EGYPT

OK... After a short trip home which was well deserved after our little adventure thru India.. however the trip was more exhausting than travelling around.

We arrived in Cairo and it was bloody hot, we got into a line for immigration and it was massive i guess all the planes land at the same time. It look over an hour until we got to the front also with people pushing in and then razzing them to get to the end of the line..finally it was our turn to shine we stepped up to the desk and the man said no no no you need visa to enter cairo over at that desk.. so we went over to the desk got our $15 dollar visas turned around and the line was then double the size.. so we lined up again which we were so impressed about for another hour and finally got thru....hooray!!!!

We then had to wiggle our way thru all the people trying to annoy us with crap - taxi, touts etc we pushed thru them with a NO THANKYOU was my words lets not go there with what mark had to say... but it worked. We walked over to the local bus station which was not signed in English and the buses i would say had seen better days. It cost 2 pound which is around 50c to go half hour into the city. We then decided to walk to try and find accommodation which is always fun as we do it all the time, end up getting lost and then getting a taxi to a place.. However it was amazing we actually found some accommodation and it was the place we were looking for and the best part about it was it had McDonalds right across the road...lucky for us!! Accommodation wasn't quite ready to check in so we thought we would go have a snack at Macca's and then go back. So we had a guts full of food, went back to our room, thought hey its hot we might just chuck the air conditioning on and have a little nana nap for an hour and then go exploring once the weather had cooled down. 12noon our heads went down on the pillow, mark got up and turned the air off and i said hey just check the time... eeeek it was 12midnight, we must have been tired.. we were wide awake but tried to go back to bed we woke up at 4am and turned the light on and read for a bit... then we got up at 7am and had some breakfast.

We then decided to head to the Pyramids for a look. We arrived at Giza train station and walked out. People were offering to drive us to the Pyramids in a little minivan. It was so cheap we thought ok sounds good. They were trying to spin crap to us telling us that the main exit was for tourist buses and that they would take us to the individual ticket entry, the guy being dodgy rocked up at this camel and donkey stable where you can ride the animals around the pyramids. Mark then continued to tell the man that i was Hayley Peter was allergic to horses and that i couldnt possibly ride the animals around, then mark said take us to the real gate now or we wont pay you!! they then decided to take us to the 'tourist entry gate' which in the end turned out to be the right gate, dropped us on the road and said you can walked the rest of the way... it was only 200metres but it was hot and we were so angry.

The pyramids were amazing they were so big and the sphinx was so little. We got some great photos and couldnt believe that we were seeing them in real life. We had a chance to go into a real pyramid there was a guy that was sitting out front saying NO CAMERAS then saying ok ok its fine you can take photos so we went in and looked around an empty room we exited the free pyramid and mark ran off and the guy then tried to get money out of me as he 'let us' take photos i had no money so i said sorry mate then walked off.. mark was then hiding around the side of the pyramid laughing as he knew what the man wanted. Mark said lets walk around this massive pyramid and on the other side there will be some shade. We walked for about 3minutes and there was not one piece of shade any where i was on the verge of fainting it was so unbelievable hot!!! It would have easily been 45degrees. We (I) then decided to have some lunch and get out of the sun we found a pizza hut just out side the pyramid gates, stuffed down some pizza and a big fizzy and we had the best view of the pyramids. We were looking at the pyramid map and had discovered that we had left thru the wrong gate and we on the completely wrong side. We then entered the pyramids again having to go thru security they didnt seem 2 fussed. We then had to walk all the way over the other side around a 30minute walk thru the stinking hot heat and found our lovely air conditioned bus which was blowing musty gross air on us. We then decided to get out of Cairo so we caught the sleeper train south to Aswan which was $60US but it was nice. We hopped on at 8pm that night and arrived the next morning at 10am. We then found some accommodation and then went for a walk to see the sights which didnt take long, however we did find this little local place to eat which was really nice, it was over looking the nile we ate there for almost all meals, i think a guy called ronald mcdonald owned it...

We took a felluca for a cruise on the nile around some of the islands on sunset, it was pretty scary as the boat was really really little and the wind and waves were getting really really big.

