egypt

egypt is a pretty cool place. we set off a on a whirlwind seven day tour, 16 of us in total. started off with a 3 hour train to geneva airport, 4.5 hour flight to sharm-el-sheikh, 2 hours in the airport, 1 hour flight to cairo, then a bus to our hostel. long long travel day.

arrived in cairo, the drive to the hostel was a sign of things to come. basically traffic rules do not apply, you can drive anywhere regardless of lanes, traffic lights, pedestrians, other cars, bicycles, and instead of signaling or headlights you can just use the horn. so arrived to this pretty good hostel, the guys there were super helpful and gave us a lot of suggestions of stuff to do, things to watch out for etc. settled in and quickly went out for dinner - the walk just down the street was some pretty big culture shock, not actually as dirty as i would have expected, obviously we stuck out like a sore thumb as tourists, so got 'invited' to sit down in the many cafes on the way to this recommended restaurant. lots of people hangin out on the street smoking shisha, drinking tea, playing backgammon. it's also 10 pm at this point and +30 out, feels amazing. pretty good food here, ordered a bunch of random food, eggplant dip, hummus, assorted other foods, and a kilogram of lamb meat and kebabs, pretty good. the whole meal for much less than 10 bucks. sooo cheap, this was a sign of things to come. it was a long travel day so just headed back and collapsed into bed. thank goodness there was a fan in the room.

woke up early next day at 8 am, getting ready to head out on the pyramids tour that the hostel had organized for us. had a bit of tea and looked out the window to the hazy, hot and muggy streets of cairo. we piled into a couple of vans and headed out towards these pyramids - which are actually in giza and not technically cairo itself. stopped on a bridge on the nile on the way, the traffic is just insane and cars are everywhere, also passed many donkey carts, camels, cats, piles of garbage, horses and any number of random things on the way. the nile at this point running through cairo looks terribly disgusting also. anyhow, we get dropped off at this horse/camel rental place where we are unsuspectingly lured into a haggling match for a guided horse/camel tour of the giza pyramids. after a long while it turned out to be like 160 pounds = 15 bucks for entry to the pyramids area and a camel/horse. so onto the camels and horses and walking along in the sand behind the pyramids we went. a short walk later and we're on a hill in behind the pyramids and looking at these pretty cool triangular shaped 160 m high piles of rocks. took a bunch of pictures, obviously, and saw the throngs of tourists piling in and in between them. the camels/horses turned out to be not too bad of an idea as we managed to get away from most of the big crowds and tourist bus people. fairly uncomfortable, camels are, the horse was definitely better. in any case we got up close to the sphinx and jammed in amongst a bunch of people to get some more standard pyramid pictures. around this area was when the calls of 'buy this random piece of rock' or 'hey this is a plastic cat, you should get it' began. after riding the camels back to the bus we headed off through some more sketchy streets towards the next pyramid site. passed through a lot of 'checkpoints' where they would ask where the van is going, who are these people in it, where are they from, that kind of thing. also passed by some dirty canals, more piles of garbage, run down houses, donkeys, stray dogs and cats, palm trees and army guys with guns every once in awhile. this next pyramid site is called 'saqqara' where there are these 'step pyramids' as precursors to the real smooth sides pyramids. on the way to this site, we enjoyed ourselves a half-forced half-decent lunch at a nearby restaurant. after the step pyramids we entered another site at dashur, where we were able to enter the famous 'red pyramid' which is so-called due to the red sandstone exterior. the tunnel down to the inside was not at all comfortable. hot, humid, devoid of oxygen, dark and smells like it's 4000 years old. i guess i can say that i have been inside a pyramid now. but really there wasn't anything special inside. also i forgot to mention that at this point it was +40 or something like that outside with the sun beating down at 2 pm in the afternoon which pretty much equals death if we were to be caught without water or a semi air conditioned van. after escaping from this pyramid, we headed to the last site of memphis, which was the first capital city of the world some thousands of years ago. here there were just a few more old statues, relics, carvings, coffins - that kind of thing. there was also a huge carving of king ramses II who was apparently one of the most bad ass pharaohs there were. after this fairly lengthy tour, the ride back to the hostel was long, jammed in traffic and far too hot to be comfortable so i pretty much passed out sleeping. after a bit of a rest, we headed out for a quick walk around the area, then wandered the streets a bit looking for some dinner. came across a small market where there were some fruit for sale, got some custard apples to eat later. there were strangely a bunch of shiny storefronts for everything from clothes and shoes and suits. we had a recommendation from the hostel guy to have some 'koshary' at this one particular place. so in we went, all the tables were full so we got ourselves some take out. so, for 7 pounds ~= $1.25 or something like that, i got this giant tub of food that involved macaroni, cut up pieces of long pasta noodles, chick peas, lentils, fried onions, tomato sauce, lime and garlic sauce and hot sauce. it was actually the most filling meal possible, and pretty delicious. and ridiculously cheap. sitting down on the curb in some square, people would come by and try to sell napkins, tea, drinks, cola, water while we were eating. after the koshary was the custard apples, which i have had quite a bit at home since it's a pretty popular vietnamese fruit. not the best, but definitely still pretty tasty. after dinner we took a stroll down the main street to the nile, all the while i was being overwhelmed with colours, flashing lights, people, cars, horns and more people selling stuff. some kid tried to take chris' wallet but he slapped their hand away like it was no big deal. getting to the actual banks of the nile required playing several levels of real life frogger, crossing many many many lanes of insane traffic. that's how it's done though, at first i was pretty nervous but after following a bunch of locals a few times i got the hang of dodging in between stopped cars, bikes, motorcycles and jumping out a few times in front of quickly approaching cars. once we got to the bridge across the river, we saw a bunch of boats that had colourful and flashing lights on them and also loud music. although being offered repeatedly to join in on these boat tours, we declined and simply observed what was going on for awhile before playing more frogger to walk back towards the hostel. on the way back we decided to stop in this out of the way cafe where we had some tea, smoked some shisha and i learned to play backgammon. it's actually a pretty simple game but it's quite fun and i'm looking forward to playing more of it. after hanging out for awhile in the still very warm night, we headed back for a nice long sleep after a very full day.

