Egypt summer 2011, HURGHADA part 2

Lots and lots of tourists

The next morning we woke up early to eat at the buffet restaurant downstairs which was included in our hotel room price.. The breakfast was perfect! There were plenty of good things to eat there and we spent time there getting ready for the day by eating enough! We also heard Finnish spoken there of which we weren't that happy from.. We grabed a taxi and left for Sakkala to find EgyptAir office to buy plane tickets from. We had to take two taxis because the first taxi driver didn't know where the office was. No wonder why, usually all the tourists have all-included trips so they don't need to buy any tickets. The office was hard to find but we eventually did find it. It was at the end of this supposed to be a tourist street with NO ONE THERE! :D We got the tickets to the plane we had searched online: on 14th of June to Sharm El Sheikh. We took a taxi back to our hotel and the driver was so creepy and scary! The first time we were really scared that something would happen and we were in a tourist destination! The driver was gross. We had to take his number and promised to call him (NOT!), we made all kinds of excuses that our husbands were waiting for us at the hotel and stuff. We got back to the hotel safely and nothing happened but he was scary! 

We headed to the beach of our hotel. The hotels had their own areas from the beach. We didn't even find any public beach so we had to go to our hotel's beach full of tourists with tourists prices also! There were plenty of activities set up for them for example zumba, volleyball and pool exercises. We ended up buying a snorkling trip for 180 pound /head for the next day from 8.30am-5pm. Some people told us we got absolutely ripped of but I didn't think so. We compared the prices and this was a real trip to the sea. It was actually a diving trip so we would be the only ones snorkling. First we were suggested a trip with only Finnish people! That would have been my nightmare! :D and it didn't appeal to me either that there would be hundreds (..well at least many..) of other snorklers on the water at the same time. 

We left to our pool the hang out because there weren't so many people there. We had a nice time listening to the Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On from the pool's radio or some place. At the pool we watched a punch of New Zealanders and Australians playing water ball. Most of the girls and also many of the guys were really big. That's what caught our eyes. :D Despite from the sunblock, for the first time on the trip, I burned from the sun and Saija was totally eaten by mosquitos (they were itching in the sun) so we got enough from the sun. We decided to go check out the free of charge gym! We found the gym and it was mostly held as the staff's tv room.. There were only staff members hanging in the airconditioned room watching tv. We would have had to pay for using it and there weren't that much stuff we could have done there, so we decided to give it up. Instead we went to our room to get an exercise by ourselves. We put the counterpane on the floor and then we did push ups, abs, back and some leg muscles. :D

In the evening we tried to walk to the different direction to find some place to eat at but we found nothing! After walking around 30 minutes we found one restaurant and we were looking at the menus outside when the owner asked us "ootteks Suomest?" (are you from Finland?) and our mouths dropped when the man started telling us his story. He had been married to a Finnish woman for over 25 years and most of it they had lived in Helsinki right at the center. He had two children who both had Finnish names and now he was divorced and had moved back to Egypt and opened up his own restaurant. Again, what a small world. Anyway, we didn't want to stay there to eat because it was a little too expensive for us. We left to eat at the same place as yesterday because the view and the food were good there. :) The walk there would have been long so we decided to take a taxi for the short maybe 2km ride. We had learnt (especially in Hurghada) to be careful to negotiate the price beforehand because the drivers could agree on 5 pounds but later say that they were talking about us dollars.. So I  agreed with the driver that it was five egyptian pounds and the driver agreed with me. When I was paying him he went nuts! He told me that he had been talking about euros, so for the max 2km ride he would have wanted 35 pounds and that amount in Cairo for example we almost could have had a driver for a whole day! When we wanted to get of and I gave him the money (5pounds!) he went absolutely crazy and told us that we were liars and cheating and whatever! He didn't want to take the money (at that point Saija was already outside) so I left the money on the back seat and quickly took of. Maybe he went crazy 'cause he had thought that the two young girls are easy money and we would get scared and would have paid him the amount he wanted. The taxi drivers were scary!

