Hi all. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Well, if it makes any difference I’ve been a little consumed with life lately, and then this whole school thing, then Egypt, and I’m just starting to shake off the shackles of full-time studentry–I’m feeling pretty good about alot of things. Current problem o’ the hour is finding a life path. No big deal.

I never really went into my Peru trip, though I wanted to. At the time I simply had no time. . .and as the days stretched on I forgot all the key points as well as the nonmentionables/drudgeries that I always find occassion to mention in my posts. But I’m glad I’m getting to shed some light on Egypt. It was a wondrous experience (here comes that god damn genie again singing “Arabian Nights”) and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, I am ecstatic to be home. This paradox of feeling is a common thing in my traveling. I certainly become stoked to be able to experience these things which few get to experience, but there is always the little bug inside that pines for home. And I was pretty damn sick of Egypt by the end of the trip, let me tell you.

I have uploaded about 50 pictures, put them all into this post. They are not in sequential order, and were actually uploaded in the opposite order I intended. “Fifty?” I hear you saying. “What on God’s blessed globe makes him think we want to see fifty–”

Look: I have, literally, around 3500 photos from this trip. And if you take into account that we were busy each day from around 7 in the morning to about 11 at night, you’ll start to appreciate the amount of stuff I could dump on waterblogged!.net versus what I chose to share. I had such tough time picking out this handful of photos, because I wanted to nail everything I did, but doing so much really puts a pinch on what I’m able to coherently write about. Not to mention after photo 1000 not even I am entertained anymore.

I hope you enjoy this short summary as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.

 

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

I started with these because while this event was about halfway into our trip (and what’s more, this event was also not on the program), it was by far my favorite day of the whole bonanza. Let me give you the scoop: On one of two free days we were given in the whole 3 weeks, me and the fellaz (from left to right Trey, Jeremy, me, Josh) decided we wanted to go on an ATV ride through the desert. It had so much appeal just talking about it. Hours later after many taxi cab mix-ups, a lost ATM card, and an irrecoverable loss of about 6 hours into our much-coveted free day, we hooked up with Achmed, a lawyer from Cairo turned ATV trail guide, and began what would be a wild ride. When we arrived at Taba Guides, which was simply a small brick building and about 60 ATVs, one of the workers quickly tied my head up in a scarf, saying that it was necessary to prevent dust from chafing my face off during the 2 hour excursion. I didn’t care, I thought I looked pretty effing cool, and when I put my glasses on and my scarf over my mouth, I definitely got the feeling (and I can’t express this well enough) that me and my crew were about to start some shit.

We helmeted, got on our 4-wheelers and the feeling just increased. And let me tell you, there is nothing like quadding in the Sinai desert. It really is dusty, and even with all my gear on my eyes burned for two hours straight; but it was by far one of the neatest things I have ever done. Casually popping over dunes, mountains on either side, camels just kind of standing sentinel in the middle of nowhere. Bedouins, the nomads of the desert, sitting idly in rough shelters while we zipped by. My only regret is my utter lack of ability to convey the high spirit I had while doing this activity. We rested after an hour and a half at the small shelter you see in the second photo, where we had pepsi, bought some Bedouin trinkets, and heard the brief tale of Achmed’s disgust with the legal profession. He got out of it because he couldn’t take the lies and deceit. It was, literally, against his religion. He had a gap in his front teeth and was handsome. He was just a really great guy. Our bikes cooled off soon, and we headed back on a much shorter route. It was a very hot day. *sigh: Quadding in the desert. We walked through the streets of Sharm in full get-up back to our hotel.

There’s another pic I like more that Jeremy took on this day, and you can find it on my facebook profile if you really want. I just didn’t want to spend too much time on this one blip of the entire trip. Looks like I already did though. 

Location: Cairo

The caption says “probably” because we saw a lot of these. And for those of you paying attention, that hints at the massive amount of exposure I got to “old things” by the end of the trip, and how such exposure benumbed me. By the end of the trip I was picking up rocks and feigning amazement, looking to one of the people in my group and exclaiming: “Do you have any idea how old this is?” And it’s true. Rocks are really fucking old.

