From Lower to Upper Egypt - Cairo to Aswan

Egypt - land of really old, really big, amazing things!

Our Morocco-London-Cairo flights were always going to be a little tricky; our flight from Marrakesh was scheduled to fly into Gatwick at 1:30pm and our flight to Cairo was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 5:45. So, assuming that everything went perfectly, we had a little over four hours to clear customs, grab our bags, catch the bus from Gatwick to Heathrow (about an hour or so) and check-in at Heathrow.

Suffice to say, things did not go perfectly.

When we got to Marrakesh airport, we noticed that it seemed a little busy - apparently there was an air traffic controllers strike in Paris, and it had backed up flights out of Gatwick. We ended up leaving about 2 hours late...cutting our four hour transfer to two hours. Combine that with heavy traffic on the motorway as well as having to get from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4 (we discovered this isn't completely straight forward) and we ended up getting to Heathrow just as they were making the final call for our flight.

We missed it!

Luckily, we were able to get on the next flight to Cairo (which happened to be the next day) and Kasey and Trond came through by being able to offer the couch in their brand new flat in Highgate, saving us 200 pounds on a hotel bed at the airport.

We all went out to Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Steph and I had another accidental, but very enjoyable night in London. The silver lining was that the next day we took a quick trip down Regent Street where Steph set a new shopping record by finding a dress to wear to Al and Kelly's wedding in about 15 minutes flat (leaving time to tuck in another curry for lunch).

We left with plenty of time to get to the airport and made our flight without any issues. We landed in Cairo a little after midnight and steeled ourselves for what are quickly becoming our least favourite part of the world at large - taxi drivers.

True to form, after a lot of hassle, we managed to get a taxi driver that seemed not as shonky as the rest of them and got to our hotel in Downtown Cairo at around 1:45am. We checked in and went straight to bed.

Fairly late the next day, we arose and had brekkie, then headed out to the world famous Egyptian Museum. This was a bit of an adventure in itself.

Now, if you haven't heard, natives of Cairo have the reputation of being the worst drivers in all the Arab states. However, what makes this impressive is that I'd have to say that Arabs are some of the worst drivers we've ever seen - making those in Cairo the worst of the worst! Never before has crossing the road been an extreme sport for us, especially the "10-lane" road (in inverted commas as the Egyptians don't take any notice of lane lines), which did not have any lights or subway for crossing, and was the only way to get to the museum. Luckily, Allah was with us and we managed to get to the Museum entrance without grievous bodily harm.

The Egyptian Museum is absolutely amazing, filled with relics from the past, sphinxes, walls covered with heiroglyphics and more sarcophogi than you can poke a stick at. The worst thing about it (to Steph's absolute dismay) was not being able to take any photographs! No doubt to keep the Egyptian postcard industry intact!

Outside the Egyptian Museum - the only place you can take photos

There are so many highlights in the museum, however ones that have to be seen to be believed are the sacorphogi, funery mask and relics from Tutankhamun's tomb, which were absolutely phenomenanal, and the Royal Mummy rooms, an extra charge but worth it with case after case of preserved mummies, kept at the perfect humidity level. Considering that some of them are in excess of 3,000 years old, it's amazing that they're so well preserved.

Tutankhanum's Funery Mask - provided by Wikipedia!

With a complete lack of our own photos to show you, you'll just have to take my word for it!

That night, we had to satisfy another Thai food craving, so we took LP's recommendation and headed to the Intercontinental which has a brilliant Thai restaurant. We filled up on Pad Thai and Green Curry, all for about $30, expensive for Egypt, but good value as far as we were concerned (especially after our US$100 Thai meal in Rio!).

The next day we were all set to head out to the Pyramids at Giza, however we ended up postponing this and sat down with the resident travel agent in our hostel to organise our remaining time in Egypt. By the end of the morning, we had tours, hotels and transport all sorted. It was refreshing to do this for a change and, although it would cost a little more, it meant that for the next three weeks, all we really had to do was just turn up where we were meant to at the appointed times. Very, very easy!

