Luxor - Alexandria

We spent our last day in Luxor admiring the Temples of Karnak. This was the same temple complex with which we had first become acquainted under the night sky of the sound and light show. It was a little less spectacular by day, but still an amazing collection of architecture spanning many hundreds of years. Over 100 hectares in area, it is said to be the largest religious monument in the world. And it is the ultimate example of how successive rulers have been determined to leave their own individual contributions (often at the expense of the efforts of their predecessors) for posterity. The diversity of styles, design and engineering is amazing. And there is still no clear-cut explanation as to how these ancient peoples were able to raise such giant architraves, pylons and obelisks into place without machinery. It was a fitting end to a very enjoyable visit to Luxor.



We boarded the evening sleeper train for Cairo where we arrived early on Tuesday morning. From there we switched to another train for the two hour onward journey to Alexandria.



Alexandria is nicely situated on the Mediterranean coast, spreading far along the seafront. It has a beautiful skyline, accentuated by many grand old buildings which evidence a European influence. We found the weather much cooler than in southern Egypt and we also immediately appreciated that no-one was hassling us to buy things. A welcome relief. The place has a more dignified air than the bustle of Cairo, and a much more European feel.



We spent our first day at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a huge recently-built library. It is architecturally stunning, like nothing we have ever seen before, and a worthy successor to Alexandria's original great library from many centuries ago. It holds books in many languages (with capacity to hold many more) and a fascinating display of ancient manuscripts of all types and ages. It also offered an exhibition on the history of Alexandria and its own museum of antiquities. Not to mention the planetarium. We spent much longer there than we had planned. But still the most striking feature was the architecture of the main library itself - a tiered structure whose exterior is adorned with carved symbols from every known alphabet. The library is also in the heart of the university area and clearly enlivened with the energy of the throngs of young people who go there for study or, more often it seems, just to hang out.



The next day we wandered through the backstreets of Alexandria to Pompey's Pillar, a single large standing pillar from the Roman period which actually had nothing to do with Pompey. It was surrounded by other items unearthed in the area, albeit dating from different periods - amazing that these things seem to be just lying around. Then on to a series of burial catacombs, apparently dating from the second century but slightly confusing because of their mix of Roman, Greek and ancient Egyptian imagery. And they weren't just for human corpses. In a bizarre twist, there is evidence that the remains of successful racehorses (and racehorses owners) were also placed in these catacombs. Finally, we visited the partly excavated remains of a Roman amphitheater - which still seemed very much work in progress.



By now we were starting to better appreciate Alexandria's unique blend of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and more recent European cultural history. What better way to reflect than over a coffee at French (or was it Brazilian) coffee house near the seafront.



Simon

Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel

CAIRO



We arrived bright and early on Monday morning in Cairo. It was a national holiday and the city was quiet as we drove to our hotel in Zamalek, a peaceful suburb on an island in the middle of the river. Not wanting to waste any time, we went almost immediately to Giza - an area just a short distance from the city center where Egypt's most famous pyramids and the Sphinx are located. The pyramids are huge and quite well-preserved. They seemed strangely anachronistic, standing there on desert land, with the skyline of the modern city right behind. I had not appreciated that they were so close to town.



We were able to enter one of the pyramids and made our way through ascending tunnels to the burial chamber. It was hard work. The tunnels were low and there was almost no ventilation - very hot and sticky. The burial chamber itself was unspectacular. Nothing left there after generations of grave robbers had been through. It was dark and, in the gaps between each batch of arriving tourists, there was an eerie silence. We spent several hours around the Giza site, admiring the Sphinx (looking exactly as it does in the tourist photos and carved from a single piece of limestone) and walking around the rocky sand hills.



