They do things a little differently down here....in Aswan I mean.
Kim and I had to get up in the middle of the night to catch the plane. Yes another long and costly trip to the Cairo International Airport....it seems like I'm living out there sometimes.
The flight was about an hour and a half and was uneventful....we were deposited at the Aswan International airport....about 30 klicks out of the city.
We got our bags and walked out into a feeding frenzy of rapacious tax drivers who were just waiting like sharks for a school of herring.
Kim had been doing some investigating while we waited for our our bags in the airport...and had come up with quotes that ranged from 30 Egyptian pounds to 80...I had talked with our travel agent and she said we might have to go as high as a hundred because the buggers have kind of got you over a barrel out there....
The first quote was for 150 pounds and I laughed like I`d just heard a dirty joke.....so back and forth we go and settle for a hundred....which is basically what I had thought we would have to pay. The guy says ``okay a hundred....this is my brother...he`ll take you in`'! So you see they`re all related and in cahoots out there so you really can`t win....
Off we go on our merry way down the highway through the desert.....it is a long way.
We drove across the famous Aswan dam. It was built in 1970 by President Nasser...he`s the guy who rested control of the Suez Canal from the British and French...it was a nasty time and our own Lester Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to settle it. Anyway...Nasser built the thing with help from the Ruskies
It and the Aswan high dam further up the river provide about 50 per cent of the electrical power to the Egyptian people....they also sell power to the Libyans and Sudanese....that`s the upside.
The downside is that 30 thousand Nubians had to be uprooted and a new city built for them about 30 kiliometers away from the flood plain. The Nubians are kind of like Australia`s Aboriginies or our North American Indian...they have their own culture and are naturally proud of it.
Farming in Egypt....98 per cent of all crops in the country are irrigated from the Nile. And now because of the dams...the crops have to be fertilized...
Others problems with the damn include a 12 percent water loss through evaporation....constant dredging because of the silt....and if the silt is in the flood plain behind the dam...that means it`s not going down stream to fertilize farmers fields...they now have to buy expensive fertilizer to make up for it. As well the river runs much more slowly and it can't push the Meditereanean sea out of the delta area around Alexandria and Cairo....that means much of the water and soil on the delta is now contaminated with salt and is not much good for anything...so much for the price of power and progress!
Into town we go...a dusty fly blown affair for the most part......but not nearly as busy and noisy as Cairo and even Maadi for that matter...
We were paying a hundred bucks a night and that included a buffet breakfast and dinner....which turned out to be very helpful....because after awhile the streets of Aswan begin to pall.
The hotel is on Elephantine island..and eight kilometer spit of land in the middle of the Nile....so they run a twenty four hour ferry back and forth ...it's free..and it's a nice little three or four minute ride...very scenic...
At the hotel they take your bag from the ferry up to the foyer....I gave the guy a couple of pounds tip....I couldn't convince him that I could take the bag...and that it actually had wheels....he carried it all the way up. Dumb bugger!
We book in.....oh oh...big problem....Kim's resident working visa has expired and we're getting this good deal because she's a resident...without that visa ...no deal. My visa wouldn't work because I'm in on a tourist visa....that took about an hour to sort out...it culminated with a call to our travel agent...who convinced the hotel manageress that she would send her something that would make the whole problem null and void...I don't know what the agent did but....success...we're in!
Kitchener's Island
Nice room...twin doubles...a balcony overlooking the other side of the Nile....and another much smaller island called "Kitchener's Island". It was named after Earl Henry Horatio Kitchener of "Khartoum".
He was a kind and gentle British Field Marshall who Queen Victoria liked to use as a battering ram in the Middle East and North Africa. It was he she sent to the Sudan (not far from Aswan) to rest it back from the murdering savages who wiped out the British garrison in Khartoum in 1885....Kitchener went back in the 1890's and lucky for him they had just invented the Gattling machine gun...so he just mowed them all down...and took back the country....lesson learned for ther Sudanese.
Iconic first world war poster of Kitchener exhorting the menfolk to join the army.
Then she sent him down to South Africa to sort out those pesky Dutchmen in the Boer War....the Boer men proved to be more than a match for the British....so Kitchener just locked up all their women in the first ever "Concentration Camps" .....many thousands of them died of disease and starvation...the Boer men finally had to throw in the towel to stop this wholesale slaughter. Next up for Kitchener was the first world war...it was he put together all of the English armies so they could go France and Belgium and be killed.
