Travelling Tim

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December 31, 2006

Corresponding from Cairo

Wishing a Happy Christmas to all my readers!!

I have a few days here in Cairo between sections, and the chance to sort out my things, do washing and repairs before the next stage of this epic Dover - Cape Town journey begins on the 1st of January 2007.

Passenger News: The last section picked up just one more person who is travelling all the way to Cape Town, and two who are travelling as far as Addis Ababa - the others leave at Cairo. 5 passengers stay on the truck, 1 left in Alexandria, and 6 leave here, but 13 join, so there will be some new faces and new people to talk to for the next section from Cairo to Khartoum.

I had some emails asking me who was on the truck for the journey through Tunisia, Libya, and into Egypt, and what kind of people they were. The passenger list was like this: 2 English, 1 New Zealander, and 9 Canadians. The youngest was 36 and the oldest 68. The majority were in their late 30s. There were 2 couples, and the rest were single. Only 2 were vegetarians, but they found sufficient to eat throughout the trip, especially in Egypt. On the next section, the balance changes yet again. I have not seen the final passenger list yet, but apparently there will be people from Australia, Holland, Ireland, and the US joining, and the balance of men/women changes from 6/6 to 6/12.

Since my last blog in Tripoli, we have spent much time in the Libyan desert. We had a really wonderful time, and I enjoyed the chance to visit this seldom-explored part of the world very much. As the sand is so soft, and the truck so heavy, we left it behind in Tkarkiba, and transferred to Toyota Land Cruisers, with special sand-tyres. They could handle the soft dunes with ease, so we were able to journey deep into the desert, visiting ancient cave paintings still preserved after 10,000 years, the saline lakes of Ubari, and many of the big dunes that cover this part of the country. We had Tuareg guides, who were able to navigate through the rocks, dunes and sand fields, still coming out where they wanted to. I never saw them use a map or GPS!

Though we brought tents, most of us slept out at night. The weather during the day was sunny and quite hot for December; at night there might be some cloud, and always quite a strong wind. I was using both my sleeping bags, one inside the other, so when the drawstrings were pulled tight that left a small window for me to watch the stars through whilst going to sleep, and if I woke during the night. OK, so everyone has enthused about the stars in the desert 100 times before, but just in case you've never slept in a desert, I'd like to add my recommendations for the experience. Its just like nothing else - the sky is so black, and the stars are bright, and there are just so many of them. An evening around the fire ( desert TV ) and then snuggle down in a warm sleeping bag to watch the shooting stars streak across the sky, or the Milky Way, so bright you can almost read by it. Apparently, the Milky Way contains 10^10 stars, or 10 billion, and when you are looking at them from the desert you can well believe it! I'm looking forward to doing more of this down through the deserts of Egypt and Sudan.

Apart from the wonders of the desert, the other highlight of this section were the magnificent Roman ruins of Libya, still so well preserved and accessible. The most impressive were in the abandoned city of Leptis Magna, but the other sites at Sabratha, Cyrene, and Apollonia were just as interesting. You can see more of my photos on the Africa Photos-2 and Africa Photos-3 pages.

Libya was a great place to visit, despite lots of pre-conceptions of a police-state that carefully controls its visitors. This has changed completely in the last few years, though a full time guide is still required, making the country much more suitable for group travel than individual backpacking trips. I found the people very friendly and interesting to talk to, and to talk back to us. A suprising number of people spoke English. There were lots of satellite dishes everywhere, so people are obviously picking up their English from the many channels available these days. There are lots of cars on the road too - everyone seems to have one, though this might be explained by the cost of fuel - a litre of diesel is only 11 cents US - far far cheaper than bottled water!! No alcohol is available in Libya, so its not the place to go if you want to party.

After Libya, a slowish border crossing took us to Egypt. Christmas was spent at Siwa Oasis. This is a small town deep in the Egyptian desert, reached after hours of driving through an open, rocky landscape. Just in case you were wondering: despite what you have seen on 'Lawrence of Arabia', the desert is not all big sand dunes - much of it is just flat and rocky, or covered in gravel. You can drive for hours and not see a thing, apart from the occasional microwave relay tower. Suddenly, some palm trees appear on the horizon, then more, and then the town of Siwa appears as if from nowhere. It has a few small hotels, some natural springs, an abandoned mud city, some fresh-water lakes, LOTS of donkeys, and is a good place to take a Christmas break. Somewhere to shower, somewhere to get the sand of the desert out of my hair, pockets, and just about everywhere else it might have crept into.

As mentioned above, the food in Egypt is a lot better for vegetarians than it was in Libya or Tunisia. Here there is a large selection of salads, some lovely bean-dishes with a variety of different sauces, (called 'foul'!) and the famous 'felafel', common throughout the Middle East but perfected here in Egypt. A felafel is a round ball of ground chick-peas and spices, that are deep-fried in a moment then served with salad and some tahini sauce in a hot pitta-bread. Food for the Gods!! The prices are cheap too - felafel with salad, bread and tahini in a sit-down restaurant costs typically 5 Egyptian pounds, which is about 90 cents US. Buy one from one of the many street vendors and it is even cheaper.

I went to visit the Poste Restante counter at Cairo's main post-office yesterday, and was surprised how quiet it was there. A few years ago, it would have been crowded and bustling as travellers from all over the world queued to pick up their mail, but these days email has almost taken over completely as the preferred means to receive news and greetings, and yesterday I was the only person there. Instead of sorting through a huge pile of mail from the 'M' pigeon-hole, I was given the entire stock of poste-restante letters to look through - about 12 items for the whole of Cairo, of which 4 of them were for me!! Thanks very much to Jill and Gerry, Stan and Rosemary, Margaret Makins, and Sue Kitching for their letters and Christmas cards. If anyone else did send me anything, I am sorry not to have received it. If you put an address on the outside of the envelope it should be returned to you after about a month. Please write again, to any of the addresses I will check along the route (you can see a full list on THIS page). It is always nice to receive hand written letters, newspaper cuttings, cards, etc., and all will be replied to personally. Emails will be answered as emails. I'll send postcards from time to time, when they are available, but the main news will continue to be found here on this blog-site.

Well, that about wraps up this 'Correspondence from Cairo'. I'll end by wishing a very Happy New Year for 2007 to everyone, and hope that it will be the best year yet for you all.

Travelling Tim

Posted by travellingtim at December 31, 2006 02:05 PM