Later that day, we went to the Coptic area of the city with its numerous churches and monasteries. It is an area of great significance for followers of the modern Coptic church and there were lots of relics on display. The Coptics seem to co-exist comfortably enough with the larger Islamic population of Cairo. Finally, we successfully negotiated our way back to the hotel using Cairo's efficient metro system



Next day we had to spend some time trying to organize visas for some of our future destinations. Then we were off to Egypt's national museum, an enormous collection of objects from antiquity including many items from King Tutankhamun's tomb famously discovered in 1922 and a large assortment of mummies in varying conditions. There was a lot to absorb and we had to agree with the criticisms we had heard that the collections are not exhibited in a very viewer-friendly way. Nevertheless, we persevered, knowing that we were seeing some remarkable artifacts. Some almost 5,000 years old. It makes the Western European history we learned seem like it happened only yesterday. It was astonishing to realize how sophisticated and advanced the ancient Egyptians were so long ago.



We spent our last day in Cairo looking around the medieval section of the city. A collection of peaceful mosques interspersed with the frenetic activity of various bazaars and markets. Also very striking was a series of immaculately restored medieval period houses. There seemed no end to the rooms and nooks and crannies in these very spacious buildings. Our last stop was a climb above the only surviving gate in the city wall. We were able to ascend one of the minarets for a panoramic view of the entire city - at least as far as the hazy conditions would allow.



The we boarded an overnight sleeper train bound for Aswan. This is one of the world's classic tourist train journeys - people don't often travel like this any more. We had a very comfortable bunk cabin and managed a good night's sleep. The motion of the train and the rhythmic noise on the rails combined to produce a somniferous effect.





ASWAN - ABU SIMBEL



The sun gets up early in Egypt. We were up at 5 am as our sleeper train moved through Luxor and on to Aswan. People were already at work in the fields - tending crops of sugar cane, wheat and palm trees. The land was surprisingly green and fertile. Not the desert landscape we had been expecting.



After arriving in Aswan, we found our hotel near the river and took an orientation walk around the city. It was incredibly hot. It felt as if we were walking in an oven. The temperature was over 40C and we were told that it can reach 45C. No wonder there weren't so many people walking around.



Later in the day, when it was a little cooler, we took a felucca trip on the Nile. The idea was to sail to one of the islands on the river and then cruise around as the sun set. There were just two of us on the felucca, a heavy wooden boat which could carry about 40 people. Things didn't go quite according to plan. The headwind was quite strong and the boat man had to struggle on the oars. There was no motor to make his job easier. We finally reached our island destination, a botanical garden created by Lord Kitchener. It was beautiful and green against the backdrop of the barren desert on the other side of the river. We got to see the sunset as we returned to Aswan - but, with wind and current against us, the night darkness had descended long before we disembarked.



Next day we had arranged to visit the temple complex at Abu Simbel. There are two major temples in Abu Simbel with some of the largest statuary in Egypt. But getting there is also an experience in itself. Tourists have to travel by bus convoy for security reasons. And the main convoy of the day leaves from Aswan at 4 am. It was also the day on which Egyptians put their clocks forward for summer time (which we didn't know until someone called us very early in the morning), so we didn't get a lot of sleep.



It's a three hour bus trip to Abu Simbel and we arrived a little after 7 am. The good news was that we avoided the heat of the day and were able to see the two temples in relatively comfortable conditions, albeit with the hundreds of other tourists in the same convoy. The temples were worth seeing. The more impressive of the two is a temple built by Ramses II, fronted by statues of himself which tower 30 meters high. He was not very modest. Inside are many chambers with carved hieroglyphs. A second temple next door is a little smaller, and again fronted by giant statues of Ramses - but his wife Nefertari also gets a couple of statues this time. Both temples are not on their original sites but were moved there out of the way of the flooding associated with the Aswan dam constructions. It must have been an enormous job to move everything.



On the way back to Aswan, we stopped on the dam walls and learnt more about the scale of the dam work undertaken to control the flow of the Nile. The Aswan high dam is only the latest in a series of attempts to control the Nile that has been going on for many generations.



We also visited the Ptolemaic-Roman temple of Philae, another relocation from the dam path. The original Philae island is now under water, so the temple is on a different small island. It is also quite impressive, though very different in its origins from what we had seen earlier in the morning. When sightseeing in Egypt, one has to jump backwards and forwards by centuries and even millennia.