For his efforts the Queen gave him that island in the Nile...seems Kitchener had a green thumb and had the whole thing turned into his own private garden....and it's beautiful. It was sceded back to the Egyptians after he ...charitably....drowned when the warship he was on hit a German mine and sank off the Orkney's.
Picture of the beautiful garden's on Kitchener's Island
The island is now a litle tourist trap that aggressive Falucca men sail people to for a fee.
Kim and I had a bit of a rest and the restaurant manager who came over on the ferry with us spotted us leaving the hotel and insisted we come in for a free breakfast....that was nice of him!.
Over to the mainland on the ferry...Kim had been asking around on the ferry if anyone knew where there was a market...in fact I had seen one in the cab on the way in from the airport...but a nice fellow who got off the ferry with us walked up and said..."I over heard you talking about a market...there is a big one just down there to your left" . Okay...that was nice of him...shokran. This is a pretty big market mostly for tourists...it has just about everything in one place...but man are these merchants aggressive....they're starving for lack of tourism...so you really walk the gaunlet....the upside is...they're very motivated to make a deal and with an hour or so I had just about every tourist thing I needed...and that was to save me a lot of time in the week or so to come before I went home.
Having done that we headed back across the river to the hotel for a couple of drinkies...then headed back over to hire a falucca guy to take us for an hour or so sail on the Nile.
When you get off the ferry and walk up to the street you're assailed by any number of very aggresive busiessmen I'll call them for lack of a better description who want you to go on a power boat ride...a tax ride a horse and carriage ride...and of course a falucaa ride.
We ran into a falucaa guy who wanted to take us for 80 pounds for an hour...I got him down to 50...so down the river we go.
We have to climb over a restaurant railing to get to his boat...a 25 foot long flat affair with a big wooden deck with a couple of beat up cushions sliding around on it. He has a friend to help him out...and he needed it.....this boat is a quite a heavy sluggish affair and required both of these young strong guys to haul up on the keel and then shove a mangled old bolt through an eye hole to prevent the it from slipping down....the wind was behind us so in that situation the guys don't really worry to much about the sail configuration...they just kind of let it flap around out there and down the river we went flat as a pancake...Kim and I are laughing and taking pictures having a jolly old time sailing on the Nile...imagine it.
We shoot through a narrow gap between a couple of big rock formations...there's lots of rocks in this part of the river.....in fact the area we were sailing is called the "Cataracs" because before the advent of the dams upstream.... the water moved quite quickly through here.
A quick shot of one of four little boys who paddled out to our boat from shore....when they got there they asked us "what language"?
Now it meanders...and there is a beautiful old Victorian Hotel called the "Old Cataract Hotel" sitting up on a big mountain of rock overlooking the Cataracs....it's still beautiful....and I mentioned to Kim that we should go up there for a drink on the terrace before we leave....more on that later.
So we drift passed the Cataracs and then turn and bump into the shore....where the guys let out more sail and get ready for the kilometer or so sail back up the Nile....that done and we set out tacking back and forth..when done right these tacks are quite graceful because there is no boom...the big front sail just sweeps back and forth.
Our helmsman with the not so much "deft" touch on the the tiller
We make a couple of tacks....and then the helper who is on the big thick tiller loses the edge and we began drifting slowly but solidly towards the rocks....I'm thinking these guys have done this so many times before...they've never let us hit the rocks....wrong!
I tell Kim to brace herself.....CRASH...bounce bounce on the keel on the rocks....CRASH into the rocks again. Okay I think the bottom of the boat is made of cast iron...so no harm no foul...CRASH...again...Kim says should we get off.????
We could actually get off and climb up the rocks onto the street and WALK back home...but I said no......
I don't think anything really bad is going to happen...and I wanted to see how these guys were going to get us out of this!
So they get out a big stout pole and push really hard...then bring up the keel....which takes both of them to do!
And finally we drift out into the current.....where the real sailor takes over the helm...and back and forth we go in lazy arches back up the river....over to the far bank where they re-set the sail and back into their slip...which is just a space between some rocks and the restaurant deck. We get caught up on the wrong side of the rocks...and have to fiddle with the keel again big time...then pole around the rocks into the slip.
I gave them the 80 pounds they originally wanted for the ride....the extra 30 pounds was worth it simply for the entertainment value.
