Our first stop in Jordan after meeting up with Toon was Wadi Mousa, a small town nestled in one of Jordan’s many fantastic valleys. This valley is special, however, because hidden deep within the sandstone formations at its bottom is the ancient city of Petra. Many of you will be most familiar with Petra from its starring role in the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, where it was used as the setting for the final resting place of the Holy Grail. But let me preface this post by saying this: even if you thought Petra was impressive in that movie, it can’t even hold a candle to the wonder of this place in real life. Petra is more impressive by an order of some magnitude than nearly everything we’ve seen so far in our travels, and that’s saying something. It makes the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela look like the work of amateurs. It even humbles the great Temples of Angkor Wat, and shifts the ruins of Rome and the Great Pyramids of Giza down the list to make room at the top. Petra is, to put it bluntly, awesome. I hope I can do it justice here…

One of the things that most contributes to Petra’s allure is how you first approach the city. It’s primary access is through a 1.5 km long ‘siq’, which is basically a canyon that was formed not by erosion, but by a tectonic event that split a large piece of rock in half. The siq often gets as narrow as about 3 metres wide, and the walls rise above your head by some 200 meters or more. Because the stone was rent apart, it’s often possible to see clearly how the two sides once met. But even more impressive than the shape of the siq is the character of the stone itself. It is primarily sandstone, but it’s traced with iron, which creates incredible swirls and arcs of colour through the rock. As the sun climbs and moves across these patterns, the stone seems to come to life and glow with its own warmth. As a visitor to Petra, you walk the 2 km from the visitor’s centre through the siq on foot (or on horseback if you prefer…but go on foot, because you’ll want to take it slowly). As you walk through the siq, admiring the stone and the trenches cut into the walls to carry water, you find yourself peering around each corner with a growing sense of anticipation, as you wait for Petra’s most famous building to appear. And just when you are starting to feel like you can’t possibly wait any longer, the stone shifts and the Treasury appears before you.

The Treasury is probably Petra’s most photographed site, and this has a lot to do with it’s dramatic appearance at the end of the first siq. It’s simply breathtaking — you emerge from within the narrow passage into an open space surrounded on all sides by more stunningly-swirled sandstone (say that three times fast!), and the Treasury stands tall and proud before you. It is carved from the very stone that surrounds it, and the communion of such a beautiful work of the hands of men and the siq’s stunning display of the work of nature is something to behold. What impresses most about the Treasury is the incredibly fine detail in the facade, which has been preserved in far better condition that one could even hope for simply due to it’s sheltered location. The columns and pediments are wonderfully ornate. Can you imagine that it was all carved from a single, solid piece of rock?

As someone whose previous knowledge of Petra was limited to what Indiana had shown me, I naively expected little more from the ancient city. Surely such an introduction can not be bettered! But I was again surprised; it turns out that the Treasury is only the tip of the ice-burg, so to speak. Dr. Jones failed to mention the Street of Facades, the Royal Tombs, the Theater, the Great Temple, the Royal Plalce, the Unfinished Tomb, the Monastery, or the High Place of Sacrifice, to name only a sampling of the city’s numerous highlights. It has something to please everyone, from Roman and Greek influences, to natural landscapes that will stop you in your tracks. And if that doesn’t impress you, try this: while most of the buildings of Petra date back to between 600 BC and 300 AD, a village has recently been uncovered nearby that dates back to about 7000 BC. Let me help with the math — that’s 9000 years old!!

Even though the city is wonderfully seductive even today, I can only speculate at it’s grandeur as a living city, when incredible feats of engineering brought water to the site, and gardens flourished everywhere. Even now, what we see is only part of the story, as our guidebook tells us that only roughly 5% of the city has been excavated so far. Until recently, archeologists discovered very little about actual living quarters in Petra, which is surprising considering that it was once inhabited by upwards of 30,000 people. Where did they actually live? What other wonders await discovery there? It’s very exciting to think that there is so much more of Petra to be explored. Who wouldn’t want more of such a good thing?

I will end this post by letting the photos do the talking for me — words simply fail when they are tasked with describing such a phenomenal place.