woke up the next morning with plans to head to the big market in cairo. got up a little late, so took a short cab ride down to the market , or 'souk' as it is called, for all of about 15 pounds or 3 bucks. it was still quite early so not too much action in the market yet, but there was definitely stuff to be bought and people up and about. spending a good couple hours wandering the winding streets and alleys of the market was a super cool experience, definitely have not seen anything like that before in my life. as time passed it got louder and more crowded, more stalls opened and more hecklers trying to get us to buy anything with any number of techniques. shouts of 'everything for one dollar' were heard often. they had everything there from food, spices, clothes, pots and pans, tea, souvenirs, hookahs, fireworks, and honestly everything in between. people delivering breakfast/lunch/tea to the shop owners wandered around with trays piled with hot tea and food and shoved through the crowd never spilling a drop. at the end of the day there were some t shirts, tea, backgammon boards, hookahs and random street food bought. as the day got hotter we headed towards the air conditioning of the famous 'egyptian museum' in cairo. on a nice walk towards it we encountered yet more games of frogger, i saw a guy riding a bike with one hand while carrying about 1000 pieces of the egyptian flatbread that we had been eating on a tray above his head. i can't imagine how he could brake without dropping everything. definitely a walk on the street is the best way to see a city, lots of cars, lots of people, a cool building or two on the way too. for lunch we went for this takeaway place that was recommended by a travel office that we popped into for a suggestion. i had a kebab that i think was something like 8 pounds ~= less than 2 dollars/chf? yea, significantly less than the 10 chf that it is in switzerland, that's for sure. pretty tasty too. so headed over to the museum, after going through what seemed like 30 security checks, dropping our cameras and bags, buying tickets - we finally made it in just before it got way too hot outside. at this point i'm going to mention that if you ever go to egypt, have a valid student ID card with you!! since the card that i had was expired at the end of 2009, i lost out on literally about 50 bucks worth of entry fees - to the pyramid sites, museums, etc. yep, but that's the way life goes. in any case there was a lifetime of artifacts to be gone through in this museum. to tell you the truth after a couple hours it ended up feeling like they just found all of this ancient egypt stuff and jammed it all in a museum. of course there was some really really cool stuff, so much gold, honestly where did they get all this gold from. huge coffins, burial chambers, giant stone statues, tombs, mummified animals, mummies of the kings, tools, weapons, and honestly everything from that time period. the most appalling thing though was the famous burial mask of king tut, which is something like 10 kg of pure gold. insane, i wish i could learn more about egyptian history but that would seriously require another lifetime to really go through it. at the end of the day a very cool couple hours spent. after the museum all we had to do was to get to the train station in cairo in time to catch the night train heading south to luxor. some more wandering around the city ensued, we walked down by the nile, crossing a couple bridges, by the nice green spaces in the park on the island in the nile, this area was actually very nice and the first bit of green. lots of younger people hanging out and that kind of thing. a short walk later and we're back in the area of the hostel, grabbed some fruit from a marketplace, some drinks and stuff like that for the train ride that night. for dinner i hit up the same koshary place again, i mean you can't really go wrong with a 2 dollar meal can you? so yea just a bit more just chillin out, then got on the metro to head over to the train station. on all accounts the time budgeting for getting to the train station was a little overestimated, so we had some time to kill while waiting for our train to come in. a bit of hackysack, a bit of sitting on the platform, observing all the other tourists in the station, our somewhat ramshackle looking train came into the station. heading towards the complete wrong side of the platform, a little bit of a light jog to get to the right car had us in our 'first-class' seats for the night. turns out that they did recline and all things considered they were pretty comfy. after some reading, some music, and discussion on whether a pizza folded in half was indeed a sandwich, i drifted off to a few hours sleep.

