Abu-Simbel

We flew to Aswan, via Luxor, then onto Abu-Simbel. Juice box on each of  the 4 legs :)

Side Bar: Egypt Air dont really subscribe to the idea that the safety video needs to be finished prior to the actual take off. On 2 occasions we were in the air before the video was half way through.

Got to Abu-Simbel, it was 42 degrees in the shade, and as you can't take liquids on the flight, we didn't have sunscreen on us. Surprisingly we got out of it largely unscathed.

Abu-Simbel is simply amazing. Two massive temples, cut into rock, not made from rock, that had to be taken apart (cut) in 20-60 tonne blocks, and moved 180 metres up a hill due to the Nile dam and the lake Nasser that formed because of it.

This Dam would have put a whole bunch of temples under water unless they were moved so Egypt asked the world for help to save them.

Flew back to Aswan and transferred to our hotel, the 'Old Cataract Hotel'.

This is the hotel made famous by the Agatha Christie book and later movie, Death on the Nile.

We had a nice room, with a view to the new cataract hotel and the pool an to the Nile.

As we only had one night here we quickly got settled and headed to the pool for a quick dip and a beer.

We had a feluca ride prior to sunset and on return we had High Tea on the edge of the nile watching the sunset.

This was spectacular.  We sat with our friends, Gail and Susan, and had a bit of a laugh with Tommy and one of the waiters that played a trick on me.

Previously we'd booked dinner for the 4 of us at the famous 1902 restaurant. There is a strict dress code that I didn't meet. The waiter that was playing tricks had hooked us up so that we could get in so we we're all sweet.

Dinner was sensational.  We had the set menu which was about 45 euro pp. We also had a bottle of white wine, called 'Obelisk'.  Food consisted of crab spring rools, followed by a milky chicken and sweet corn soup. The mains were either Sea Bass, or a Lamb Curry. Kath had the lamb the rest of us had the fish. Desert was either chocolate cake/mousse thing, or fruit salad.

Has been a very, very long day and with a 7am start in the morning, we went straight to bed.

Love, k & k.

Cairo Day 2

We had a leisurely breakfast and met in the lobby for our tour to kick off.

We headed off to the Cairo Museum which was a bit of a drive away.

No cameras allowed in the museum unfortunately, so no pictures.

Brief intro to things then went to see 'the scribe dude' who is famous as his statue has in-layed eyes that are amazing.

More info and then we got to King Tuts area, which fills a large part of the museum.

We saw the massive boxes that housed his coffin thing. 4 big boxes in total, with 5 sarcofa-thingys inside each other that had his body.

Went into see the famous gold mask that is so amazing to see for real. There was also many other pieces of gold jewelry as well as a couple of the sarcofa-thingys that jost blow your mind.

After leaving the museum we went back to the hotel and dropped off most of the people and we continued onto the 'Bazaar', or market.

This is aimed at tourists and is thick with hawkers.  We strolled arount for 10 minutes and the found Tommy, our tour guide, at a cafe smoking a Shesha pipe. We sat down and Tommy offered us a pipe on him. I couldn't refuse as it looked pretty cool.

We had the apple flavoured tobacco and kicked back and puffed away.  The is nothing sus in the tobacco, just normal tobacco flavoured.  Kath was fine, I got a bit of a head spin, but it was pretty cool. We had a fanta and waited fot the others to get back from shopping.

Went back to the hotel and had a bite to eat. Had a swim, and watched a movie in our room, and had room service for dinner, pizza and pasta.

Tomorrow, early start, off to Aswan and Abu-Simble.

Love, k & k.  

Egypt

Got to Cairo Airport and had an easy transfer.  We got to the beautiful Conrad hotel and promptly had a couple of Stella's (local beer).

Checked out our Nile View room.

Side Bar: The worlds supply of satellite dishes are in Cairo.

We had a swim and then caught some zzz's by the pool. Went and got changed and then went to Le Bar, which overlooked the Nile, and the road.

We watched the crazy traffic and noticed that the buses don't stop fully to pick up or drop off passengers, which made for an interesting spectacle.

Was a lovely evening, about 25 degrees, so we decided to BBQ outside.

Was really windy and we were nearly the only ones there, had a few wines and beers and called it a night.

Love, K & K

Dubai Day 1 - Part 3

After getting back to the hotel we had a little lie down before we got picked up by Waris (Wireless he said to call him).

We were in a Land Cruiser GX-R Petrol with a 6 point roll cage installed. This was going to be FUN!!!!

We picked up two other couples and then headed out to the desert, via the 'Horses Track', which is the local name for the Race Course.

We sped along the highway at about 135km/h and were being over taken by a select few crazy drivers. The speed limit was 120km/h.

We eventually got to the Dubai Conservation Reserve. Don't let the name fool you, there was noting to 'Reserve', this was just a big desert with the occasional shrub.

We met up with 36 other fourbys and headed off into the desert.



It was amazing how reckless and careless it appeared Wireless was driving, but at no stage did you feel like there was going to be a roll over.

The trip lead us through the desert, stopping about 3 times to change seats etc. We had a stop over at a camel 'farm' and then headed to a place to take a photo of the sunset, which was really just the sun disappearing behind a big dune, but it was the thought that counted.

