Picture Pages

We're coming up on the festive end of Ramadan here -- Eid el Fitr. (I hope to get some photos this year... we'll see.)

In the interim, and while I'm still drafting up other posts, I'll share some more every-day pics of life in Cairo:

Delivery options: Yes, McDonald's delivers. No, we've never done it.

Local flower delivery method.

I loved this group. I saw them way across the street and managed to get one close up too. Women shopping and gabbing, truly universal.


HATS
(Not really a hat, a bag of bread disguised as a floppy hat.)

No idea what's up with the paper cone hat. ?!?

During the summer you see these all over the place. I call them "Tea Carts" but they're probably selling hibiscus juice instead of hot tea (we haven't tried them yet).

LOVED THIS!! I've been trying to capture one of these for nine months now. It's a bicycle cart selling roasted sweet potatoes. Again, have not tried one, but I vow to this Fall/Winter. I just find them utterly delightful (in a sooty, rusted kind of way).

Gotta love the trucks!



Seating is NEVER an issue... ??!?(If you look closely, there are people perched on top or hanging off the sides.)

R-N-R – Really Not Relaxing

When I was telling someone of our recent “R&R” vacation I could tell by the gasps, laughs and bouts of silence that maybe our’s wasn’t the most typical. Now granted, we haven’t been at this expat life very long, but am I to learn that most R&Rs are not filled with shredding 14-years of bank statements, or performing simple yard work that results in poison ivy, or threats of “Bill the Hurricane” heading for your rented beach house, or an infestation of bed bugs from same rented beach house, or repeated discussions with all parental parties about where the “will” drawer was, or five-hour flight delays that result in lost luggage? Did we not do this correctly?

I had been duly forewarned about the craziness of trying to squeeze in visits to all the parents, siblings, friends and old Aunt Lizzy, so without following the (ultra-smart) rent-a-house-come-to-us plan, we thought we had it all mapped out fairly sanely. Of course, when you hear out loud, “Six states in 26 days,” it can lose its efficiency sheen regardless of how pretty the color-coded calendar looks. But without the glare of reality clouding our view, we were certain it would all work out perfectly.

We started out visiting my mother and high school friends in Ohio, which despite the mere few days, included some fun times and delightful shopping opportunities. These latter resulted in the need to ship four boxes home of can't-live-without books, CDs and a socket wrench set my husband felt inexorably drawn to. From there our plan was to spend a quiet week with my husband’s father and help him sort out some things in his house. This turned out to be slightly more stressful, for all parties involved, than any of us expected. But we did get through it without any major brawls, managed to amass several ginormous bags of shredding, acquired just enough poison ivy to be uncomfortable, were dutifully instructed where the “will” drawer was and uncovered some delightful photos of my husband looking bewildered throughout his childhood. The bowl haircut just seems to get better with age.

Itchy as we were, we confirmed we were not contagious and headed toward our one week at the beach house on the New Jersey shore with great anticipation (we had heard they did not have a shredder). We met up with my husband’s family, including father, siblings, siblings’ spouses, and siblings’ offspring. All in all, there were nine of us, ranging in ages from three to eighty-three, under one roof. As an only child, with relatives I can count on two hands, this was definitely the most people I’d been with under one roof that didn’t involve a keg. I took to it as any good spouse-of-the-baby would, with keen observation, a camera and a notebook (see documented Uncle-pummeling by the nephews).


The week was definitely relaxing for us. We swam in the ocean every day, we rented bikes, we read voraciously, we bemoaned the humidity and felt ourselves longing for the straightforward heat of Cairo. And in the end, for all our enjoyment, we paid the price. As the itchy random bumps started to emerge on our last day we had that horrible feeling that we were in a “60 Minutes” special on the horrors of communal houses and bed bug infestations.