 

After eating we walked past (or at least tried to) couple of shoe shops.. I bought two shoes for 25 pounds ( 3,5€!!) each and one pair of Nike's winter shoes for 185 pounds (25€!). The starting price for the Nike shoes was 395 pounds!!! I already once walked out from the shop and the owner ran behind me.. :D What a show!

Then we went to our nearest supermarket to get stuff to fill our fridge again mostly with water bottles and sodas. Then we were hanging in our room and taking it easy and early to bed to get ready for the next days snorkling trip.

Inside the boat

On 11th of June we were picked up in front of our hotel in the morning. There was this Finnish looking man wandering in front of our hotel like he was lost. When we got into the car we left to pick some other tourists from some other hotel. And from there this same man came into the car. It was maybe after a minute when the same man from the back seat asked us "ootteks te Suomesta?" (are you from Finland?). The man was around a 50-year-old gay man from Helsinki travelling alone. So much for speaking in private with Saija for the whole day.. We drove to the harbour and picked up snorkling equipment for us and then headed to the boat. The boat was really nice and there was maybe 15 other tourists with us, mostly older couples. We hang outside on the deck of the boat. When the boat was heading towards the coral reefs the Finnish man came to sit near us and told that he was doing some diving course and all the assignments were in English and that he didn't speak fluent English so I tried to help him out the best I could.

Coral reef

At the first coral reef we were a bit confused about what to do because no one told if we could go to the water or not. We put our gear on and finally hopped to the water. This one man working at the boat was sent to come with us.. :D maybe we looked so confused that they thought we would loose the boat or get lost in the ocean or something.. :D The water was so clear and bright blue and the weather was perfect like every day. In the water we saw so many different coloured and shaped fish swimming at the coral reef which was just below the water surface. It was really easy to swim even though it was very windy and lots of waves. We had the whole sea for us since we were the only snorklers but still me and Saija collided into each other in the sea. We also had quite a few hysterical laughs about something in the water and the man with us must have thought that we lost it for good..

Ready to hit  the water and the coral reef

Going to diving with Arnold

At the boat there was working our age boy named Arnold from Holland. We was a really nice guy and kept us company the whole day. He had gotten tired of his live in Holland and wanted to leave everything behind and try something new. So he had educated himself to be a diving instructor and had moved to live and work in Hurghada. Arnold offered that we could try diving with him for a while for free. Diving with him was so cool though it hurt me ears even though I tried to even the pressure. I could see the coral reef much deeper than just benieth the surface. It was really nice! :)

We also visited another coral reef near by and swam there also. We also had a good time laughing to that Finnish man because he was so confused all the time about everything! He for example had the snorkel pipe upside down. All the staff at the boat laughed at him and told us that it's gonna be a hard time for him to pass that diving course..

Getting a massage from Tamer

The boat ride back to the harbour was really nice and the time went past quickly. We burst into laughter when we asked the Finnish man to take a pic of me and Saija and he told us "I'm wondering if there is a zoom on or whether you just look so big.." At the back of the both there were two Belgian men, Arnold and Tamer who also worked at the boat and me and Saija hanging around. The guys had some kind of bet going on that Tamer wouldn't have to courage to give me a back massage but he ended up winning since I was happy to get a massage. :D Saija also got one from one of the Belgian man.

Belgian men and me. Which one is the brownest..? Me? :D

We were exhausted when we got back from the snorkling trip! We took a nap and when I woke up Saija wasn't sleeping, surprisingly.. We had created this joke with Saija because it seemed that everytime I woke up from the nap Saija was either eating or in the bathroom putting on make up, plucking eyebrows, putting nail polish on or something else. This didn't happen once or twice. It happened almost everytime! :D

