Egypt - Ananda Camp (Taba / Nuweiba)

The next part of our journey was THE reason we were in Egypt; For me to attend Itzhak’s Yoga Massage course!

The boys and I took a courageous 18hr bus ride from Luxor to Dahab. The bus wasn’t all that bad except for the fact that it did not stop for food and we were absolutely starving. Upon arriving at Dahab, we were exhausted and decided to check into the Hilton for a 1 night reprieve from back-pack fatigue.

The 10 days at Ananda Camp were amazing; time just flew by. The boys had a great time playing with all the people at the camp; Isreali & Egyptian friends - selling sea-shells, painting, chopping up the fence for a science project, catching crabs, fish and digging huge man-size holes!!!! The camp was really isolated and Amr would take them to the gas station (22km away!!!) for a treat to buy ice-cream if they had been good............ haha!!!

I, one eye on the boys, the other on Itzhak, as I did my 3rd massage course in 6 months!! I know, I am probably going a little OTT, but the course was great. Going back to basics was essential; after learning all the fancy technical stuff at Arnaud's course, it was really good to be reminded about the philosophy behind what we do and understand why we practise this art....... to give in humility to others, to treat the physical body in order to give balance @ an emotional / spiritual level.............

(For more details about this part of the trip, check out http://www.yogabodywork.blogspot.com/)

Nile Cruise - Aswan - Luxor

We took the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan to start our journey along the Nile on a 5 star cruise ship. Needless to say, the 1st class trains in Egypt are awful. (But still much better than the 2nd class wagons that had no lights, people piled on top of each other along the aisles and overflowing from the compartments!!!)

The boys were so cute carrying their back-packs! (They didn’t think it was so cute to be walking around with em though!)

When we got to Aswan, of course we were not brought to the ship we booked; that would have been too simple. We were given some story about the ships being over-booked and being up-graded……. Ya right!!! Anyway, we had already paid, so we thought we’d make the best of it. I am not sure what the 5 stars were for, but we had a largish bath-tub on the upper deck disguised as a pool, a pretty comfortable room and all was good.

Our 5 star cruise ship, THE SERENADE!! We actually booked to go on the L'Aube du Nile...

Sound & Light Show @ Philae Temple

The walls of the temples were like giant size comic books. I believe this one told of the story of Horus taking revenge and defeating his uncle, the brother of Osiris for killing his father. In this pictoral, the evil brother was depicted in the form of a hippopotamus. He can also sometimes be drawn as a snake, donkey or.......em, I think crocodile.....

The walls are truely amazing. There are some that are medical journals (Enemas where already really big in those days), calendars etc....

It was a good thing that we decided to visit the temples with the cruise cos the temperature in Aswan, Edfu and Luxor was in the 60s. Yes, it is not imaginable……. We could hardly breath!! Anyway, there was only a Lebanese couple on their honeymoon and us in our group so the visits were nice. We did all the temples…… and all the temples pretty much morphed into one………. Since I am writing this more than 2 weeks post-motem, I can’t remember most of it anymore! There was the Temple of Philae (in honor of Isis), where we watched the astronomically over-priced and kitsch Sound & Light show, Kom omo (in honour of Sobek the evil crocodile God) and Horus, son of Isis, The valley of the kings, karnak temple, Nefretitit temple…………. It was all supremely interesting but I don't remember much of it.....

The sacred Scarab-beetle represents eternal life cos it is the only insect that is asexual (I think that is what it is when they have both male & female in the same body and are able to auto-reproduce.) This beetle was either in Luxor or Karnak but it is a very special beetle. Go around the beetle anti-clockwise : 3 times for luck, 5 times to be married, 7 times for children and 10 for money. Our little typical Sporean boys of course ran around the beetle 10 times!!!

The largest Obelix in the world - Temple of Karnak!!! (By Nephretiti, I think).

The famous Obelix in Paris was taken from the Temple of Luxor. There were actually 2 of matching obelix here. Mohammad Ali sent over one of em as a gift to France and you know what the stingy french sent to Egypt; a crappy clock that is now in the citidal in Cairo. haha.

@ Aswan Dam - the 2nd largest dam in the world after the one in Brazil (Don't ask me which one cos the guide couldn't remember...)

Anyway, the Dam was built with help from the Russians and this created the largest man-made lake, Lake Nasser. Thanks to the dam, the lands along the Nile are no longer as fertile as they used to be and the best......... they flooded AbuSimbel, Philae Temple and a bunch of other historic stuff. Unesco had to come and rescue the temples and move em to higher ground brick by brick.......... The things that we do to our environment in the name of development!!!