After two days of itching and trying to flay our arms, we spent several hours at the Walk-In Clinic in my father’s small Virginia town (the next stop on our whirlwind “resting and relaxing” trip), where we were promptly diagnosed with bed bugs, given a shot for the residual poison ivy and given a prescription for a creme that would help the itching. As we departed, with the washing machine diligently cleaning everything we’d touched in super hot water, my father verified that I knew where the “will” drawer was. I did.

Our last few days were spent seeing friends in DC and Maryland at various lunches and dinners, grabbing a few more shopping chances, and me fighting a horrendous head cold that left me wanting to sleep more than seeing any beloved friends.

But our day of departure was finally here. We could put closure to this “R&R” and, once the itching fully subsided, laugh about all we went through and promise to never do that again! Surprisingly our departure day did not play out as planned, starting with a five-hour delay before we even left the airport, resulting in missed transfers in Europe, with a potential eleven-hour layover that we managed to knock down to a mere three-hours by visiting every possible Lufthansa service desk in all of the Frankfurt airport, making it home to Cairo only three hours late. Alas, our luggage was not so lucky, so after an additional two-hour delay in confirming the non-arrival of said luggage, and filling out the requisite forms (which really involved Ron and some Germans trying to fight the stampede of we-don't-believe-in-lines Egyptians), we were finally on our way home.

So it's been five days and the itching is subsiding, the jetlag is diminishing and we're resuming normalcy of life in Cairo. Oh wait, there was the 1:00am wake-up call of the screaming Egyptians our first night back where we awoke to find that the building two doors down from us was on fire. After verifying that we didn't need to pack the cats in the car and drive away, we took the opportunity to watch the fire engines try to maneuver through the tight back alleys, where one fireman had to ride on top to lift up all the low-hanging wires. By 2:30am the screaming had stopped and by the morning we were able to assess the damage (it seems that an air vent or something reaching up the side of the building, had caught on fire). So yes, everything is back to normal -- at least Cairo-normal.

Inter-Planetary Camping – Part Five

Our intrepid guides finally decided to set up camp and chose a spot far from the other few camps around. (After nightfall we could barely see the flicker of the other campfires in the far distance.) While they set up our sleeping area and got the campfire going, we explored a bit and relaxed. (Our "camp" is off to the left in this photo, near the red dot that's the Xterra.)





One of the first orders of business was to designate “pigeon rock.” In Arabic the word for bathroom is “hammaamm” and the word for pigeon is “hamaam”. Yeah, great fun at dinner parties. So a large three-story rock a ways off from camp was designated the pigeon rock and I called the right side as the girl’s side.

As the day came to an end, we all watched the sun set over the desolate scene. There was no sound of cars or horns or donkeys or birds or even the wind. Just silence.



Our guides prepared dinner for us, with fresh fruit, baladi bread, a vegetable stew and rice, and chicken bits for the carnivores. I don’t know if they laced the vegetables with chocolate, or the day’s excitement just altered my senses, but the rice and vegetables were some of the best I’ve ever had.

As the night enclosed around us, the stars above came out in abundance. I’ve been fortunate enough to see the Northern Lights from an observatory in Manitoba, Canada, however even then I did not see the number of stars that blanketed the White Desert sky.

We had all brought sleeping bags with us, even though bedding was provided. So we chose our spots and laid out our bags on the layers of rugs and blankets that had been spread out for us next to an L-shaped fabric wall supported by the two vehicles to block the wind. It took a while, but I think we eventually all fell asleep, only to be woken a few hours later by Ben screaming, “Go away! Go away!”


It was not a nightmare of being swallowed by female sand that awoke Ben, it was the two desert foxes who were bringing their squabble closer and closer to his head. As the fire was dying, before we all went to bed, we had seen two wonderful little beige foxes skittering around our camp. They were very interested in the grill that the chicken was cooked on. We could hear their little growls of delight as they wrangled with any leftovers they found. Our guides had told us that we might feel the foxes run past us, or over us, throughout the night, but that they shouldn’t really bother us. Ron, of course, was convinced they’d be gouging out his eyes as soon as he nodded off. (Traveling with Ron and Ben can be like bearing witness to a Worry-Wart-of-the-Year competition. They’re like two old men trying to one-up one another in guessing all the ways they could die in that instance. It’s a hoot!)

