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Egypt
September 2003
A three week journey around Egypt. I wrote a full account of the trip, to record both the memories I want to keep and the historic facts I want to remember.

Part 6: Going Solo
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Edfu
I woke up at 6am in Aswan and took a taxi from the hotel to the station. While waiting for my 7:30 train to Edfu I walked around the station's neighbourhood. The streets were still empty and it was nice to just walk around without being hassled.
The train drove next to the Nile most of the way, so I got to see much of the landscapes that I missed out on by not doing the felucca trip (which would also go from Aswan to Edfu) with the group.
In Edfu station I quickly took a taxi to the temple, which is on the other side of the Nile. I had made a hotel reservation in Edfu, but I planned to go on to Luxor the same day if the temple visit wouldn't take too long. The taxi dropped me in the middle of the tourist market before the temple.

The Temple of Horus
Edfu was already the center of worship of the falcon god Horus in pharaonic times, but the surviving temple was built in Ptolemaic times. It was started in 237 BC by Ptolemy III, and finished in 57 BC by Ptolemy XII, the father of Cleopatra. It was completely built in the style of the New Kingdom temples though, and as it is the most well preserved of all ancient temples, it's a great example of Egyptian architecture.

Since I hadn't checked in at a hotel, I had all my luggage with me. The tourist police at the entrance offered to guard it for me, but I didn't want to take the chance, so I carried it all around the temple. I must have been a funny sight :)

Inside the temple are two hypostyle halls with 12 columns each. Unfortunately I only had a disposable camera with me now and its flash turned out to be too weak, so all my pictures inside the temple failed. The picture on the right gives an idea though.
According to the Lonely Planet it used to be possible to get on the roof of the temple if you bribed the guards, but I tried and saw a British tour guide try and we both failed, so I guess it's not possible anymore. I'd manage to get on the roof of the much nicer temple of Hathor at Dendara though, so no worries.

Them again!
It was fun to spend as much time as I wanted to check out the temple; for the first time I didn't have to be at the exit after a certain time. When I was finally done I left the temple and started walking back to the entrance of the temple area. Halfway I put down my heavy luggage to rest a while, and while I sat there I saw three girls walking in my direction. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, but I had once again run into Cathy, Esther and Sara, who I had first met in Luxor five days earlier. This time I was really gonna have to buy them those beers :)

It turned out they'd also been to Aswan and then sailed on a felucca for one day, and had now just visited this temple on their way back to Luxor. Since I was also going there I loaded my luggage into their minibus and drove straight to Luxor with them, which saved me a lot of time.


Back in Luxor
Back in Luxor I got a single room in the same hotel as before, where the girls were also staying again. They had arranged their trip to Aswan via the hotel owner, a sly young man called Aladdin, and since not everything had been completely satisfactory, they immediately started pushing him to give them a nice free meal as compensation. I admired their assertiveness and almost felt sorry for the guy, but he obviously liked them a lot and it was all very friendly. After much much talking it was agreed that they would get a free meal that evening, but in return would have to write something nice in his guest book.

The four of us then spent the afternoon at a swimming pool on the roof of a nearby hotel. The pool was small but the view was superb. Now that I finally wanted to buy the girls the beers they'd been demanding ever since the third time I ran into them, they all wanted Coke Light instead, ha!
We spent the evening smoking shisha (waterpipe) on the rooftop terrace of our own hotel. Cathy, Esther and Sara had had their free dinner and now each in turn made good on their promise to write something nice in Aladdin's guest book. Aladdin had left for Cairo right after having dinner with them, so he wasn't there to see what they wrote.
In no time they filled two big pages with things like "My dearest prince Aladdin, once I looked into your deep dark eyes my soul was lost forever. Now it hurts so much to leave you" and so on and so on. It was hilariously over the top :) After their two pages full of love poems I added one line saying "Dear prince Aladdin, don't worry about your harem, I'll look after them while you're gone!" and signed with "Filip the Eunuch".