After this we went to the Arabic Camp where there was all you can eat and drink arabian food and western wine and beer.

Kath got some henna done on her ankle and we sat and watched the belly dancer flail around on the stage area, dragging poor unsuspecting blokes onto the stage while I shat myself with fear. All went well though, and I remained un-assulted by the belly dancer.

Quick not on todays adventures, we went to the 'Electroncis' area of Dubai and had a look around for an N95 for Daniel at a good price. Best we could get was 2540 dhs, which equates to about AUD$800 and you can get them for that in AU, so sorry Dan, no luck. (I'll check at the airport on the way out for you.)

After that we had a private car take us on a 3 hour drive all up and down the coast. Saw the Burj and a whole bunch of other manzing things.

Side Bar: The amount of construction going on in Dubai is incredible to say the least, it is 10 times more incredible than just plain old normal incredible. I don't think we saw a bulding that wasn't under construction. Not to mention roads, train lines and the tallest bulding in the world.

Better go, back soon, somewhere from Egypt next time.

Love, Kent and Kath.

Dubai Day 1 - Part 2

After getting ahold of our cold hard cash, we proceeded to hire a cab and headed off to the 'Spice Souk'. This is bacically a couple of alley ways that have a bunch of stalls with guys selling 'spices'.

Some of them were rocks and it seems as though the worlds supply of dried lemons is in this one place as well.

Slightly more than a little disappointed we headed, by cab, to the 'Gold Souk'.

Side Bar: Cabs in Dubai are incredibly cheap. You bascially get an AUD$20 cab ride for about AUD$4 over here.

The Gold Souk was much more interesting, with literally hundreds of shops selling nothing but gold and jewells.



We spent ages walking around through the alleys and in and out of little jewellery shops. The experience only soured by the fact that you only had to turn around to be offered a copy watch or some sort of fake hand bag. Singapore has nothing on Dubai for copy watch dudes.

We headed back to the hotel as at 4:15pm we were to be picked up by someone from Arabian Adventures to go on a 4WD Safari out in the Desert, which will be the topic of the next post... Stay tuned...

Love, Kent and Kath.

Dubai Day 1 - Part 1

We've survived our first day. Boy it's hot here.

We arrived at 5:30am and got to our hotel by about 6:30. As we'd booked the night before, our room was ready for us and we were able to go right in and try and catch up on some much needed sleep.

Kath had a bit of a sleep on the plane, Kent on the other hand, was wingey and uncomfortable most of the time. Singapore Airlines are much better than Emirates in Kent's opinon.

After a quick nap, we got up and had breakfast, our second breakfast for the day, the first one while on the plane.

After that we set out to get some money. This was proving to be a little difficult. The machine we went to to start with said that it only accepted MasterCard. So we stuck one of those in and attempted to withdraw 300dhr (about AUD$100).

The transaction failed stating 'Invalid Card Number', strike 1. Not overly surprised we went to the Money Exchange desk only to find their machine was broken. Strike 2.

Oh, well, lets try the front desk at the hotel we are saying at. They have published rates, (pretty bad rates, but rates none the less).

They could only trade in notes and as we wanted to use our card, it was stike 3.

They suggested the exchange place down the road. We proceeded down the road and after getting to speak to someone, they said that we couldn't use the card unless we had our passports as well, which were locked up at the hotel. Strike 4.

A little bit less jovial at this point, we proceeded to call the ANZ card services team to find out why thr original transaction failed. This was a good experience and the lady indicated that the machine sent through a account type value that was not for a credit card. The ATM didn't actually give us the option to choose the account type, so we thought we'd give it another go and see if there were any more options.

This time around, Kath spotted that the suggested card type was a 'MasterCard Debit'. With this thought, I put my credit card away, and got out my ANZ debit card, and tried it. This is the one we wanted to use all along.

Low and behold it worked and we had 300dhs in old crappy notes and were as happy as you could see two Aussies in Dubai that had no money.

Stay tuned, more on Day 1 to come shortly...

Love, Kent and Kath.

At The Airport

We're at the airport and just having a beer. Thanks so much to Quey and Janelle for dropping us out here.

I'm attempting to attach a picture to this post via email.

By!!!

 

The Day Is Here...

Well, the day has finally come.

We are doing the last of our packing, trying to keep the weight down on our day packs, making sure we turned off all the things we can about the house, cleaned out the gutters, sorted out the BBQ, taking the Jeep to the secure car park and trying to get excite about the trip.

It's a funny feeling as we don't quite think it's real yet, but I can guarantee we will know its real when we land in Dubai and it's over 40 degrees!

David and Janelle are coming to pick us up to leave at 5:30pm and our flight leaves at 9:30pm. We get Dinner and Breakfast on the flight, but it will be dinner at probably 10:30pm and breakfast at 4:30am, which will be interesting.

Thats about it until we're in Dubai.

Adios Amigos!!

Egypt and Greece Here We Come!

Well, less than a week away now before we head off.

Not sure that it's real yet, but we are pretty organised so it must be real.

Stay tuned for updates and photos of our travels.