woke to a bit of a panic, as very few people had noticed that we were stopped in luxor while the train continued to aswan. pretty much hopped off the train onto the platform as the train was pulling away. surprisingly it was already kinda light out, and it was only a short walk to the hostel. checking into this place that was pretty cool, 'bob marley hostel', and had a quick little hour nap to try to take the edge off of that night train ride. bright and early at 8 am though, we arranged for another guided tour with a couple of vans, this time to see the tombs of the pharaohs at the valley of the kings and queens, as well as a couple other ancient sites. before this though was a nice breakfast on the roof of the hostel, which was basically a big chill out space with a bunch of cushions and a family of cats. some falafels and bread and eggplant and yogurt and bean dip for breakfast. piled into the vans shortly after, for some reason though, we ended up sitting in the van while parked on the side of the street for awhile, eventually waiting for another few tourists to join our caravan. however, where we were parked allowed us to have a very clear view of basically this truck unloading a few cows into this butcher shop and so subsequently we had a nice morning show of this guy just chopping up some meat on a table in the street. certainly had not seen that before. soon enough we go to the valley of the kings, basically it's this big valley where a ton of tombs of kings long past are located. unfortunately there was no photography allowed...but the jist of it is that there are a bunch of tombs that have been excavated, like hundreds, and some of them are huge and long and go way way underground - like 50 meters! insane how much effort these guys put into their burials. in any case, we only had some time to visit a few chambers. so we hit up king ramses I and III and some other one that i forget now. more or less, these tombs consist of a nice dark and hot and sweaty passage into the earth, with intricate carvings/paintings/hieroglyphics on the walls. there are stars on the ceiling representing the real stars, at one point a lot of treasures buried, many chambers for coffins, coffins of children, mummified stuff, and basically everything. there were definitely a lot of tourists around, and some of the tombs got very stuffy and sweating and hot indeed. in any case, it would take a lifetime to truly explore the valley of the kings, and honestly the only way to experience it is to go there. so i'll leave it at that for now. so on the way out of the area though, they funnel you through a gauntlet of more people trying to sell you stuff you obviously don't need. little did we know this was to happen at all the subsequent site visits, but i guess that's how it is. after the valley of the kings we were ushered into an alabaster factory/workshop where these guys showed us how they carved alabaster by hand and other such things. obviously just a pit stop to squeeze some money out of us, but i mean if you just held your cool it was alright. some of the carvings and stuff weren't bad though, pots and cups and stuff. and 'moonstone' which was basically glow in the dark rock (although likely could have been plastic). after that brief stop, we headed out towards the temple of hatsepshut - okay well the story is that somehow through royal marriages/deaths/treachery etc. this one lady ended up becoming a pharaoh and then turned out to be one of the best pharaohs and was also a woman. in any case we went this huge temple that was dedicated to her. this was set in the side of a rocky mountain/cliff which was quite cool, and the building itself was pretty impressive. again, lots of carvings, pictures, paintings on the walls, telling of many stories such as one envoy that she had sent to 'punt' aka ethiopia that brought back some trees that were planted here and the stumps were there to prove it. by this point it was getting really really hot again and we were definitely struggling with the heat and i for one was pondering a nice nap. however we pressed on to the valley of the queens, where all the other royal family members besides the pharaohs were buried. same kind of thing as the valley of the kings, except definitely less intricately built tombs, as could have been expected. pretty much the end of the tour at this point, got back to the hostel and took a quick well-deserved nap before heading out for dinner. on the hostel guy's recommendation we hit up this place close by and on the street, where, as we were waiting for food, watched life go by. pretty incredible how different everything is, donkey carts carrying propane tanks, horses, motorcycles, cars going everywhere, and a lot of people - nowhere close to as many in cairo, but still enough to make it a lot different from anywhere i've been yet. for dinner i was so hungry i ate 2 meals, some lamb kebab and something kinda like moussaka. after dinner we hit the juice stand across the street, 1 pound for a bag of juice. they gave you a bag of juice and tied it around the straw. pretty cool, and the sugar cane juice was certainly very tasty. went for a bit of a walk after this, checked out the main temple in the middle of luxor for a bit, there was also a large mosque there as well. on the way, made some friends with some egyptian guys, played some soccer in a plaza, posed for many pictures, then got away quickly while there was a fight that broke out amongst some youth. all in all pretty ridiculous situation. in this area though there were a lot of people hanging out, except for basically we got hassled pretty well and decided it was best to head back for some sleep after a long day.