After our wonderful week in Dahab, we crossed over the Red Sea by ferry from Nuweiba to Aqaba in Jordan. Africa is behind us, and we are looking forward to new adventures in the Middle East. It turns out that even the traveling part of our next leg will be an adventure — while we were traveling through the Sudan, we met two Belgians, Toon and Ragna, that were driving up from Tanzania and headed in the same direction as us. Our paths crossed several times while we were still on the Oasis truck — we ended up on the same ferry to Egypt, and at the same camp site in Luxor. While we were in Cairo, we got an e-mail from Toon (or Tony, to us English speakers, since we have a tendency to butcher foreign names) saying that Ragna had decided to head back to Tanzania, and that he had two spare seats — would we be interested in joining him in his yellow van? We didn’t hesitate. It was one of those spontaneous travel moments that you hope for, and we jumped at the opportunity. After a few emails, we met in Dahab to compare schedules and see if it would work out for all of us. Although Toon left Dahab before us, we reconnected only a day later in Aqaba, and we were off together, sitting three across the front seat. Our plan is to travel together through Jordan, Syria and Turkey, as far as Istanbul if things go well. We’re excited! The van is great, and Toon has a spare tent and mattresses, so we can camp as we go. We’re looking forward to an excellent road trip together — so it gives me great pleasure to introduce Toon and his yellow van, our new travel partners!

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.

There are over 50 dive schools in Dahab, so choosing can be a bit daunting. We did a little bit of research and decided to sign up with a small dive centre called ‘Sea Dancer’. After speaking with the manager Steve and with Paul, who would be our instructor, we were confident we’d be in good hands. Paul had oodles of diving, and life, experience to pass on to us and Mark and I would be the only two students in his class. We signed up to start the very next day.

The course is structured so that you have five confined dives, where you practice skills like taking your mask off underwater and swimming with a compass, and four open water dives, where you practice more skills and get to swim around a bit too. Both of our confined dives and our open water dives actually took place in open water, the Red Sea, which was great because we got to see even more fishies. Most people start learning scuba in a swimming pool. In addition to the dives, we also had to read a thick manual, upon which we were quizzed daily. And we have to watch a super cheesy educational video repeating all the things we read in the manual.

Even though I was prepared before entering the water for the first time, I still slightly panicked. It’s such a strange sensation. As excited as I was to become an underwater explorer, my instincts were telling me I was crazy. We humans have spent millions of years evolving from sea to land, and now I’m just going to throw myself back in there to try and breathe underwater? I was determined to try. After the end of the first session, I had consumed over 40 bar more air than Mark. That’s a lot considering there’s only 200 bar in a tank to begin with, and I’m much smaller than Mark. The number one rule in scuba is to breathe slowly and to relax. I was not relaxed. After the first morning, I felt shaky and hesitant to even get back in the water. Whereas Mark was a natural and couldn’t wait to get back in the water.

I stuck it out, however, and got better and better with each successive dive. Until finally, on our last dive, our oxygen consumption levels were exactly the same and we stayed underwater for 56 minutes. As I started to relax underwater I also started to look around and appreciate my surroundings. We were diving amongst columns of dazzling coral teeming with fishies. The fish were absolutely fantastic! The variety was outstanding. We saw lion fish, scorpion fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, trigger fish, parrot fish, clown fish, all sorts of puffer fish, barracuda, grouper, snapper, surgeon fish and octopus, to name just a few. It’s hard to believe that all this rich life exists in the Red Sea whereby in contrast, barely a blade of grass can grow in the dry desert and crumbling mountains surrounding it. The diversity of the dive sites and the sea life you see here will be very difficult to top.

Needless to say, by the end of the course, I loved scuba diving and so did Mark. I do not love the gear however, which makes me feel like I’m an astronaut or a Ghostbuster. But it’s worth it. I may not be exploring outerspace, but I do feel like I’m exploring places not many people get to go, which definitely has its appeal. To quote my scuba manual:
“Now that I’m PADI certified, I can go places, meet people and do things.” I love this quote. Perhaps they should have added ‘underwater’ to the end of that sentence.

Scenes from Dahab:
Mark hard at work writing a blog post.

Cats rule Dahab.

Sheesh-a!