After the nap we got ready and left for Sakkala to eat and to find some bar to go to. :) We asked the taxi driver to get us to a place called New Marina which was supposed to be this tourist area with restaurants and bars. When the driver told us we were there, we were in the middle of nothing surrounded by locals. Then we just started walking to one direction and totally got lost. We saw this 17-year-old looking boy and asked him for directions. The guy ended up being nearly 30-years-old and really annoying. He started walking with us but after being in the middle of nowhere again we didn't believe him anymore and took a taxi leaving the man on the street. We found the "shopping or the main street" called Sheraton St. where we found a Greek restaurant were we ate. The staff didn't speak any Greek. :/ It was almost 11 pm and we walked to this club called Ministry of Sound. The bouncers asked us to pay but we refused 'cause there was no line or anything. We started walking away but they shouted us to come back. We went inside and there was almost no one even working there yet! :D It was empty! :D We stayed there for 10 minutes and took off.

Bar Shade. Mark on the background also.

We started walking behind some other tourists and found ourselves to the New Marina where there were plenty of places to eat and drink. We went to a bar called Shade where this awesome live band was playing great songs! The band was really good! Arnold came there also to hang with us. We listened to the band and drank beer. I started talking to this Irish guy named Mark who was a teacher and had decided to spent his summer holiday living in Hurghada. He had just arrived there. We was a really nice guy (and good looking ;) ) with the deepest voice I have ever heard nor will I ever hear! First I thought that he must have some throat cancer or something. :D Me and Saija kind of run out of money what we had with us and the bar closed already at 1 am so I changed numbers with Mark and me and Saija left to the hotel. We took a taxi from this young boy who wasn't irritating like the rest of the drivers outside the New Marina gates. After sitting in the taxi maybe 100 metres we came to the same spot from which we had started walking to some direction and gotten lost. We had been that close to the place but we had chosen the wrong direction and had ended up walking over an hour..

Memories from the bar and the song we listened to with Mark :)

Egypt summer 2011, HURGHADA part 1

After the last night's wedding we were a bit tired to wake up early. We took our breakfast with us from our reception and left on to the street to catch a taxi which was much easier than we had taught it would be. We went to the bus station and there was no one there. We were there at 5.30 am and our airconditioned-tourist bus was supposed to leave at 6 am.

Saija buying the tickets for the bus

Taken from the bus

Taken from the bus

I slept the first four hours in the bus so it went pretty fast. We had heard that the bus ride takes less than 6 hours so when I woke up it was less than two hours left. That would go really fast we thought. The time went on really slowly and when we had travelled six hours in the none airconditioned bus we could only see sand from the windows..

Again, not many people spoke English on the bus, and on the tourist bus we were the only tourists. :D We asked from different people how long would it take and everyone told us different answers.. One man told us that it's only one hour more and one said that it still takes more than four hours. My stomach was killing me so I couldn't even eat anything. We had only one water bottle (at that point it was too warm to be drank) and two sodas.

The time just went on and on and we were so impatient to sit there! It was terrible! At 4 pm we were still on the bus and had been on the road for 10 hours! We stopped at Safaga and where we were told that it's one more hour. We didn't believe it. The bus driver drove the bus on the way that we sometimes thought that the bus broke down when he almost switched off the engine. It would have been just our luck that the bus would have broken down in the middle of nowhere.

Finally after sitting on the bus for over 11 hours we arrived to Hurghada! We got of from the bus and we were not exactly on the neighbourhood where we thought we would be. We thought that we could only see tourists and big hotels. Nothing. The bus station turned out to be more than 6km from the hotels. We took a taxi to our Three Corners Empire Hotel and when the driver stopped in front of it we didn't believe it could be our hotel. It was HUGE! It had metal detectors in front of the entrance and the reception and the lobby were huge. The hotel had three swimming pools, bar, two restaurants, shop, ATM, gym and other stuff. It looked like a five star hotel (it was only three stars?!). It was quite a big change for us when we had slept for example in a countryside at some tiny hut. Now we were surrounded by tourists.

The biggest swimming pool, taken from our balcony

Feeling a bit down..