up next morning, headed down to the market, see what there was. this one was less crowded, cleaner and more organized than the one in cairo - apparently the government had it cleaned up to appeal to the tourists. however this kinda took away the feel of it, without the locals around. basically what that meant was it made us easy targets for the people selling stuff. in any case it wasn't too bad, and some of us bought scarves and jewelry and that kind of thing. walking through the market we headed down towards the nile, enjoyed a very nice walk along the shore, spied some monster cruise ships docked here, as well as a lot of smaller boats that would take you for a short cruise on the river for a price. walking along the river, we ended up at this site called the 'karnak temple', which is the equivalent of something like st. peter's basilica in terms of religious importance to the ancient egyptians. and this place was huge. like, bigger than you can imagine, temples, shrines, statues, towers, walls - even had it's own holy lake in it. really really amazing. spent a lot of time just walking around and exploring all the little rooms and the whole area of the place. lots of restoration work going on, and saw some of that happening as well while we were there. definitely worth a visit - and in my opinion better than all the pyramids and the tombs, cause at this place you could really step into it and get a personal feel about the significance of the place. really cool. getting really hot in the afternoon again, so headed back for some shade, and anyways, we had organized a nile tour on a falucca in the late afternoon. grabbed some more food and some more juice bags, and then chilled at the hostel until it was time to grab our bags and head to the river with our guide to go on this nile cruise. from what i could tell was that there are just a ton of alleged guides that would take you out on the river in more or less motorboats, while our guide definitely knew what he was doing. like 20 years or something he's been doing it, nothing but one big sail, and a couple big oars if the wind wasn't blowing. amazing experience though, nice and quiet without a motor going. in any case, made our way to this place called banana island, where, sure enough, we ate a bunch of bananas, saw a bunch of different fruit trees, hung out, enjoyed the view, and then back onto the boat to catch the sunset while on the river. docked back on the shore with some amazing guidance from our guide. overall, a fantastic experience, definitely worth the 60 pounds - 10 bucks?? that it was, really incredible, i mean the sunset on the nile - so cool. quickly hopped onto a van to take us to the airport after this, and we were headed back to sharm-el-sheikh again. arriving fairly late at night, we were met immediately by a driver who would take us to the town of dahab, about an hour away. we had 15 people in a '15 person van', with all our bags, which ended up being a pretty tight ride. with lots of checkpoints on the way of course. arrived at our penguin village hotel, greeted with some nice cold hibiscus tea, and settled down for the night. however, not before me and chris went in search for something to eat. eventually we found what perhaps could have been the sketchiest food stand possible, this guy just grilling some stuff on the side of the street. so, armed with 5 pounds - 1 dollar, chris got a 'beefy' which was some canned meat in a bun - more like a 'cat food sandwich' though - and i got some chicken/chicken insides on a bun. without thinking we ate it up and headed in for bed.

woke up real early the next morning, had some breakfast at the hostel restaurant, which was actually quite good, eggs and ham and such - one note here, the 'hostel' is located directly on the ocean, on the boardwalk, with the restaurant literally on the side where if you looked 2 feet over the wall you would see the sea. amazing. in any case, we got together and piled into a couple old jeeps, drove through some dusty roads, picked up some snorkel gear, and headed to the coast. so the coast of the sinai pennisula is supposed to be actually one of the best places in the world to dive and snorkel, with a ton of coral reefs all over the bay of aqaba and the red sea. dahab is on the east coast of the penninsula, and so on the gulf of aqaba. it was a cool drive in the jeeps, pretty much just rolling over the rocky shore on 4x4, would have been real fun to drive. in any case, we got to this place called the 'blue hole', which is literally a blue hole in the middle of shallow water, this 'hole' goes down many meters. this was where we started our journey towards a national park close to the town of nuweiba. we packed away our gear in some bags, got on some camels, and started walking north along the sea. these camels looked to be in much much better shape than the ones in cairo, that was for sure. and more comfy saddles too. the walk along the coast was amazing, rocky, red mountains on one side, beautiful azure water on the other. at some points the path got really narrow, on cliffs right next to the water, but the camels were sure footed as ever, and you could even get them to run faster with a kick or steer them left and right with a pull