In the afternoon, we head out on the town, explored a couple of the souqs and visited some mosques. Unlike Morocco, you could actually visit the mosques here! It was great to see inside some of these amazing buildings, and they were a fantastic way to get out of the oppressive 40+ degree heat of the Egyptian summer.

Heading into the Al-Azhar Mosque


The prayer room in the Al-Azhar mosque - nice and cool!

The souq at Khan al Khalili

We also paid a visit to a restored Egyptian house, in the middle of the souq. The architecture and woodwork were amazing, and it was great to get a glimpse into how the upper class used to live in Egypt.

The open courtyard...

...and main hall - like the family room!

That night, we went out to see the Sound and Light show at the pyramids. All of the key classic archeological sites in Egypt seem to have one of these shows set up - all in an effort to suck more dollars out of the tourist wallet. It was your typical, cheesy "Since the dawn of time..." type thing, however it was great to get a preview of the pyramids with all the kitsch of the lasers, booming "Sphinx" voice and coloured lights. A college of key shots during the show:

The "traditional" Egyptian piper band - in full headdress!

The next day - the main attraction! Everyone knows about these amazing wonders of the ancient world, however nothing can really match it to the experience of standing at the base of one of these mammoth structures and thinking - surely a simple classic mahogeny coffin, with brass handles and antique finish would have sufficed?

The pyramids are actually from the "Old Kingdom" of Egypt - built thousands of years BC. Very fashionable for the time, however went out of fashion later on as tomb robbers didn't have too much trouble finding where the pharaohs were buried - hence New Kingdom pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings.

The ever-enigmatic Sphinx - or Sphinxy for short!

You just have to be awed by the amount of labour that must have been used in order to build these enormous monuments. Feeling the Egyptian sun beat down on our heads - it must have been absolutely gruelling work, however at least the workers didn't have to put up with the endless annoyance of touts trying to sell camel rides, donkey rides, and other assorted paraphanalia.

However, the pharaohs succeeded in what they sought out to do - make themselves immortal. The names of Khufu, Kafhre and Menkaura will live on, thanks to the world's largest and heaviest tombstones.

After a few hours baking by the Pyramids, we also paid a visit to Saqqara and the original step pyramid, the first of its kind and predating the pyramids of Giza.

The entrance to the site - mandatory tout pictured here.




The Step Pyramid at Saqqara

We returned to the hostel, picked up our bags and caught a taxi to the train station. That night, we got onto the Aswan sleeper train and enjoyed the overnight journey down to Aswan immensely. The porter served us dinner, then made up our beds for us. We had a great night's sleep, rocking to the motion of the carriage.

Our private cabin on the train...a bit of a step up from our usual travel arrangements!

Aswan is the most southern city of any notable size in Egypt. It sits on the "first cataract" of the Nile, being an area where the Nile splinters into a number of different streams and basically becomes impassable. It is also the site of the Aswan Dam, completed at the turn of the century, and the High Dam, completed in 1970.

The High Dam at Aswan

The afternoon that we arrived, we took a tour out to the Philae temple and the High Dam. Aside from the Philae temple itself, the amazing thing is that the temple was relocated to higher ground, brick by brick, from the original Philae island which was submerged after the High Dam was completed.

The Philae temple was home to the Isis cult - you can also see where many of the carvings were defaced by the Coptic Christians, trying to destroy the false idols.

The chisels of the Coptics did their work!

One of the problems with Egypt is just the sheer volume of photos that one is tempted to take. There are so many amazing sites and ruins, that you simply can't stop yourself from taking photos. Over the next couple of blogs, we'll try to keep the photos to a manageable amount, but know that for every one you see here, there's probably another 100 that didn't make the cut!

Heiroglyphics cover the walls...

...and the temples are amazing structures for their time!

After we visited the Philae temple, we went to see the excellent Nubian Museum in Aswan. The great thing about this museum is that it shows many of the temples were moved so that they wouldn't be submerged by the flooding of the valley, caused by the High Dam.

Model of an army of nubians - found in a tomb


Map of the Nile - the lake is Lake Nassar, formed by the High Dam. Note the number of monuments and temples located along the river.