LUXOR



We boarded a local train for the 4 hour journey from Aswan north to Luxor. Nothing as fancy as the sleeper train on which we had arrived, but it turned out to be pretty efficient and very economical. We were in Luxor by early afternoon and spent the rest of the day visiting Luxor temple and Luxor museum, both near the center of town. The temple is huge and impressive and, like several temples in the area, is a combination of the work of many different rulers, each of whom adds something to it (or, in some cases, obliterates something from it). These are not just rulers from the ancient Egyptian dynasties. The Greeks and Romans have also left their marks - and there is even an Arab mosque within the temple walls. Amazingly, new discoveries are still being unearthed on the temple site.



The Luxor museum is a fantastic museum. In contrast to the Egyptian national museum in Cairo, it is very selective in what it displays and everything carries excellent descriptions. We know when we've found a good museum - and this is one of them - because we don't get museum fatigue after a couple of hours. Exhibits cover all of the civilizations which touched Luxor (or Thebes as it was formerly called). We also paid a quick visit to a mummification museum where e learnt more than we necessarily wanted to know about how the mummification process works.



To round out the day, we went to a sound and light show at the massive Karnak temple. We didn't have high expectations, but it proved to be very well done. Viewing the columns and obelisks against the night sky served to emphasize just how huge they are and marvel at how they were ever constructed and assembled. As with the Luxor temple, it seems that successive rulers have added their own "renovations" over a period of about 1,500 years. We are looking forward to going back in daylight!



We next took a day to visit the West bank of the Nile - across the river from Luxor. Here is a vast series of archeological sites including the most famous Valley of the Kings where many regal tombs are located. We cycled from site to site, inspecting many of the tombs which ranged in style, condition and complexity. There is a lot of exploration work still going on and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more tombs there still to be discovered. This area retained its popularity as a burial site for several dynasties and we could see how tomb architecture evolved from modest to larger and larger edifices - all hewn into the sides of the cliffs and entered via long chambers adorned with hieroglyph carvings. The place was so popular with Egyptian kings that we even found an instance where the chamber of one tomb accidentally ran into another. There is also a Valley of the Queens where the tombs are a little more low-key and the Tombs of the Nobles which are plainer still. With a few temples in the vicinity to complement the tombs, this is an archeologically rich area and we covered a lot of ground. We were back to Luxor's east bank in time to observe the sunset and get an early night.

Simon

Johannesburg

"Jo'burg" is a large city, but usually there's a good thing about being large: there are theatres. We decided to seize the opportunity and over the weekend caught a musical and a play. The play was better. Titled "At her feet", it was a unipersonal about muslim women in Cape Town. We missed a few inside jokes, but otherwise loved it. It was along the lines of Sarah Jones' Bridge & Tunnel. Sometimes I miss NYC, you see?
We also managed to visit the main tourist sights: the top floor of the tallest building in Africa, Constitution Hill (ex prison converted into museum and Constitutional court), Newtown (revived downtown area, see picture), the Apartheid Museum that was extremely educating, and a guided tour of Soweto, an infamous township mainly due to a black student massacre in 1976. The tour felt strange, the locals were extremely friendly and a guide took us around a couple of blocks, and even into a family's house. Very clean despite no running water, inside toilets or electricity. Just the corrugated iron walls and roof, basic furniture, and a charcoal stove to keep them warm in the winter. The lady of the house told us that she's been living there for 15 years waiting for the promised government relocation to new public housing.
South Africa's general elections will take place next week. The ruling party, ANC, held various events rallying the crowds this weekend. Everybody we talked to sounded enthusiastic about the process.
Now we are at the airport waiting for our flight to Cairo, and the beginning of the Middle East section of our trip. We expect to arrive at 6am, so I hope for a good plane's sleep, and an early check-in at President Hotel to sleep a little more.
Mercedes