of the reins. really cool experience, much better than the first camel ride in my opinion. after a bit of walking, we got to our destination, a good spot to jump in for some snorkeling. at some point this was a bedouin camp, and a few locals and some children were still around. got pretty windy towards the end of the camel ride so it was good to get in some shelter. had a nice hot sage tea before heading out for a swim. so this was my second time snorkeling, but it was pretty good, as soon as you realize that you can indeed get enough air through that tube and relax a bit you're all good. but the coral reef here was absolutely amazing. obviously i have never seen anything like this before, and the only thing i could think of was the magic school bus episode when they went in the coral reef. sooo many fish, so much colourful coral, sponges, anemones, urchins, just everything. saw nemo and dory! yep, some really, really amazing fish and wildlife. pretty awesome. did a few dives down too, it's weird though clearing the snorkel. but again i cannot stress how many fish there were. the snorkeling in the caves in sardinia was amazing too, but there were so many more fish here. anyhow, it was pretty windy as mentioned previously, which meant going out a little further was pretty choppy, and in our amazement with the fish, we drifted with the wind and the current quite a ways down the coast. also, at this point i should mention that coral is really, really sharp. like knives. i was a little careless and kinda got caught too close and scraped the leg a bit. so yes, me, rachel, and chris, he who had never snorkeled before, ended up something like a kilometer away from the coral free entrance point to the sea. now, about 50 meters off of the shore, we were kinda trapped on the open water with a giant stretch of rock hard coral between us and dry land. the water's getting choppy and chris is starting to struggle, we're all freaking out and it's not looking so good. several attempts and trying to get through the coral are terrifying as the water's only maybe half a meter deep and shallow enough so that your belly would be scraping the coral if you tried to get past. as we're floating out there, alex and chan come up with big goofy grins as we tell them of our predicament. 'how do we get outta here??!!' basically in the end, we forced our way through the shallow water and manage to make it to dry land and safety, with nary a scratch except for chris who after looked like he had fought about 30 cats and got cut up pretty good actually. in any case, somewhat of a near death experience made chilling out and eating a delicious lunch that much better. of course we're all laughing about it now, and chalk it up to just another ridiculous story. hahaha, oh man, just the panicked shouts vs. the goofy grins was pretty funny i'll have to admit, afterwards. yea so a good lunch of some salad, chicken, rice, tahini, and bread. also one point about the rice in egypt - it's really tasty, they kinda mix in some small noodles and some other flavourings which makes it real good. had this rice pretty much at every sit down meal actually. after hanging out seaside some more, pictures were taken and we mounted our trusty camel steeds and headed back. at this point the sun had lost most of it's heat stroke power and it got pretty windy. it was an eventful ride back as some of the camels had enough of the walking it seemed and a couple straight up just sat down and refused to walk again, leading to some camel switching etc. at the end we all ended up getting back safe and sound, tired and happy from really an amazing day of camels and ocean. after a quick shower, nap and stroll on the boardwalk, we met up with some of the other kids who had gone scuba diving that day (i really want to pick up scuba diving, it seems amazing, i can swim and i don't see why not - i'm gonna start getting my certification as soon as i get back to calgary) and sat down for some dinner, again just at the hostel restaurant. sitting on a bunch of cushions by the sea, watching the sun go down, smelling the salt air, eating some fresh grilled fish, drinking a fresh mango juice - life could not get better. also there were a lot of stray cats that were hanging around and eventually became quite vicious in stealing food but that was besides the point, as we had spray bottles of water to keep them at bay, with the one waiter eventually tossing a cat into the ocean. played some more backgammon, smoked some shisha, drank some beer (well, since egypt is supposed to be a muslim country ie. no alcohol, it would seem difficult to get beer - however in places like dahab where there are a ton of tourists, it's pretty easy to find a liquor store or two - in fact, the place that we got it from was called 'liquor - tourist supply') and walked down through the town a bit. nothing like cairo or luxor though, the 'market' area was more like any other beach town, just with more guys hassling you about buying stuff as per usual. definitely more laid back than anywhere else in egypt i think, and would be a cool place to hang around, do some diving, some beaching, and take it easy. after another long day, it was nice to finally hit the sack and get some sleep.