This tomb was in a mosque, I have written down somewhere which mosque in particular, and if it doesn’t contain King Farouk’s body, then it contains one of his wives, one of his cousins, or one of his cousins’ wives. The tombs themselves were gorgeous and immaculate, but I can’t say enough about the mosques themselves. I have never been in more peaceful places; this peace is helped along by the fact that the ceilings are vaulted hundreds, probably thousands of feet up. Furthermore, they don’t allow the wearing of shoes on the carpet either, and the floorplan allows for a sprawling, many-roomed and mansionlike edifice. I refrained from putting too many pictures of architecture up, because you can probably google “mosque” and see better quality. But I felt very peaceful in these mosques (I visited about five) and felt more spiritual there than I ever have in any church. Which I told to my parents, which pissed them off. But they really are bigger, more respectful places to worship. They’re just so damn beautiful. And that’s not my fault.

One last thing. Beside one of these tombs a muslim man treated us to a prayer call, and oh-my-lord. I have never heard anything more beautiful in my life. He shambled up on a club foot and stank, but when he started humming it out, all bass and Arabia, the acoustics of the building made it to where it was a thousand muslims yodeling out the prayer call, and the bouncing melody reverberated for ten seconds after he stopped. Again–completely indescribable.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

Ah, yes. One of my best. Let me go ahead and remind you here that all of these pictures are out of order. This one was taken at the end of a long, stress-free day aboard the Golden Shadow. Prince Khaled Sultan’s private yacht. We were supposed to go scuba diving in the Red Sea, launched from this yacht, but the sea was too choppy. But the water was cold and my poop had been liquidy, so I was actually thankful. We got to see some neat research equipment including a research waterbot and the navigation stuff up in the. . .(cockpit?), as well as a short lecture on how they sound the depths and are able to map the Red Sea floor. We had a killer lunch on board, we these cakey chocolate muffins–the taste of which I have been unable to forget. This yacht was huge. They had several boats on it, and the ability to dock sea-planes as well. The crew as predominately British, and the girls had crotch-stains the whole day after shaking hands with the swanky British captain.

Location: Cairo

This was a fun experience. Before hitting the bazaar (where I immediately made a really. bad. deal.), me and the crew and Professor Aho and even our security escort, Achmed (not the same guy who took us ATVing), went to get some “sheesha”–which I’m not sure if that’s just the name of the tobacco, as Billy claims, or just what they call hookah over in Egypt. But for all intents and purposes it was hookah, fruit flavored tobacco smoked through a water pipe, and it was F-U-N. Because you know if I spell it, it’s serious fun business. I was quickly slain by the smoke dragon and got light-headed, but it was such a . . .communal experience that I wanted to buy my own pipe and bring it home, if not to smoke on once then at least to remember what I did that day.

And don’t go thinking that I got high. That’s not how this stuff works. I don’t know how addictive it is, however, because in Egypt I noticed an interesting thing. There seemed to be miles and miles and pounds and pounds of construction. Everywhere. As far as the eye could see. And our guide claimed that Egypt was developing rapidly, citing so many buildings completed in so many months. But I never once saw anyone working. Well, maybe once. One guy, working all by himself in the skeletons of these building graveyards. The remainder of the time I saw Egyptians sitting in the shade, smoking on their waterpipes. Everyone seemed to have one, and I couldn’t understand how anything got done with them sitting down and smoking all damn day.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

Another pic from the yacht. I was having camera problems since I touched down in Egypt (which explains why so many of these pictures were not taken by me) and the day of the Golden Shadow was no exception. However, I did not have my screwdrivers to take apart and fix my camera as I was oft to do while we were at a hotel. . .and I was pissed. But I said to myself: “Self, we are on a research vessel. They have equipment on research vessels. . .and probably screwdrivers.” So I hooked up with Suz, who whisked me down to the underbelly of the ship and got me all the screwdrivers I needed. Fifteen minutes later, my camera restored,  I demanded this man to take a picture with me in celebration of disaster averted. Yay, Suz!

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

Thinking of you, Steve.