The next day Cathy, Esther and Sara would take a bus to Hurghada at the Red Sea, where they'd spend the rest of their holiday in a beach resort. I was also considering going there later on, but first I wanted to see some things in Middle Egypt. I'd discussed my options at the tourist information center in Luxor, where they spoke fluent English, were very friendly and provided accurate information - excellent service! I'd first go to Qena to visit the temple at Dendara, and then make my way to Abydos to see the temple there.


Qena
So the next morning I took a bus to Qena, and that was the beginning of my most crazy two days in Egypt, which I'm gonna describe in quite some detail.

Police Protection
There is little tourism in Middle Egypt (north of Luxor) anymore since the attacks on tourists there in the 1990s by fanatic opposition groups who wanted to hit the Egyptian government where it hurts most: in the tourist industry which accounts for 30% of Egypt's economy. This may all sound very dangerous, but in reality a tourist is much more likely to get robbed and killed in the USA (where tourist mugging is a plague) than in Egypt. Of course, a tourist being killed in the USA doesn't make the headlines, while any attack on western tourists in the Middle East is big news.

Ever since the attack of 1997, which was a huge blow to the economy, the Egyptian government isn't taking any chances anymore. In risk zones, tourists get protected like VIPs, to such a ridiculous degree that it is highly annoying not just for the locals but also for the tourists themselves. I'd read about this and was curious to experience it myself, and I would :)

Qena bus station
The bus I took was actually a bus to Hurghada. When it made a stop in Qena, I was the only tourist who got off at the bus station there; all other tourists were heading for Hurghada. The bus was escorted by a police car which waited outside the station (which was surrounded by walls), so they didn't see me get off the bus and I was free right away, yay! It wouldn't be for long though.

I first informed when the last bus to Al-Balyana, the town near Abydos which I wanted to reach that same day, would leave. It turned out I only had 3 hours, so I hurried to the street outside the bus station and started stopping taxis, asking each driver if he spoke English. None of the drivers did, and I was making a bit of a spectacle of myself, making all those taxis stop and immediately sending them away again.

After a while I had a small crowd of Egyptians around me who were all talking to me in Arabic and some English, trying to understand what I wanted so they could help me. Finally someone turned up who spoke English well, and he translated between me and the next taxi driver I stopped. I told the driver I wanted to rent his taxi for three hours; he would have to bring me to Dendara, wait for me while I visited the temple there, and then bring me back to this bus station. I'll explain later why I wanted this. He agreed to do all this for 30 pound (4.5 euro), so off I went.

This had already been a lot of fun. The irony is that while Qena is considered one of the most risky places for tourists, I met nothing but friendly Egyptians there who just wanted to help me - a pleasant change after all the hasslers in Luxor and Aswan who only wanted to get money out of me :) Qena is shunned by tourists because local militant islamists once warned that tourists wouldn't be safe there, but meanwhile they revoked that statement (or I would've stayed away).


Dendara
The driver brought me to Dendara, which is right across the Nile from Qena, and dropped me off at the police checkpoint near the temple. This time I didn't want to carry my luggage around all the time, so I asked one of the policemen to guard it. He told me to put it back in the taxi. I said I was afraid the driver would run off with it then, but the policemen promised he'd personally keep an eye on the taxi driver. I demonstratively memorised the taxi's licence plate anyway.

I walked on to the temple area, and found the whole domain seemingly deserted although it was the middle of the day. There was a building with signs indicating it was a bar and a gift shop, but it was closed. The ticket cabin seemed to be empty, but when I looked inside I saw a man sleeping on the floor. I didn't want to wake him, so I walked on to the temple entrance.
There I saw the first sign of life: armed soldiers sitting in the shadow, relaxing. They asked my ticket and were very amused when I explained why I didn't have one. I ended up walking back to the cabin and waking up the guy just so he could sell me a ticket. Fun :)
Once past the gate I discovered that I was all alone inside, except for the soldiers. This is one of the most beautiful monuments in Egypt yet I was the only tourist there! Terrorism has its advantages :) One of the soldiers followed me around but he was nice and kept some distance.

The Temple of Hathor
Dendara was already the center of worship of Hathor in pharaonic times, but the current temple dates from Ptolemaic and Roman times; it was built between 125 BC and 60 AD. Just like the temple of Horus in Edfu it uses the old Egyptian style and has been beautifully preserved. Around it are other, smaller monuments.