It brings us great pleasure to present the inaugural edition of the Oasis Overland Cape Town to Cairo Truck Awards! Everyone on this list spent at least part of the past four months with us, striving every day to earn the awards presented here. So let the boasting and toasting begin! Without any further delay, may I present (drum roll please)…

		The “Women’s lib” Award: Ali, for being most likely to fight for women’s rights in Muslim countries, usually by smoking in front of them. The “Essex tart”Award: Ali, just because we all know it’s her true self, deep down.
		The “Beer me, please” Award: Andi, for being the most likely to have a beer in hand within 2 minutes of stopping for the night. Runner up: Grant The “Know-it-all” Award: Andi, for always seeming to have an answer, no matter how ridiculous the question.
		The “Can you hear me now?” Award: Barbara-Jeanne, for being audible from several miles away. Runner up: Andi after a few beers, and Ross when there’s a vuvuzela around. The “That’s not my name” Award: Barbara-Jeanne, for having the longest name on the truck, and stubbornly refusing to allow anyone to shorten it in any way. The “Fric n’ frac” Award: Barbara-Jeanne, for using the largest vocabulary of words that we’re not sure exist.
		The “Some of it is my hair” Award: Becky, for having the best, and worst, truck weaves in Africa. Runner up: Wee Bam, for sporting Barbara-Jeanne’s hair so fashionably.
		The “I’m invisible” Award: Breffni, for being least likely to show up in anyone else’s photos. Runner up: Kevin The “How short do you want it?” Award: Breffni and Luke, for providing excellent salon and barbershop services, anywhere you like.
		The “Oh yes, I’ve always been interested in yoga” Award: Bryan, for being most likely to do yoga just because it might impress Stephanie.
		The “That’s not a knife” Award: Colin, for being most likely to have stolen that white-handled kitchen knife from the truck. The “I read them for the articles” Award: Colin, for his large collection of fine literature for men.
		The “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” Award: Debs, for leaving us so early on. The “Where’s the fire?” Award: Debs, because where there’s smoke (smokes, smoking), there’s fire — and Debs.
		The “I get three bars here” Award: Eric, for being most likely to know whether or not there’s a wi-fi network around. Runners up: William and Mark
		The “I showered twice last month” Award: Farmer, for being the least likely to take a shower, even if one is available. The “Down with progress!” Award: Farmer, for being most likely to argue passionately in defense of Tesco’s employees and their endangered jobs.
		The “I hate those damn beans” award: Grant, for being most likely to blow up a bean factory, if he ever found one. The “Skip to my lou” Award: Grant, for being by far the most talented male double-dutch jump-roper on the truck.
		The “It’s pronounced ‘mou-lay’” Award: Guy, even though we all know it’s just a mullet. Runner up: Farmer The “I’m still pretty drunk, eh” Award: Guy, for being most likely to still be drinking the next morning. Runner up: Guy’s liver
		The “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” Award: Helen, for usually sitting more on Colin’s seat than on her own. Runner up: Stephanie, but on Bryan’s seat, obviously.
		The “Tell it like it is” Award: Hiro, for always saying what’s on his mind, and often asking what the rest of us were afraid to ask, however inappropriate. Runner up: Suzanne The “Mr. Sunshine” Award: Hiro, for always being cheerful and enthusiastic. The “Best English” Award: Hiro, because let’s face it, he really did speak better English than all of us. Runner up: Nobody
		The “Squeaky clean” Award: Jeff, for being the cleanest all-around overlander. Runner up: William, even though he did use more hair product. The “5 spades” Award: Jeff, for the most consistently unpredictable bridge bidding.
		The “Meh” Award: Kevin, for being most likely to appear unimpressed, even when he is. The “Hat’s off” Award: Kevin, for having the most Australian-looking hat, and being Australian too. Runner up: William, because it’s a Tilley.
		The “They’ve got another few years in ‘em” Award: Luke, for having the most absurdly worn out sandals ever, and still wearing them. This also contributed to the next Award… The “Get those out of my face!” Award: Luke, for having the smelliest feet. Runner up: Farmer
		The “Mr. Perfect” Award: Mark, as nominated by Guy and Farmer, although Meghan disagrees. The “I know how they look, but they’re so comfortable” Award: Mark, for being an unpaid Crocs ambassador. Runners up: Meghan, Jeff, Colin, Helen, and Suzanne
		The “Namaste” Award: Meghan, for inspiring so much yoga in so many people. The “The sun can do that!” Award: Meghan, for explaining the concept of sunshine-created charcoal to everyone.
		The “I’ll take two” Award: Ross, for being most likely to buy it, whatever it is, and especially after a cider or two. Runner up: Becky The “He works through me” Award: Ross, for channeling Wee Bam’s personality so impartially.
		The “Like” Award: Shay like, for being most likely, like. The “I know how to wear them” Award: Shay, for wearing Birkenstocks and not being teased for it, and also for never polishing them, at least in public.
		The “Ooh, it was lovely” Award: Shelagh, for being most likely to be pleased with anything and everything.
		The “I fell down some stairs” Award: Stephanie, for being most likely to injure herself, usually around the eyes somewhere. Runner up: Meghan, for actually falling down some stairs. The “Let’s get physical” Award: Stephanie, for being the most fanatical workout addict, even when it’s 47ºC outside. Runner up: Jeff
		The “Babel fish” Award: Steve, for always making things crystal clear. Runners up: All the Auzzies, Kiwis, Scots, Irish, Dutch, Welsh, and British, for being completely incomprehensible to us North Americans. The “No haircut required” Award: Steve, for having the slowest-growing hair on the truck.
		The “Dust-buster” Award: Suzanne, for having the most complete anti-dust costume on the truck.
		The “Sheeeeeeeeeelaaaaaagh” Award: Wee Bam, for being most likely to appear in Shelagh’s dreams, or nightmares.
		The “Yup, I’ve got that” Award: William, for being most likely to have whatever it is you need to borrow, even if it’s a travel iron. The “I’m cleaner than Jeff!” Award: William, even though we all know it’s not true.