We walked the short way to the ferry terminal....being hastled by businessmen every step of the way. Back too the hotel for a nice smorgasborg dinner...and a pretty early night.
****`
Next: Aswan....Life on the Nile....Agatha Christie style.
Kim and I had to get up in the middle of the night to catch the plane. Yes another long and costly trip to the Cairo International Airport....it seems like I'm living out there sometimes.
The flight was about an hour and a half and was uneventful....we were deposited at the Aswan International airport....about 30 klicks out of the city.
Deplaning in Aswan....it's only about 6 a.m.
Kim had been doing some investigating while we waited for our our bags in the airport...and had come up with quotes that ranged from 30 Egyptian pounds to 80...I had talked with our travel agent and she said we might have to go as high as a hundred because the buggers have kind of got you over a barrel out there....
The first quote was for 150 pounds and I laughed like I`d just heard a dirty joke.....so back and forth we go and settle for a hundred....which is basically what I had thought we would have to pay. The guy says ``okay a hundred....this is my brother...he`ll take you in`'! So you see they`re all related and in cahoots out there so you really can`t win....
Driving in the cab along the top of the Aswan Dam.....note the furry dashboard!
We drove across the famous Aswan dam. It was built in 1970 by President Nasser...he`s the guy who rested control of the Suez Canal from the British and French...it was a nasty time and our own Lester Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to settle it. Anyway...Nasser built the thing with help from the Ruskies
Aswan high dam on the lower Nile.
Nubian family in front of their
house |
The downside is that 30 thousand Nubians had to be uprooted and a new city built for them about 30 kiliometers away from the flood plain. The Nubians are kind of like Australia`s Aboriginies or our North American Indian...they have their own culture and are naturally proud of it.
Farming in Egypt....98 per cent of all crops in the country are irrigated from the Nile. And now because of the dams...the crops have to be fertilized...
Others problems with the damn include a 12 percent water loss through evaporation....constant dredging because of the silt....and if the silt is in the flood plain behind the dam...that means it`s not going down stream to fertilize farmers fields...they now have to buy expensive fertilizer to make up for it. As well the river runs much more slowly and it can't push the Meditereanean sea out of the delta area around Alexandria and Cairo....that means much of the water and soil on the delta is now contaminated with salt and is not much good for anything...so much for the price of power and progress!
Into town we go...a dusty fly blown affair for the most part......but not nearly as busy and noisy as Cairo and even Maadi for that matter...
Terminal for the 24 hour ferry between the mainland and the Hotel. The Moevinpick Hotel can be seen in the distance.
We're booked at the Swiss co-owned and operated luxury hotel called "Moevinpick" it's a pretty good deal....what with the revolution and riots and all ....tourism has really fallen off...so they offer incentives.
The "Moevinpick" Hotel on "Elephantine Island" shot from the ferry halfway across the Nile. Note the "faluccas" to the left.
We were paying a hundred bucks a night and that included a buffet breakfast and dinner....which turned out to be very helpful....because after awhile the streets of Aswan begin to pall.
The hotel is on Elephantine island..and eight kilometer spit of land in the middle of the Nile....so they run a twenty four hour ferry back and forth ...it's free..and it's a nice little three or four minute ride...very scenic...
At the hotel they take your bag from the ferry up to the foyer....I gave the guy a couple of pounds tip....I couldn't convince him that I could take the bag...and that it actually had wheels....he carried it all the way up. Dumb bugger!
We book in.....oh oh...big problem....Kim's resident working visa has expired and we're getting this good deal because she's a resident...without that visa ...no deal. My visa wouldn't work because I'm in on a tourist visa....that took about an hour to sort out...it culminated with a call to our travel agent...who convinced the hotel manageress that she would send her something that would make the whole problem null and void...I don't know what the agent did but....success...we're in!
Three views from our hotel room .....these rooms were never occupied while we were there...attesting to the dirth of tourists coming to Egypt these days.
Rock and sand high land with a temple on the top and nicely lit up at night..
Nice room...twin doubles...a balcony overlooking the other side of the Nile....and another much smaller island called "Kitchener's Island". It was named after Earl Henry Horatio Kitchener of "Khartoum".