We had our own big room with a balcony and we both had our own big beds. We had a tv, a fridge and air conditioning! When we opened our balcony doors we could hear some band playing next to the biggest swimming pool. The songs everyone knows, no more local music. We left to eat and immediately when we left from the hotel doors we were surrounded by irritating men from the souvenir shops. "Where are you from?! Sweden, Finland, Norway? Can you come to my shop and write to my notebook this sentence in Finnish?" And they really could speak Finnish! "Finland Finland, NOKIA NOKIA, mita kuuluu?" When we walked and tried to find some place to eat at this happened several times. I hated it. I didn't like it at all. The last night we had been in a local Nubian wedding with local traditions, language, music and stuff and now the ugly men were trying to use us to get us buy something for ridiculous high prices talking Finnish to us! When I'm abroad I don't want to talk Finnish! I want to get to know the country I'm in and its lifestyle and language etc..

We found a nice restaurant or cafe towards the sea.

After we had eaten we walked back to our hotel and just relaxed on our room for a moment. Listened to the music coming from outside our balcony and watched a bit tv also before going to sleep.

Coming to Hurghada we knew that it was supposed to be this tourist location but after all we weren't surrounded by that many hotels or tourists than we had expected. All in all we found Hurghada being confusing, maybe it was because it was big or something. We got lost many many time! The city is divided into different section, like El Dashar (where our hotel was) and Sakkala where the most tourists are. The city was just weird or maybe we were just stupid for not figuring it out.. As a tourist destination there was supposed to be many tourist shops and clothes stores etc. but we didn't find that many.. Personally I didn't like the city at all! All the locals we spoke to told us that it's made for tourists and all "the locals" have moved in from different parts of Egypt just to work there. The city was also dirtier than the other parts of Egypt where we had been.

Originally we were supposed to take a ferry to Sharm El Sheikh after staying 6 nights in Hurghada but we heard that all the ferry connections were cancelled because the ex-president Mubarak was in a hospital in Sharm. So our options were to sit in a bus for over 11 hours or catch a flight. Guess which option we chose?

• On the whole trip we were thought of being under 18-years-old. All the time. Most often I was the younger one at the age of 16! This really happened ALL THE TIME! :D 

Egypt summer 2011, ASWAN part 3

The next morning we had a date with Mostafa at the internet cafe downstairs to get the number to the hotel in Hurghada and call there. After that we bought more sun tan lotion, some snacks and water to go and headed to Mostafas boat and towards the same place where we had spent time yesterday. It was a great great day! We enjoyed the sun, swam, hopped from the roof of his boat, swam to the rocks, watched camels near by, played in the water. There were also couple of other boats with local families cooling in the water and the kids playing around and of course watching us. We ate some watermelon, bread and other stuff. We were there until 4 pm and then left back.

Mostafa invited us to see his other apartment in Aswan (the other one was in the Elephantine Island). We bought some dinner with us (fish from the River Nile) and ate it at his apartment. The flat was in this hill in Aswan with many apartment buildings there. The flat was a nice and rather big with a lot of carpets and other rugs there. When Saija was standing on this small balcony which faced towards an open area where some kids were playing and when they saw Saija they stopped their games and started whispering and waving to Saija. When we left from the apartment all the kids (around 25) came to us and the bravest ones started talking with us in english. They were so cute!! They asked our names and where we were from and how old we were. The youngest one could barely stand by herself. We left by car and the children ran next to the car waving us goodbye. Mostafa took us to our hotel and we agreed on seeing around 10 pm. We took nap and backed most of our stuff before leaving to the wedding.

