Egypt

 I went to Egypt in October with 3 crazy Canadian ladies, two of which I live with in Riyadh.  We fit a ton of fun into a quick week in the ancient/modern world that is Egypt.  We started with a few days in the desert about a 5 hours drive SW of Cairo at an oasis.  Here the guys at the oasis planned all our activities, it was perfect for us!!  They took us for fun jeep drives hurling us over sand dunes and doing donuts and making us squeal.  We went to the “local watering hole” (which may or may not have been less of a swimming place and more of a water containment device), they also played traditional music and taught us the traditional dance (and the dance may have been something one would do alone or perhaps not in a group situation).  Nonetheless, these guys did show us ladies a fantastically entertaining time.  We went out to the white desert and the black desert.  Who knew these types of places existed?!  The white desert you could tell it had once been under the sea because the rock formations were in the shapes of waves, really unexpected and spectacular!  We spent a night under the stars outside in the desert, just the four of us ladies and our driver with the full moon rising!  So beautiful!  

Our fun driver guy who took us out in the jeep to camp in the desert was super fun!  He put up with all our girly silliness and goofing around and frolicking in the desert.  We stopped just to run up and down sand dunes till we collapsed tiredly in the sand.  He even humored me and tied me up and pushed me down a big sand dune.  This was when I thought it would be an interesting experience to be in a hostage situation and thought I could use the practice in advance.  Like I said nice guy!

One of my favorite things to do on vacation, particularly on holiday from the Kingdom is to go for long runs!  Oh the pure joy of the freedom!  And what better place to do that than in the open sands of the desert!  Running in the morning coolness with the moon setting on one side of the horizon and the sun rising on the other and the only sound being the quietness of my feet in the sand, really, nothing could start the day in a better way!  Ahhh!  Also there was a cute camp dog that accompanied me on runs to make sure the jackals didn’t eat me.

We also did the ancient Egypt thing as well!  How can you go to Egypt without seeing where the pharaohs ruled and hieroglyphs!?  We started in Aswan.  Then up the Nile to Luxor where the Valley of the Kings is located, King Tuts tomb was found here.  The most information is known about this king since his tomb was found untouched and intact.  A lot of the things from his tomb were in the Cairo museum, including his famous mask.  Everything was very ornate and marvelous looking.  I think they actually buried the tomb builders inside the tomb so that they wouldn’t tell anyone where it was located in order to prevent robberies.  We were able to go into several tombs in the Valley of the Kings.  The colors and hieroglyphs inside these tombs were spectacular, and they are 3000 – 3500 years old!!  It is kind of crazy to think about how ancient it all is and how detailed and huge these structures are.  As a kid my favorite part of history was ancient civilizations, probably something to do with the stories from this time period sparked my imagination so it was really fascinating to be in Egypt!  

At the end of the trip, back in Cairo, we went to see the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.  Yes they are massive.  Actually due to the massiveness of the pyramids time literally slows when one stands close to them, I kid you not.  One of those crazy physics things!  At the Sphinx a lady came up and took tons of silly tourist pictures for us!  Good times, I guess you just have to do it!  Since it was Christina’s birthday we went out for a dinner boat cruise on the Nile!  So lovely!  There must have been 3 or 4 types of hummus, I was pretty much in heaven!  Also the dinner entertainment was fun: singers, a whirling dervish, and a belly dancer.  The whirling dervish was mesmerizing, just spinning and spinning, like hula hooping!  And then at the end he pulled up his skirt and the lights when out and he had a flashing light show underneath!  Hilarious!  Belly dancing is said to be the best in Egypt.  This girl was very good, and she had quite a following on board!  Just a really nice way to end a lovely week in Egypt!

A day or two before we left for Egypt there were protests and burning of Coptic churches this event was considered the most violence in one day since the revolution back in the early part of this year.  But we went anyways and had a fantastic time.  Egypt’s economy is obviously hurting from the fall out of the Arab Spring, not good for the Egyptian people.  We were there in the middle of October.  Their elections just took place at the end of November.   One guy we chatted with said he was very proud of the Egyptian people and very proud to be Eygptian, finally to have the freedom to vote!  Good hope for Egpyt!