Suez

Yesterday, we arrived in Suez from the Red Sea. We had threaded our way through the anchored ships, waiting for their convoy through the canal, Dreamtime close by. A launch came out towards us, and as it came alongside, a guy introduced himself as "Moses" and came aboard, handing us a letter of introduction from Yacht Kalymnos. This letter from our friends gave us some confidence in Moses acting as our agent and getting us our permit to transit the Suez Canal.

The going rate for "baksheesh" was cigarettes. Offering certain people a cigarette and leaving the packet with them was enough to "oil" the paperwork chain. Franda II carried a few spare cartons of cigarettes specifically for "gifts". After agreeing to Moses's terms, he showed us where to tie up alongside a barge. Dreamtime then tied up alongside Franda II. Tina and I slept in Franda II's cockpit.

Mike's 22nd birthday. He received birthday wishes from his family, and Dreamtime's crew gave him a card and a cake they'd made him. Mike was the last family member to have a birthday at the farm, so this is only his second birthday onboard.

Moses found us a taxi. While Dad, with Moses' help, haggled a bit about the price for the day hire, I noticed the grime landing on my bare arms. The wind picked up the sand, dirt, and dried animal manure from the streets, allowing it to settle on me and the others. I assumed it was also landing on the men as they sipped coffee or tea, smoked shisha, played backgammon, and sat at little tables outside the coffee shop. Once they agreed on a price, Dad and Mum climbed onto the front bench seat and squashed beside the driver. Josey(Yacht Kalymnos), Fiona, and her mum squeezed into the middle seat, and Tina and I sat in the back seat. The lack of seatbelts made us all feel a little vulnerable.

On the drive through Port Suez, I realised it was a dirty town. It still had a lot of relics from the "6-day" war with Israel. Bombed buildings and rubble as if the war ended yesterday, not over 10 years ago. Watching vehicles, donkeys with carts, pack donkeys, horses, and humans all going around the piles of debris and rubbish was interesting. I wondered why nobody had bothered to clear the rubble or tidy the street. Maybe as it was not theirs, they did not clear it. It was easier to just go around. To make the town look even more unloved, some buildings appeared to be falling apart even as they were still being built. We were told it was because it was sea sand and had not been washed properly.

Cairo was 150km inland, at the end of a sealed road heading into the desert. It would be an especially long ride for me as I was out of sorts that morning, feeling grumpy and uncommunicative. I sat staring out the window, possibly trying to convince myself that my life was hard and unfair, until I finally noticed the number plates on the other vehicles had Roman and Arabic numerals. So, I set a positive task for myself: learning Arabic numerals. After the long, hot, boring, 2-hour drive, I finally had them mastered.

In the last two months, I had only seen sand, rocks, and salt water, so I was surprised to find Cairo a green city. Mum and I both particularly enjoyed seeing flowers in people's gardens. Also, many of the streets were lined with Palm trees and green grass. Seeing " green " again was an incredible feeling; I had not realised I had missed it.

Cairo was a bustling city with traffic everywhere, seemingly going in every direction. Vehicles did not appear to follow many rules but, for the most part, kept moving. However, we were detained for a short while in a traffic jam. The lack of an air conditioner was felt more when negotiating the cityscape concrete and vehicle fumes. Trucks pumped out blue smoke, and drivers hollered at one another in greeting or anger; I couldn't always tell. But finally, we were deposited at the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, hot and sticky but miraculously alive, even with no seat belts!

Stepping inside the Cairo Museum was stepping into another world, calm, quiet, cool and back many thousands of years. We were assigned an English-speaking guide who spoke quickly and with a heavy accent; none of us could understand him. We only had one and a half hours to appreciate the splendour we were seeing. King Tut's treasures, solid gold coffin, and multiple other coffins took my breath away. I was amazed at how many different coffins he had been buried in. Each gets larger and less decorated. King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered untouched and held a fantastic number of treasures.

After a semi-western lunch outside the Museum, our friendly taxi driver took us to the Giza Valley. Crossing the Nile was a great disappointment for me. I had created a romantic image of Bedouin campsites, date palms and flowing blue waters. It was nothing like that. It was viewed in the middle of a bustling, polluted city flowing with brown water!

When an opportunity came for a camel ride, we three youngsters grabbed it. We had not been on the ungainly animals before and were delighted by the weird motion. In some ways, it was similar to a yacht's motion. No wonder they are called ships of the desert.

We bought our tickets, hired the mandatory tour guide, and excitedly entered the Cheops pyramid. We young girls hurrying ahead of the adults. The "tunnel" was dully lit with a few bare bulbs. We needed to slow down and carefully negotiate the uneven steps descending into the Earth, entering under the pyramid's edge. Then, back up the same number of steps to ground level inside the pyramid. The lights were seemingly less bright, but maybe it was darker here. No daylight reaching in. At the end of a straight passageway was the king's Burial chamber.

My imagination was running wild again; I thought about being inside the Earth with the added weight of the pyramid's building blocks pressing down on me, burying me. I reeled it in with an effort, telling myself that the pyramids had stood for thousands of years and wouldn't collapse now just because I was below them.

The Guide then went outside the chamber. Tina and I wanted to explore a bit, so we turned down another passage; suddenly, we were in the dark. A dark so complete that we could not see our hands in front of our faces we grabbed each other and held hands tightly, scared. With relief, we noticed a glimmer of light as the Guide returned to the burial chamber with 3 lit candles. As we were ushered out and informed that the electricity had failed, Tina and I felt cheated. We believed the Guide had turned the lights out, so we would all have to leave.

There is one photo of me in front of the Great Sphinx of Giza with its busted nose. Mum had sparingly taken it using her simple Instamatic camera; photo film and development costs were prohibitive for Franda II; taking photos was rare.

The Hawking of trinkets by the locals was more than annoying and dampened the whole experience for us. Not only would stallholders call out in English from their stalls, but when we replied politely, "No thanks", they'd leave their stall and come and show us trinkets by stuffing them in our faces. Talking their talk about how the alabaster was from the Great Pyramid, prices were the best in town, etc., others would join in, all shoving their trinkets at us, trying to make a sale. A very uncomfortable time, as we did not want to be rude, so we ended up just ignoring the hawkers as best we could.

It had been a long, tiring, but exciting day. We were all glad to get back to our respective boats. As I lay on my bunk thinking back over the day's adventure, I decided, in the future, not to imagine what a place would be like, but just to see them how they were. In this way, I hoped never to be disappointed in a place again.

I looked forward to going through the Suez Canal.