Hathor was the goddess of love and of sensual pleasure (the Greeks identified her with Aphrodite). She was always represented as a cow or as a woman wearing two cow's horns that surround a sun disc (she being the daughter of the sun god Re). Once a year, her statue was taken from its sanctuary in this temple and brought to Edfu by boat, where she was then reunited with her husband Horus during two weeks of sensual celebration.
The entrance pylons of the temple are gone, so it now begins at the hypostyle hall, which has 24 columns. The capital of each column has Hathor's face on each of its four sides. Such capitals were also used in Karnak.
Sadly, the faces were all deliberately damaged by Coptic christians (i.e. christian Egyptians of the 1st-6th centuries AD, when christianity became the predominant religion in Egypt) who wanted to destroy all images of the heathen gods that their forefathers had worshipped. In all the reliefs on the walls of this temple, the faces of the gods had also been systematically ruined.

I saw this everywhere in Egypt: delibarate damage done to pharaonic monuments by early christians, for no other reason than religious zealotry. In the north of Egypt, a lot of monuments were completely destroyed this way (e.g. in Alexandria). It makes me angry just to think about it. If it weren't for the conquest of Egypt in the 7th century by the then more tolerant muslims, there would probably be a lot less pharaonic monuments still standing today.
Despite the damage, this temple was still the second most beautiful I've seen in Egypt (after Karnak). The hypostyle hall was especially impressive. The ceilings have superb reliefs that represent the sun's journey through the heavens. I had a great time photographing it all, but again all my pictures failed because I only had a disposable camera :(
The funnest part of this visit was that I could get onto the roof of the temple. There were no balustrades or anything there so I could walk anywhere I wanted. The soldier was still following me everywhere so I used him to make some nice pictures.
Back at the checkpoint
After visiting the temple I walked back to the police checkpoint. I'll explain now why I wanted to have a taxi waiting for me at the temple, instead of just taking a taxi there and another taxi back.

In the Lonely Planet guide I had read about Dendara that "you are likely to be met by policemen there and could well be escorted to the temple and then put on the first train to Luxor". I read the same about every other place in Middle Egypt; the general policy seemed to be to let you see it and then force you back to Luxor where it's safe, or even to take you there by police car.

I was afraid that even though I wanted to move on to Abydos, I too might be forced to go back to Luxor, but I figured that with a taxi waiting for me, the police would more easily let me continue by myself, seeing that my transport was already arranged. I don't know if it helped, but in any case the policemen at the checkpoint just asked where I was going next, talked to someone on the radio and then let me go. I lied and said I was gonna take a bus to Hurghada though :) (a touristy and hence 'safe' place like Luxor)


From Qena to Abydos
The taxi got me back to the bus station in Qena in time for my bus to Al-Balyana. Of course the bus was an hour late (as the bus to Qena had been) so I had actually hurried for nothing, but in Egypt you just have to be relaxed about that, like Egyptians are.
The bus had TV screens, and strangely they started showing an old American kung-fu movie. It had Arabic sub titles but noone could possibly read those on the small screens, and noone in the bus knew English. I wondered if Egyptians like seeing kungfu action without understanding the dialogues, or if they were showing this film just for me, which would be sweet.

When we arrived in Al-Balyana (the town near Abydos), the bus driver stopped near a police checkpoint at a bridge and told me to get off there. The bus immediately drove on without me, and the weirdest 24 hours of my life began.

Al-Balyana
As I was standing there trying to figure out where I was, a fat guy in a long dress and a turban waved a big rifle to grab my attention and told me to come to the checkpoint. I'd often see guys like that mixing with the uniformed police, and they usually seemed to have authority. I'm not sure if they're policemen themselves, or representatives of local leaders.
Since I loved the sight I was getting - a police checkpoint with a big picture of president Mubarak next to it - I pretended not to notice the fat guy and quickly got my camera out of my luggage to take a picture.
Big pictures of the president are everywhere in Egypt. Though they're not as numerous and big, they still remind strongly of the pictures of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I don't understand why the government, which usually pretends to be democratic, isn't more concerned about its image. I'd at least expect them to not put up pictures of the 'beloved leader' in touristy places, but in Aswan I saw one that said in English "Our president mister Mubarak is a great man". Perhaps they just don't understand what impression this makes on western tourists.