woke up early - again! - next morning, and hopped on yet another mini bus, this time heading for ras mohammed national park, south of sharm-el-sheikh and on the southern tip of the sinai penninsula right on the red sea. a longer drive this was, about an hour and a half, but the views were quite nice as the drive up from the airport had been in the dark. really cool to see red rock mountains, deserts, and camels running around everywhere. a lot of goats too, and of course passing through all the checkpoints (really though, i am so glad of these checkpoints and all the security - all of those past terrorist attacks in dahab, sharm-el-sheikh, taba - when you think about it, it's really scary actually, because the thought of something like that hardly ever crosses your mind when you're in canada, or switzerland, or anywhere else like that. so yea, it might have been a bit of trouble to have to carry your passport around everywhere, but for the safety factor of having at least some army guys and guards making sure the resorts and parks are safe, it was worth it.) getting into ras mohammed national park was amazing, white sand beaches that somehow seem to spill out from the desert. dropped off at this fairly busy beach, full of european holiday-ers going about their business, but as soon as we pulled the snorkels on and got out in the water it was immediately clear why we had come here. again, there was a bit of a shallow coral shelf which then spilled out onto the open water, and once we got out there - absolutely amazing. like, the day before was amazing, but this was actually mind-blowing. not to mention that the water was incredibly warm as well, even in march. so there were actually just thousands, and thousands, and thousands of beautiful, colored fish, coral, everything! i saw a sea turtle! it was just swimming along, hanging out, coasting, and was like the size of me i'm pretty sure. floated into a field of jellyfish - they feel like jello. kinda freaked out at first by the potential of them being poisonous, but turns out they're nothing to be afraid of - although at one point i was swimming through what seemed like a thousand of them and i did kinda panic when every kick and stroke i punched some jellyfish. this experience was beyond words though, and if you ever ever get a chance to go scuba/snorkel in the red sea, please do it. huge fish also, definitely at least one was the size of a person. enjoyed the sights, and then got out of the water to check out some other cool stuff in the park - there was this big mangrove grove that seemed to be growing in a sea of desert, in salt water, and yet was green as ever. nature is amazing, i'm awed every time. there were little crabs hanging out in the sand and it was cool to see them all scurry into their holes in unison any time they were disturbed. after this was checking out a couple canyon like formations where the sea had eroded away the rock and formed these kind of underwater cave like things. really, really cool. again, all of this is nothing i've ever seen before and it's still surreal to me even now that i actually experienced all of this. for lunch, we headed over to another little bay, where there was a little camp set up. this was the first actual white sand beach that we got to hang out at, and finally got in some nice hot beach time. a bit of sun and already i'm tanned well. lunch was a couple of salads and bread....which now we are all regretting that we ate. it was delicious, and yet we were warned about any salad at all. let's just say that this was the beginning of something horrible. in any case, after lunch, we had just 20 minutes to quickly go snorkel a little bit more before the park closed and we had to head back to camp. so in and out we went, same story, beautiful fish and coral and the only thing i could have asked for was more time to hang out in the water. alas, all things come to an end and we piled back into the van, hot, wet and super happy about another beautiful day out in the sea. back at penguin village, we all took good naps, in preparation for the mt. sinai hike that night. what we were in for, was an overnight hike beginning at 1 am, sitting at the top of a mountain, and watching the sunrise. before this though, we took a nice stroll down the boardwalk, looking for something good to have for dinner. lots of restaurants, lots of advertising, but eventually, we ended up back at this pizza place close to the hostel. 'egyptian pizza' it was called, and we all ordered the one with all the toppings on it. while waiting for it to be cooked, we grabbed some more beers, chilled out, some more backgammon, and really, what's better than pizza and beer? except for maybe wings and beer, or steak and beer, or hot dogs and beer...anywho we got this 20 pound - 4 dollar pizza, which in fact was a pastry like thing that wrapped toppings inside and then was topped with more toppings on top. really, really good. like amazing, i think that they should have egyptian pizza everywhere, and somehow before this i had no idea something so delicious could exist. ran over quickly to the store to get some supplies for the night hike, a bag of chips and a liter of mango juice - which i would regret later...now, it was time to set out on our midnight adventure. so, at 11 pm, we got in the vans, drove for about two hours in the darkness. we had worn all the clothes that we brought, as it gets real cold in the desert at night, luckily i had brought my fleece sweater (thanks magic school bus desert episode) which i thought would be fairly effective. arrive at 1 am, in the parking which is actually quite full of people. pull out the headlamps, and we start following out 16 year old guide up the mountain. offers of camels for hire are somewhat tempting at this point, as sleepiness starts setting in. quite a few breaks on the way left us not terribly tired, just sleepy. towards the top, there are these rest pavilions, with the price of hot tea increasing exponentially in relation to the distance to summit. whereas you could probably get a tea for less than 1 pound anywhere, it was like 10 pounds for a cup of tea at the last rest station. at this point, it was already getting really cold, and even the fleece sweater wasn't holding out too well. also, one of the camels on the road was doing this stupid thing where it spits out it's tongue (stomach?) out the side of it's mouth and making this hilarious (probably only cause it was 3:30 am and we were so tired) noise as it was doing so. for the last few hundred steps to the top, another sort of sensation besides the fatigue was setting it however - revenge of the salad that we had for lunch!! ahhhhh. it was horrible, the stairs and the climb and the lack of sleep and the coldness, and then the stomach troubles. let's just say that if mt. sinai had eyes, i probably couldn't look straight into them cause of what i left on it. blargh, terrible. well, by the end, almost all of us that ate the salad had gotten terribly sick on the mountain. at this point also the 5 pound/per use toilets were not illuminated so i couldn't have even used those. after this ordeal, the 20 pound blanket/mattress rental for the summit was well worth it. sitting at the top of the mountain, we prepared to watch this sunrise. trying to get in a comfortable position, i sad on my backpack...with the mango juice and bag of chips in it. disaster. as if things could have gotten worse, hahaha. mango juice, everywhere. at least, i had a towel in there that i had planned on using as a blanket, so that managed to soak up most of it. so i left a bunch of mango juice and a lot of chips on mt. sinai as well. the sunrise though, was beautiful, and the whole situation was definitely pretty cool. once the sun came up it got warm enough to cast aside the blankets and everything was all good again. also the blanket smelled like camels. also camels smell, and not good, i don't know if i've mentioned that yet. with our stomachs still in turmoil we made the long descent down the mountain. i was legitimately scared for another attack but managed to keep it together until we'd reached the bottom. fatigue at this point was reaching a tipping point, and while waiting for this famous st. catherine's monastery to open i fell asleep on a bench. this monastery is really old, and apparently a clipping from the famous burning bush in all the bible stories grows here. it was cool, don't get me wrong, but at this point all i wanted was a bed and a bathroom. oh yea, i guess if you haven't figured it out yet, the reason why we (and a bunch of other tourists) flocked to mt. sinai is because it was where moses received the commandments from god and all that good stuff about it being a holy mountain, and then at some point people decided that the best way to add to the holiness is to watch the sunrise from it's summit. in any case, a short while later we're all asleep in the van as we head back to our beds.

