taller and skinnier. It is a credit to them that they have managed to maintain their own cultural traditions, which we got to see a little of when we stayed for dinner. We did a short tour of the village, and visited the school that Imaginative Traveller sponsored, then sat down to dinner with them as they showed off their crafts and clothing and culinary delights. It was a very enjoyable evening, one of my favourite parts of the trip.
We then said our goodbyes and hopped back on the felucca, spending the night moored on the banks of the island on the Nile, sleeping under the stars in Southern Egypt....Nice!!
more in a bit.
Tony
peace love and happy faces
Temples and Tombs Overload on the Nile - the short version.
g'day,
how do i sum up the past week? it's been breakneck hell-for-leather speed.....on-speed (not literally, but you get what i mean). Just to give you some idea, i'll give a brief rundown by timescale how nuts this week has been.
Monday 17th, CAIRO - ASWAN Guided visit to the Pyramids & Sphinx at Giza, which I have already written about. 10pm Overnight train to Aswan.
Tuesday 18th, ASWAN 10am Arrive Aswan , visit Unfinished Oblelisk - an ancient monument, then free afternoon. 7pm Visit Philae Temple for an evening sound and light show. 10pm bed.
Wednesday 19th, ASWAN - FELUCCA CRUISE A so-called 'free morning'. Instead, it was a 3am wake up, and a 3 hour, 300 km drive south to Abu Simbel. 2 hours checking out some ancient temples, 3 hour return drive to Aswan. 11am, jump on a felucca boat for lunch and a Nile cruise til sunset, sailing around the islands of Aswan. 6pm Visit Nubian village for cultural show and dinner. 9pm bed, Overnighting on board the felucca.
Thursday 20th, ASWAN - LUXOR 7am wake up. Drive from Aswan to Luxor visiting the riverside temple at Kom Ombo, 30minutes viewing time, and then the Temple of Horus at Edfu, 45minutes viewing time, en route. Arrive in Luxor, have a take-away lunch, then in the afternoon horse drawn carriages to Karnak temple ,3 hours viewing time, then dinner. 8pm bed.
Friday 21st, LUXOR 4.45am wake up. Donkey ride for 7Km to the Valley of the Kings for some more Pharoah tombs (including Tutankhamen's). Free afternoon, dinner, souvenir shopping in the markets, then 11pm overnight train back to Cairo.
Saturday 22nd, CAIRO. Arrive 8am. Tour finishes tonight, so this is essentially a free day. Late afternoon we ride camels by the Pyramids and watch the sunset. At Midnight i get a 9hour overnight bus to Dahab.
While this was a completely nutso itinerary, a lot of cool stuff happened.....i'll elaborate on those in the next email - give you guys a breather as well!!
Cheers, Tony
peace love and happy faces
how do i sum up the past week? it's been breakneck hell-for-leather speed.....on-speed (not literally, but you get what i mean). Just to give you some idea, i'll give a brief rundown by timescale how nuts this week has been.
Monday 17th, CAIRO - ASWAN Guided visit to the Pyramids & Sphinx at Giza, which I have already written about. 10pm Overnight train to Aswan.
Tuesday 18th, ASWAN 10am Arrive Aswan , visit Unfinished Oblelisk - an ancient monument, then free afternoon. 7pm Visit Philae Temple for an evening sound and light show. 10pm bed.
Wednesday 19th, ASWAN - FELUCCA CRUISE A so-called 'free morning'. Instead, it was a 3am wake up, and a 3 hour, 300 km drive south to Abu Simbel. 2 hours checking out some ancient temples, 3 hour return drive to Aswan. 11am, jump on a felucca boat for lunch and a Nile cruise til sunset, sailing around the islands of Aswan. 6pm Visit Nubian village for cultural show and dinner. 9pm bed, Overnighting on board the felucca.
Thursday 20th, ASWAN - LUXOR 7am wake up. Drive from Aswan to Luxor visiting the riverside temple at Kom Ombo, 30minutes viewing time, and then the Temple of Horus at Edfu, 45minutes viewing time, en route. Arrive in Luxor, have a take-away lunch, then in the afternoon horse drawn carriages to Karnak temple ,3 hours viewing time, then dinner. 8pm bed.
Friday 21st, LUXOR 4.45am wake up. Donkey ride for 7Km to the Valley of the Kings for some more Pharoah tombs (including Tutankhamen's). Free afternoon, dinner, souvenir shopping in the markets, then 11pm overnight train back to Cairo.
Saturday 22nd, CAIRO. Arrive 8am. Tour finishes tonight, so this is essentially a free day. Late afternoon we ride camels by the Pyramids and watch the sunset. At Midnight i get a 9hour overnight bus to Dahab.
While this was a completely nutso itinerary, a lot of cool stuff happened.....i'll elaborate on those in the next email - give you guys a breather as well!!
Cheers, Tony
peace love and happy faces
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