There was none of the violence that our government had warned us against, but there were still a few signs of the January 25 revolution. Tahrir square was still occupied at least partially by a motley collection of tents and flags and a few revolutionaries. There is a multistory building across from the Egyptian Museum that is a burnt out shell, its crime being Mubarak's headquarters. The police force has basically ceased to function since they fired into the protests but the Tourist Police are still about protecting whatever tourists do come here from walking the wrong way. But for us this means we have the attractions virtually to ourselves; I couldn't imagine the hordes if Egypt were to again reach its tourist capacity.
There is a poignant sentiment expressed in the Ipuwer Papyrus at the fall of the first dynasty millenia earlier : "Events have taken place that had never occurred since the dawn of time: the King has been deposed by the rabble! He who had been buried as a Falcon was brutally dragged out of his sarcophagus! The burial chamber in the pyramid profaned! And now a handful of incompetent men in the government of the kingdom managed to deprive the country of its royalty". The question now is what men will be in the government?
The city of Cairo is ragged with the signs of decline everywhere, perhaps no longer the 'Paris of the Nile'. Although I can not tell if this has been a slow and gradual process or something more sudden. The motorways are fighting a constant battle with the desert and are filling up with sand. Cars park randomly along its length, sometimes to answer mobile phones or to shop at seemingly impossible stalls perched over the edge of the motorway, otherwise because it is the only available park, The traffic everywhere is heaving, belching, chaotic mass oozing through the veins of the city mixed with animal carts, pedestrians, road-works and breakdowns. Pedestrians incongruously seem to have right of way as long as you have nerves of steel required to step from the footpath. The is buildings being constructed across the country yet many are shells seemingly stalled mid-way to completion, others are empty shells. Still this is a city that isn't desperate for the tourist dollar, there even remains some of that old world charm in the souqs of the Old City.
The revolution may have caught up with is on the way to Luxor as the train was delayed at Assuit for many hours. In the end we followed a tour group onto buses and led in a poilice convoy to our final destination. We later learned from reluctant hotel staff that protestors had blocked the tracks. We met up with Roselin's cousin Priscilla and hubby Daniel for tours of the west bank, Abydos, Dendara and they also talked us into a balloon ride. We even met an Egyptian who didn't want anything from us. The "Music Man" bought us tea, sheesha and took us all to a belly dancing club. Unfortunately there had been some drunken revelry the night before and the police came and closed the place 10 minutes after we arrived. We did still manage to get an insiders glimpse of the underbelly of Egypt; alcohol, uncovered women, and men showering the dancer in money.
They are good salesmen in Egypt. The usual pickup line of "looking is free" contests with many more witty baits:
"Let me help you spend your money"
"Come into my shop and buy some useless trinkets"
"I don't want all your money only half"
"I don't know what you are looking for, but have a look in my shop"
They are masters of the up-sell or add-ons, and once they have you business they will push for every extra they can. Still the humour is lost in the blatant double pricing (one for you, one for locals; one for when you start, one for when you finish). Even asking for directions can provoke a call for baksheesh (or hashish to some). Faux guides will start to follow you around a tomb pointing out in broken English a man or a cow and then ask for tips. Even though we can read the Arabic numerals, rarely are the prices marked and vendors are not shy from multiplying any local price by 7.
Aswan didn't live up to the relaxed hype we had heard of, and perhaps this was as much my fault as anything. The ferry to Elephantine Island is blatantly 5 times that for a tourist as it is for a local and the ferry to the Temple of Philae can not even be negotiated until after you are locked in by buying an entry ticket. But in the end I was the biggest loser as it meant that I missed out on both. My frustrations are minor when compared to the local frustration at the lack of tourists in Egypt that means you have to ignore the near constant calls for you business when you walk anywhere.
The revolution probably did catch up to us on our way to Abu Simbel when we came across a road block 20 kms from our destination. We were only two of four tourists on a local bus but we could see tour groups on the other side milling around waiting to see what would happen. It seemed to be the usual stoush with lots of shouting and arm waving. Men from our bus would move the rocks off the road and protestors would move them back. Then in a single moment of insanity our drive drove through the human barricade and the bus was pelted with rocks (several coming through the windows). We sped to a nearby police post and were sheltered in a room with the of all people the driver as police raced about everywhere with there automatic rifles. We apparently only ran over one protestor. And although a few came to the door to abuse the driver we finally made it into Abu Simbel. Consequently, the next day we basically had the attraction all to ourselves.
In Ismailia, on the Suez Canal, we stood on the ferry that crossed every few minutes to watch the cargo boats sail through the desert. On our way back out in the afternoon to get a second helping of the freighters we were adopted by a local family. They spoke little English but we spoke less Arabic, which made Google Translate very useful. We circled the coast of the Sinai through Sharm el Sheik and Dahab before making it to our last port of call - Gebel Musa or Mount Sinai. This is Bedouin country, one of the many groups that make up Egypt. Bedouins are the nomadic groups from Arabia that hold onto all the Arabian traditions of old. Yet they are not shy about going into the street and blocking a road and shooting their guns into the air when they feel aggrieved. There are the Muslims usually discerned by the golf ball sized callous in the middle of their forehead from their devotion to prayer 5 times a day (Islam does mean submission). There is the Nubian in the south, they are darker and get there name from the Egyptian word for gold. Apparently there are good Nubians and bad Nubians. The good ones got to be pharaohs and the bad ones were the usually shown in carvings as about to have there heads crushed by the pharaoh. There are the Coptic Christians who built Byzantine in churches in ancient Egyptian temples. In many temples and monuments you can see where the Romans plastered over the inscriptions or the Copts have converted into to a church by chiseling off every pagan image, 17th century holiday makers from Europe have taken a bit home or left their name and date, or even in ancient times the latest pharaoh didn't like his mother-in-law too much. But I digress.
The village of St Katherine is a small community near the monastery of the same name built to protect the site of the burning bush of Moses. Mt Sinai being the sacred mountain Moses brought the Israelites to after leaving Egypt. We of course climbed the mountain (because it was there) and met about 300 Nigerians on a pilgrimage heading up in the dark as we were on our way down. The next morning we walked through local villages and gardens to the ruined Turkish fort on the summit of Gebel Abbas Bas. Most of Egypt that we saw was a sea of sand (with a sliver of green through the middle that is the Nile). But in Sinai that sea becomes a tempest of sharp ragged waves of rocks, this is a great place to walk and when the Bedouins are in their gardens in Summer camping would be easy.
The next day would be our last in Egypt - the 25th of January, a year since the Egyptian people "took their revolution back". Still Sinai was isolated from the turbulence of Cairo. We took the Bedouin Bus to Nuweiba and bought our tickets for the slow ferry to Aqaba, Jordan. It hindsight we should have probably gone via Taba and Israel as the ferry is a exercise in frustration. There is a queue to get to passport control, then a queue to get on the boat, then a queue on the boat where you surrender your passport. The boat actually leaves Nuweiba several hours later as this whole process takes forever. Much longer than the boat trip itself that is only a couple of hours. On arriving in Aqaba I was greatly relieved Roselin was able to talk the officials into us keeping our luggage as the free-for-all as passengers clambered through skip-bins to reclaim their bags looked like a nightmare. We still had to collect our passports in the processing centre and get though immigration. Luckily we are obviously tourists and used this to jump most of the queues. Jordan, a new country and one step closer to the end of our trip, we had better make the most of it.
