I don't even know how to go about explaining my last nearly two weeks of adventure. Cairo, Egypt was my main destination to visit two of my friends from college (Mari Michael & Lindsay) who are currently working as fabulous architects in Cairo. How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to visit an area of the world with so much rediculous history while I know some locals living there?!? Clearly I could not. I had been talking about visiting for several months now...most recently I asked how the end of March would work for timing; turns out it would work perfectly since there were a large group of Auburn students currently studying abroad who were coming to visit at that time too! I was SOLD! After a little anti-terrorism training my vacation was approved and I bought my ticket!
[view from MM & Lindsay's room]
After 19 hours of traveling and crossing 9 time zones, I got into Cairo late Friday night (March 19th). After sitting through a large amount of traffic with Mari Michael and her bf, we finally made it to the apartment which was packed with nearly 20 people!! There were people (visitors) everywhere!! That night we went for a late night falucca ride down the Nile. What a great way to start of my trip...cruising down the Nile! I was so excited just to be there! Here's a map showing the main places that I was for my trip. I felt like I was all over the place for 11 days!
[click to make bigger!]
Saturday morning we got up bright and early (I was still super messed up from the time zone change) to get packed up for our excurssion into the desert. I'm not entirely sure where we were for the next couple of days, but it was somewhere in the vacinity of Fayoum. We took 3 trucks into the desert with our bedouin guides. It was so crazy to me to be amongst so much sand! It was EVERYWHERE!! Our first stop was actually a lake in the middle of the desert. More specifically there was a little waterfall that we stopped to see. Apparently it's a pretty good hot spot for locals to come play and spend the day at the beach. We stopped and wandered around, some people went swimming, and the guides made us a fabulous lunch of local Egyptian food (which I am a rather large fan of). Upon completion, we jumped back in the trucks to head to our next desert destination.
[the caravan]
[desert waterfall]
[yummy lunch]
[the beach]
Again we drove through so sand as far as the eye could see. It really felt like I was in the middle of the ocean, except the ocean was sand. Speaking of ocean, turns out the desert used to be just that! Our next stop was at a place where a bunch of whale fossils had bee recovered! At one point this area was covered in water, and now it's desert with remnants of whales and other sea faring creatures. Crazy to think that it was once a body of water. The actual whale fossils were set out in little displays, but just walking around we found a ton of shell fossils as well. The place itself was just a beautiful place to be in general as well.
[where the whales were]
[whale bones!!]
[wandering around what used to be covered in water]
That concluded our sight seeing for the day, and out next stop was to be to set up camp for the night. we drove into the middle of the desert where there were dunes everywhere and I could imagine it would be very easy to get lost on your own. Luckily we had our handy guides with us who knew the desert well enough to get us in and out! While we all explored the area, our guided set up camp and cooked dinner for us. This was such a great way to take a trip where everything is taken care of for you! The dunes were awesome, and a great workout to climb up and down. Again...SAND EVERYWHERE! Not that I was really expecting anything else, it was just a sight to see. Dinner was followed by lots of drinking and dancing and exploring and watching shooting stars and just enjoying the evening in the desert. The next morning we were caught in a bit of a sandstorm. Our camp set up was able to shield us through breakfast, but then we decided it best to pack up and get back on the road before it got covered in sand as well!
[our campsite for the night]
[big dunes everywhere! that's a lot of sand]
[playing on the dunes]
[our camp setup]
[driving through the sandstorm]
After making a few more stops at little villages on the way back, we made it back to Cairo. Now it was time to prepare for the next excursion! Since the girls had to work a few days in the week, I joined some of the other visitors on a few other little trips. Sunday night a few of us took the night bus down to Luxor to do some quick sightseeing. When we got there, we just made a deal with a taxi driver to take us around to all the places we wanted to see for the day. First stop was the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. This has always been one of my favorite buildings when we studied in in architectural history, so it was really awesome to see it in person. It was amazing how the structure was built into the cliff and it's contrast with the height of the cliff was really beautiful.
[I'm actually there!!!! The temple of Queen Hatshepsut...you go girl!]
[The temple]
[I love how the cliff towers over it...amazing!]
After the temple we went to the Valley of the Kings where many many pharaohs hid their tombs in the side of the mountain to keep it away from tomb robbers. There were a ton of tombs, but the access ticket only let us into 3. It was cool to see the spaces and there were a lot of decorations all over the walls, but all the stuff on the inside had been taken out. I can only imagine what they all looked like packed full of all their treasures! We got to see a lot of the stuff that was previously inside the tombs when we went to the museum in Cairo later in the week. We were also not aloud to take pictures here. Our next stop was Karnak on the west side of the Nile where we saw a lot more old stuff! We wandered through the temple complex and I was rather awed at the size of everything!
[Avenue of the Sphinxes]
[Temple of Karnak]
[cantilevering HUGE rocks]
[more HUGENESS!]
