SB '09 Part 1

I just got back from Egypt this evening, so I thought I would share the experience. We left last Thursday after classes on a Jet bus bound for Aqaba. The trip was off to a good start as we got the front seat on the upper deck, so we got a really good view (though it was nighttime in the desert, so there really wasn’t much to see).

We got in around 11:00, so we really didn’t do anything but eat dinner at this place called Rover’s Revenge. We started our first day of Spring Break by walking along the “Boardwalk” to Aqaba’s Mamluk fort. The Boardwalk in Aqaba is nothing like the one’s on the east coast back home. It’s basically a string of street vendors selling swim trunks and some other beach gear. The Mamluk fort was pretty cool. There was a herd of cats living there though, and it subsequently smelled like cat. Afterwards we went to the beach, which was sort of a mixed bag. There was little sand and a lot of rocks and coral. It was pretty painful to walk on, but beautiful to watch with the snorkels we bought. Afterwards we went to a really good Chinese restaurant and a café.

The next day we were set to take a ferry to Nuweiba in Egypt. Things did not get off on the right foot. We arrived at the port around 10:00 in the morning, with plenty of time to spare before a noon departure. First, we had to go upstairs in the office to buy tickets. Next, we had to go back downstairs to buy the departure stamp. After that, we had to go back upstairs to get the stamp put on our passports. Then we had to go back downstairs to wait for a shuttle, which took us to the ferry. We finally had made it to the ferry, but it wasn’t until 1:30 that we left. Two hours later we arrived in Nuweiba, but had to wait on the ferry for another half hour before we could get off. When we did get off, we found ourselves in this awful port, filled with semis. We had to walk across the port and wait at this dank, smelly, crowded office to get our arrival stamp and then walk to another office to get the stamp put on and retrieve our passports. Another interesting wrinkle: when we first got on the ferry they took our passports, and the only thing we got in return was this slip of paper with a little scribble on it. After finally getting our passports we had to go through security, which was a warehouse filled with garbage. Finally, we went to the East Delta bus office next door to buy bus tickets for the next day and took a van to our hotel. All this was made worse by the fact that it was about 95 degrees and muggy. It’s hard to describe what an awful and frustrating afternoon this was. Welcome to Egypt.

The hotel (the Ciao) was much better. We started off by having dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was pretty good. After that we went down to the beach on the Red Sea, where one of us hooked up our iPod to some speakers and had a mini-dance party with the eight of us as the moon was rising over Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel.

The next day we took an eight-hour bus ride across the Sinai desert to Cairo. About as exciting as it sounds. It was kind of a culture shock arriving in Cairo. Our hotel was in downtown, which is a lot more crowded and cosmopolitan than Amman. That night we spent getting tickets for the train to Luxor and getting lost at Ramses Train Station. We went to bed early in preparation for our tour of the pyramids the next day. The pyramids were pretty awesome, as expected. We took camels and horses around Giza, then took pictures of the Step Pyramid from the road. About 45 minutes south of Cairo is the Red Pyramid, which was cool because you could go inside of it. There really wasn’t anything to see there, and it was really hot and smelled like ammonia, but it was cool simply for the fact of being inside of a pyramid.

The surprising thing about Giza is how close the pyramids are to the city of Giza. You can easily see the city and there are people and archaeological debris all over the place. It’s surprisingly similar to what a lot of other historical sites are in that regard, though still spectacular. After we got back we napped, since it was nearly 100 degrees and very humid. In the evening we went to Cairo’s old downtown where there were a lot of crowded shops with cool stuff for sale. We ate in this little alley at a dingy but delicious Kosheree (Egypt’s national dish) place.

I should probably mention that I was traveling with three other people, one guy and two girls, from our program. There was also another group of four girls that we were with some of the way because they had a similar itinerary. Ours was a really good group to travel with because we all were interested in having a similar trip. Anyway, more to come in the coming days.