We finished off the day with a walk up the hill to one of the cafes that overlook the cataracts and watched a beautiful sunset.

Aswan at night

The next day, we took a 3am bus for the five hour trip down to Abu Simbel to see the temples of Rameses II and the Temple of Hathor, dedicated to Rameses II's beloved wife, Nefertari. These temples are some of Egypt's most impressive, and the buses all travel in convoy down and then by convoy back to Aswan for security reasons - it's the site where a number of tourists were killed in the late nineties.

Again, it was amazing to see the relocation efforts. With this one, it's double impressive as they didn't just move the hillside carvings, but the entire hill as the temple inside also had to be moved. Unfortunately, no photos allowed inside (which I was told in no uncertain terms by one of the guards), however we took plenty of photos of the outside!

This entire hill used to be 100 metres down the slope, now underwater

The Temple of Hathor - also relocated piece by piece

We got back to Aswan around 12:30pm, and ducked into the hotel for a nap and to escape the heat. We went back out around 7:00pm and sheepishly headed to our first McDonalds dinner of our trip. It was one of the nicest located places in town, on the river bank and, after such a long day, it just really hit the spot.

Returning to our hotel, Steph managed to convince one of the hotel staff to hunt up some beer for us, and he came back with a six pack stashed under his jacket. We ended up having to drink it in the room, however it went down fantastically well.

Drinking Stella in our room and relaxing

Thursday was our last day in Aswan and we just had a couple of small tours in the morning, of the botanic gardens and some roman ruins on Elphantine Island, in the middle of the Nile river. There was a completely crap museum that we wasted a few Egyptian pounds on, literally rocks on a table without labels in a couple of stifling hot rooms.

The Botanic Gardens, Steph was thrilled to find a deep pink Frangipani!

We also met a group of three British travellers, Dawn, Phil (aka Tickell) and Graham, a great group of people. We discovered that they were going to be our companions for our felucca ride, as well as our tour of the renowned temples at Kom Ombu, Edfu and Luxor.

At around lunchtime, we boarded our felucca and started our peaceful float downstream to the next leg of our Egyptian adventures!

Jebel Toubkal - 4,167 metres, no worries!

Enjoying our accomplishment at the summit

After a nice relax near the beach, we were ready to tackle a mountain... Jebel Toubkal to be exact. At 4167 meters, Jebel Toubkal, in the High Atlas Mountains of Southern Morocco, is the highest mountain in Northern Africa. While apparently a lovely climb during the summer months, a late-fall or spring climb here requires lots of special equipment including crampons, ice axes, etc., and a winter climb is near impossible except for professionals. Good thing for us that it is summer!

Map outlining the possible routes

Back in Marrakesh, we set out for the little town of Imlil, where we would base our trek out of. As has become standard, the journey required some patience and effort. However, resigned to finally getting a handle on bargaining and traveling like a local, we took a jam-packed collective taxi with 7 people (including the driver) jammed into a normal Merceded sedan, bound for Asni. In Asni, we changed taxis for the final 30 minutes to Imlil. But you don't go anywhere in Morocco for 10 minutes and not have a story to tell...

On arrival to the taxi stand, we were immediately bombarded by a couple of touts full of advice.

TOUT: "No, sorry. There are no collective taxis to Imlil from Asni."

US: "Actually, we are positive there are collectives that run to Imlil."

TOUT: "Hmm, yes but they are 150 dirhams (about $22), but I have room available in the back of my (dodgy) pickup for 30 dh each. We will leave in 30 minutes, please come sit and have tea."

US: (Thinking to ourselves) Yeah, we've heard this all before, and we're finally smartening up to it all. "We'll just wait over here and see if one of the collectives that doesn't stop here magically turns up..."

TOUT: (Not about to be dissuaded, follows over and continues to flap his gums about something, but we had stopped listening since a collective was pulling up.)

US: "Well look at that. Miracles do happen..."

TOUT: "Yes, but it will be expensive."

US: (To collective driver) "How much to Imlil?"

DRIVER: "20 dirhams each."