Congratulations to everyone on their achievements! If anyone has any other nominations, be sure to comment below (but remember, we’re all friends here, right? Right?). It was a great four months together, and we’ve got some memories that we’ll never forget, even if we wanted to. We wish everyone the best in their future travels and endeavors, and hope our paths will cross again someday soon.

After 400 days:

Average speed over land: 43.5 km/h
Equivalent time spent in transit: 72 days
Fastest mode of transportation: Train (68 km/h average)
Slowest mode of transportation: On foot (2.1 km/h average)
Kilometres left to go: unknown…

Morning came, and we boarded a bus and picked up our guide on the way. As we drove towards the pyramids, I was surprised at how close the city crowded in around them. It was very surreal to be riding on an air-conditioned bus through modern city streets, and to have these ancient monuments looming up on our right, seemingly just a stone’s throw away. We were one of many, many tourist buses to pull into the parking lot at the base of the pyramids, but I wasn’t bothered. All of the other tourists did a nice job of keeping the touts and camel riders busy, and I just let my eyes wander upwards, away from it all. Just in front of where the bus stopped, the biggest of the Great Pyramids (Khufu or Cheops, in Arabic and English respectively) climbed stone by stone towards the sky. It was huge, but the reality of it’s size only hit home when we saw how tiny people looked in comparison. When seen on it’s own, it’s still very impressive, but it’s hard to get a sense of the scale of the stones used to build it. Put a person next to one of them, and suddenly you have an appreciation not only for the size of the Pyramid, but also for what an incredible feat it was to build them out of stones that size over 4000 years ago.
 

We spent a couple of hours walking around the bases of the three Pyramids, although Meg and I decided not to pay the extra money to go inside them. Our guide suggested that the inside of the Pyramids, while interesting, was not as grand as the outside. Many people did opt to go inside, but it seemed that the main motivation (and indeed the main sentiment afterwards) was just to say that they’d done it. We felt that the Valley of the Kings had given us a very good taste of the inside of Egyptian tombs, and they are meant to be much more spectacular that the rooms and corridors inside the Pyramids. We contented ourselves with appreciating their grandeur from without, and were not disappointed.

As much as I was surprised at the city’s proximity to the Pyramids as we approached, I was equally as surprised to discover that, once among the bases of the Pyramids, the city seemed to disappear into the distance. The Great Pyramids are built on a piece of high ground in the middle of Cairo, which shields the modern city from view. It was possible to get at least an idea of what it must have been like to have them rising out of the sand in the middle of the desert, which must have been quite a sight. After seeing them up close, we drove to a lookout where we could see all three pyramids together, providing you could fight your way through the throngs of tourists to get a view. Even hordes of gaudy, obnoxious tourists couldn’t spoil the moment. I was duly impressed.
 
Our next stop of the day was the Great Sphinx, which is near the pyramids, and is equally overrun with tourists. The narrow ramp leading up to the viewing platform was a perpetual traffic jam of people, and it felt a little claustrophobic in the heat. Once at the top, we couldn’t resist taking the requisite cheesy picture. Mwah!
 

