Egypt - Journey to Luxor

Truck loaded with Sugar Cane

Over the last two weeks I’ve been lucky enough to have Sheila visiting me (she’s posted a couple of comments here as So Kay).

Somehow, the two weeks went past without us achieving everything on the “To Do” list, but such is life. We did manage a trip to Luxor, but since I’ve already blogged about that once, I won’t go into detail again. However, there were a few differences this time.

Everything started off fairly smoothly. We packed for the two-night / three day stay, Safi kindly booked the taxis and guides for us, and the taxi was waiting outside El Andalous as we stepped out of the building.

However, we got only as far as the security gate out of Sahl Hasheesh when we realised that maybe Sheila should have her passport with her – either for the hotel or for police checks on the way. We got the taxi to turn round so that we could fetch it.

On arrival at El Andalous, we were accosted by an Egyptian guy telling us to get out of the taxi and not to get back in because there was a big problem. I imagined a tourist attack in Luxor and my heart sank. This was the last impression that I wanted Sheila to have of Egypt!

After trying to get some information out of the guy about the problem, he said he needed to speak to Safi. At first I thought this was because he wanted to explain the problem in Arabic to her so that she could relay it back to us. I couldn’t reach her on the phone, so I started to go in and then thought I could get Medhat to explain rather than disturbing Safi.

I returned to hear him explaining to Sheila that the taxi had basically been double-booked and that it had been agreed that he would take us to Luxor and not our original taxi driver. At this point, I realised that maybe I needed to get Safi after all.

I felt really bad for her as she had gone to a lot of effort to help us book and it wasn’t her fault (our taxi company had failed to inform the other taxi driver that it had been agreed that the other taxi driver should be cancelled). Anyway, she came down and told us just to get in our original taxi and drive away immediately; she would sort out the other guy.

We did as we were told and drove away leaving an angry taxi driver and Safi in the back mirror.

As it turned out, we didn’t need Sheila’s passport, although this time there were a lot of police checks (we didn’t have any when I went with Lena), including one where we got a bit confused when they asked for our hotel room number (how could we know when we hadn’t even arrived?). However, it turned out they meant our previous address (El Andalous).

At first there was an unusual amount of traffic and it turned out that a cycling team was riding down the road – they were described by the driver as tourists, but we suspect he may have meant foreigners, as they were all dressed up in what looked like team cycling gear.

Half-way down the motorway we stopped to hand over a package to someone in the middle of the road having apparently come from the middle of nowhere; this is pretty typical for Egypt. Sheila was surprised when we picked other passengers up in our taxi on other occasions, but it’s just more efficient, even if it does all seem a bit random at times.

Last time I did this journey, we took the ring road and bypassed Qena; this time we passed through it and it was very interesting. It was sugar cane season, so there were tons of trucks and donkey carts carrying the sugar beet and a small train with carriage upon carriage of sugar beet. If the locals saw us looking, they would wave to us.

I guess we took the ring road last time because it was quicker. The journey was quite a bit longer this on this occasion, but it was also more interesting to see the city and daily life going on.

On arrival at the hotel, we paid the whole expenses up front, as last time. At least I now knew to expect this. We also received an apology for the mix up over taxi drivers.

It’s rare to have a journey out of Sahl Hasheesh that doesn’t involve some kind of adventure!

El Andalous - Problem Overhang

Sahl Hasheesh - Threadfin Butterflyfish

Of course, a new year is really just the continuation of your life; the boundary between the years is just arbitrary. And so, my problems from 2014 (not that I have many) are still here.

One such problem is my camera. You may recall that a new digital underwater camera was on the list of things I got from the UK last year. Well, it’s already broken. It was working very well, even though I abused it quite a bit by keeping it underwater too long and forgetting to clean it. However, one day it refused to take any more photos. It wouldn’t switch off and the shutter wouldn’t close. In retrospect, I think this may be because I washed it afterwards, as suggested, but then opened it too soon afterwards and some tiny bit of water got in because it wasn’t 100% dry.