At this point, you would think that the tout would finally just leave us alone as we had clearly proven him a big, fat liar however, not to be outdone, he then asked us for money because he had been so helpful in bargaining down the fare to 20 dh!!! Hahaha. Fat chance. You didn't do anything. We asked the fare, the driver answered. End of story. (Refer back to Marrakesh - the land of snake charmers, henna artists and touts for my general feel on the Moroccan people we have encountered.)

As we were putting our luggage into the trunk, another tout was hassling us saying it was $20 Australian dollars (not dirham). Having had enough, I looked at him and made a remark about not having any AU dollars, but then again, neither did he. This sassy little remark turned out to be a mistake. The next 5 minutes were spent with me feeling very uncomfortable while this very loud tout saying "Ooh, sexy Australian woman. She so sexy, etc." I jumped in the front of the car, encouraged Kyle to get in with me and waited the final minutes until we finally got out of there.

Thirty minutes later, we arrived into Imlil. We were very pleased with ourselves as we had avoided every attempt made to scam us until... dun, dun, dunnnn... Imlil. Our main problem here was that we had a guide with hotels listed but no map. So when we were approached by someone with a hotel available, we knew to say no, but he insisted it was a certain one in the Lonely Planet. We were tired, hungry and ready to get there, so we caved. (Our first mistake of the day.)

The man stated that his hotel was a 15 minute walk out of town, but he was happy to offer a free donkey to carry our packs. Well, ok.... So after a 20 minute walk with a poor donkey hauling our crap, we walked down a little, unmarked driveway, across a small stream and through an apple orchard to reach our hotel. Does anyone else see a red flag here??

Trekking out of town with our donkey

Upon arriving to the "hotel", the man showed us in and to our room... a dirty room with a mattress on the floor (no sheets), a blanket and a rug on the floor. That's it. Hmm, this doesn't sound like the description in the book... We asked to see any paperwork, brochures, anything proving that this was in fact the hotel that he stated it was. Of course he didn't have any because he lied to us and now he's just hoping that we'll stay since we're in the middle of nowhere. Not gonna happen. You're a bad man.

We grabbed our stuff and started back down the long road to the town, when we passed a place that had caught our eye on the way up, Atlas Gite Imlil. It was a lovely stone building with ivy crawling up, a lovely open terrace and roses everywhere. Now this is more what we had in mind.
It also had a highly recommended restaurant, Chez Jean Pierre, named after the French owner.

The silver lining of getting scammed was that we would never have found this place had the original guy not led us up the road out of town - I guess a blessing in disguise!

We went into town to hunt up some provisions for our hike and some dinner. The shopping for snacks was fine, but there was no decent place in town for dinner. Literally no place that served food that was inside. On a night that was already down in the teens (C), we weren't too keen to sit outside.

We scrambled back to the hotel hoping that it wasn't too late to get in for dinner. However, as it's low season, unless he is prepared for you and buys enough food, you're out of luck. Bummer! Luckily, Habib (the owner's son) was very kind and took pity on us, serving the rest of the soup he had, fresh bread, cheeses, olives and eggs. Very tasty. We could definitely tell that he spent some years living in France by his cooking style.

We ate dinner with Gabbie & JP, the only other guests at the hotel. They were a couple from near Quebec City and spoke French, but their English was also exceptional. (Not to sound lazy, but I was ready for a break from my attempts to speak french!). We had a nice chat over dinner, and when we discovered that we all intended to do an unguided hike the next day to Toubkal, we decided to pair up.

The next morning after a lovely brekkie prepared by Habib (and some good luck licks by his pups), we set off on the trail.

Our hike of Jebel Toubkal was a 2 day adventure.