this was our last few hours in egypt, and after a quick nap, packing up the bags, paying for all our excursions and van rides, i had one more tea to try and calm the stomach before heading out to sharm-el-sheikh airport to catch the plane home. a bit of a kerfuffle at the check in desk ensued, with us being allegedly late to the flight, even though easyjet is late all the time (and was) anyways. the 4 hour flight was not the greatest due to the stomach troubles and somehow like 4000 babies being on the same flight. we get back to geneva, hit the train to zurich, then wait in the station for an hour before the last train gets back to baden, and then home. ate a burger at bk in the train station while waiting, that was a poor choice on account of the newly coined name for the salad sickness - 'the pharaoh's curse'. the sunday after this trip was sorely needed, to recover from something like 36 hours of zero sleep, the pharaoh's curse, and above all a one day buffer to try and get over the euphoria of an amazing seven day trip before getting back to work. absolutely amazing all things considered, and all i can say is GO TO EGYPT! it's awesome.

xc skiing

so last weekend was pretty relaxed, watched the movie 'moon' one night which i suggest, it's quite good. saturday was just hanging around, went out to zurich for a bit although it's still quite snowy and cold. had some good fondue for dinner then went out to zurich again to check out a jazz show. really really good, talented band and played some good music, soul and reggae beats too. expensive drinks though, like 20 bucks for a cuba libre...

woke up pretty early next morning and took about 2 hours to get to this place called langis, where we rented some xc skis and headed off for some xc skiing. another first for me, just tried the 'classic' style this time, but pretty much just immediately fell over as i clipped in. feels weird, skis are so light. but pretty quick i got the hang of it and was going with the nice glide as well as the kick double pole technique. there is very little to no transferable skills from alpine to xc skiing. maybe herringbone up hills but that's about it. pretty fun though, a bit of a foggy day but a good workout with some good friends nonetheless. ended up going about 15k or so, but it really was tiring and definitely felt some hip flexor soreness the next day. tried a bit of 'skating' style at the end as well, and i will for sure be picking this up at home. haha, now i'll need like 5 pairs of skis...there wasn't too much bus service up to this place so we ended up hanging out at the restaurant and had some soup and a beer, good end to a good day. man those guys on the olympics make it look a lot easier than it is.

on tuesday night, imogen heap was playing in zurich so we grabbed some tickets and headed out after work. it worked out that there was a vietnamese restaurant right next to the bar/club where the show was, so we went ahead and had some dinner there. had some bun bo hue and tried a bit of hu tieu as well, and it was definitely the best i've had yet since i've been here. pretty legit, i was impressed. still, can't believe it's 20 chf/20 bucks for a bowl of noodles though, outrageous. in any case we headed off 'abart' to check out the show. some random band from iceland was the opening act, 'helgi jonsson' i think it was, not bad, but probably played far too long of an opening act and kinda emo. after a lengthy stage set-up (later on proved to be completely appropriate) the show started. she's from the uk and it was nice to hear some english music live too. it always nice to be able to understand stuff. she's very musically talented and had some pretty cool/weird instruments, a great voice, and i'm sure about a million loop pedals as well. really good show i thought. it was too bad that it was getting close to midnight, and the last train back to baden was at quarter to - didn't really feel like sleeping on the streets of zurich so unfortunately we had to go home. still, from what i heard it was totally worth it.

not too much else happening this week, just kind of getting ready for the week trip to EGYPT starting on saturday, should be really good, +40 weather, sun, will be perfect, really looking forward to it.

ireland

half day of work on friday with a spicy thai food lunch and then off to the zurich airport. about a 2 hour flight to dublin on aer lingus which was actually not bad at all. so glad to hear english the whole way there. landed and hopped into some rented ford fiestas to start the drive over to galway on the west coast of the island. thankfully i didn't have to drive standard on the left side of the road. all worked out in any case, the walkie talkies that we brought were a brilliant idea. got across the island in a couple hours or so. pubs stop serving food at about 9 pm so very unfortunately didn't get a good pub meal. instead got a sub. and then went drinking at the pub. pretty tasty 3 euro pints of guinness. the first place had some ridiculous old guy playing essentially the 90s playlist on my ipod, pretty good and pretty funny actually. moved on to the next pub which had a couple guys playing some old irish folk music which was very cool. after wandering around a bit we found another pub with a live band that was playing kings of leon at the time we went in. shortly after they had to close it down but did play 'all you need is love' by the beatles to end it off. there is this local beer in galway called 'hooker' and it did actually taste pretty good, very strangely like lychees. the night ended by me and chris going to 'supermacs' which is basically after pub heaven. inside there is everything from ice cream to subs to pizza to fried chicken to burgers and fries. needless to say at 2 am 100% of the patrons were intoxicated. so funny but the cheeseburgers were good.