This was taken during one of the few parties we had. We were usually too exhausted to do anything but sleep, but on this night we had some drinks and I took a mattress from a hotel room so a couple of the more sauced individuals could lay on it instead of the grass. The party was helped along by the fact that Trey and Josh had a villa and not a hotel room. So we had a backyard, and a nice view of the lit city. It was a good night. I talked the entire night, whether anyone was there to talk to or not. I also annoyed everyone with my soliloquys on Sarah. . . how much I missed her and wanted her to be there with me.

Location: Sinai Peninsula (just outside of Sharm)

I don’t know who took this picture. But it looks really damn good, doesn’t it?

Location: Cairo University

 Our first field trip on our first day, and it was a doozy. The story behind this critter is that “we” bought him. I’m not sure if Dr. Faisal meant Cairo U, our AUM/ MSU conglomeration, he and the princes (we were traveling with princes; i’ll get to that later), or what. But the sheep was bought from the man with the wrap on his head, and some Cairene surgeons were on a quest to find out whether or not this particular sheep had “rumen” in one of his stomachs. If I were paying attention that day I would have been able to tell you what that meant, exactly, in scientific terms. As it was, I was too busy pretending to be taking copious notes, notes so copious I had to squat, which obscured the open, bleeding stomach from my vision. I was pretty sick, and I wasn’t listening to their explanation because that made it worse.

I was almost immediately nasueated, and if you look down you’ll see why.

The room was small, filled with about 35 people, no air conditioning, smelled like the outside and inside of a sheep, and center stage was a bleeding mess. It was kind of embarrasing, coming all this way to be knocked out in the first round by sheep guts. But I’ve never been good with blood. I think the sheep checked out to be okay–no foreign bodies were found in the tummy. Myself, however:

I came out worse in the deal. This photo was shot immediately after surgery. And I felt like grade-A doo doo. I don’t imagine I’ve ever seen myself look worse. I look kind of like Xack did in his cancer days. And all this hullabaloo over a couple of pints of blood. Ridiculous.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

Here, you see my color much improved. This is about halfway through the course, I’ve gotten some sun, bought some snorkel gear (which I broke on the last reef-diving day–funny story there), and rented a wet suit. I look sexy because I feel sexy. I’m about to get in the water, and the reef comes right up to the shoreline so once I’m in I’m in and the wonders just keep slapping againts my face like the waves themselves. Only a few people had underwater cameras, myself not among them, so I’ve got no pics but I’ve got a couple of decent stories. I’ll tell you one.

Jeremy, Josh, and Anna, and I had some free swim so after lunch we took off to a reef close by the reef we had already been studying formally. So we had some shenanigans in the water, mostly just watching (that’s all you can really do)–when out of my beautiful brown peripheral vision i see a blue-spotted ray. “Hark!” I exclaimed irrelevantly, and directed Jeremy’s attention to the desk-sized (long, not wide. only about a foot wide) ray to our left. We quickly swam, always the dolphins, towards a reef that the ray seemed to be heading towards. Jeremy was slightly ahead, and I was pushing him. The ray was faster.

As it swooped up and over the top of the reef, about 6 inches of space between the top of the water and the top of the reef, Jeremy snapped the photo and I reached out to grab his ankle–he was careening into the reef itself and didn’t look like he could stop. He almost hit the fire coral. Good times.

The colors and fauna of the Red Sea fringe reef were beautiful. The experience of floating over them was similar to what I felt the first time I strapped into the Superman ride at Six Flags. On this fun-filled day, I cocked one hand on my hip, and extended the other forward–as though Superman himself, about to fly over Metropolis. You see, swimming over the reef environment was alot like flying over a cityscape, complete with skyscrapers and insignificant denizens. More than once I assumed the Superman stance as I dived down and wound in and among the colored fish and swaying coral. Jeremy got some underwater photos of me, but I don’t think I’ll ever see them. I am now a snorkel enthusiast, and would like to go to the Caribbean.