The fat guy brought me to the checkpoint, where I was offered a chair in the shadow and asked to wait. Then he disappeared, which was unfortunate because noone else there spoke more than ten words of English. All the policemen (about 10 of them) were friendly and we laughed a lot while trying to communicate. It was clear I couldn't just stand up and go where I wanted to though.

In the early 90s there have been riots in this region, and since then few tourists come here anymore, except on excursions from Luxor which drive straight to the temple at Abydos and back. In the Lonely Planet I had already read that "the police here tend to be somewhat heavy-handed in their efforts to protect you".

As usual I was asked where I'm from, where I'd come from and where I was going. Policemen never wanted to know my name, just my nationality; I was always "Belgiki" (the Belgian), period. Now it was early evening already and too late to visit the temple of Abydos, but my plan was to spend the night in a local hotel so I could visit the temple first thing in the morning. According to the Lonely Planet guide, this would not be allowed "given the nervousness of the local police", but the tourist information service in Luxor had told me it was possible, and I was going by that.

Now the policemen didn't understand the word 'hotel', so I made the signal for sleeping while saying Abydos, and I repeated this a dozen times because they kept replying something about Luxor and I desperately did not want them to send me all the way back there. They were trying to communicate with their HQ but neither the phone nor the radio were working, so I sat there a long time. Luckily a soldier with a walkie talkie then walked by and solved the communication problem.

A bit later the policemen stopped a taxi although it already had a passenger. Two policemen sat in front, which meant there were now four people on the front row of the Peugeot, while two others joined me in the back. Everyone was chatting and smoking cheerfully. I always liked how relaxed Egyptians are about comfort; fitting another one in a car is never a problem :)


Hotel Abydos
When we arrived in the village Abydos across the Nile, I was escorted to a hotel. Victory!

My night in Hotel Abydos, as it was called, was one of the weirdest of my life. The hotel and its occupants seemed to have escaped from a David Lynch movie. Two guys were running it. One of them spoke about 5 words of English, the other one just said "fafafaaah! fafahfa!" all the time while gesticulating frantically. It took a while before I realised he was deaf.

When they brought me up to my room I could see this hotel had not been used in a long time. There was no reception. There was a big hall that had once been a dining hall but it was a mess, full of broken furniture. Some rooms had no doors and I could see that they were ruined inside. Someone seemed to have decided to tear this place down but then changed his mind halfway.

On the 2nd floor there were some intact rooms. Mine had nothing but two beds inside, and included a dirty shower that wasn't working. Although it was just 6pm, the guys thought I wanted to sleep immediately. This made me think that the reason I had been allowed to stay here, in a hotel that was obviously not open for business, was that I had said "sleep, Abydos!" all the time at the checkpoint. Perhaps the policemen there had thought I was very sleepy and hadn't had the heart to send me back. That would be cute, but I'll never know :)

I was hungry like hell though so I said I wanted to eat and drink. Or rather, I used sign language because one didn't understand English and the other was deaf. We 'talked' like this for half an hour. It was particularly funny when I had to explain that I don't eat meat; imagine the three of us doing animal impressions. The deaf guy was obviously enjoying the conversation a lot. I guess he doesn't get to talk to strangers a lot, but in my case he wasn't at a disadvantage since his friend couldn't talk to me either. After a lot of gesturing they had enough information and went off.

A while later the deaf guy returned to my room by himself though, just to have a chat. Now what I haven't told yet is that this guy was totally, totally gay; his gestures, his constant giggling, ... an actor couldn't act more gay than that. Strange, because in the Arabic world gayness is not something you confess to openly, but I guess noone gives this poor guy a hard time since he's deaf.