The foxes darted off following Ben’s yelling and we all settled back down again. Ron decided he’d head over to pigeon rock since he was awake, so he grabbed a flashlight and walked around the left side of the rock. I lay there waiting for him to return and watching the band of the Milky Way above us slowly ripple across the sky. Eventually I sat up and tried to see if Ron was heading back. It was so dark I couldn’t really even see pigeon rock, despite its size. Then suddenly I saw off to the far right a bobbing light; like someone walking around with a flashlight. I wasn’t sure if Ben and Jim were awake, so I quietly said, “Is that Ron out there? Why’s he walking back and forth?” From the pile of bedding to my right a sleepy Jim muttered, “He’s been doing that a long time.”

Ben volunteered to go bring him back to camp, so I waited now for both of them to return. Ben returned, said he’d spoken to Ron who had just gotten a little turned around, and he’d be heading back soon. So I waited some more, watching as the bobbing flashlight started to get smaller and smaller.

This wasn’t good. He was heading the wrong way! So I donned my shoes, grabbed a flashlight and headed out to retrieve my husband. I was just passing pigeon rock, calling out Ron’s name, waving my flashlight around, when Ron suddenly said, “Ben?” “No, it’s your wife.” I answered. (The fact that he mistook my voice for Ben’s is a matter for another day.)

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I got turned around. I wasn’t sure which way was camp.”

“Why didn’t you head towards the campfire?”

“I thought that was an enemy camp. I couldn’t figure out where you all were.”

Enemy camp? Did everyone fail to tell me we were camping in “enemy” territory? It was too late to argue the lunacy of that statement, so I just led him back to our non-enemy camp. We made it through the rest of the night without any more fox squabbles or wayward wanderings.



We awoke the next morning just before sunrise, so we grabbed our cameras and set out to explore and find different views of the sunrise over the White Desert (once you get home and review all the photos, you realize how many practically-identical shots you took, over and over).

I did enjoy examining all the various animal tracks that surrounded our camp. Some obvious fox tracks, but then other not-so-obvious ones that someone suggested might be scarab tracks and who knows who else.



There was a bit of an issue with our guides sleeping in late that morning, so much so that the policeman (we never did get his name, he was less than chatty with us) eventually had to wake them up. They did provide hot tea and toasted bread with jam for breakfast and then packed up all the gear and we headed out. We stopped only once or twice on the way back to Bawiti.

Before we headed home however, we did want to put some more air in the tires and get gas. So our ever-professional guides led us into town to the gas station, and would have made it had their car not run out of gas itself a few blocks away. The perfect cap to a weekend with guides who continually proved their unpreparedness. You could say we got what we paid for, because if our memory is correct, it cost us about $60 each for the two nights, guides, and food, however based on my experience in Egypt so far, this is about what I would expect from anyone. And the bottom line is that we had a phenomenal time (and it helps to go into most situations with an open mind and low expectations).

We did get gas and air, and checked out at the Desert Police Station as we left. You could almost hear the sigh of relief that the American Dips were safe and sound and Obama would be happy. Then we headed out for the long dusty ride home.

Again, I didn’t spot any wildlife scampering around the desert, however I did see several dust devils (little sand tornadoes just wandering across the ground), which was always amusing, and one or two bemusing signs as well.

We were quiet on the way home; each of us digesting our weekend of adventures and misadventures (it’s a fine line in Egypt). But I think it will remain one of the most-unusual, most-amazing, and most-beautiful trips we'll take in all of Eygpt. At least until the next time.