We saw Mostafa at his boat at 10 pm and he drove in front of the Elephantine Island where we had to wait. We waited for two hours sitting in the boat! We had company from couple of his friends for instance the chief's son was there with us. At first it was really boring just to sit there! But time went past really fast and I enjoyed myself. I was sitting on the edge of the boat, one leg in the warm river and at the same time I was admiring at the starry sky. Mostafa and his friends tried to teach us arabic and nubian language. We listened to music from our phones. I also recorded Akon's No more you from Mostafas phone to mine. :) After waiting for two hours something started to happen. People gathered on the dock and they all started to climb into boats. There were three boats of people (not all of them full though). Finally the boats took of into the middle of the River Nile. Then all the engines very switched off and all in all five boats were fixed together floating in the river. Most of the people went to the boat in the middle but we stayed on the next boat. On both edges of the boat line there were one man on each to make sure that the boats stayed at least almost in the middle of the river. Once in a while they had to put the engines on to move the line. There were both woman and men on the boats. They had drums and man did they play them loud! They sang some traditional Nubian songs both sad and glad (we didn't recognize any difference). The noise that came from them was so loud! They didn't have any microphones or anything! It was amazing to watch them move, dance and sing their songs. Everyone was so into it and not one member on the boat stayed silent. Mostafa tried to teach me some nubian dance, but I sucked at it. We were watching them for a little over two hours when we told Mostafa that we wanted to leave and get some sleep. We took the boat from the end of the line and he drove us in front of our hotel and walked us to the street. We hugged him goodbye and promised to remember him! We won't forget the nubian  little village boy with Akon's No More You as his ringtone! From our hotel window we could still hear the drums playing somewhere in the middle of the River Nile.

Mostafa's ringtone and the song that reminds me of Aswan and the great time we had there. Since then it has also been my ringtone.

Learnt in Aswan:

• The men there didn't wear the gowns so much than in Luxor
• Nubian people with their own culture and spoken language
• Gasserekom = thank you in Nubian
• The weddings are usually two days, the first day is a henna day (people have A LOT of henna tattoos on themselves) and the second day is the party day (that's what we were told but different info can be found from the net)
• The River Nile flows from Aswan to Cairo not the opposite way we thought.
• Aswan is as high as the tip of the Cairo's highest pyramid

Arabic:

• Ismik e? = what's your name? (to a woman)
• Ismak e? = what's your name? (to a man)
• Ana Ira = my name is Ira
• Andak kamsana? = how old are you? 
• Hamdulellla = I'm good
• Ana zort Masrr = I have been in Egypt
• Masr jemila = Egypt is beautiful
• Bas har sjuwaia = But a little hot

Egypt summer 2011, ASWAN part 2

On Tuesday 7th of June we left to the Elephantine Island in the morning. We took a boat to the island and it didn't take that long. We entered the Island and saw nobody anywhere when suddenly this old man came to talk with us and told us he's going to show us around the island for a little money in return. We told him that we can get around by ourselves and we didn't like the man at all. Well, that wasn't okey for him so we had to let him show us the Island. The man was the chief of the village and one of the elderly of their people. The people who lived in there were Nubians. Not Egyptians, Nubians. They had their own spoken, not written, language. The Nubians have their own culture that is different from the egyptians. Nubians have their own dresses, dances, traditions and music for example.

We walked through the village and got to see a lot of their traditions and the way they lived. The chief showed us the school of the village etc. He took us to a house were this young Nubian woman made Henna tattoos for us (for a high price..!). But we were too embarrassed to start to haggle the price. I took a henna tattoo to my ankle with stars and my name written in arabic and Saija took some flower thingy in her arm. After the tour around the village the man started wanting money from us and he wasn't pleased at all to the money amount we gave him. We took a local ferry boat back and the payment was that you just left some money on the table whatever your conscience told you to leave.

Here's a video that I found from youtube. On the video you can see the chief that introduced us his village:
Nubian village

Like every other day it was really hot so we wanted to walked to the Isis-hotel to swim. Going to the same direction this Nubian boy called Mostafa started talking with us and I was really rude to him at first. (you'll never know what they'll want..) He was really patient with me and my angry answers to his questions. He walked with us more than 5 minutes and I started to like him when I noticed that he was just curious about us and he was being friendly. He offered to take us to this area mostly used by locals only and we could swim and relax there. It was his day off from work (he had his own boat and business) but he offered to get us there for a two hour trip and we would pay him something. We told him that we'll give him a call if we decide to accept his offer. 