woke up the next day and didn't really get a chance to take a look around galway because the whole cars and parking situation was a bit of a struggle so we made our way out and on the road. beautiful day, green fields and blue sky. driving south along the coastline is beautiful, taking in everything as we drive by. stop at this old castle on a bit of an outcropping in a bay, the tide was out so you could see all that was under it. really cool, nice place, beautiful pictures. further along we stop in the middle of 'the burren' which is basically natural limestone hills of rocks in cool formations. all the walls and fences in ireland seem to be made of stone, probably cause there is so much stone in this place. the farmer's fields are fenced off with stone walls, and obviously along the way we see sheep and cows and some llamas even. and of course some baby lambs frolicking. pretty cool. in any case the burren is quite the sight to see. driving along the coast of the atlantic ocean is one of the most beautiful places that i have seen, absolutely incredible. stopped at the edge of what seemed like the earth, looking out to open sea and scrambling over a few hundred meters of interesting rock formations to get to the water from the road. really cool. hopped back in the car to head to a tiny town called doolin where we were going to spend the night. stopped in to check out the friendliest hostel and most chill hostel i have ever been to, a refurbished 19th century farmhouse or something like that. really cool. walked down the 20 seconds to the nearest pub for some lunch. two pints of guinness, soup and delicious fish and chips later we head out on the road again to the cliffs of moher. driving on some narrow roads on the 'wrong' side of the road is pretty cool. these cliffs are breathtaking, like more that 200 meters straight down for quite a long stretch. walk along them for awhile, and the lay down and peer over the edge - reminiscing about bungee jumping...haha although this time there was no rope attached to my feet. amazing though, really worth seeing. after the cliffs we head back to doolin, check out this ruined church and graveyard with some old celtic crosses on them. see some more sheep on the way. pretty cool. head back to the hostel for a short nap to get ready for another night in the pubs. woke up to a nice picture slideshow from the hostel owner, beautiful pictures of the area in the burren and the cliffs. learned a lot about the area too. lots of ancient burial sites, tombs, history and about the aran islands just off the coast near doolin. these islands hardly see any visitors and the people still strictly speak gaelic. well, most of the people on the west coast speak gaelic as well. went in search for some dinner, unfortunately the two pubs within 30 seconds walk were full to the brim - ireland had just beat england in the six nations so people were getting happy. ended up putting down a few pints and then shoveling down some terrible pasta from the italian take away place. but that's besides the point. returned to the pub and heard some amazing live music, banjo and guitar and tin flute and some other traditional irish instruments. talked to a bunch of irish people who are very friendly. enjoyed many a pint and towards the end some irish whisky and in general had a great night. one of the best experiences i've ever had to tell you the truth, small town pub in ireland with some live music, tasty beer, good friends, happy, friendly people - there really isn't too much more you could ask for.

got a good sleep in and headed out again on the road early in the morning. drove through some more picturesque countryside and then stopped at in some small town to find some breakfast. ended up in spar (a fairly popular grocery store throughout europe (except for switzerland)) to see what there was. apparently, they had a full hot food section where i purchased, for 3 euros, the most awesome 'breakfast roll'. a large sandwich filled with two sausages, grilled bacon/ham, eggs, black and white pudding (blood sausage and some other sausage). so delicious. meat paradise. and apparently, at essentially every store in ireland more or less these breakfast rolls are available. amazing. it was a really good sandwich okay. and then for some reason, out of 12 adults, 50% of them thought that milk would be a good purchase for a road trip beverage. inexplicable, but i did also buy a liter of milk so i don't know. moving on from this breakfast experience, we headed towards limerick, where on the way we stopped at this castle in bun ratty. at first i kinda thought it was a tourist trap with the 10 euro entrance fee, but it's actually quite well repaired and there was a nice man who showed us around the castle as well. pretty well done - i guess i have never been inside a legitimate castle before and this was it. from the outside it didn't seem that big but there was for sure a lot of stuff inside. all the rooms and the halls were decked out in 15th century stuff which was also really cool. climbed up all the towers and saw all the rooms and got a pretty good view from the top. there was also a reconstructed village within the castle walls as well so it was cool to look around for awhile in there as well. saw some chickens and some pigs. and some dogs - on that note, i saw some absolutely beautiful dogs on this trip, the perfect sheepdog/collies/retriever type dogs that i would love to have. can't wait to get myself one. after the castle, we drove south through limerick and then headed east again back to dublin. a short while later, we drop off the cars at the airport and take a bus into the city. settled down and went for a walk into the town in the 'temple bar' area and then to this cafe for dinner. very cool place, apparently been around since 1840. bewley's i think it was. in any case had a really tasty dinner of leek soup and bread, some sort of spicy pasta (100000x better than the horrendous pasta the night before), and some brownie for dessert. really good. headed back to the hostel and picked up a few more beers on the way to watch the GOLD MEDAL HOCKEY GAME. canada and the united states again in the final, and it was a great game to watch, so glad that we could in the hostel common room. iginla to crosby in overtime, just perfect. great olympics too, i've been staying up a few nights to catch a couple hockey games, saw the first states canada game when we lost, then when we beat russia. kinda sucks not being around when the games are so close to home. but made due, following as best as i could on the internet. really great results though, most gold medals! pretty tired from being on the road for the past few days so settled in for the night after that.

woke up next morning nice and early, took a nice walk around the center of town, through the university with the greenest lawns, also all the universities that i have seen in my travels make u of c look just terrible. wish i had more time to hang around dublin but unfortunately we had to catch a flight back to zurich at noon or so. stopped in before leaving at this nice little park, and then to this cafe for some good breakfast and a good coffee too. not too much for the rest of the day, a relaxing afternoon at home and not work, that sure feels good. playing some guitar, watched the movies 'city of god' and 'drag me to hell'. city of god is an amazing movie i thought, really suggest it.

that's it for now, think i'll be heading out to do some x-country skiing this weekend, inspired by the olympics and i'm also curious to try it for the first time. also tonight is a chicken nugget party, somehow a few interns managed to get over 20 people to eat a bunch of nuggets together - we're so weird.