We Wander — Mark & Meghan’s World Travels

Our destination after Cairo was a seaside town, called Dahab, for some solitude away from the truck, rest and relaxation. Dahab is a chilled out town on the Red Sea, catering to backpackers and holiday goers. There are so many tourists here that in spite of it being Ramadan, the restaurants and shops are all still mostly open. The restaurants line the shore, where you can relax on oversized cushions, sip a cool beverage, dine on fresh seafood and smoke a shisha. Dahab is notorious for it’s top-notch snorkeling and diving. Our decision to not dive with Mike and Sarah in Thailand has been eating away at us ever since we said our goodbyes. But since we can now reasonably budget for the last couple months of our travels, we were able to scrounge up the funds to take our PADI Open Water Course in Dahab to become certified scuba divers.

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We got our first glimpse of ancient Egyptian edifices on the ferry from Sudan, as we passed the magnificent Abu Simbel, beautifully lit up, at night. Between Aswan and Luxor (upper Egypt), we have expanded our repertoire by visiting Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple, Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Workers, Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple — all constructed during the Middle and New Kingdoms.

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Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2009 states this about the Nile confulence in Khartoum:

Arabian poets call it the ‘longest kiss in history’ – which, admittedly, sounds much nicer than ‘confluence’ and does more to convey the import of this river collision. The pale-silt-carrying White Nile, rushing up from Uganda, and the soily Blue Nile, on its way west from Ethiopia, get it on in Khartoum – meeting, flirting for a stretch (their coloured waters flowing together but still visibly separate) before entwining for a monotone future together, watering farmers and pharaohs all the way through Egypt. Take a ferry to rural Tuti Island, in the middle of the city, and look back on the liquid love story.

Our impression was a little different. Haha.

It feels a bit strange to be back in a land of mass tourism. It’s nice to have modern conveniences once again, especially fast internet, but we’re also subject to rip off tourist prices and swarms of inappropriate tourists. We’re still in an Islamic nation where women and men are encouraged to cover their shoulders and knees. However, 95% of the tourists either choose to ignore this or are completely clueless. Check out this dude strolling through Edfu Temple.

We’re not out of Africa yet, we’re in Egypt, which has a distinctive Northern African/Middle Eastern feel. And so it feels as though we’ve left Africa behind us now, although the continent will surely stay with us for years to come.

We’ve covered roughly 20,000 km overland, across 12 different countries (excluding Egypt), not really knowing what to expect as we moved from one to the next. We enjoyed every country we visited, but a few definitely stand out in our minds, namely Namibia for its spectacular desert scenery, Malawi for it’s warm and friendly people, and Ethiopia for it’s unique culture and breathtaking mountains.

Here are some of the small things that will remind us of our time in Africa:

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We arrived in Wadi Halfa after what felt like our longest marathon journey to date: seven whirlwind days around Ethiopia, followed by a two-day long border crossing and four continuous bushcamps across a stinking hot desert. Our arrival was welcomed, yet still somehow anticlimactic. We were onto the homestretch, getting to Egypt, but the some of the worst was yet to come. Don’t get me wrong here, I am loving traveling through these parts of the world, but it is full-on. There is very little relief from the skin-melting, life-sucking, dry heat of the Nubian desert. After a while, even the hardest-worn traveler craves staying put in one place, a little shade, a cold beverage, a bucket shower, bare shoulders and knees, and sweet, sweet air conditioning…to name a few.

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My parents, and our two most avid commenters, just renewed their vows in Vegas. I’m so happy to have parents so much still in love. The fire must be rekindled now that all the kids are grown up and out of the house. But guess what mom and dad? We’re coming baaaaaaaaaaack! Haha, after our big voyage is over, we’ll be moving back into the basement for a few months to help us save and pay off some of our accumulated travel debt. Thanks mom and dad :) Congratulations.

Ethiopia feels unique amongst the other 11 African countries we’ve visited so far. The borders separating Ethiopia from its neighbours feel natural, whereas most borders in Africa were created for the convenience of the colonizers — mashing together or splitting apart a multitude of different tribes and religions under one flag. As soon as we crossed over from Kenya into Ethiopia, things were decidedly different. We started climbing. The scenery in Ethiopia is some of the best we’ve seen anywhere in the world. It rises to a plateau, spanning most of the country in a spectacular highland of mountains and valleys. No wonder Ethiopia produces some of the world’s top runners! There are endemic plants and animals found nowhere else, including the very cool gelada baboon, the mountain ibex and the Ethiopian wolf.

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After reluctantly saying goodbye to Lalibela we made our way to Axum. The marathon journey took us a full day and a half to complete along winding switchback mountain roads. Once we finally arrived, Mark was relieved to lie down on a bed and recover from a stomach bug he picked up, while I ventured out with the others to see the sights.

I’m not much of a history buff to begin with, let alone Ethiopian history, so this was another place not on my radar. Axum, Axumite: these words sounded somewhat familiar. I probably read about Axumite kingdoms on a museum plaque once upon a time, not really registering their significance. Once again, I can thank my travels for enlightenment. This ancient kingdom was a truly significant civilizations for almost a thousand years, from around 200BC to 8th century AD, before outside religions took hold of Ethiopia. The Axumite were traders, thriving on the Red Sea. The city of Axum was the centre of their kingdom.

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The source of the White Nile is near the town of Jinja, Uganda. A series of waterfalls and dams marks the start of the mightly river which runs from Lake Victoria all the way up to the Mediterranean. It is here, near Jinja, where some of the world’s best whitewater rafting exists. Since we missed out on the opportunity to raft on the Zambezi river near Vic Falls (because the water level was too high), we decided that rafting here would be a more than adequate consolation.

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