Inter-Planetary Camping – Part Four

By this point it was nearing lunch, so after getting a mere glimpse into the vastness of the Black Desert, we hopped back onto the highway (with a great sigh from Ben) and were taken to “Oasis Cafeteria,” a local lunch dive. Thinking this might be my last chance for western plumbing I checked out the facilities. It was “western” in that the four stalls were tiled nicely, but the hole in the ground bordered by foot indicators in each stall made me yearn for Badry’s. Hence began my attempt at following the camel method of water storage.


Following a leisurely lunch, we headed out into the desert. Or maybe I should say, even further out into the desert. Along the way we passed another "guide" truck highly laden down with rugs, blankets and tables for the valiant campers.

Just before we arrived at the entrance to the White Desert Protectorate (which encompasses 115 square miles), we came to “Crystal Mountain.” Considering the scope of what we’d seen already, I think we were all expecting a towering creation of sparkling wonder that would induce ooo’s and ahhh’s to rival any good fireworks display. Instead it was a natural outcropping of quartz crystals that left us less than enthused. Yes, it sparkled, a little. And yes, there were some pretty rocks around, but I think the marketing campaign stretched itself a bit with the “Crystal Mountain” thing, maybe “Crystal Rock” would have been better.



Regardless, we appreciated it, dutifully took lots of photos, and then moved on. Now we were entering the White Desert. Based on photos I’d seen of it, I was expecting an almost arctic landscape, dotted with huge white chalk formations looking like casual snowdrifts. In reality, it was far more impressive.

But, before getting there we had one more significant off-roading hurdle to overcome. Too bad we failed.

Islam was in the lead car and as we came around a bend into a large open area he took off, spinning and fish-tailing and spraying sand in as many directions as possible. By now we were used to his antics, so Ben stopped the car and we just waited until the off-roading demonstration was over. However, as we watched, Islam careened through a sand dune and then seemed to stall out. We watched and waited and realized that they were semi-stuck, but doing all the revving and wheel twisting needed to get un-stuck.

At this point Ben felt that the jocularity had reached its peak, so we decided to avoid the area Islam was currently spinning in, race through the middle and wait for him on the other side of the clearing. Good idea in theory. Not so great in practice. About two-thirds of the way through we hit the dreaded “female sand” and quickly became bogged down. Despite all his training and instinct, Ben couldn’t get us out of this one. By this point, Islam had wiggled his way free from his female-sand clutches and came over to help us out. The more we tried to get out, the deeper we sunk.


We tried various methods for digging out, including using a plastic water bottle cut in half to help dig and dragging large flat rocks over to place under the wheels. Another set of guides, with their two campers, came along and lent their help too. So at this point, we had one Desert Policeman, four “professional” guides, Ron, Ben and Jim (I was the documentarian). And amongst everyone who had come out to the White Desert for a camping outing, we had no shovel and no tow-rope. (As a side note, I will give credit to Ron for requesting that I buy a tow-rope before we came to Cairo and I thought he was just being silly – however, being that we were not in our car, we did not have said tow-rope. Not the brightest are we.)

Following several unsuccessful attempts to tie pieces of cloth together to act as a tow-rope, they were all finally able to get the Xterra out of the female sand and onto the safe, hard, secure male sand (sighs and cheers all around).

From here, our caravan of now three cars (with the extra guides) traveled another few hundred yards and crested at the top of a mountain overlooking an expanse like I’ve never seen before.

The vastness of the landscape cannot be properly conveyed in photos or words. We sat at the top of the hill for quite a while, taking photos, relaxing, gazing.

If you look at these photos below, you can see two very small figures way way out there. Those were the other two campers who had opted to walk down the mountain. I can’t deny that I fully expected a Landspeeder to whiz by at any moment. The mental “Star Wars” references were hard to ignore.


Never one to miss an opportunity, “Idea Man” Ron tried to start a trend of making sand angels. It didn’t catch on.

When we’d all had our fill and were ready to head on in to the unknown, we buckled ourselves back in the car and following Islam’s lead (though Ben was having some rather colorful nicknames for him by this point), we flew down the mountain at break-neck speed. It was fantastic!

