Quite a few of us started this trip by flying in to NYC on Friday night, and 6 or so of us braved the subway system on Saturday to go & visit Central Park. We took 2 carriages & rode around to see the park, then ate street food. The park was beautiful, the ride was fun, and the subway was an adventure since the closest station to the hotel was closed. Saturday afternoon, we all trooped over to JFK airport and met up with the group for the overnight flight to Cairo.
When we landed, we met Affifi (sp?), our guide for the land portion of the trip. Educated in Egyptology with a good grasp of the American language and used to quirky Americans, he made a fantastic guide. Single Diiiivers.... Single Diiiivers! That's how he got our attention throughout the week, especially when we were around other groups. We gathered our bags, loaded onto a tour bus that was ours for the week, and drove across Cairo to our hotel, which was very close to the Giza Plateau. Fortunately, our bus driver had bottled water and sodas on board for us to buy....2 bottles of water for $1.00, vs. paying $4.00 per bottle at dinner in a restaurant! We learned to load up at the end of the day! You could see 2 of the Pyramids from either the front of the hotel, or from the pool area. Traffic in Cairo will turn you gray if you watch it, so luckily most of us were looking at the zillions of apartment buildings that are either partially finished or just started, but they all seemed to have satellite dishes at the top! Seems the top floors are never finished for government tax reasons, so it looks a little odd. Once we arrived at the hotel. about 1/2 the group went to take a nap, and the other half of us went to the barside pool. Stella beer for all, while sitting on the bench seating in the pool, with the Pyramids hovering in the background.
That night, we had a group dinner on a Nile cruise barge-type boat, complete with entertainment of a belly dancer and a whirling dervish dancer. To both, all I can say is WOW.On day 2, we visited the Citadel, which enclosed the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (No, not the boxer!). The Citadel itself is very old, and the Mosque itself is absolutely beautiful inside. Affifi spoke to us a bit about the Muslim religion and the people of Egypt, and their customs. We were allowed to take cameras, so we'll post pics. It was very enlightening for many. Then we headed to the Cairo Museum, and the whole group agreed that we could spend many days there and still not see everything. King Tut's exhibit is phenomenal. We could take pics on the outside of the Museum, but we could not take them inside. Afterwards, we headed towards the Bazaar area and had a group lunch at a Turkish restaurant. I must insert here that I tried a little of every new dish offered on this trip, and most everything I tried was delicious. While at the Bazaar, we noticed that we had not only the armed "Tourist Police" guard on our bus, but also a police escort through the city. We got the Deluxe Security Package, for sure! There were Tourist Police everywhere we went, dressed in white and standing around with automatic rifles. As a deterrent, it seems to work very well. The Bazaar was an experience that would get us used to being bombarded by the hawkers of all types of goods. Very persistent hawkers, and we ran into them absolutely everywhere we went on land. After the Bazaar, we headed back to the hotel for some quality pool time and some more Stella. 15 of us went to a Cairo restaurant down the street for dinner, and ate some wonderful traditional food. Dan aka Rookie had an interesting night, getting a knock on his door at 4am and chasing the jokester down the hall only to realize that he locked himself out of his room, and had to show up at the front desk in his skivvies to get another room key! I think he ended up with 4 keys to that room alone, and collected room key cards throughout our land portion of the trip. It wasn't until the very end of the trip that the jokester was revealed.....Cass confessed, and she had an accomplice with her.
The next day we went to Sakkara and went through Titi's tomb. We could take our cameras but were not supposed to take photos inside the tomb - unless you bribed the guard inside with Egyptian pounds. We visited the first Step Pyramid but could not go inside, and from that location we could see the Bent Pyramid at Dakur (sp?) in one direction, and the Unas Pyramids in the other direction. We stopped at the place where the broken Statue of Ramses II is housed, along with the Alabaster Sphinx, and then visited a carpet making school and several purchased some beautiful pieces. We ate lunch at La Cuisine, and then we went to the Giza Plateau and got to visit the 3 Great Pyramids (there are actually more than that on the Plateau, but since the smaller ones were for wives, I guess they're not considered that important). They only allow 100 visitors per day inside the Pyramid of Cheops (the largest one), so although we climbed up to the entrance, we could not go inside. Many of us went on camel rides to this great area, and the camel drivers were very nice about taking our individual pictures of us on the camel with the Pyramids behind us. It's interesting that Cairo bumps right up to the Pyramids, but beyond them is nothing but the Sahara Desert. Then we got to visit the Sphinx area, and then a stop at a Papyrus factory on the way back to the hotel.
The next day we flew to Luxor (every day, including on the boat, was an EARLY wake-up call on this trip....if you wanted to sleep in, you were going to miss something!). We had free time from 11am to 4pm (very hot down south!) so most of us took naps or went to the pool. At 4pm we went to the Temple of Karnak. We were allowed to take pictures there, and the bits of color remaining show us how spectacular the place was in it's heyday. We stopped at a jewelry store on the way back to the hotel so people could order cartouche's (necklaces or rings with their names in heiroglyphics), and then we had a group dinner.