Boys sailing on the Felucca. My original plan was to sail the Nile on a Felucca. This would have meant 5 days on a boat with no toilets, no showers, no fans, no aircon and camping out under the stars............ I think it was a good thing we took the cruise considering how the kids took turns being violently ill that week. (Mixture of food poisoning, unbearably hot weather and the fly vomit from the week before??)

Egyptian museum & Bahariya Desert

Day 3 – Egyptian Museum
The lonely planet claims that you need 2 days to do the museum and we did it in 45mins! The boys said that they were completely overwhelmed and there was too much to take in, so asked to go for a long lunch instead. There was tons in the museum and it would have been very interesting had we had a guide with us. We focused our attention in the Tutankamum rooms. The mask of death was the must see item. It was amazing what these guys had in their tombs with them. It reminds me of our Taoist traditions a little. They go to the Netherlands or the underworld after they die and they bury with them things they need to help them in the after-life; including statues of servants and overseers (365 servants for everyday of the year and 36 overseers for each block of 10 days (I think)). Mathieu was of course super excited about quite a lot of the stuff as he studied it in school last yr. It was cool to see the jars in which they kept the organs and the different mummies. The mummies of the pharaohs were kept in a special area that cost another 100 EP entrance fee so we decided to give it a miss. I will probably have to come back to see it another time. The rest of the day was spent at Fafela restaurant and hanging out at the hotel........




















Day -4, 5, 6 Bahariya Oasis
Karim, the hotel owner, organized this trip for us and came along with us. The boys were of course thrilled and he was good company if not for the smoking and the incessant Egyptian music. He claimed to have given us a special rate at 300USD but we found the same at a travel agency down the road and this was before any bargaining and with private car transfers instead of the pubic bus. Knowing that it wasn’t the best deal, the boys still wanted to go with Karim as they felt that he was a friend. I guess service is still more important than price.

Anyway, the 5hr bus trip to the oasis was uneventful except for Stephan having the runs and us having to stop the coach numerous times.

We stayed at Bahir Sahara Camp the 1st day. It was charmingly rustic and we would have liked to have stayed a few more days if not for the gazillion flies and the primitive bathroom. The flies came out in swarms and literally covered the food. The boys of course could not eat and Nic was only too clear about how disgusting flies where and how they spat out poison on our food so that it would make the food ingestible for them (and this would cause food poisoning).








Boys making targets for target practice at the Oasis














The temperature is so hot that it is difficult to do much. We still had an eventful afternoon climbing sand mountains, swimming in hot springs (Only Mat got in the water. The rest of us where too hot and too grossed out by the mould in the cement tank to swim!), visiting the salt water lake etc…. It would have been nice to have a geologist with us to explain how all these amazing things are formed.
We saw mountains of crystal, sand corals (guess it must have been the sea before), white desert of chalk formations, black desert of volcanic deposits etc…….. It really was wonderful. I am ashamed to say that we were not very environmentally friendly as we took some stones with us when we left. (The Egyptians encouraged us to take a souvenir…. But I know, it is no excuse!)


"Kryptonite" mountain according to the boys!!
















Making sand angels (angels have not started flapping their wings in photo yet...) and drawings........ amazing what we can do!!!








I was ill the night we camped out in the white desert. I had such a bad cold that I took a flu tablet and crashed out, missing the glorious sun-set and the starry moon-lit night. I did make the sunrise though and this was spectacular. Somewhere in my drug induced sleep, I re-call the kids freaking out over the foxes that we were circling our camp-site waiting to eat our dinner scraps. The way back was rather tedious with 4 hrs in a 4x4 to get out of the desert followed by the 5 hr ride back to Cairo. This time, we did not have the luxury of the coach but had to take a micro-bus. We were packed like sardines and I had Stephan on my lap throughtout the trip. There was some disgusting odor in the bus that made us all want to puke and to top it off, we were stopped at the police check-point and not allowed to cross because tourist are not allowed on micro-buses. Someone paid some bachess after a good 15mins of raised voices…….. and we were allowed to leave.



Travel around Egypt is very restricted with police check-points in almost every town. We have to write a declaration that we do not require police escort to go from place to place if not, we would have to pay for the police to be with us. The worst scam is the tourist police that are supposed to be there to protect us but are in fact colluding with the tour guides and companies so that they have a cut of the pie too.







Meditation in the morning was glorious (but V V cold) Yes, finally a meal without any flies.......





Flower corals -> fossified corals........ beautiful!

Nic had his nose in his book (Eragon) ALL the time!!! I really love the fact that he loves to read but not to the point of being anti-social..........

Us in the Cold Spring (Cold = 38 degrees which was still quite disgusting, but cooler than the 45 degrees air temperature!!!)