Location: Cairo

The story here might not be very funny. We were at an Arabian horse ranch, which also had some other facilities like artificial insemination and an old library. In this library were several old books on horses, replete with funny pictures like this one. I don’t know what happened–

As soon as I saw this fella in the book, with his big, distraught eyes and frantically pointed hoof, I just yelped out: “But I left it right here!” And it seemed to fit. It became a buzzphrase on the trip, repeated at random with nothing relevant to attach it to. Ah, memories. We also used it too often to insult the professors, whom we were generally not fond of.

 

Location: Alexandria

This ECILOP car provided a moment of much needed mirth on an aggravating day in Alexandria. Most of the days in Alexandria were aggravating.

Location: Cairo countryside

The city of Cairo was dirty–the countryside was dirtier. Irrigation canals would typically line the street and while they weren’t all this filled with rubbish, this was the general state of things. Aghast at the conditions, we were even more aghast to find people swimming in it, and children playing in it.

These people need information on waste disposal, or some kind of local program, most likely. It makes me really appreciate the sanitation programs we have here.

While I’m at this point in the trip, I’ll go ahead and tell you that our bus driver’s name was Sayid (I will spare throwing up yet another picture, though I have one) and he was a badass. At the end of this day he backed into a tree and the back window exploded in a shower of glass. My crew and I had not sat at the back that day, due to a pissy tirade on sitting at the front of the bus by one of our profs, and luckily for us: we would have been showered and bloodied by the concussive plosion of glass. As it was, however, the event was hysterical. Sayid put the bus in drive and drove off like nothing had happened. Such a badass.

Location: Cairo

We visited a man whose relatives used to hunt animals in the region (relatives as in ancestors) and eventually became concerned about depleting numbers of these selfsame animals. Eventually they turned to conservation and became very “zen.” He is pictured on the right.

He looked and talked like a monk but he was also very down to Earth; he cussed and smoked once we got outside to look at thecopious amounts of reptiles living at his compound. He threw them all on Marissa, shown here unperturbed by being covered in scaly, squirmy things. She later admitted her love life allowed her to grow accustomed to such things. (I’m lying, btw)

There are lots of pictures from this event but, again, I’ll spare you. There were snakes and scorpions and lizards and turtles, and a couple of goats roaming around outside as well. This man is probably the Egyptian Neo. I had a great time at this place–and they had the best tea I’ve ever tasted.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh (Ras Muhamed)

A ship named the Marie Schroeder–a name I’m sure that in the German was umlauted to hell and back. Not a very interesting history. . .it just got too close to the reef and mangroves and wrecked. After leaving it for a couple of years, the wildlife living on and under it was too abundant for removal to be sanctioned. So it slowly rots, meanwhile looking very dramatic. This was located just outside a very scenic plot of mangroves (plants that can tolerate living in saltwater) and, as you can see, a very shallow bay. This place was gorgeous, the water was warm, and I was sure I was going to step on a ray or skate. As it was, I nearly cut my foot off on the sparse coral near the ship. We saw green crabs, brittle stars, slugs, and lotz of seaweed. I wish you could have been there.

 

Same ship. Anna got a really good photo–it took her about half an hour to catch the spray up like that.

Location: Cairo

Ok, I hope you got this one. If you didn’t, I’m going to go ahead and give you the (undoubtedly erroneous) pronunciation: cock’-luh-’KNOCK-us. We had a great time with this one.

Oh, and btw, it represents a Coptic Christian family’s tomb. But it’s ok to poke fun, they aren’t real Christians.

Location: Cairo

Not sure what happened to the caption there, but I’m too lazy to fix it. “Josh, aka Joshy-pooh, giving us his rendition of ‘the mad cow,’ or Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy. It’s a biology thing” is about what the caption should say.

Same sheesha bar as that first photo. Josh was a really funny smoker, and Anna here is getting a woody over it, apparently.

Same place. Jeremy turned out to be a real badass. Something I didn’t expect.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh

We’re walking to get wetsuits and this terrible smell hits us. So we’re all blaming Ice Trey and then we stumble upon this pot-o-bile. These guys are pumping shit up from a septic system and apparently a little too enthusiastically–it spilled over into the street. The real kicker is that guy in the yellow and green on the left? He left his shoes at home.

