We spent the time relaxing on the Sinai, along the Red Sea. It took a couple of uneventful days of travel to reach Dahab, but when we did we were relieved. Dahab is a resort town were many Europeans vacation so it has many of the luxuries that the rest of Egypt seems to be missing (like swimming pools, cool sea breezes, and good food). We met a couple from New Zealand (Troy and Monique) on a boat to Dahab and ended up spending the next 5 days hanging out with them. They say some funny things like "heed" instead of head and "Jutter-Bar" instead of speed bump. It took 5 full days for us to run out of things to make fun of each other for. Once we did, it was time to move on to Jordan.
Jordan has 2 major sites that are frequented by travelers, Petra and Wadi Rum. Petra is an ancient city that was carved into cliffs that are out in the middle of the desert. It was kind of the same concept as Mesa Verde for those who have been there. The difference was the quality of work and the sheer size of the place. It was probably 10 square miles that consisted of over 800 tombs and monuments. The most famous of which is "The Treasury". This 100 foot tall building took over 200 years to carve from the cliff face (from 100 BC to 100 AD). It is still in perfect condition because if is protected from all sides. Perhaps you have seen the Treasury on the final Indiana Jones movie (which incidentally was playing in every souvenir shop in Petra).
We met up with 2 guys, Stewart from New Zealand and Doug from San Francisco, on the boat to Jordan and ended up traveling with them through Jordan.
We didn't have too much time in Jordan because we knew that we needed to get back to Egypt to meet up with Chris who was flying in on the 16th to join the adventure. We had talked to the taxi driver that had taken us from the port city of Aqaba to Petra about a taking us back to Aqaba in a couple of days, and he said that would be fine. He selected the early time of 6am to depart Petra. We didn't think much of it, so we got up, ate breakfast, and were ready to roll by about 6:02. We (Rob, Doug, Stewart, and I) went out and got in his cab only to find that it was surrounded by 6 other cabs. We didn't really notice, but our driver was acting a little funny about the whole thing. We started to drive out of this one horse town when a couple of the taxis honked at other taxis and before long we had about 10 taxis that were either following us or watching us. Our driver who did not speak English all that well, quickly drove back to the hotel and told us to go into the hotel without getting our bags (which we were a little reluctant to do). Due to the concern on his face and his apparent trustworthiness, we did as he said. He proceeded to drive off with several cabs following him. When we got back to the hotel, the manager explained that the driver was from Aqaba and out of his jurisdiction for picking people up (which explained his choice of the early pick up time). The manager told us that the hotel van would take us just outside of town to meet up with our driver (Yosiff) and our bags.
... It gets better...
The manager of the hotel called the owner of the hotel who came over pretty quickly. The owner was a very thin man of about 30 years. He had a certain coolness about him and the manager whispered to us that he was a very powerful man in the town and his family was very well know in all of Jordan. We were happy to have such power on our side. At about 6:30, "The Boss" as we called him, told us to go out into the street and start walking towards the ruins and he would swing down with his van and driver when he could. We did not feel unsafe during any of this, rather a little concerned that we had not seen our bags in half an hour (since they were in Yosiff's cab). About 3 minutes later, The Boss came by in the van and he took us through the back roads to get to Yosiff's cab. When we were almost there, we spotted a taxi road block just ahead. Several taxis had taken it into their own hands to keep us from getting out of town. When they saw the boss in the car, they seemed to get a little worried. After a heated discussion in Arabic, the taxis moved out of the way and we drove through, but they followed. Just as we were leaving the city limits, the cabs honked and pointed us out to some other people in town. As we crossed the boarder of the town, all the taxis that were following just stopped as if there was some barrier in the road keeping them from following us. We were happy to escape the situation.
...But there is more...
About 10 minutes later (we were still in the van), a Police car came up behind us with the lights on. There were more Arabic words exchanged and the van turned around and headed back to town. The Boss explained that they were getting a ticket and that we had to follow them to the Police station. After 5 minutes in front of the police station, the cops told The Boss to take us back to the hotel. When we got back, one of the cab drivers from the blockade was there. He was begging with The Boss telling him that he did not call the police and that it must have been someone else. The Boss was just silent and let the man plead his case. In the end, the Boss told the driver that all of Jordan would know what happened that morning, but that tomorrow was a new day. The cab driver, in some sort of repentance, offered (or was told) to drive us to Yosiff on the out skirts of town. Needless to say, we were not very excited about getting in the cab with this man, but The Boss assured us that it would not be a problem or that the guy would have some serious problems in the future. We got in and he took us to Yosiff and our bags and we headed to Aqaba via Wadi Rum.
Wadi Rum is a place that has beautiful mountains coming up out of the desert. They do a bunch of 4-wheel driving and desert camping there, but we decided to skip it.
Now we are in Cairo waiting for Chris to arrive. Cairo is much better the second time because you know what to expect. For instance, we got off of the bus to see about 100 cabs waiting to take us somewhere. The cabs make a commission from the hotels if they take people to the hotel, so every cab wants to take you to a "Special Place with a Special Price". We knew where we wanted to go to a hotel called "The Sun Hotel" because we stayed there the week before. The first cab driver we asked preceeded to tell us that the place was out of business. The second one told us that they were all full. We finally told the last guy that we had a reservation at the Sun and he took us there. He did try to talk us into a couple of other places along the way, but we held our ground. We ended up at the Sun hotel and they had a room for us (even through we didn't have a reservation). It takes a while to get used to these annoying things in Cairo.
The Sun Hotel is very similar to most of the places that we are staying. They are very cheap and not all that nice. The walls are pretty dirty and some times you have to go down the hall to the bathroom. By US standards, they are very poor. By Egypt standards, they are average. One of the more interesting things are the bathrooms. To start with, the water that comes out of the tap is useless for anything other than taking showers, washing clothes in the sink, and squirting one's behind ( I will visit this more in a moment). The water is not good for drinking or brushing teeth because it is not clean by US standards. There is usually wall to wall, ceiling to floor tile which is due to constant flooding caused by the shower. The shower consists of cold water that is directed up an external pipe to a watering bucket type spray nozzle. The water just runs everywhere. Best of all is that there is no toilet paper. I guess Egyptians think that toilet paper is a useless luxury and it clogs up the sewers. So...every toilet has a small hose with a spray nozzle on the end (much like many kitchen sinks have in the US) that is to be used to clean up one's arse. Needless to say all the westerners carry toilet paper with them everywhere. The nasty thing is that the toilet paper can't be put in the toilet, so you have to drop it in a little trash can next to the toilet. It is quite disgusting.
Well I have been on the computer for far too long.
More details soon....
Disclaimer...We are engineers. We don't claim to be able to write or spell. :)