At the pool we had so much fun when Saija noticed (while I was trying hard to sunbathe and get some colour since I was still white!) that there were three local men trying to paint the numbers how deep the pool is to the egdes of the swimming pool. Saija noticed that some of the numbers were incorret. It was supposed to say: 1,2 m but the number two was upside down, like a mirror image. I didn't beliave Saija so I got up to see. She was right and of course she wanted to correct it to the men that didn't speak english. Once we started to correct them, we did it throughly.. All the numbers were incorrectly marked down next to the pool and had already been painted. The deepest place in the swimming pool where I could barely stand with my head above the surface was marked as only 1,4 metres.. So they also had all the numbers wrong how deep it was at what place of the pool. Also when they meant to put 0.9m they put cm instead and didn't believe us when we told them that it is supposed to be metres. When they finally got their job done, after they had had to do it again several times after we had checked the numbers. We thought that since we were so nice and helped them out that they're gonna offer us something to drink, at least water. But no. Nothing. They just waved us bye and left. :D

We only had two hours of patience to stay put at the pool so we decided to call to Mostafa. The boat ride took around 20-30 minutes and the view was amazing! On the other side of the River Nile was the city and on the other side all you could see was sand. At some points the river was really rocky and Mostafa had to be careful not to drive too fast and he really had to know where all the rocks in the river were for not to hit them.

The place was called a Nubian Beach and it was really amazing! We were almost the only ones there and the sand was so soft and warm (hot). We had a great time hanging and sitting on the warm sun for couple of minutes at the time since after that we had to go to the water because it was too hot. Mostafa told us a story about this indian man called Ajakan who had visited Aswan many times. The man had some kind of rheumatism and in India he had been running from doctor to a doctor to get some help for his symptoms. Nothing helped. Not the medicine or anything. He had tried everything that he had heard of, even some herbal stuff and legends they knew in his town in India. Ajakan came to Aswan with his family for the first time and he heard from the local people about their old ways to treat people with his kind of symptoms. It was the magical sand on the Nubian beach. The sand was so soft and different from what I've ever come across anywhere. The sand was said to have this magical power because the sun kept it warm almost all the time. For example if you had knee problems you were supposed to sit on the sand and cover your legs to the warm sand. Ajakan thought that hey, why not to try it. The doctors in India had promised him less than 5 years to live. The sand did miracles for him. He could move and do everything better than before. Eventually he and his family moved to live in Aswan and the man lived much much longer than expected. Before his death the man dig a grave to him and his wife on the hills of the sand dunes. The graves they wanted to be buried into. The story felt like a was hearing this old urban myth or legend that were usually told around the bonfire from father to son.. :D

You can see the rocks to where we swam

Anyway, at the beach we had fun! At the shore we jumped of from the roof of Mostafas boat! We swam in the River Nile and we even swam to the nearest rocks even though to currents were really strong. And you needed to be a good swimmer the get there. Me and Mostafa jumped to the water from the rocks and it was about 3 metres to the water. First I couldn't even walk on the poiling rocks, when my feet got dry. Mostafa didn't even notice that the rocks were that hot and I couldn't walk there at all. After a while my feet got used to it at least a bit.  I was too scared to jump because I was afraid of the rocks benieth the surface. Mostafa knew the water like his own pockets and to places were the rocks were. He showed me exactly were I could jump and it was so cool! :D Swimming back to the shore was much much easier and we didn't even have to do anything because to current got us almost to the shore. :D

When we got back Saija and Mostafa's friend had disappeared from the boat and my bag was gone (I knew she had taken it). Then I saw one snow white hand moving behind the sand dune and we ran to see what happened. Saija and the other guy were riding on a camel!! :D Me and Mostafa also got a short and also a free camel ride. It was fun but also a bit scary because the camel was a bit stubborn and when he felt like it he just went down all of the sudden to rest.. After riding the camels we swam and hang in Mostafa's boat to get some cover from the sun and wait for the sun to go down. Our agreement for the two hour trip didn't go as planned 'cause we really fast became friends and had such a good time so it was like friends spending a day rather than that we had bought a business from him.

