Thursday 20 May 2010

Baksheesh and Escorts

Four tired, dirty, excited Gummi Bears elbowed their way off the boat onto Egyptian soil and were met with chaos and total disorder. What can only be described as a stampede of crazy people frog-marched their way through three barriers to rush to ... hmmm, I'm still not quite sure what the rush was about.

Karma came to bite them all in the butt when the man with the power to let people through handpicked the few of us not trying to maul and flatten our neighbors. Naturally the four of us accepted this invitation.
We have been ripped from the developing world and slapped, like a baby's bottom at birth, with the tourism assembly belt that is Egypt. 50plus of these ginormous hotel boats sat on the Nile in Aswan and all overflowing with pink tourists in mini shorts, wife beaters, big hats and cameras glued to their noses. It took us a while to come to terms with flush toilets, aircon, swimming pools, wi-fi in our rooms and food that doesn't have negative after effects. Although we all loved the real Africa it is surprising how quickly you can readjust.

Felucca boats on the Nile >>>
While waiting for the car to arrive on the barge which was a few days behind us, the Gummi Bears explored the Temple of Isis by night and the souk (market) by day. The touts and locals are on full tourist alert and you cannot step out of your hotel without being offered a felucca (boat cruise) ride, taxi, curios or a horse-drawn carriage ride.

Danny and Jill on the felucca to the Temple of Isis light show >>>
Campbell and the felucca captain >>>
Chilling out on the Nile >>>
The Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens was blisteringly hot but amazing. Unfortunately there was a hefty fine for taking any photos so sorry folks, no pictures for you.
Colossus of Memnon >>>
Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple >>>
This brings a new meaning to a camel ride in Egypt >>>
Baksheesh can be loosely translated as a tip, bribe or bonus for services offered. It's a part of the Egyptian culture and is widely accepted as wages are generally quite low. In East Africa we had the stereotypical dirty street child with the extended belly, snot running down their faces and flies in their eyes beg us for money and at times like these it is hard to say no. It has taken some getting used to when well dressed Egyptian children rush over in packs smiling, healthy and giggling hellos in our direction and then fling a "baksheesh, baksheesh" at us.

The road to Aswan and Luxor went by with the expected temples, heat and long roads and a familiar friend has returned - the speed hump. Kaspuur was last abused by this traffic calming devise in Tanzania but that was nothing in comparison to Egypt. Next to the Pyramids if Giza, speed humps are their national treasure.

Our journey from Luxor to Cairo was at best utterly bizarre and quite scary. We decided to make the trip to our African overland finish line over two days and stop in the not-so-small town of Asyut. Little did we know that there had been some trouble in these parts a month earlier. We were therefore baffled when a police escort was forced on us en route to Asyut, another two police escorts were allocated (one inf ront and one behind us) to take us to our hotel, a personal escort to take us out of the hotel to get food and drinks, several escorts to get us out of town and four hours out of Asyut. All this time, no-one would tell us why this was necessary. We found out when we got to Cairo.
One of our escorts >>>


We figured it was for our own protection but the people and the roads were perfectly safe with nothing but the usual donkeys, camels, speed humps, small children, tuk tuks and bikes in the road.

5 comments:

  1. Just going to pretend that it's the royal treatment that you guys got. And not that you were in life-threatening danger. Glad you guys made it to Cairo safe and sound.

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  2. love the camel ride photo. that's too funny!!!!!

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