The Sphinx and the Pyramids stood together on the skyline as we departed, and it was an image that will stay with me for many years to come For all the hype and all of our high expectations, we weren’t let down at all. It was a pretty special morning.
 

Our last stop of the day was at the Cairo Museum, which is packed to the seams with statues, sarcophagi, and other artifacts from the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. We were very impressed with the collection from King Tutankhamun’s tomb, which is famous for being the only tomb so far to be discovered intact. The gold and other jewelry was magnificent, and the mask found on the King’s mummy was, for lack of a better word, awesome. And speaking of mummies: there is a room in the Cairo Museum which houses 11 mummies, on display in glass cases. We paid the extra to visit this room, and it was something else. The mummies are creepy, but also incredible. They are so well preserved that some of them still had eyelashes. You could see manicured nails and hair, but it was all set against dark, leathery skin pulled tight over bones. It’s surprising how thin a human neck really is when seen in that condition. These mummies were over three thousand years old. I’m only 29 Crazy.
 
Our second and last day in Cairo was spent madly repacking our belongings into two backpacks, in preparation for life on the road as individuals again. Like so many of our stops in Egypt, it was too short a visit to do proper justice to the city of Cairo, but perhaps we’ll be back one day. Next up, we are looking forward to a week in Dahab, located on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea — and famous for its diving…

After nearly four months of driving through Africa, the last leg of our Oasis Overland truck journey had finally arrived. We set out from Luxor after a too-brief visit and headed into Egypt’s Western Desert for four days of travel on our way to Cairo. I have to admit that it was a leg of the journey that I was not too excited about at first. Our time in Aswan and on the felucca had gotten me used to the trappings of civilization again, and I didn’t relish the prospect of heading out into the unrelenting heat of the desert for another stretch of several days. On the other hand, there were a few things to look forward to on the way: we would be driving through the White and Black Deserts, and hopefully getting a few more nights of desert bush camping along the way. This was the home stretch, and Cairo was the ultimate destination, the end of our marathon overland crossing of the African continent. Only one little desert left to cross…

As we left Luxor behind us and drove into the desert proper, we met our first bit of unfortunate news. We were stopped at the first of many police checkpoints, and informed that we would be required to have a tourist-police escort accompany us all the way through the Western Desert. This in itself was no big deal, but they also informed us that we would not be permitted to camp out in the desert either. We would instead be required to stay in towns along the way, which was a much less scenic option to be sure. In spite of all of the hardships encountered driving through deserts along our travels, desert bush camps were probably our favourite sites of all. The prospect of crossing the desert for 4 days and being denied a last chance at enjoying the quiet, starry desert nights was undeniably disappointing. But there was no room for negotiation on this, so we took it in stride as best we could.

Our first three days of driving were fairly short and fairly uneventful. We spent the nights in El Kharga Oasis, Mut Oasis, and Farafra Oasis respectively, and our primary focus in each town was where to find cold drinks. This was often a challenge, since its the middle of the holy month of Ramadan right now. During Ramadan, Muslims don’t eat or drink at all during the day, and so most shops are also closed during fasting hours. Fortunately, a few shop owners would sometimes open up when they saw us coming through, since we were fairly conspicuous as a large group of very thirsty-looking tourists. Aside from the search for refreshment we did very little other sight-seeing. We did walk through the old part of Mut for a while, and snapped some pictures of the abandoned buildings with their collapsing roofs and walls, but that was about it. The one upside to staying in towns rather than in the desert was that we often had access to showers. I would normally hop in the shower and then put my clothes back on without even drying off, and within 10 minutes I would be completely dry again thanks to the heat. It was the only way to feel refreshed.

The oasis towns we stayed in weren’t exactly what we expected them to be, either. When I think of an oasis, I picture a clear bit of refreshing water surrounded by a circle of palm trees, bordered on all sides by desert sands. The scale of these oases was larger than that by a good margin, and therefore less quaint. They may be more interesting to see from above, where the borders of the oasis are visibly meeting the desert, but from ground level they mostly just resembled shabby towns. In Farafra Oasis Meghan did go to visit a hotspring and garden, which offered a bit of a different perspective. At first the idea of swimming in a hotspring in that heat seemed ridiculous, but considering the hotspring was about 37ºC and the air temperature was about 48ºC, Meg reports that the water was actually quite nice, even cool. It did smell strongly of sulphur, however, and it wasn’t the most idyllic setting either, but what else is there to do in a place like that?

