Cairo: 7.5/10

I'm so bored at work that I'm writing these posts out longhand & typing them when I have time, which is why I'm posting a lot more than I thought I would. Continuing on... We arrived in Egypt very early & were greeted by someone our hotel sent. He didn't have to wait outside baggage claim; he walked us through customs in what would have been record time if the official hadn't looked at me & kept insisting "you China!" despite my American passport. After frightening me for a while he said he was joking & let us through. How amusing. At long last we were driven to the Mena House Oberoi, a lovely old palatial hunting lodge-turned-hotel. It is literally across the street from the Pyramids, as Giza is now an area of Cairo. We got a Pyramid view room. Basically, when we woke up each morning it was like, "Oh look honey, out the window!" We had a lovely spacious room with lounge area & lots of space for our bags. There were balconies for our French doors as well. It was fun to walk into the heat in the mornings then go back into air conditioning. I was pretty good this trip - for four weeks I packed a big suitcase & a tiny one only. Usually I need the big one for just a week so I was very restrained. We were exhausted after all the jumping off bridges & baiting great white sharks with ourselves so we had a very quiet first day by the pool. Other than the maddeningly persistent flies, it was lovely. The pool is an enormous oval & there's a guitarist who plays all afternoon. Sexy Englishman dozed & read The Elegant Universe, a gift from me, while I caught up on more Economists & Mind Performance Hacks.

I don't understand how Arab women can stand being so hot in those burqas. It was about 95° & I couldn't bear wearing much more than a bikini! (Although I did, of course, I'm not stupid.) I find it odd that a religion mandating so much black clothing popped up in the desert of all places, instead of Scandinavia or something. I guess it's because people wanted to wear so little that men had to be "protected" from temptation. Learn some self-control, boys, jeez. According to the Lonely Planet guide (LP), it is wise for a woman traveler to just say her male companion is her husband, because they respect married women much more. Since a good Muslim girl has to be a virgin for her wedding night, foreign women are their chance for easy pussy. LP also said to keep as much of myself covered as possible. SE wasn't quite ready for a Mrs. SE but my safety won out. He'd made fun of me all through South Africa for packing so many long-sleeved shirts & pants & I was finally vindicated when man after man stopped & turned to stare at me regardless. One guy even tripped in the street while walking backwards, staring. To be fair, I think part of it may have been that they never see any young attractive Asian women, only old Japanese & Chinese tourists, but it was still disconcerting & made me nervous. It was much funnier when hawkers jokingly tried to buy me from SE for outrageous numbers of camels - the highest offer he got was 100 million. Each one is worth ~$1000 so it's lucky the 7-year-old kid didn't seem to actually have any camels or I'd be trapped in some harem right now.

That first night we went to the Sound & Light Show "narrated" by the Sphinx. It's super cheesy & pompous, although it's cool to see the Pyramids & Sphinx lit up at night. We had dinner at the Mughal Room in the hotel which was probably the best Indian food I've ever had. We did the tasting course & each one was more scrumptious than the last. The mains, especially, were so good we wanted to keep eating even though we were totally full. Partly as a result of that plus all the sunshine earlier, we decided to take a disco nap before the belly dancing show at the hotel's nightclub later. LP said Cairo was the birthplace of belly dancing & had the best dancers in the world so I was extremely excited. I was so sleepy though, when SE woke me up at 2am I couldn't be bothered. The next morning we had a tour bright & early with Sharif of Abercrombie & Kent Tours. We grabbed some delicious (& amazingly cheap at E£3 = $0.55 for 4 sandwiches) falafel from Felfela & visited the Pyramids. We went to the 3 big ones by us, Khufu, Khafre & Menkaure.

They look a bit like step pyramids now because their limestone coverings & some of the inner limestone was taken to build other things, but they're still massive. Each block is about 1 meter x 3m & although Sharif explained how they were put together, it's mind-boggling. The current consensus is internal & external ramps winding around & around the pyramid & then disassembled. Contrary to what I'd read as a child, the workers weren't slaves, they were farmers keeping busy during the fallow season, given the very high honor of building Pharaoh's tomb. I guess if you want to call it that. We climbed inside the Great Pyramid & the most amazing thing was how smooth the walls were. I can't even get my head around the amount of labor it must have taken. When we'd had our fill of giant rock monuments, Sharif took us to a Papyrus store which was quite interesting & its curio shop which was not. Stuff in Egypt can look so tacky.