The Drakensberg - imposing

Just a 2.5-hour drive from Durban, Drakensberg is the escarpment that separates South Africa from the kingdom of Lesotho. It is a wall of rock, sometimes more than 3,000m above sea level, and several km long.
We based ourselves in a town outside the National Park called Winterton. It felt simpler than the several fancy resorts everywhere near the mountains.
We drove to two areas for a short hike in each. First, Monk's Cowl in Central Berg, where we visited a couple of small waterfalls and took the picture. Second day, we went to Royal Natal, were we hiked up a river towards a long rock called Amphitheatre.
We were blessed with the most perfect weather: blue sky, no clouds, no humidity. Cool after the sun was down.
There are lots of trails of any duration you like in both places. In the daily ones you generally walk on rolling grasslands towards the escarpment. The mountains are so imposing that you can't stop looking at them. One of my favorite places in Africa, absolutely recommended.
Today we are off to Johannesburg from where we'll fly to Cairo on Sunday. Looking forward to a weekend in South Africa's largest city. However, we'll miss having a car. After driving for 3,500 km over a 10-day period, we were starting to feel attached to it.
Mercedes

Durban - mixed

Not much to say about Durban, it gets a mixed review. Located on the east coast, it has a long clean beach and lots of waves. The not so nice part is that the beachfront is dominated by high rise hotels. There are lots of sharks in the area, so they have shark nets to keep them away. Just in case, we didn't swim. :)
It is the third largest city in South Africa, and the most mixed in terms of blacks and whites, as far as I saw. It also has a significant Indian descent population. The city center has a few imposing British-style government buildings, but the rest seemed out of date. Downtown felt past its prime, and Victoria St market reminded us of the rest of Africa, instead of the orderly and tidy South Africa we've seen on the southern coast.
To make things more confusing they've recently changed the names of almost every street. All maps, including my bberry's Google, had the old names. However, the signs on the streets showed the new names, mostly 20th century revolutionaries. There's even a street called Che Guevara. No right turns on this one, ok?
Our hotel was in a not too far away suburb. Fully wired with alarms like every house in the neighborhood. Similar to what we saw in Johannesburg, there are small clusters of restaurants and guest houses in safe suburbs, instead of a main central city location.
It is Thursday morning and we are headed to Drakensberg, the mountains were we expect to have some good hikes today. All is well.
Mercedes

South African cost from Cape Town to Durban

After enjoying the wine tasting and the quaint town of Stellenbosch, (well, technically, I enjoyed the tasting and Simon enjoyed the driving) we headed to the southern most tip of Africa: Cape Agulhas. This cape is also the meeting point of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Very windy; kite surfing was the main activity in the area.
Later we rode through route 62, a scenic route that traverses vineyards, mountain ranges, and farms. The road was beautiful and plagued with bikers in their fancy gear going up and down the hills.
We spent the night in Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital. We didn't know that there was a festival in town that weekend, so we drove around for a couple of hours before we found the last room available in the valley (we came very close to spending the night in the car, but were lucky that the locals are extremely hospitable). The following morning we visited an ostrich farm that provided an educational tour and the opportunity to ride an ostrich. So I bravely hopped onto one, helped by two handlers. And the ostrich just started running full speed from one end of the corral to the other. I was hanging on to its wings for dear life, almost falling backwards, until the handlers stopped the bird and helped me get off. It looked like a cartoon: Mercedes on the back of roadrunner. I may not be a good rider, but I should note that the ostrich fillet is delicious, tasted almost like beef.
The rest of the day was quieter. We drove up the mountains of Klein Karoo through spectacular passes and hairpin roads. We also visited the enormous limestone Cango Caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites, and stalagnites (this is what the guide called the columns formed when the first two join).
Later we reached the famous Garden Route and almost instantly the weather changed from dry and sunny to misty and cloudy. The Garden Route runs next to the coast and it has some beautiful viewpoints. However, it is very developed, and being Easter weekend, there were too many tourists. We spent Saturday night in Knysna. On Sunday we hiked in Tsitsikamma National Park. This park is right on the coast, so the trail runs on the rocks' edge. We were hoping from one big rock to the next, while the waves came splashing hard on the wall of rock underneath us. There are lots of waves turning the ocean white with foam. (See picture). Very fun trail.
After that, we spent the night and the following morning in Jeffreys Bay. This town is famous worldwide for surfing and its "supertubes" waves. We were not in "supertubes" season; nevertheless the waves were quite big and there were several surfers around.
On Monday we took a detour and left the coast for the mountain town of Hogsback. Suddenly, the place names were English rather than Afrikaans (specially the British monarchy: Elizabeth, Albert, Victoria, George, etc. ), there were lots of black townships everywhere, and the road was filled with local hitchhikers, some even offering money. Hogsback is perched on top of a mountain. At 1300m over sea level, the climate was noticeably crisper. Our hotel 'The Edge' was right on the edge of the mountain overlooking a gorge covered by indigenous forest. The hotel also has the longest labyrinth in South Africa. I walked the 1.4km (all within a circumference of 91 meters) in search of inner peace. I followed the instructions: walk slowly, breathe, feel comfortable, maintain a meditative state of mind, get rid of excess thoughts... Unfortunately, I must have a lot of 'excess thoughts', whatever that means, because I wasn't more peaceful afterwards. Maybe I was expecting too much from a labyrinth. The view was really nice, though.
Later on Tuesday we drove the longest stretch of our trip, from Hogsback to Durban, back to the coast. This gave us the opportunity to stop at a rest area on the road and enjoy a Steers burger, the local McDonalds-like chain, ahh, the inexplicable joys of roadtrips. Tonight we will certainly sleep like logs. Fortunately, our hotel for the night, Roseland, is in a peaceful neighborhood. South Africa is a larger country than it looks on the map. Simon has already driven 3,000 km and counting.
Mercedes