On our fourth drive day we finally passed the last checkpoint before Cairo, and dropped off our tourist police escort. With only one night to go before we’d be off the truck for good, we were going to get one final desert bush camp in! It was really windy, but it was a great campsite. We listened to Barbara-Jeanne play ukulele for a while, and then I borrowed Colin’s guitar and we had one more jam session. It was our 30th different bush camp site of the trip, and an excellent finale to cap it all off.

On our last drive day, we drove through the White and the Black Deserts. It was stunning scenery, and it helped us forget the tediousness of the previous few days. The White Desert was characterized by white stone formations that dotted the landscape like giant mushrooms. It was blinding in the midday sun — the name “White Desert” is very literal. We stopped the truck and spent an hour walking through the formations. It was like walking through a silent, fossilized garden. We took the opportunity to practice a couple of yoga poses one more time.

After the Black Desert, we made a brief stop at Crystal Mountain, which unfortunately was not quite as magnificent as the name implies. From there, it was only a couple of short hours before Cairo was all around us. We spotted the tips of the Great Pyramids as they peeked over the city skyline at us, and the truck was all smiles. We made it! We’d successfully covered 19,730 km of African roads between Cape Town and the Egyptian capital. It was almost time to say our goodbyes, but there was still one more day to go, and a few very famous, very old sites to visit together…

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.

The Egyptian Temples were dedicated to life, while the tombs were dedicated to the afterlife, the latter of which was of far greater importance. The Temples are all built on the East side of the Nile, the side on which the sun rises, and the Tombs are all built on the West side, where the sun sets. The Temples were all magnificent, soaring masses, dedicated to Pharaohs, with walls covered with hieroglyphics, carvings and sculpture. Karnak Temple was by far the most impressive and largest, spanning almost 2 acres of desert in Luxor.

The Valley of the Kings, located on the West bank of Luxor, contains the tombs of over 60 Kings from the New Kingdom. During the Old Kingdom, they started building conspicuous pyramids as tombs for the kings, making them easy targets for treasure thieves. Because keeping a tomb and its mummy safe was of the utmost importance to the Egyptians for afterlife, one smart king decided to do away with the pyramid design and dig deep into the sides of a hidden valley, the Valley of the Kings. Some of the chambers dug into the alabaster cliffs are only a few metres in, some are extremely steep and tunnel in for 120 metres before reaching the tomb chamber. The inside chambers are richly decorated with paintings or painted bas-reliefs depicting great stories from the King’s life and symbolic depictions of judgement day.

To minimize further degradation of the paintings in the tombs, no photography is allowed inside, or even outside. If you’re caught taking a photo inside the Valley of the Kings, it’s an automatic $2,000 fine. Oddly enough though, the plain-clothed security guards will let you behind sectioned off areas for a baksheesh, or tip. It’s quite aggrevating — they try to do this at all the tourist sites, but that’s another post…

Equally as fascinating as the Valley of the Kings was the nearby Valley of the Workers. They wanted so badly to keep the location of the Kings tombs a secret that they hired an entire city of workers and housed them in another secret valley, the Valley of the Workers. The workers stayed in this valley until they died. They lived with their families who would grow up to become the next generation of workers. They were paid very well to keep this secret and for their work on the tombs. But since they were not allowed to ever leave, they didn’t have much to spend their money on. And when they had time off, they had nowhere to go. So what did they do? They built their own tombs and temples. We saw one man’s tomb where the quality and craftsmanship was better than most of the Kings. Despite all these elaborate measures to keep the mummy kings safe, they were all eventually robbed too.

There are so many more incredible archaeological sites to visit in Egypt, but we saw enough to get a fix and a feeling for how impressive the Egyptian Kingdom really was. When you see these buildings with their elegant proportions and superbly stylized decoration, it’s impossible to believe that they’re nearly 5,000 years old. They’re nearly 5,000 years old and still intact! Then you look around at the delapidated excuses for homes they’ve since built in the neighbouring cities and it becomes even more unbelievable. It’s as though humankind has degressed along the evolutionary line since the great Egyptian civilizations. It feels quite humbling, especially when you consider that the mighty British Kingdom, of which there are still feeble remnants today, lasted a mere 150 years, whereas the Egyptians dominated for thousands of years. Needless to say, we were in awe.