Anyway, there I sat in a hotel room in the middle of Egypt talking to a gay, deaf, giggling Egyptian in sign language. It was totally surrealistic. Although I understood less than half of what he was trying to say and often just nodded yes, we somehow managed to have quite a long conversation. We talked about how nice the temple is and how shabby this hotel was (he brought that up himself). He asked what time I wanted to sleep, and then he asked if I was married (first using the sign for ring, then for breasts, quite funny). Now since I was alone in a hotel room with a gay guy, you'll forgive me for lying and saying yes :)

I then said how nice the view from the room was (it looked out on the sugar cane fields and the mountains in the distance), after which he signaled me to follow him and lead me to the roof of the hotel, where we got a nice view all around. Along the way I got to see another floor of completely ruined hotel rooms.

After a while we spotted the other hotel guy on the street. He was coming back from the shop with my food, so we went down again. I was brought to a room that had once been the manager's office and still looked nice, except for the dirty mattress on the floor. There was a TV connected to the satellite dish on the roof and he turned it on for me, but there were only Arabic channels.

A while later my dinner was served here. I got: one scrambled egg, a pack of dry sandwiches and a plate full of chips. For dinner! I guess they think Europeans eat chips for food. I ate the egg and as many of the dry sandwiches as I could, and politely ate some chips as well :)

After dinner I decided to check out the village. I tried to sneak out, but at the exit I discovered that there was a soldier with a machinegun sitting in front of the hotel, apparently to protect me. He stopped me and called the hotel guys. When I said I was going to walk around the village, they discussed it in Arabic quickly; then the soldier said "no problem", but he was gonna come with me.

So I strolled around the village, with a soldier carrying a machinegun following me everywhere. I felt at once important and ridiculous, because the few people on the street were perfectly friendly and kids were playing football on the empty field in the middle of the village; hardly a threatening place. I tried talking to my bodyguard but he was very shy and spoke little English.

We walked around the field, I did some shopping, and we returned to the hotel where he resumed his position in the front porch. In my room I discovered that I couldn't lock my door from the inside, so I put my luggage in front of it.

In the evening I did some reading in my travel guides and made up my mind to go to Hurghada after this, since the other places in Middle Egypt didn't seem that interesting and I wanted to go snorkling in the Red Sea. The howling of prayers from the minarets at night was especially impressive here, because unlike in Cairo and Luxor there was no other sound.

Breakfast next morning was the same as dinner: an egg, dry bread and a plate of chips. While eating I saw a fat Egyptian walking around in his pyjamas, looking for a room with a working shower just like I had done. I thought there were other guests here after all, but a while later he was wearing a uniform; I guess the police use this hotel when they work late shifts.

After breakfast I paid for the hotel (40 pounds, more than all my previous hotels, but I hadn't felt like haggling the night before), took my luggage and went outside. I found my bodyguard sitting in front of the hotel again (I hope he didn't spend the whole night there) and he accompanied me to the entrance of the temple, just 200m from the hotel.


Abydos
Abydos was the most sacred place of ancient Egypt. It was the cult site of Osiris, the god of the dead, and the Egyptians believed that the entrance to the underworld lay in the mountains here. It was a place of pilgrimage that every Egyptian tried to visit once in his lifetime. The ones that couldn't make it were buried with a small boat so their soul could make the journey after death.

It is in Abydos that the very first pharaohs of Egypt were buried, although they also built tombs in Saqqara in the north to emphasise their rule over both parts of Egypt. The oldest pharaonic tomb found here is that of Djer, who was the third pharaoh of the 1st dynasty and ruled around 3000 BC. Later Egyptians identified his grave as that of the god Osiris himself, which started the pilgrimages. Abydos was already a necropolis since 4000 BC though, and would remain so without interruption until 600 AD, an incredible 4600 years later.

Abydos once had many temples, but today only the temple of Seti I remains, along with a wealth of ruins. It is one of the busiest archaeological sites in Egypt.

The Temple of Seti I
Seti I ruled from 1291 to 1278 BC, just a few decades after the death of the rebel pharaoh Akhenaten who had tried to wipe away the old religion. This temple was dedicated to Egypt's six main gods - Osiris, Aset (Isis), Horus, Amun, Ra-Horakhty and Ptah - and must be seen as part of the effort to restore their worship. It was started by Seti I and completed by his son Ramesses II after his death, just like the magnificent Hypostyle Hall at Karnak was.