Location: Cairo Zoo

Josh and I are only half making fun of the local custom of men crossing arms. The other half of the motive is sheer enjoyment. Hey, Irish! Josh was a clown, and I enjoyed his company.

Location: Sharm el-Sheikh Waterslides!

Our hotel had some really neat amenities–among them these waterslides. I went swimming with my hat and only went down this yellow one once. The only slide worth its weight in colorful plastic was the blue one to the right, which was a freefall slide. We got in trouble for insisting on going down facefirst. Also, not pictured, is a huge chess set, the pieces of which were approximately the size of my lower body. It made me wish, Brandon, that we could have realized our dream of having a giant pinata chess board. Ice Trey and I beat J-Steel’s asshole in chess.

Not much to say about this one. Just good ol’ fashioned sex oozing through each pixel. [for you, Sarah dear ;-) ]

The horse farm again. They had a line of jars of fetuses in various stages of developement. It was kind of creepy.

Location: Sharm (The Red Sea)

This mother was salty.

We were beside ourselves at this particular moment, because it was our first chance to get into the Red Sea. Anna and Genae (from let to right) were so happy that they threw caution to the wind and decided to make it a strange Partridge family moment. This trip would have been much duller without their antics, however.

And if any of you ever make it to the Red Sea, beware of naked old lady breasts. I can’t stress this enough: They are everywhere! Same goes for European men in speedos.

Location: Cairo

This mosque was fucking amazing. The whole deal was open air, with a huge square in the middle and a little domed edifice. We had to remove our shoes and the ladies had to don these ewok-inspired green robes. The weather permits buildings to be open aired like this, with all the carpets open to the lovely sun–there is no moisture to fuck them up. I could have spent the whole day here. Everything was made of alabaster, and at noontime the alabaster floor was too reflective to look at directly.

The green robes are to prevent sex from falling out of the women’s clothes. And it worked pretty well. They all looked so silly.

Sharm. Another sheesha bar. More good times.

Location: Cairo University

I asked how best to get a sonogram of a water buffalo:
“Why, by sticking your hand up a cow’s ass!” he replied.

This was typical of the vet type stuff that we did. My only regret was that when he asked who wanted to get lubed up and take the doo-doo dive I didn’t perk up and raise my hand before Katie did. When he took his hand out I discovered where the word plop came from, as several pounds of fecal stuffs came. . .plopping out on the floor.

They really are double-fisting it. I later got a painting on papyrus to commemorate this event. Katie was a really bad chick.

Location: Guiza

The perfunctory pyramid/camel-riding photo. My camera broke on this day and I had left my screwdrivers. So I asked everyone to take lotz of photos, which they did. I’m not going to bore you with more than one angle. This event was really cool, but if it weren’t for the camel ride I might not even have mentioned it at all. God dammit, this was one of the greatest events. So hot though. The air sucked the sweat right out of me.

Locals making bread that we ate, right after we finished off a bottle of ridiculously expensive Egyptian wine. It wasn’t my idea. They had great bread in Egypt.

Brandon’s not even this badass. They fried it whole.

 

I’m kind of mean to Anna. But she did shit like this all the time, so it evens out. She, myself, Josh, Trey, and Genae were inseparable for most of the trip. Our band name was “Pussies for Sunsets.”

Location: Alexandria

Just a library, right? But it was huge. I normally don’t get off on buildings/architecture/places, but I was envious of the peoples of the city because this was their public library–no special access required. It was a wonderful place with a few galleries and museums and almost a million books, yet they have the capacity for 8 million. I urge you to google it to get a good view of the outside, which was built to resemble a setting sun. Wonderful atmosphere.

Alabama churches ain’t got dick on Egyptian mosques.

Location: Cairo

We changed security escorts every day. This guy, Achmed, was by far the most endearing of them. He was always jovial and consistently fooled the group by pointing out dropped phones, money, and passports that didn’t exist. He had a great mustache that I aspired to, and he also showed me his gun. I had to push for a picture, but it was worth it. Also, he showed us the proper way to smoke sheesha.

