Two days and no bed; Egypt bound
Aug 2-4
Long overdue, but here’s a picture of the three of us with the Beast shortly before we dropped him off and said goodbye for good. A sad day for all involved.
This picture was actually taken at our campsite in the Masai Mara in what was, in retrospect, a wonderful calm before the storm of the next few days to follow. A manageable storm, mind you, but definitely a challenging experience none-the-less.
After Josephetu (our guide and campsite owner at the park) snapped the photo, we hopped in the car and drove all the way back to Nairobi in about four hours. We found the hotel where we were supposed to drop off the car, cleaned everything out from the inside (how we had gathered so much crap in there I have no idea), had the car washed, got in contact with the car’s owner, found an internet cafe and printed out our boarding passes for our flight later that evening, got a cab for the night, drove to Carnivore (a.k.a. Pat and Robb’s heaven) and had a pretty decent meal of all you can eat meat (although I must say we were a bit disappointed that the only “strange” meat was ostrich - we were hoping for some gamey-er stuff, but alas. However ostrich is quite delicious, and I very much recommend it), got back in our cab at midnight, and finally made our way to the airport for our 2am flight.
The rest of the evening was pretty much a blur of exhaustion and attempted sleep interspersed with airplane food and staring out the window. After a few hours we landed in Istanbul (oh how I wish I could have stayed to see the city…. but I’ll make it back there someday), got on a second flight, made our way back down to Cairo and arrived about mid-day. Then of course waited through customs, got our Egypt visa, found out after two hours of waiting that all of our bags had been lost except miraculously for mine, made a claim, got in another cab, went to the train station, ran around for an hour arguing about tickets, tried to find somewhere to store our bags, failed, ran around again to find an internet cafe where I hung out with our stuff while Pat and Robb shopped for ridiculous clothing on the streets to last them the duration of the cruise, found a place to eat dinner, got back to the train station, stared threateningly at some cockroaches (or maybe cowered in fear, who knows), and got on the 10pm train.
But here comes the best part. Our tickets were first class, but not sleeper, which meant we had booked only three seats in a cabin of six with no where to lay down. Fine. Our cabin-mates came in shortly after we did, three large Egyptian men who barely nodded in our direction, and I had a sense we were in for an interesting night. I was so exhausted from running around in the oppressive heat all day, not to mention not really sleeping the night before, that I pretty much passed out against the window thirty minutes after the train left the station. Robb did about the same. Of course shortly after this commenced a strange all-night Egyptian party.
According to Pat (who stayed up a bit longer than Robb and I), as well as my delirious recollections at various times throughout the night, the Egyptian men not only stayed up talking and laughing (at us) all night, but apparently took pictures on their cell phones of us (joy!) and really lived it up. Anyway, the night went something like this:
Eyes open, half-asleep at 2am, see them all seated, talking, laughing, and being served tea. Slip back into unconsciousness.
Woke up again at 3:30am, there’s a fourth guy sitting with them - who is he? They’re still laughing, and wont turn out the lights.
Woke up at 4:30am, are you fucking kidding me WHY are they still awake? More laughing. I think I’m delirious.
Woke up at 5:30am, there’s one guy passed out on the seats across from us, the lights are finally out, thank god.
Woke up at 6am, and now Pat’s spread out on the seats across from us, and Robb’s lying down on our seats. Oh hell no, when did this happen and why am I still leaning against the window? Push Robb over, curl up on the seat and a half I have and feel so grateful to be able to lay down for the first time in two days.
Sigh of relief.
Eyes open at 6:30am, curled up and listening to the train on the tracks, the morning call to prayer, and quiet. My hair and face have been replaced by grease and some odd smell that can only come from not being able to wash your clothes in two weeks. My body aches. My head hurts. I’m still weak from being sick. But I’m smiling. I’m not quite sure why, honestly, but I’m filled with this overwhelming sense of pure joy. I sit up and look out the window as Egypt rolls past me, snap a picture, lay back down, and just smile.
I’m in Egypt. Beautiful, strange, beautiful Egypt.