The temple of Seti I is the most well preserved of all New Kingdom temples. The entrance pylons and courtyards are gone, but the inner temple is mostly intact, even the roof. The temples at Edfu and Dendara used the New Kingdom style too but were built over a 1000 years later, in Ptolemaic and Roman times.

When I entered the temple I immediately rushed to a particular part that I had been dying to see: the wall with the relief known as the Gallery of the Kings. I would have spent a week at Hotel Abydos just to see this if I had to. The relief depicts pharaoh Seti I showing his son, the later Ramesses II, a chronological list of all the pharaohs of Egypt that came before him; over 70 of them, starting with Menes who first united Egypt and ending with Seti I himself.

This is something truely awesome. These great historic figures lived 3300 years ago, but here we see them looking back on over 1500 years of history themselves. This timespan must have seemed incredible to them, yet here we are looking at them and all their history after two more such incredible timespans have passed. We see them linking their past to their future: the pharaoh presents to his son the heritage that he will pass on to him, and it's just fascinating to know in hindsight that the boy would more than live up to that heritage.
I spent half an hour reading the names by looking up the hieroglyphs in my precious Chronicle of the Pharaohs, searching for famous pharaohs like Khufu and Tuthmosis III and finding them all, fun! :) Controversial pharaohs like Hatshepsut (who'd usurped power from her stepson Tuthmosis III) and Akhenaten and his successors (including Tutankhamen) won't be found in this list though; they were simply omitted, erased from history by their own successors.

Once again I could visit a magnificent monument almost alone: only me and two Egyptians were visiting the temple. My private bodyguard was still following me around but after an hour he apparently got tired of it, shyly asked some baksish (a tip) and disappeared.

The inner temple consists of two hypostyle halls and a maze of chapels, all fully decorated with reliefs. The hypostyle halls have 24 columns each. The reliefs created in Seti's time, both here and in Karnak, are considered to be the finest the ancient Egyptians have ever made, and many of them have retained their colours.
I had a great time photographing it all, especially the two hypostyle halls, but once again all the pictures failed because the disposable camera's flash was too weak, grrr.
I went out the back door to check out the ruins of another temple, the Osireion, that lies right behind this one, but there wasn't much left of it and what was there was mostly under water.

The Temple of Ramesses II
After completing his father's temple, Ramesses II also built a temple of his own in Abydos, at a few hundred meters from that of Seti I. I wanted to go see this temple next, but was stopped by the two policemen who were guarding the back door of Seti's temple. They called someone through their walkie talkie, and then gave me a chair and offered a sigaret while I waited.

After about 10 minutes a guy appeared who was armed with a small machinegun but was not wearing a uniform. He escorted me to the temple of Ramesses II, and though his English was very poor we had a nice chat along the way, about his family and about Abydos. At the temple, he yelled for the temple guard to come open the gate for me.
After I'd visited the temple, I tried to persuade my escort to let me see the tomb of Djer, but that was clearly not arrangable. When he asked baksish I gave him 5 pound, and all the way back he whined that that wasn't enough.

Back in the temple of Seti I, I discovered that a small group of Americans had arrived by tour bus from Luxor. They were all wearing long white shirts that said "Children of Light" and were loudly filosofising, at a very idiotic level, about the nature of the ancient Egyptian religion. On the web I've come across sites of freaks who visit Egyptian temples to feel the "energies" of "creational geometry" and to make "soul connections" with the ancient gods, and I think these were just such freaks. Oh well, I was on my way out anyway :)


From Abydos to Qena
At the exit I picked up my luggage, which I'd left there, and unwantedly picked up another police escort as well. Thus begins another long tale of dealing with the annoying police protection, skip it if you've had enough of it :)

My goal was to get to Hurghada at the Red Sea that same day, which was quite a distance (check the map on top). I knew there were regular busses from Qena to Hurghada, so I set my mind on getting to the Qena bus station first.

My new escort got us a taxi back to the checkpoint in Al-Balyana. Along the way we had to stop twice because the trunk of the car kept opening by itself. At the checkpoint I explained that I wanted to get to Qena bus station. Since I had been dropped of here the day before by a bus coming from Qena, I expected that I could get on a bus back to Qena here, but after some discussion the policemen decided I had to go to a place called Abu Sush.