Cape Town and Stellenbosch

Cape Town is so nice and livable. One of those cities that is big enough to have a metropolis feel and a fair amount of cultural activity, while being located in one of the most beautiful settings in the world between mountains and sea. Loved it so much, I could stay and live here.
We spent 3 days visiting the regular tourist spots: Long St for lots of restaurants and bars; Robben Island where Mandela and many other political prisoners were locked for years and decades; the top of Table Mountain from where you can see amazing views of the city, the peninsula and the bay; Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope: the southern tips of the peninsula, and the continent; one of the most beautiful Botanical gardens in the world; and the super modern waterfront. Everything is first world, even the shanty towns are out of sight. After all our rough travels through Africa, this feels like a vacation, everything is easier, tab water is drinkable. Except understanding the locals, whose heavy accent makes it impossible for me to communicate. Fortunately, Simon communicates ok.
On Wednesday we drove to Stellenbosch, the wine region, just about an hour away from Cape Town. Beautiful like most vineyard landscapes, when combined with a sunny day with absolutely blue skies, and a lot of wine tasting; well, that's heaven for me. All made possible by Simon driving but not drinking. After a few hours of stopping for a sip here and a glass there, I was a bit tipsy, but extremely happy.
We plan to spend the night in Stellenbosch town, and tomorrow drive to the Garden route.
I hope the weather continues to be as splendid as it's been.
Mercedes

Victoria Falls

After an eventful day of traveling by bus from Maputo to Johannesburg - including a bus breakdown and a police search of all the luggage - we took a flight out to Victoria Falls. We had discussed a lot about whether to visit the Falls from the Zimbabwean side or the Zambian side, and we had received different opinions from those we asked. In the end, the Zimbabwean security situation seemed stable enough and the Zimbabwean side offers more extensive views, so that is the choice we made. The worst we expected were problems with electricity supply and phone connections.

We arrived in the Zimbabwean town of Victoria Falls mid-morning. The flight was uneventful and life seemed calm. There were signs of the economic problems which have now resulted in Zimbabwe having no currency of its own in use - the local supermarket took US dollars, rand, even Botswanian pula ...but no Zimbabwean notes. And people were pouring over the border to Zambia to do their shopping. As we walked towards the Falls, we had offers to exchange our rain jackets for souvenirs. Someone even wanted to take my shoes in exchange for a carving (given the state of my shoes, that was a close call).

We had seen the spray rising from the Falls from a long way off and, as we approached, the roar was tremendous. At times, it felt as if it was raining. We learned that the water was running at 10 times its normal volume - a 50 year high. We thought we were in for something spectacular. And indeed we were. But it was not so much a visual spectacle. The water was so fast that the spray obscured most views of the Falls. Clad in our heaviest wet weather gear, we walked from one observation point to the next, suffered deluges of water from above pounding down on us, and waded through streams of runoff. Our reward was an occasional glimpse of the Falls from behind the veil of spray, but almost too quick to capture on camera (we feared for our camera anyway, with all the water coming down).