We stopped for lunch at Abou Tarek, which specialized in kushari, a noodle-type dish with spices which is pretty good. Then it was time for the Egyptian Museum. Sharif was in his element - he was a fount of information on the highlights of the Museum, as we obviously couldn't see every single thing in 2 hours. A bit overwhelming, actually - 2 hours of relentless lectures & not much walking around makes my eyes droop. My favorite exhibit was the diorite statue. Sharif said diorite is the second hardest material in the world, behind only diamond. & yet the ancient Egyptians carved 23 statues out of it. The weird thing is, we can't figure out how they did it. Apparently the only way they've been able to make a dent in diorite nowadays is with lasers, & they can't manage that level of detail either (nostrils, eyelids, etc.). Very mysterious. (A quick Google search revealed that Sharif was perhaps more patriotic than knowledgeable, as diorite is only a 6/10 on the Moh hardness scale & it is certainly not only lasers that can carve it.) It was also interesting to learn that silver was actually much more valuable in ancient Egypt because it had to be imported, whereas gold was so plentiful they buried their pharaohs with tons of it. Even a weak, short-lived king like Tutankhamen had a several gilded sarcophagi & a treasury's worth of gold. Maybe that's why their jewelry now is surprisingly expensive - they locked most of it away with dead people. My favorite part was the small pond outside the building with reeds & lilies which represented the papyrus & lotus of the kingdoms of Upper & Lower Egypt.

For dinner we went to Bird Cage at the Semiramis InterContinental, touted as the best Thai in Cairo. I don't know if that's true but it was certainly the best Thai I've ever had. We tried the chicken satay, crab & corn soup & crispy shrimp appetizers - then chicken cashew & spicy beef something after that, which were all fantastic. I could eat there every night. There was a belly dancer coming on later that night in the same hotel so we went across the street to El Mojito at the Nile Hilton to wait for her. However, we'd eaten too early - 8pm - & after 2 hours we were too bored to wait until 1 am for the show. We went home & I think we just played Scrabble.

On Friday we were really lazy, got up late & ended up sitting by the pool again. We tried Abu Sid, highly recommended by LP, & were extremely disappointed. It is not sumptuous or fit for a pasha & the food was ok but certainly nothing special, while the service was glacial & mixed up. I've had better meals at Le Souk in NYC. As it was our last night in Cairo, I was absolutely hell-bent on seeing a dancer before we left. SE was tired & tried to beg off but I convinced him by arguing that we'd probably never come back to Cairo & thus would miss out forever, & also I needed protection from the men. Fortunately for us lazy bums, the hotel night club was having a performance so all we had to to do was stay awake. When we got down there the audience totaled 12 people - including us. The singer soon finished & musicians began pouring out. it was like the circus act with the clowns popping out of a VW. We counted 19 people on stage! At long last the dancer herself came out. She was terrible. She had some basic moves, the requisite smile & was even pretty cute, but there was no rhythm or passion. Maybe she was a novice, I don't know. I was so disappointed I cried a little on our way back to the room. To his credit, SE comforted me instead of saying told you so.