After arriving in Egypt via the overnight ferry across Lake Nasser, we spent three very relaxing days in Aswan. Compared to the Sudanese desert and Wadi Halfa, our accommodation in Aswan was pure luxury: our room had A/C, an ensuite washroom with shower, a fridge, clean sheets, good mattresses, a rooftop swimming pool, and even cold beer! On reflection, that description might be misleading to some: if, for example, you’d booked 2 weeks off of work to travel across an ocean and live in high style in Aswan, you would likely have considered the hotel a little shabby, maybe rough around the edges, or just straight up disappointing. But after a week spent camping in the desert in 47ºC heat, believe me when I say that it was a palace in our eyes. Welcome to Egypt indeed!

Feeling recovered and somewhat less cooked, we departed Aswan not on the big yellow truck, but on a felucca. For anyone who has never heard of a felucca before, it’s a sailboat, and there are hundreds of them on the Nile in Egypt. We had two boats for our group, each one big enough to hold about 12 people plus a crew of 3. What was in store for us was two days and nights of sailing on the Nile. It was something we’d been looking forward to for some time, but it well exceeded our expectations.

I should start by describing the boats a little bit. They have a single mast, which is set quite far forward. The boat uses a retractable keel rather than a fixed one, allowing it to be lifted as it pulls into the banks of the Nile. The sail is huge, and is made of strips of fabric canvas sown together. It’s not the type of high-tech sail fabric we see in North America — it actually looks a lot like something you could make yourself, given enough bedsheets and time. It’s very prone to damage, and every sail we saw was rife with patches and repair jobs. In fact, our sail developed a sizable rip along one of the seams on our first day of sailing. But don’t worry: the upside of having a sail that looks like it was made by hand at home is that it can be repaired exactly that way, in place. Our crew simply hopped up on the mast with a length of string and a needle, and with a few deft strokes, the sail was as good as new. Well, maybe not new — but now it certainly looked as if it would have no trouble lasting at least another 6 hours before more repairs would be needed.

The sail itself is suspended between two lengths of wood, which I will call (for lack of better or perhaps more proper terms) the upper and lower booms. When the boat tacks, the sail doesn’t flip around the mast. Instead, it simply rotates it’s angle against the mast and collects wind on the other side. It was very interesting to watch our crew sail the boat, especially since it was so different from other sailboats that we’ve been on. The major bonus of having a boat setup with such a forward mast is that the cockpit is huge, and since the sail doesn’t require any cockpit work for tacking, all that space is dedicated to one purpose alone: relaxing. It was covered entirely with a comfy foam mattress, and there was a canopy for shade sheltering the entire area. This is where we got to spend most of our time, lazing about as our awesome crew did all the hard work of sailing, cooking, serving and cleaning up for us. In fact, about the only time we left it was when we decided to go for a swim.

Swimming in the Nile was not something that we’d really contemplated before this point. When we’d rafted at the source of the White Nile in Uganda, the water had been fairly clean, but since then most of our encounters with the mighty rivers had done anything but inspire a quick dip. The Blue Nile is a reddish muddy colour for most of its length, and the White Nile quickly becomes dirtier as it flows steadily north. In Khartoum (at the confluence of the two Niles) the water not only combines to form an opaque brownish sort of colour, but it picks up all kinds of lovely garbage and debris from the city itself. By the time the river encounters Lake Nubia/Nasser, it’s not too appetizing. But something amazing happens between the point of entry on Lake Nubia and the river’s exit through the dams at Aswan: it gets clean. I don’t know how else to describe it. Perhaps the lake is so large that the water has time to settle out its debris and sediment, or perhaps it’s filtered at the dam. Whatever the cause, the result is water that is surprisingly clear, and incredibly refreshing when jumped into off of the deck of a felucca.

Our crew were competent sailors, took good care of the boats, and cooked us some excellent meals each day. At night, we pulled over to the bank and tied up, and we slept out on the deck mattresses. Being near the water made the heat much more tolerable, and the sailing itself was exhilarating. By the second morning, I’d reached levels of relaxation that I’d never previously thought possible.

We disembarked early on the third day and boarded a bus headed for Luxor. Along the way we’d be seeing our first Egyptian temples, but that’s another post.

Here’s a photo of the wording on the photography permits we had to obtain in the Sudan. They don’t mind if you take pictures of the sand, but pretty much everything else is off limits. Oh, and you’d better only photograph sand that makes the country look good. Or else.