El Andalous - New Camera

Sahl Hasheesh, Entrance Piazza at Night (Courtesy of New Camera)

I managed to get my credit card unblocked and in the mean time my camera started to work again. However, it took only one snorkeling trip and me taking the batteries out afterwards for the camera to decide it didn’t want to do it again. I think it’s just getting a bit old (a bit like me!); a little bit of water is visible when I open the battery compartment and although I leave it open so that it can dry out internally, I suspect some damage may have been done. Either that, or it always takes a few weeks for it to dry out completely but that’s just too long for me to wait.

I tried searching online for anywhere in Egypt that would sell me the camera I wanted (or indeed any decent underwater camera), but the only vendor I could find was in Cairo and seemed to be the same one that was selling it via souq.com (and thus sold out), so I didn’t bother.

I decided it might be interesting to go on amazon to look at the reviews of the camera I wanted and also to see the reviews of my current camera; to my astonishment, the amazon site for the product came up with the message: “This item can be delivered to Egypt”. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Amazon never used to deliver to Egypt at all (not even kindle books). This was a major step forward in life!

It did make some sense, since I’d noticed that souq.com now also had the amazon logo on its page and was somehow related to amazon.

I decided to give it a go – I ordered it from the UK site, my credit card was accepted first time (hurrah!), and the site informed me that the camera would arrive in 4 days’ time! Impressive. I wasn’t quite ready to believe it, so I waited for a message that my order had been cancelled but, no, instead I got an email informing me that my purchased item was on its way.

It actually took 6 days to arrive rather than 4 (for some reason it went via Germany and France), but that’s still pretty good for Egypt. I had to pay an extra 45 GBP import tax, which is quite a lot (about 15%), but it was well worth it!

I can’t explain how exciting it is to think that I can now order at least some things off amazon from Egypt. It’s up there with having a supermarket open in Sahl Hasheesh. I do try to buy locally, but some things are just impossible to get over here and more so since Egypt has fallen on hard times.

I eagerly went out on Sunday to try the camera out (it’s the first time I’ve ever had a top-of-the-category camera), but unfortunately, due to the Super Moon, even though it was an unusually non-windy day, the waves were large due to the pull of the moon (I guess). Trying to see underwater was like gazing through fog with all the sand that was being swept up with the waves. I was actually a bit scared of being thrown out onto the coral by the waves, so I stayed a respectful distance. I took some photographs, but although some of them were promising, they all suffered from the “fog” blurring the images. Hopefully the tides will have calmed down by next week!