We waited the sun to start setting and then started to climb our way to the top of sand dunes! We had to wait because the sand would have been burning hot otherwise. The way up was sweaty, hard and long! It felt like walking without moving anywhere. The guys walked without shoes but me and Saija had flipflops on and they told us when we needed to use them when it was rocky. The rocks were sharp as knives! So we didn't want to get cut.

On our way up

Half way up and the view was quite something!

Finally we were at the top and we could see the whole Aswan! Our boat seemed so small when we saw it. We were at the top for almost an hour just admiring the view and enjoying the cool breeze from the wind.

Our boat

You can see the strong currents

Me and Saija holding the Sun :D

Then we decided to walk even higher to the other side of the sand dune to see where the sun was setting. We ran the hill up and it was a great excersise!! We were at the top. Couldn't get any higher.

Running up the hill

Coming down from the sand dunes was fast!! :D it only took a minute or so! :D The sand was so soft and still warm for the sun. While we headed back to the boat Mostafa's friend took of running to what seemed like a desert for us. Mostafa told us that they know the places and the sand like their own pockets. Their villages was just around some of the sand dunes so the friend left there to get us some sodas to drink.

Coming down

Back at the boat we finally left back to our hotel. First we picked up the guy from around the corner of the island. We were starving so Mostafa drove his boat in front of this restaurant where we ate. He kept us company. After eating we wanted to go to take showers with Saija and agreed to see him in a bit. After taking a shower we went to this bigger boat with a restaurant in it to drink beers. We were joined by Mostafas friends and we had a good time with them. :) Mostafa invited us to a Nubian wedding the next evening so we decided to stay one more night in Aswan. We would miss the first day of our hotel reservation in Hurghada but we didn't care and Mostafa kindly offered to call to the hotel to tell them that we're going to arrive one day later than expected. We were only a street across from our hotel so Saija left to sleep earlier and I stayed with the boys. We talked over two hours about everything like coverments, religions and the situation in Egypt. It was an interesting night with the boys. :) Mostafa walked me to my hotel at 3 am. And Saija, the magical girl with electronics, couldn't get our door open for a while, but finally I got in..

Shokran Mostafa for making our day so great and unforgettable!

Egypt summer 2011, ASWAN part 1

After sleeping less than three hours we woke up around 4 am to get ready for the hot air balloon ride! We had a really busy schedule after the hot air balloon so we backed our backpacks to be ready to just pick them up from the camp. Again, we waited outside our camp for the company to pick us up. We paid 300 pounds / head (40€) for the trip and it was totally worth it! The minibus driver had gotten my egyptian number from Ahmed and called me to make sure that we had woken up and came to pick us up. Along with some other tourists we were taken to this big open area on the West side where there were four huge air balloons being put up. We could already see the sunrising behind the scenery.

Our balloon

Sunrise, taken from the ground

We were told instruction on the ground: listen to your captain on board and when he tells you to take the landing position we were supposed to do it immediately. We watched the balloons getting bigger and bigger and finally they were up. Then we were told to run fast to the balloon and get inside the basket quickly. I started climbing inside it when this man took me to his lap and threw me in. :D Everything happened really quickly. Before we noticed we were up in the air. Our captain Mohammed introduced himself to us passengers. The basket was much bigger than you see in movies. The basket was divided into five different sections one of which was Mohammeds (in the middle). There were maybe 10-12 people with us in the basket.

The ride was amazing! The view to Luxor was something so indescribable! The sunrise was beautiful! And we could see the sights we had visited like: Colossi of Memnon and the Temple of Hatsepsutin. We also spotted our camp and our hut! :D We flew above the River Nile and admired the view! We had thought that the balloons would land to the same place where they took of but they just flew farter and farter away from the West side and we ended up landing on the East side on some field. The ride took 45 minutes and was totally worth the price and the early wake up!