Another policemen escorted me to Abu Sush and dropped me off at another checkpoint. I had to explain everything again (where I'm from, where I came from and where I was going) and had no idea what they were planning to do. After long waiting, a bus drove by and I hoped they'd put me on that, but instead I was put in a luxurious minibus with curtains. Inside were two policemen, one of them who I assume had a high rank sitting princely on the second row.
The minibus drove me to Qena. About halfway I looked under the curtains in the back and noticed that the bus was driving right behind us. I was sitting in the car that was the bus's police escort! Interesting plot twist. I hoped I would be brought to Qena bus station now, but instead I was dropped off at yet another police checkpoint.
The driver of the minibus asked me 20 pound, but I knew that the bus fare from Al-Balyana to Qena was 7 pound and told him that, after which he said "yes but this is VIP", haha. He had a point but I said I hadn't asked for VIP transport. In the end we agreed on 10 pound.

So there I was in I don't know what part of Qena. When I realised I wasn't anywhere near the bus station I was pissed off; I had asked to be brought there a dozen times and instead was now at my 3rd police checkpoint of the day. I had to explain everything once again and kept repeating "bus station", but they didn't understand much English.

After 20 minutes another minibus arrived at the checkpoint, and the policemen started guiding me to it. I thought this minibus would bring me to the bus station, but the driver who thankfully spoke English told me he was called to take me to Hurghada, which would cost me 50 pound.

Now I really got angry. I refused to get in the minibus and told the police (using the driver as a translator) that I was tired of being pushed around, that I'd told them a 100 times that I wanted to get to the bus station, and that I was starting to feel like a prisoner. The latter seemed to push the right button, because I immediately got what I wanted now: they stopped a local taxi to take me to the bus station.

This taxi driver spoke only 10 words of English, so I said "bus station?" several times to make sure he got it and he assured me he did. We agreed it would cost 5 pounds. He drove me all around Qena (which was quite interesting, got to see the whole city center I think) and then stopped at a busy square full of minibusses just like the one I had just refused at the checkpoint. Argh!
I had a long hot discussion with the driver; I kept yelling "BIG bus, not minibus" but he kept insisting this was the bus station. I made drawings of a big bus, a taxi and a minibus and kept pointing to them while saying the words to show the difference, but he refused to understand.
A guy on the square who spoke English came to our taxi to help out, bless him. My driver finally understood now and would take me to the bus station for another 5 pounds, which I refused. They both kept saying "yes yes 10 pounds" and I kept saying "no, 5" but then my driver just took off.

This time he brought me to the bus station alright. I gave him 5 pounds and we started the whole discussion again, him in Arabic and me in English; quite funny. In the end I just got out. A while later he walked to the bus station's office and shook a finger at me and mumbled angrily while he passed me, but I could see he was also smiling :)

I went to the market outside the bus station to buy grapes. It was nice to shop in a place where the vendors didn't harass me. After almost getting on the bus to Sohag because someone told me it was the bus to Hurghada, I finally got on the right bus, and that ended my little excursion in Middle Egypt. I'd had a blast, really a great experience because it had all been so damn weird.


Hurghada
Hurghada was once a small village at the Red Sea but is now a big tourist center. The bus arrived at 7pm and as I was the only tourist getting off it, I immediately got all the taxi drivers, vendors and hotel guys over me - welcome back to touristy Egypt. I barked them all away, took my luggage across the street and sat down on the pavement to consider my options.

Cathy, Esther and Sara had given me their address in Hurghada, but it turned out to be 20km outside the city center. I decided to take a hotel near the beach. After checking in, I went out to find some food, and on the street I ran into... my group! I knew they'd pass through Hurghada on their way to Sinai that evening, but it turned out their hotel was right next to mine.