He was a kind and gentle British Field Marshall who Queen Victoria liked to use as a battering ram in the Middle East and North Africa. It was he she sent to the Sudan (not far from Aswan) to rest it back from the murdering savages who wiped out the British garrison in Khartoum in 1885....Kitchener went back in the 1890's and lucky for him they had just invented the Gattling machine gun...so he just mowed them all down...and took back the country....lesson learned for ther Sudanese.
Iconic first world war poster of Kitchener exhorting the menfolk to join the army.
Then she sent him down to South Africa to sort out those pesky Dutchmen in the Boer War....the Boer men proved to be more than a match for the British....so Kitchener just locked up all their women in the first ever "Concentration Camps" .....many thousands of them died of disease and starvation...the Boer men finally had to throw in the towel to stop this wholesale slaughter. Next up for Kitchener was the first world war...it was he put together all of the English armies so they could go France and Belgium and be killed.
For his efforts the Queen gave him that island in the Nile...seems Kitchener had a green thumb and had the whole thing turned into his own private garden....and it's beautiful. It was sceded back to the Egyptians after he ...charitably....drowned when the warship he was on hit a German mine and sank off the Orkney's.
Picture of the beautiful garden's on Kitchener's Island
Kim and I had a bit of a rest and the restaurant manager who came over on the ferry with us spotted us leaving the hotel and insisted we come in for a free breakfast....that was nice of him!.
The start of the market (souk) in Aswan
Over to the mainland on the ferry...Kim had been asking around on the ferry if anyone knew where there was a market...in fact I had seen one in the cab on the way in from the airport...but a nice fellow who got off the ferry with us walked up and said..."I over heard you talking about a market...there is a big one just down there to your left" . Okay...that was nice of him...shokran. This is a pretty big market mostly for tourists...it has just about everything in one place...but man are these merchants aggressive....they're starving for lack of tourism...so you really walk the gaunlet....the upside is...they're very motivated to make a deal and with an hour or so I had just about every tourist thing I needed...and that was to save me a lot of time in the week or so to come before I went home.
Kim dealing with a rug merchant in a side street in the Aswan souk.
He's in the doorway.
Having done that we headed back across the river to the hotel for a couple of drinkies...then headed back over to hire a falucca guy to take us for an hour or so sail on the Nile.
When you get off the ferry and walk up to the street you're assailed by any number of very aggresive busiessmen I'll call them for lack of a better description who want you to go on a power boat ride...a tax ride a horse and carriage ride...and of course a falucaa ride.
Falucca's on the Nile from our hotel window
We ran into a falucaa guy who wanted to take us for 80 pounds for an hour...I got him down to 50...so down the river we go.
Narrow gap...at the "Cataracs"
A quick shot of one of four little boys who paddled out to our boat from shore....when they got there they asked us "what language"?
And then sang "Frere Jacques"...I gave them each half a pound for their effort.
The "Old Catarac" hotel in the distance to the left!
So we drift passed the Cataracs and then turn and bump into the shore....where the guys let out more sail and get ready for the kilometer or so sail back up the Nile....that done and we set out tacking back and forth..when done right these tacks are quite graceful because there is no boom...the big front sail just sweeps back and forth.
Our helmsman with the not so much "deft" touch on the the tiller
We make a couple of tacks....and then the helper who is on the big thick tiller loses the edge and we began drifting slowly but solidly towards the rocks....I'm thinking these guys have done this so many times before...they've never let us hit the rocks....wrong!
I tell Kim to brace herself.....CRASH...bounce bounce on the keel on the rocks....CRASH into the rocks again. Okay I think the bottom of the boat is made of cast iron...so no harm no foul...CRASH...again...Kim says should we get off.????
Poling off the rocks....we were close to shore so no worries!
I don't think anything really bad is going to happen...and I wanted to see how these guys were going to get us out of this!
So they get out a big stout pole and push really hard...then bring up the keel....which takes both of them to do!
And finally we drift out into the current.....where the real sailor takes over the helm...and back and forth we go in lazy arches back up the river....over to the far bank where they re-set the sail and back into their slip...which is just a space between some rocks and the restaurant deck. We get caught up on the wrong side of the rocks...and have to fiddle with the keel again big time...then pole around the rocks into the slip.
Coming around to go back to dock....the people are Aswans...waiting for a local water taxi.
We walked the short way to the ferry terminal....being hastled by businessmen every step of the way. Back too the hotel for a nice smorgasborg dinner...and a pretty early night.
****`
Next: Aswan....Life on the Nile....Agatha Christie style.