Our camp, the biggest island (the white one on the right) was the island were we swam

Our camp, our hut was the blue hut on the left side

Buildings on the East side

When we landed to the East side and we really were in a minute schedule to catch our train. The company workers were the best! Ahmed had told them our timetable and they really took care of us! They told us to get into the minibus which was leaving first and we got a ride straight to the river and there they had a boat waiting for us to cross the river. The boat took us in front of our camp (the harbour were to boats were supposed to go would have meant 15 minute walk for us). All this time one of the company workers came with us to make sure we made it on time! We crapped our backs and Ahmed was waiting for us to get us back over to the East side were he took a taxi with us to the train station. We quickly bought some breakfast to go which was so bad we couldn't eat it.. We told thank you to Ahmed and we were the first ones on the platform just 10 minutes before the train was supposed to arrive..

Supposed to.. Well it never arrived. We sat there like idiots when we saw Ahmed coming back and told us that there is no train coming and we needed to take a minibus to Aswan. Great. Then we tried to figure out how to get our money back from the tickets because at that point we had around 5€ left.. Ahmed told us that we could get the money back from the tickets at 5 pm so he agreed that he gave us the money now and he would get the money back from the tickets in the afternoon. We went to sit inside this minibus outside the train station. There was maybe 12 seats + the driver. Before us there were already three men waiting for the bus to leave but it wouldn't leave before it was full. Also there we sat like idiots before we figured the thing out and got off the bus to the outside to wait. We waited an hour before we got the bus almost full and then the men started getting mad at the driver and he finally agreed on leaving.

The bus ride was terrible. It was so hot and we were really hungry! We sat on the back seat and I had one backpack right next to me on the right side and the other one under my legs. Saija sat on the left side and this old egyptian man sat on the right side. I couldn't move at all or move my legs. No one on the bus spoke english and we had a fun time laughing with the old man when we for example tried to ask how long does the ride take. He also watched fascinated while I wrote our journay or when I watched our pictures that we had taken on the trip. The bus ride took 3,5 hours and again we had no idea where to get off! The busride felt to take forever! When most of the other passengers took off so did we. Oh, and before the bus left from Luxor we paid to this younger man who shouted people to get into the bus trying to get it full, we thought that he was the driver. Well he wasn't. And when the bus made it closer to Aswan the driver started to collect the money from the passengers. The men looked at us a bit when we didn't pay.. We tried embarrassed to explain that we had already paid for the ride.. We didn't have enough money to pay it twice! (we would have paid it twice if we had had the money because it was so cheap).

We got off from the bus and put our backpacks on and tried to figure out what direction to go to. At the camp we borrowed this local mans computer to check some places to stay at in Aswan. We were standing at some bus station and we were surrounded by taxi drivers offering us a ride. We really couldn't accept their offers 'cause they were too high for us and our current money situation. Finally this one taxi driver understood what we were willing to pay and we hopped on. He took us to the hotel Memnon of which downstairs happened to be a bank! 

The view from our hotel window to the River Nile

We draw out money while around 20 army guys in this big trunk watched us. We made our way to the hotels reception and they also had plenty of room for us. We got our own room with a big window to the River Nile and we paid 7,5€/head/night. We chose the hotel because there was supposed to be a swimming pool but there wasn't so we left out to find this four star Isis-hotel with a swimming pool. The staff there were great to help us out. They even agreed on changing our big 200 pound (27€) money to smaller. 'Cause in Egypt you need to have small money like 5 pound notes! They had no changes to give back at you anywhere when you paid with "big" money. We swam at the pool for around two hours and it was sooo relaxing after the bus ride. We were basically the only tourists at the pool. There weren't many in Aswan altogether. After swimming we were starving and ended up at some local restaurant to eat good food with a low price. We walked through some Aswan bazaar but we didn't buy anything. Then we made our way to the train station to figure out what our next move would be in a few days and how to get to Hurghada. We learnt that we had to take a bus to there instead of a train. We also found an internet cafe just outside our hotel and we stayed there for a while then we went to bed early.

Sunset, taken from our hotel window