We continued our explorations, stopping here and there, grabbing some photos, having an impromptu foxtrot which, despite Ron and me not practicing regularly, we did fairly well. Until Ron tripped on a volcanic rock and called it quits, that is.

If you check out the White Desert online, you will see a slew of photos of stark white chalk formations, ranging from knee-height, to several hundreds of feet tall. These have all been formed by the wind, over all these years, gently and silently carving them out. The end results are a huge variety of shapes. We saw the chicken and egg paradox (I had to hug the chicken).



We saw the Loch Ness monster.

We saw, quite possibly, a first draft of the Sphinx.

We saw a bunny.

And we saw lots of “mushrooms” or “trees” or “spaceships.” Whatever you want to call them.





But after I got over the initial amazement and started to look past the individual formations, I was suddenly struck by the overwhelming feeling of being on a remote distant planet, so far from Cairo, the U.S., even Earth itself. It’s hard to believe that we didn’t have to travel through space to see this.



There were a handful of other cars around, but even with people milling about it was not difficult to find an area with no living being in sight. And coming from the mountains we had been climbing over all day, to come to a land so flat and so strange took some sensory adjusting.

Inter-Planetary Camping – Part Three

We woke up to a sunny day with a light breeze. We all enjoyed the shower facilities, knowing we were headed for the land of no-plumbing, ate breakfast and relaxed. After packing up and making sure our guides (Islam and Suada) had everything they (and we) needed, we headed out back into town.

Here’s when we realized the "Dip" stir we had caused the previous day. Apparently having four American Dips wandering through the White Desert may cause President Obama some concern (we were actually told, “We don’t want Obama to be mad.” We assumed the end of that phrase was something like, “… if anything happened to you.”) So after waiting at the Desert Police station for an extended period of time, one officer was finally chosen to accompany us on our overnight trip. So he climbed in Islam’s car and we now became Six Men and Julia: Camping.

As we headed out of Bawiti, we were able to capture some of the town scenes (we liked the sign this one camp had, offering "Rooms with pathroom" - the "P" and "B" issue in Arabic can be amusing at times):












We followed the two-lane highway for a while, but then Islam veered off onto the sand and much to Ben’s chagrin, we began our off-roading adventure. Yesterday, as we were relaxing around the camp, Badry, the man himself, stopped by to chat. We talked about his expansion efforts, the new generator that allowed a constant flow of electricity (this was new), his family, etc. Then he gave us his advice on life, love and off-roading. It all came down to this: there are two types of sand, male sand and female sand. Male sand is hard, unmoving (uncompromising), and female sand is soft and yielding. The latter will suck you in and trap you; at least according to Badry. So for the next 24 hours Ben must have muttered a hundred times, “Stupid female sand,” as we were spinning our wheels, or “Avoid the female sand!” I fear this has caused an even greater setback in his relationship desires.

So our first stop on our off-roading desert adventure was in the Black Desert. These golden volcanic formations are covered in black rock deposits. It looked like cookie crumbles everywhere. (I’ve done extensive online research and can find very little about this area. Some sites say these are iron deposits, other basalt deposits.) Regardless of the geology of the area, the terrain was slowly becoming other-wordly. To be in such a surreal environment, and to see no evidence of any other living being, was a remarkable feeling.


We all took a moment to marvel, oogle, and take in the wonder. Ben started calculating the best apertures and f-stops for the scenery, Jim felt the moment should be marked with a beer and Ron grabbed the chance to introduce the Ericsson Alien to, well, possibly the closest thing to his home planet. (The stuffed penguin is “Tux” and belongs to Ben. How is it that I’m the only girl on this trip and didn’t manage to bring a doll?)




Once we collected everyone back in the vehicles, we continued on. We stopped again below a volcanic formation that took our breath away. Thinking back, these sights just kept getting more and more amazing, but in comparison to what was coming, these were miniscule.