• DAY 1 - 10km hike, ascending 1,467m from Imlil to an altitude of close to 3,000m, passing through the town of Aroumd & lots of apple, cherry and walnut trees before crossing the valley floor. This is where the ascent begins, and it didn't let up until we reached the refuge a few hours later. The scenery is spectacular, especially during late afternoon when the clouds were doing their best to catch up with us, shrouding the valley below. While not particularly challenging, it can leave you a bit puffed if you haven't acclimatized properly (as we hadn't). We overnighted in one of the two refuges on the western side of Jebel Toubkal. (Total time: 5 1/2 hours)

Our hiking team - Gabbie, me, JP & Kyle

The stunning scenery on the walk out of Imlil


Looking back at Aroumd

And then forward across the valley floor to Toubkal

Getting overtaken by the donkeys carrying other people's luggage

Taking some time out for the stunning scenery

After 5 1/2 hours uphill, it was fantastic to finally reach the Refuge


After 3 weeks of tagines, we were ready for a change...
so we made Kraft Mac'n Cheese to give us energy for the hike.

• DAY 2 (Part 1) - Ascent to summit (4167 m). Most cross the river then ascend the southern cwm(Welsh word for valleys formed by glacial activity), which was what we intended until we somehow lost the path. We did a fun, somewhat tough climb up the moraine for 45 minutes and then a 10 minute scary scramble across steep, loose gravel when the real path was spotted. The path continued up the fairly obvious path up the snow fields, zig-zagging up the steep path carved into the rock-solid snow. We then picked one of many paths leading around the edge of the mountain until we reached the ridge line. After taking in the spectacular views in all directions, we spotted the metal pyramid marking the top and made our way up the last 30 minutes or so to the summit. This part is where if you're going to get altitude sickness, it will be now. We were at 4000m and still working pretty hard to get there. Slow and steady. (TOTAL TIME: 3 1/2 hours)

What climbing up a moraine at 7am looks like


Feeling pumped up after a fun climb


Looking back over the steep scramble that we had to make back to the trail... A bit scary.


Looking up at our next challenge -- the snow fields

Pausing for a pic (and to catch our breath)


The path zigzagging up through the rock-hard snow


Slowly making my way and trying hard not to slip!


One of the views from the ridge line

Rejoicing when we finally made it to the summit

The views from the summit were phenomenal. Unfortunately, we could only stay and enjoy for about 20 minutes or so before heading back so we had to soak up the serenity and vast beauty of this quite quickly!

• (Part 2) - Descent to the Refuge. We commenced our descent around 11:30am, and it proved more difficult at times than going up, especially on the loose gravel. All of the rock-hard snow encountered on the way up had gotten quite slushy - making some parts a bit slick and others pretty fun. (TOTAL TIME: 2 1/2 hours)

Starting back down


The slippery part coming back down


And then the fun part...


A Kiwi showing us that it was much more fun to sled down on your bum than walk!


Kyle giving it a go - skiing down in his boots

• (Part 3) - After a 30 minute break for a rest and lunch, we had to begin the long trek back to Imlil. The day already felt pretty long, and then to have another 4+ hours of trekking ahead wasn't pleasant. Add in that downhill is killer on your knees and magnifies any minor issues with footware, and it became my least favorite part of the 2 days. (Kyle got major blisters on the back of both heels, and both of us had a couple of my toenails that were destined to fall off later...) By the time we reached the hotel, I was nearly crawling with Kyle giving me a peptalk. Everything hurt so much, that I even had difficulty walking on completely flat ground... (TOTAL TIME: 4 1/2 hours)

(DAY 2 - TOTAL HIKING TIME: 10 1/2 hours)

Toubkal was by far the highest mountain we've ever climbed, and on our own as well! Well, not completely on our own - we had JP and Gabbie ("the mountain goats") setting the pace, but we were still pleased to have done it.

It was so, so good to get back to the hotel, and while we did our best to stretch out our aching muscles, there was no avoiding the pain that came over the next few days.

There were a few casualties...

Steph's Losses:

• 1 toenail
  
• was nearly incapable of walking down the stairs for 2 days

Kyle's Losses:

• 2 toenails threatening to go
• hiking pants (which managed to get a huge tear while being ridden down a snowy slope
  
• pair of hiking boots (2nd to go in the trash so far this trip... Guess we're going boot shopping again...

And a little extra bit -- Gabbie showed me where the secret cherry trees were, so we snuck over and ate a bunch and loaded our hands with as many as possible. I was so excited to eat my stolen cherries! Yummy!