The next morning at 3am yes 3am we got up and joined a convoy to head south to Abu Simbel, the convoy is used for security reasons. In Egypt the drivers say that they see with their eyes and not their lights. So it being 3am pitch black the driver decided to turn his lights off and then on and then off and then on and so on. He then decided that speed doesnt really kill and he wanted to see how fast he could drive with his lights off, getting up to 160km i then decided to give him a little noise to let his know that i was not impressed, he then slowed down and turned his lights back on. I was so scared but happy when daylight came. Abu Simbel was fascinating, the massive monument was great we got to walk inside, it had a sign and guards saying 'NO PHOTOS' mark ignored all and took some great shots, not that he wanted the photos he just liked being a rebel.

The next day we caught a train to Luxor after the train guy ripped us off with 'tourist prices' i lost my temper, not that it helped as we still had to pay the inflated price. We arrived in Luxor and stayed at this flash place for a good price as i haggle him down to basically nothing. We walked around the town looking at temples and ran into our good friend mr mcdonald (ronald) again it was such a coincindence!!!! We were walking passed all these horse and carts and one guy yelled out, hey you want a ride, and i said in a very angry voice ' NO BUT WHY DONT YOU FEED YOUR BLOODY HORSES' they were skin and bone it was so sad, he probably didnt understand me but i felt better.

We then headed to Hurgagha on the local bus it was only ment to take 6hours but we arrived there in 10hours so that was suprising them being 4hours late!!! There was a guy that was at the bus stop organising accommodation and ferry tickets so we jumped in with him and 2 other canadian fellas that we met. The driver was like our best friend showing us all the sights taking us to the ferry ticket office. We stayed at his hostel which was some dodgy little room that had no nothing, sheets were dirty the room was gross but it was cheap and it was only for one night. The next morning we were on our way to the ferry the guy didnt want to know us, he knew he couldnt sell us anything else and i think he wasnt happy about how much we complained about our room as he had lied to us about the condition of the place. He dropped us to the ferry and the 4 of us got out and walked over as we had to validate our tickets it seemed a bit dodgy so we didnt pay the dude. He then walked over to us demanded that we pay him at once and how rude it was of us to just walk away while he was waiting in the car, he got his money after we check our tickets were ok, he stormed off, and we laughed at him as he was so rude. We finally then caught the ferry over to Sharm El Sheik which was suppose to take 90minutes, it was the roughest ferry we have eva been on, we were getting air borne in some places and other places we were almost tipping over. One of the Canadian guys after an hour of shaking then started to vomit into his fruit bag, mark then looked over and wasnt feeling to flash either, i was trying to encourage him to be sick as it would have been a great story to send home, but he did deep breathing for a while and started to have contractions it was so funny i was laughing so hard. I looked out and seen some dolphins i said to mark about it and he snapped at me 'I DONT WANT TO SEE BLOODY DOLPHINS I WANT TO SEE DRY LAND' I was in tears it was just so funny..... after 3hours of very very rough water we finally arrived on the other side of the red sea on the sinai peninsula. We walked around Sharm El Sheik but the whole place was a rip off, it was very touristy and that ment the prices of everything were ridiculous!! The four of us then haggled a taxi driver to take us to Dahab which took 1hr he was a maniac driving way to fast mark told him to slow down and then said 'IF YOU DONT SLOW DOWN YOU NOT GETTIN PAID' he then slowed down. When we arrived mark paid him and said praps with this you could get some driving lessons.

Dahab was beautiful it was relaxing right on the beach we had nice accommodation for once and the food was great and it was all cheap. We went snorkelling and ate then ate some more and then ate some more, this time ronald wasnt there which was good so we got to try local dishes. Unlike the rest of egypt the locals were really friendly. We could have spent a week there just relaxing on the beach but only had a couple of days to get back to Cairo. From the beach we could see Saudi Arabia 10km across the water. We had to organise tickets for the bus to get back to Cairo so we hired a taxi which was a yellow 1950 jeep, the guy was a true egyptian which a turbin on his head all dressed in a white dressing gown. We broke down 3 times on the way to the bus stations, which was only 5km, on the way back it stopped again and the guy asked us to get out and push, mark tried to get it cheaper, while mark pushed i thought it was a good opportunity to get a good photo, a car pulled up behind us and helped us on our way, in the end we broke down about 5 times, lets just say in the morning we decided to get a different taxi to the bus station.

We caught the bus back to cairo and went straight to the airport ready and flew to Nairobi Kenya...................