They were just about to eat in an Italian restaurant so I joined them, and we exchanged stories which was fun. I couldn't stop laughing when they told me they'd read the guest book of the hotel in Luxor that afternoon (they changed busses there) and had read these amazing entries by three Belgian girls who had fallen in love with the hotel owner; they thought it was serious :)

After dinner Danny, Cathy and I walked all around Hurghada until we found an internet cafe. I sms'd Sara to find out if she and Esther were going snorkling the next day, but they weren't. The other Cathy was going diving and I could come along, but I figured that snorkling while everyone else was diving deep wouldn't be fun, so I decided to go on my own.

Snorkling in the Red Sea
Next morning I got up at 7am and called Hamdi, an Egyptian who'd been on my bus to Hurghada and whose mobile I had borrowed to call Salma. He'd told me he would arrange a snorkling trip for me if I'd call him, and since he had been helpful I wanted to do that, but he was sleeping. I went to a nearby 3-star hotel and managed to arrange a good trip myself on the last minute.

Me and an Egyptian couple who were staying at the hotel were driven to a resort where we got snorkling gear and went on a boat along with about 50 other tourists. On the quay I saw an Egyptian wearing a T-shirt with a big American flag and the words "Proud to serve", very weird.

The couple were on their honeymoon; he was an engineer in Port Said. I reflected on how after two weeks in Egypt these were the first Egyptians I got to know in a normal way, i.e. not as a customer. They were a very friendly and polite pair.

The boat took off and made a first stop after about an hour. I enthusiastically put on my snorkling gear and jumped in the water, but it totally sucked. I couldn't breath through the snorkle, I got water in the goggles, and because of the high waves I swallowed a lot of salt water while trying to fix them. Worst of all I only saw one brown fish. I thought this was gonna be a very lousy day.

Later the boat made a stop at the Giftun Islands, which have the most beautiful coral riffs in the Red Sea. Expectations were low now but this time everything was just perfect. The water was calm and crystal clear. I got the goggles right, and I gave up trying to breath through the snorkle. It was much more fun to dive anyway; with the foot pads I could go really far and deep.

Most importantly of course, this place was FULL of the most beautiful fish, in all colours and shapes, and I could dive and swim right between them. I saw blue fish with bright yellow fins, fish with zebra stripes and a beautiful yellow shine in the white stripes, big fat fish whose skin was like a colour gradient from blue to green, white fish who were thin as a spear, and so on. Most of the time they swam around in small groups of the same kind. They were amazingly beautiful and it was fantastic to swim between them; it was like flying between the birds.

Unfortunately I didn't have an underwater camera; they sell disposable ones but I didn't know that before I got on the boat. Click here to get an idea of what kinds of fish I encountered though.
After this second stop the mood on the boat was great, everyone was enthusiastic. We got a very nice lunch, but it was weird to get a full fish on your plate right after having swum between these creatures. Some day I'm gonna stop eating fish.

After dinner we made another stop near the islands which was just as good as the first one, and on the way back to the coast we made a fourth stop. The boat returned to the coast at around 5pm. This whole trip, including lunch, had cost only 60 pounds (9 euro), great value for money!

Public Beach
The next day my bus to Alexandria was only leaving at 14:30, so I decided to spend the morning on the beach. I foolishly decided to go to a public beach. Everyone had recommended a private beach, but I figured that on a public beach there would be local people going for a swim, which seemed a lot nicer than sitting between masses of fat tourists in a resort. My little map showed a public beach not too far away, so I went on foot.

I must have passed the 'public beach' three times before I realised that the deserted piece of coast in between two fancy resorts was it. It was full of garbage, and the first 200m of the water was too undeep to swim. The artificial beaches of the private resorts stretch out to the swimable water.
After washing off the salt in my hotel room I did some shopping. The ride to Alexandria was going to take 10 hours so I bought a can of tuna and some sandwiches in case there would be no food stops. There wouldn't be so that was a good move. I took a taxi to the bus station, and while waiting for my bus to leave went to have a look at the nearby mosque.
To Alexandria
Although I'd specifically asked and been promised the middle seat on the back row, where I would be able to stretch my legs, my ticket was for the seat next to it, the worst one on the bus because you have no leg room and can't move the back of the seat. Needless to say the trip was a torture. We drove north by the Red Sea coast until Suez, then turned left to Cairo where half the people got off the bus. I could take a good seat now, so the final hours to Alexandria were okay.



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