…Egypt (6)
Friday, may 7th 2010
As we walk past the shops and businesses in Aswan towards the Corniche (which is the name of the boulevards along the Nile in most cities), I realise it is friday, so everything is closed. Christian’s sunday is muslims’s friday…
Today we leave the luggage in the hotel. This will be picked up later by the driver, as we just take the necessities we need for our felucca-stay. We are taken by a small boat to the feluccas at the middle of the nile, where we split up in two groups (funny how automatically the two most logical groups are formed)…
On the felucca, we sail to the police station where the sailors get the permissions for sailing. Here, I call Ingvar, who is in Sweden to wish him happy birthday. The grlz n I sing as we usually do over the phone, loud, so everyone can enjoy with him. Over the felucca there is a sunscreen and over the seats there are matrasses so we immediately take on our ‘i will totally unstress’-attitude, at which I am particularly experienced…
Today we just relax and sail. We stop somewhere at the westbank (oh-ooh, wasn’t that the sunset side?!) and sit at the other boat all together and have the most amazing lunch with pasta, tuna, a kind of egg-tomato-mixture, salad washed in mineral water (very important in egypt), very tasty soft feta- cheese, pita bread, beans, all prepared at the boat!
Again we experience how well this trip has been put together, as this day of obligatory chillness is exactly what the doctor ordered; apparently for everyone… It is good to reflect on the amazing sights we have seen, the culture, the history, the people.
When on a boat with 41 degrees, the water looks tempting I can tell you… However, Jacqueline warns us not to go swimming, because there are larves that enter your body through your skin and lay their eggs. Hm, that sounds like a scene from a horror movie I’ve seen… But even without Jacq’s info, which we take very seriously as she is gradually becoming the Cleopatra of travel guides, sailing downstream over the Nile we see other reasons floating… We love the felucca, a very traditional way of sailing, but we are continuously passed by big, smog-exhausting cruiseships. And guess where they dump their unnecessities? Right! So when seeing the locals swim, wash and even drink from the Nile, I could have imagined they are immune for the larves, but are they immune for shit from diarrheeing tourists? Don’t think so (sorry for becoming so graphic).
We get other examples of the wit of egyptians from our captain Asaf, when we are continuously hearing donkeys bark ashore. “Egyptian telephone” he says. And then when we get wind after a long period of lying still, he says he called God for some wind. When we ask why he didn’t call before, he says: “he was still asleep, couldn’t wake him up!”… Two things are extra funny about their jokes. First of all, he draws this very serious face with them and second, their humour is very dutch with word jokes and stuff!
Sailing over the Nile provides us with amazing views though, in the evening of a beautiful sunset behind the palms and the desertous mountains in the background. At the end of the day, we end up without any wind, so after Geert and I have done some rowing, we wash up on the shore with the two boats.
On the other boat dinner is prepared by the crew and again it is amazing what they are able to do on one gascooker! They prepare soup, vegetables, some meats; we have pita bread and salad and we sit together on the biggest boat and have a great meal…
Afterwards, everyone is getting ready for bed, as we are awakened early by the sun and by Jacqueline (this girl has an amazing amount of energy!) to sail just a couple more kilometers to be picked up by the bus in the morning. Everyone is building his bed, putting on mosquito-repellent and lying under the blankets to start falling asleep…
And even though the matrasses are thin and it is even getting cold, I get to fall asleep watching the stars…
Is this a fairytale or what?
Tags: egypt