We finally found a couple of vantage points which were far enough away to allow us some respite from the "rain" and the briefest of views of the bottom of the Falls - a very narrow chasm, which may account for the amount of spray. We also walked a little way upriver behind the Falls and got a sense of just how fast the water was moving. Very, very fast. We came away from the Falls with an impression that we had been exposed to something spectacular - we had heard them, felt them, but just not quite been able to see them.

The next day, we decide to try our luck on the Zambian side. In the dry season, most of the Falls are not even visible from this side. But maybe the wet season would be different. We walked across the border bridge, entered Zambia on day visas and went into the park which surrounds the Falls. Just as on the Zimbabwean side, the spray was incredible. I don't think I have ever been so wet in any rainstorm. And the views were no less elusive. The Falls were teasing us. The spray swirled around, opening up tantalising views for the briefest of moments, and then snatching them away. Again, we knew we were seeing something great - if only we could see it! A bonus on the Zambian side was a trip down to the river level to view the waters as they churned away from the Falls. Here we saw a section of river appropriately called the Boiling Pot. The name said it all.

We returned to the Zimbabwean side and, later in the day, went upriver from the Falls to do some canoeing. It was a long slow journey by truck through a Zimbabwean national park to reach the put-in point. The park was almost totally empty of major wildlife - very different from our experience in Tanzania and we realized how lucky we had been there. The canoeing was fun. Our first time in inflatable canoes, which were ideal for the rapids we encountered. We had been warned to watch out for hippos and crocodiles, but they must have been keeping their distance because we had a relatively tranquil journey and enjoyed the sunset. After a few hours, we finally reached our take-out point about 1 km above the Falls - a point we certainly didn't want to miss.

Next day, we took a flight back to Johannesburg and on to Cape Town where we plan to spend a few days. Victoria Falls had been well up to expectations, even if we couldn't exactly see them.

Simon

Maputo - surprisingly beautiful

We left Ibo island a day late due to the rain, apparently a spill-over from a cyclone near Madagascar. When we arrived in Maputo on Monday, it felt like an enormous city. It is all relative. Coming from Ibo where the airport is comprised of just a grass runway and a roof with 4 columns and 2 benches that acts as a terminal, and where the little airplane has to fly over before landing so that somebody moves the animals out of the runway, well, any city would have looked enormous.

In all fairness, Maputo turned out to be large, and more beautiful than we expected: lots of trees shading every street, cleaner than any other African city we visited, several tall buildings, and a couple of nice colonial remnants, like the train station on the picture. It is located on a bay by the water, so there are plenty of restaurants with outdoor seating by the sea. Ideal, when combined with the blue skies, sunny days, and perfect weather we had. We saw many foreigners and heard lots of English. In a way it felt the most European-like city so far. It is also evident that the streets were renamed when the communists took power. Important avenues are called: Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Min, Vladimir Lenine, Karl Marx, etc. There's even a Salvador Allende, but we haven't found Fidel's yet.

Our hotel, Mozaika guesthouse, was the perfect place after so much constant travelling in recent days. So we decided to change our plans a little. We are not going to go up the southern coast of Mozambique, we are going to stay a little longer in Maputo, breathe, recover, and then start the constant travelling again. On Thursday we'll take a bus to Johannesburg, from where we'll fly to Victoria Falls for a couple of days, and lastly fly to Cape Town on Sunday night. We plan to see the falls from both the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides, visas permitting.

So this is our 'adeus' to Mozambique, a country with few touts and the friendliest people, the most mosquitos, lots of ruins from the past, and the best grilled calamari and prawns. I had more fish and seafood in the last couple of weeks than over the last 10 years. Delicious.

Mercedes

PS: today is the beginning of the second half of our trip. What!? We reached the middle point already!?? Mixed emotions. It feels like we've been travelling forever, but it also feels like we still have so many places to visit that half a year will not be enough.