Anyway, I was desperate for a new camera, so I bought a new one while Geraldine was here. By some miracle, I found one in the Kodak shop on Sheraton Road (although it’s a Polaroid camera). It cost around 110 GBP instead of maybe 70 GBP that I’d pay on amazon, but since I didn’t think they had any here at all, I was actually pretty pleased.

Getting a new camera means learning how to use it, which is always a bit tiresome, particularly when you’re not so good at reading instructions.

First of all, I couldn’t work out how to put the batteries in. They made a big fuss about making sure they were inserted correctly, but I couldn’t find anywhere telling me which way they should go in.

I put the batteries in, but I got it wrong, and then found out that I couldn’t work out how to open the battery compartment. We finally worked out that you had to push a sliding clip towards the back of the camera while pushing the compartment to the right. However, this seems to work on a temperamental basis and sometimes it takes me several days until it will just suddenly decide to open.

I got the right order of the batteries in the end, but then I couldn’t work out how to take a photo. It turned out that the button I was pressing thinking it was the shutter was in actual fact a thing which meant that your viewing screen was the front of the camera and not the back. It wasn’t until I tried to take a photograph with Geraldine watching me and she pointed out that she could see the screen that I realised what was happening.

Anyway, on a few occasions now, my blog has been posted later than I wanted purely because I’ve been struggling to open my camera (my memory card is stored where the batteries are, so if I want to download my photos, I need to tackle that pesky battery compartment).

I keep on thinking I’ll take the camera back as the battery compartment is so difficult (I wonder if it’s malfunctioning), but each time it opens, I end up forgiving it.

Sahl Hasheesh - Welcome 2015!

Sahl Hasheesh - Chez Paul

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your celebrations and festivities, that the hangovers have gone, and that the new year is starting well for you.

I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions, but the good news is that this is at least in part because I understand that I can’t or won’t fulfil the criteria that you need to have a resolution.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have plans. I hope to release both of my novels this year, although my second novel (Space Shapes) is moving so slowly that I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll manage. Sometimes, I even question if it’s worth publishing, but I’ve been working hard on it recently and am feeling a little more optimistic just now (apart from the occasional wobble). In October I’ll be releasing New Year’s Resolutions – For Fish! And probably in the first half of this year, I’ll be publishing my German false friends book (and I still need to find a title for that). So, it’s quite an ambitious year even without any resolutions.

I’m not regarding any of these plans as resolutions because I haven’t got a schedule telling me how to fulfil them or when. I want to reserve the right to change my plans (and thus they are plans and not resolutions). Yes, I’m a pedant!

As mentioned before, for my New Year’s celebrations I went with Safi to a new restaurant in Sahl Hasheesh called Chez Paul. My brother Paul in New Zealand expressed great confidence in this choice of location.

Safi and I had originally gone there to ask them what their menu would be and to enquire if they would have entertainment or what they would do. We were requested to come back later as the menus weren’t yet decided.

When we returned a week later, they were just finalising the menu. To our disappointment, it was full of things we didn’t like (salmon, fish, cheese, minestrone soup), so we asked if we could have a la carte on the evening. Safi moaned that she wanted turkey and I moaned that I wanted tomato soup. We probably sounded like two spoilt children! They promised that a la carte would be fine but that there’d be an extra charge for the entertainment.

Charging for the entertainment was fine, but I didn’t want to commit unless they told us the final price. Perhaps a week later, I went back to see if they had finalised the menu and costs. To my surprise, they’d changed the menu completely. Miraculously, it now contained tomato soup (hurrah!), turkey (hurrah from Safi) or t-bone steak (hurrah from me). Consequently we went for the fixed menu after all.

It started off with a free cocktail (alcoholic) and ended with flambé bananas; we had party poppers, party whistles, party hats. A life-size Santa bobbed about by the door. There was no entertainment – allegedly the singer had had an accident or something.

Still, I’m not complaining as it still made for a good evening with delicious food.

Here’s hoping that 2015 is a good year for everyone!