The next morning, most of the group got up very early to to a hot air balloon ride over Luxor, but due to some haze it was cancelled that morning. The rest of us met up with them and we visited the Valley of the Kings. Absolutely no cameras allowed inside the Valley at all, so sorry about the lack of pics inside the Valley. We got to go inside 3 tombs....Ramses VII, Ramses VIX, and Tutenkamen's. Tut's mummy is in his tomb, not in the Cairo Museum with the rest of his stuff. We were told that Ramses II's tomb is in a complete shambles and closed to the public. We then visited Queen Hatshepsut's Temple just down towards the entrance to the Valley, and camera's were allowed. Again, a small bribe got a couple of us "inside the rope" to get a picture of a statue of Hatshepsut. Back to the hotel, and many of us ate lunch poolside. Later that afternoon, 16 of us went on an hour long sail on the Nile. Very peaceful! We had a group dinner, then headed back to the Temple of Karnak for a sound & light show.
The hot air balloon rides took place the following morning, and the rest of us got an extra hour's sleep, then we went to the Temple of Luxor. More great pics and history learned. Back to the hotel to check out, and we sent Gloria, Meagan & Sherrie back to the airport for their trip home. The rest of us boarded the bus for the 4 hour drive through the desert to Hurghada where we boarded the dive boat for a week of diving in the Red Sea. There were regular checkpoints on the road, with armed guards in towers.
During the land portion of the trip, there was a lot of laughter but also some serious stomach/intestinal issues that caused a few to stay at the hotel for a day. Imodium doesn't work for everyone, or for whatever bug they had. We tried to keep it funny, but I'm sure it wasn't all that funny to those who were affected. Luckily I missed all of that. The mix of modern with the old in Cairo is fascinating to see.....In the middle of car traffic, you see ox or donkey carts pulling produce through the streets, or camels being led to the Pyramids. Mud huts that the farmers live in along the Nile, right next to big modern Egyptian houses being built by the wealthy of Cairo outside the city proper. Men in business suits on the street, and many men & women in traditional dress next to them. They tend to congregate outside late at night, when it's cooler. All in all, it was very educational to see how people in this part of the world live. Mainly a Muslim population, there are more Mosques & Minarets than you can imagine.....you can actually stand in one place, turn a 360 degree circle, and count 6 or more Mosques within blocks of each other.
On to the diving portion of the trip!
This was my first liveaboard trip - all of you know why I've avoided them in the past!!! But, I owe Dive Geek a big THANK YOU for pushing me towards the scopalomine patch. This trip was considered rough by the crew's standard, and I never felt queasy once. That patch is AWESOME, and worth every penny.
The Sea Sound vessel is being considered as an addition to the Blue o Two fleet, and I think they should go ahead with the deal. I don't have any previous boats to compare it to, but I felt it was a beautiful boat, and although it could be tight in places with the 23 of us plus the dive team plus the boat crew, I can also see where it could have been much worse! Twin beds instead of bunk beds, the bathrooms in each berth were small to say the least, but got the job done. Someone said they could XXXX, shower and shave all at once, and was not kidding! Big sun deck on top, shady seating by the 'bar' with a few berths on the next level down, the salon, dive deck & eating area on the 'ground' level, and berths below that. The best thing about the boat was their chef & kitchen crew. The food was fabulous and plentiful, and varied. Even the vegetarians and vegans had plenty to choose from!
The day we boarded was Kamala's birthday, and Affifi had called the boat ahead of time to arrange a cake for that evening. Delish! Richard aka ScubaVazz did his own unique version of a belly dance as her 'gift' from us. A few days later Kathy aka Little Mermaid had a birthday, so we got more cake!
The water the first 2 days was 79 degrees, but further south got up to 82 degrees. The corals are plentiful, although not quite as colorful as they are in other places in the world. It wasn't until the last day of diving that I realized that I didn't see any sponges. Kamala, Carole & Rosa got to witness octopus porn, and have teh video to prove it. Lots of anemones and clownfish of varying types, huge triggerfish, turtles, emperor angelfish, and so many new types of fish that I don't even know their names! I'm going to have to buy a book so I can ID what I took photos of. Very colorful fish, and beautiful to boot. Although we tried to see the schooling hammerheads, I don't think anyone saw them. We did see silkie and thresher sharks, though. Some of the sites had a raging current, and others had almost no current at all. I prefer the latter myself....it's hard for me to control myself in "raging" currents and it makes me anxious, plus you can't hold still to photograph anything. Vis varied greatly from site to site, but was generally OK. We could go guided or unguided, and there were 2 dive guides available - Karin from South Africa, and Chris from the UK. The boat crew did not speak much English, but were willing to join us once or twice for a bit of traditional dancing. Chef was a ham! We stayed on the boat the last night after we got back to Hurghada. Richard & I went to the Hard Rock Cafe for shots (and souvenir shot glasses), then a bunch of us went to a great restaurant with the dive guides for a lovely meal. Some went with Karin to the local bar with a band playing American music, and I hear they got silly on the dance floor and stayed out very late. Well, it looked like they had a good time the next morning! LOL
When we left the boat at the end of the week, we flew from Hurghada back to Cairo, and stayed at a hotel close to the airport. About half of us went shopping on the bus....Hard Rock cafe in Cairo, the Funky Monkey for t-shirts and Egyptian Cotton sheets/towels, and then back to the Bazaar for souvenirs. After a group dinner that night, we shuffled the gear in our bags and got ready for the flight home the next morning.
Several of us stayed in NYC again on the way back, so we tried to get our goodbye's done with everyone else at the baggage carousel. I'm sitting in the business center of our hotel in NYC writing this report, while Cass sleeps in. We'll catch a flight back to KC around 11:30 this morning.
All in all, the trip was more than I could have hoped for. Although I wouldn't do Cairo again, I'd dive in the Red Sea anytime! It was great to see all the new critters, and the company was great. I made lots of new friends, and we have shared memories to last a lifetime.