After wandering around we walked by the Luxor Temple, but decided not to pay to go in since you could see most of it from the street. We were also ready for some nice relaxing, so we opted for a nice boat ride on the Nile instead. It was a great way to finish off the day and watch the sun set.
[boats on the Nile]
[Luxor Temple at night]
After a packed day, we headed to the Train station to catch the sleeping train back to Cairo. This was waaaaaay better than taking the bus down. We actually got food served to us and beds to sleep in. It was amazing! The next day was packed again. We did catch a few more Zzzzs when we got back to Cairo, but then headed out to the Egyptian museum. This is where we got to see all the ridiculous treasures that the tombs of the pharaohs were packed with and all kinds of other carvings and such from thousands of years ago. We also got to see some mummies!!! It was really pretty gross to see them, but also crazy to see a body so well preserved from such a long time ago, especially after visiting some of their tombs and temples. After the museum, we headed over to the market for a few hours before heading back to the apartment. That night we hopped on another night bus to head over to Dehab on the Sinai Peninsula. After we arrived we grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and headed out for some snorkeling in the Red Sea...how cool is that?!? What's even cooler is that we could actually see Saudi Arabia from the hotel restaurant. Dehab is pretty much a little beach town, so we had a nice relaxing time soaking in the sun. We were really close to Mt. Sinai and the hotel offered a trip where you leave at 11pm, drive to Mt. Sinai and hike up it for sunrise. I kind of wish now that I had done it, but after several nights in a row of riding on trains/busses I really wanted to get a good night's sleep. The next day we spent hanging out in the sun again before hopping on the night bus again to head back to Cairo.
[where we went snorkeling]
[a camel walked by behind me while I was sun bathing :) ]
[laying out on the roof deck...if you look closely you can see the Saudi Arabia coast!]
We made it back to Cairo Friday morning, and I was ready to stay put in Cairo for the rest of my trip! So much traveling around to see everything! After a little nap, I met up with Lindsay and her Aunt, who had just gotten into town, for a little Cairo sightseeing. We first went to Coptic Cairo which is the center of Christianity in Cairo. Supposedly it was actually the same place that Mary and Joseph fled to with baby Jesus too. That's so crazy to think that I was there too! After that we headed to a nearby mosque. That was my first time in a mosque and it was interesting to have to remove my shoes, put a scarf over my head, and enter through a different entrance than the males. Once inside we enjoyed the calming silence and beautiful architecture.
[coptic Cairo...I loved this wall!]
[me in the mosque...I had to wear the silly green cloak too]
After a day of being touristy, I got to spend the evening with the locals! It was one of Lindsay and Mari Michael's friends' birthday, and they were throwing a little get together and one of the bars in town, so I got to join in on the festivities. I met lots of fun people and had a long and fun night of celebrating!
[my girls!]
[party people]
[pretty and yummy birthday cake...mmmmm]
After some good sleeping in on Saturday morning, I was ready for some more being a tourist. After being in Egypt for over a week, I still hadn't seen the Pyramids! So that's what we did today. I went with Mari Michael and her bf down to Giza to see what all the fuss was about. I had actually seen them from the highway on the way out to the desert, but now I got to see them up close...and ride a camel! We took a little tour around the pyramid complex on our camels and climbed a little bit on the Great Pyramid. Then we took a little drive to the other end of the place and hung out with the Sphinx.
[riding a camel past the pyramids!]
[riding camels!]
[our guide really wanted to take pics of us!]
[sitting on a pyramid!]
After a day of touristing and hanging out in the sun, we got pretty pooped so spent the rest of the night hanging out at the apartment. I was definitely ready to pass out when bedtime came along! Sunday was my last day in Egypt, so I spent it being touristy again! I went with Lindsay and her Aunt around to a few more mosques, the big market in town and wandered around a really nice and clean part of the town. It was a lot of fun just to walk around and explore the city. We ended up at a big park which apparently was once a garbage dump. They did a really good job about fixing it up though because it was a really beautiful park on the hill with great views of the city!
[visiting a mosque]
[lots of spices in the market...apparently even one to cure the swine flu!]
[pretty lamps store]
[Egyptians love Obama! He's the new Tutankamon of the world]
[Park with great views of the city]
Sunday night was my final night, so we all went out to a nice Egyptian restaurant before I headed back to the airport to start my little flying adventure. When I got the the airport, I found out that my flight to Amsterdam was delayed 2 hours which would make me miss my flight from there to Seattle. The airline switched around my flights and got me on a few different flight that would get me to Seattle 11 hours later than I was supposed to. I was not very amused at all! At that point there was nothing I could do about so I just sucked it up and settled in for my 30 hours of traveling. Monday night I finally made it to Seattle to be greeted by a super cute boy who I missed very much :) Luckily I had taken Tuesday off of work as well so I spent the day recovering. It was such an awesome trip, and I'm so glad I actually did it! I can't wait for Lindsay and Mari Michael to come back to the states so we can all see each other again!