Location: Abdullah’s face

Son of Khaled and brother of Fahad, Abdullah was just a really great guy. I wanted to throw up a picture of Fahad but he was just so gosh darn elusive, he was in hardly any photos. I could tell stories about these two guys (who are Saudi, not Egyptian), but I don’t want to piss them off, they are a fan of privacy and for good reason. Suffice it to say that they can break coral with their teeth, rip through ship hulls with their biceps, and Fahad himself can squat a confirmed 400 lbs.

Another pic from our day on the yacht. Gosh, what a nice day. Though I think the top researcher got a little too excited with all the ladies on board. I saw where his eyeballs were looking.

Again with the mosque. Aren’t they cute little ewoks? Awww. . .and look at Erica on the far left–she didn’t cover her ear like she was supposed to, and generated many boners.

Getting sex appeal all over the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Location: Step Pyramid of Zhoser

Perhaps my fondest memories of the trip center around this man, Mr. Hagahzee. My first impression of him came up very short, as first impressions usually do. He looked alot like Yoda, and in his ball cap and polo shirt I gave him little credit. I thought he was to guide us around the zoo (his first day with us) and then depart, as did every other professional we encountered. But not Hagahzee. He stayed with us til the very end, coined some buzzphrases himself (”Come on, spider-man group!”) and had charm and charisma, as well as always doing his damndest to make sure every one of us had whatever we wanted. He had a lilt in his voice (my favorite word he said alot was “side,” as in, “and here on the left hand side”) that also endeared me to him. Luckily I recorded it incidentally in several movies I took with my digital camera. The vid quality is shit, but you can hear him pretty well.

I mentioned he was eager to please. One day at a papyrus museum, as I had been informed we were all going to receive free rolls of blank, 100 percent papyrus, I innocently asked him when we could expect to get it. The problem was, there was no “free papyrus.” This, however, did not stop Hagahzee. He insisted on obtaining some for me and immediately quested to find it before I could dissuade him. It would have cost me all of ten dollars to get it myself, but Hagahzee showed up a few moments later, and gratefully (yeah, he was grateful to me. Such a nice guy) and hands me a roll of papyrus which I decide to give to my mother (who loved it).

He finally left on the last day, after taking us on 8 to 12 hour field trips almost every single day, and knowing so much on the lore of the ancients and the current events of Egyptians and relating it to us easily and fluidly. He was a very hard worker, and always tipped the locals for us. It brought Jeremy to literal tears one day, when he decided that as a going away present we should tip Hagahzee. He just kept laughing and repeating: “We should. . .we should tip. . .tih. .. . . .we should. . .” I’m not sure why he thought it was so funny, but he had the rest of us rolling.

We couldn’t get the whole thing out of him for about half an hour.

I told Mr. Hagahzee one day that in America we have a saying: “And that saying, is ‘you’re the man.’ Do you know what that means?”
He said he did.
“Well–you’re the man.”

Location: Cairo

Our first stop after we got off the plane in Cairo; basically, the first sight we saw. You can’t tell from the photo but it’s a gigantic pyramid, built to commerorate the past, as well as Egypt military might. There were men dressed as soldiers from different eras in Egyptian history who have to stand there during daylight hours. The pyramid is always staffed, and it is always hot.

Note how pleased this particular soldier looked.

The Alabaster Mosque from a different angle. At the bottom is Dr. Matti Kiupel. We loved Dr. Kiupel because of his speedo and flamboyant animal print shirts. Also, his Schwarzenegger accent gave him lots of points.

Location: Mediterranean (Outside Alexandria

I was there and I couldn’t believe how blue it was. There were also hundreds of jellies, some big, some small, littering the beach. You don’t know how bad I wanted to get into this water. We were there for about half an hour.

 

It’s a damn shame  you can’t see the pyramid that’s blocked by the white light in the upper right corner. Anyway, this is us lunching near Guiza. You may have noticed by now that I am wearing my UPS hat in every photo. It’s not a coincidence. I almost never take my hat off anymore. And, since I like green shirts, I’ve been accused of looking like Luigi at least 10 times. Luigi’s a good looking guy, right?

 

This blog made me all bleary-eyed and nostalgic. I had so much fun. I wouldn’t trade anything for these memories.

 Well, maybe a few things.