Saturday we realized that we had forgotten to go shopping. We decided on the Khan Al Khalili bazaar as suggested by LP but when we told the cabbie where we wanted to go, he told us it was at least an hour there, plus Cairo traffic is horrible so probably it would be longer. We only had 2.5 hours total before we had to be at the airport so we were happy to take his suggestion of shopping near the hotel. I got some sheets, since people are always talking about Egyptian cotton, & we bought some cute clothes & jewelry. We managed to cross the street without getting run over - you think jaywalking is bad in NYC, you'd be horrified at Cairo. People basically walk whenever & wherever they feel like it, & there are hardly any stoplights. In any case we got what we wanted, although we didn't have time to get proper shawarma before our flight as I'd hoped. Our cabbie took it upon himself to stop & get us some, & wouldn't let us give him money. SE only had E£100 ($18.18) bills & said so when the driver stopped to get us drinks, but again he insisted it was his hospitality & that he had change for the fare of E£50, no worries. When we arrived SE gave him the E£100 & the guy just said thanks & started walking away. SE was like, No, I need change, you said you had it. It turned out he only had E£12 so we had to take that. This was one of the more egregious examples of how annoying baksheesh (tipping) is in Egypt. He clearly wanted us to tip him a lot, which is reasonable, but it sucks when people try to manipulate you into it. We might have just given him the extra 50 if it weren't for the fake "hospitality" & the bullshit about change. Don't call it hospitality when you have an agenda. We were also frustrated by how hard it was to get change. Whenever we wanted to break a bill they always asked if we had smaller, & on the frequent occasions when we didn't they were quite happy to pocket the excess unless SE got annoyed & walked away. LP said baksheesh is the custom for any kind of service but we got really tired of feeling fleeced all the time. In any case, we made it through both security gates (I suppose just in case we'd created a weapon in the 100 feet between the 1st X-ray/metal detector & the 2nd) & onto our flight to Sharm safely.

Victoria Falls: 7/10

We flew Jo'burg to Victoria Falls on Friday morning, 7/13. Zimbabwe kind of looks like upstate New York with less trees & more monkeys. Sexy Englishman had us at the Hotel Mercure Rainbow, which turned out to be not bad. We wanted to do activities right away, but the earliest thing we could do was a sunset cruise on the Zambezi so we spent a couple hours relaxing & drinking by the pool. The boat ride turned out to be a booze cruise with hippos, crocodiles & elephants. Apparently elephants swim from the mainland to the little islands in the river quite often to forage. SE & I made friends with some English backpackers on the boat, who invited us to a bar later (as if we weren't drunk enough already). Fortunately we had electricity when we got back to the hotel - it had been turned off before. We decided, probably unwisely, to eat dinner at the bar, which of course we forgot to do. Upon venturing out into the town we promptly got lost despite being told directions. We wandered up & down the main street several times until we decided that a pitch-black road was where we should be; happily, my misgivings were proved wrong when we got to Shoestrings. It's an expat bar at a backpacker's hostel, filled with aid workers, student travelers & assorted other (mostly white) people. Lots of fun. We found some Americans there, pretty much the first we'd met in Africa, & over-indulged in $1 beer & $2 vodka tonics. They love US money in Zimbabwe. Sadly, their Zim dollars are pretty much toilet paper. We got Z$100,000 for US$1 on the street, & according to an Economist published while we there we could have got Z$250,000. The worst part of the hyper-inflation for the citizens is that President Mugabe insists on holding the exchange rate at Z$250:US$1. There's now a "farmer relief" accelerator of 60, so it's 15,000:1 but that's still completely divorced from reality. The funniest thing about the money is that it has a sell-by date. I have a Z$100,000 bill in my wallet that is no longer legal tender, as it expired on 7/31. Good job Mugabe, we all totally believe you're not running your poor starving country into the ground.

The next morning we had a helicopter ride & bungee jump scheduled. Poor SE was much the worse for wear, while I was perky & awake at a ridiculously early hour. (I don't get hangovers.) He managed to make it through the flight without throwing up, fortunately. The Falls are gorgeous. They're the biggest system in the world. Their very appropriate Makololo name is Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders. It's amazing how deep & winding a gorge the Zambezi has made for itself. The falls come off a flat plain & that's it, the land looks like a
giant was trying to carve something out. An interlocked series of Zs maybe.

After we got back from that I put SE to bed with some tlc. He's never sick, I'm always the one who needs looking after, so it was really nice to be able to take care of him for once. When he woke up he felt much better & was excited, instead of apprehensive, about the bungee. Well, less apprehensive. I was jumping up & down with anticipation. When we got to the Vic Falls Bridge between Zimbabwe & Zambia it turned out that we could do 2 other activities as well, a gorge swing & slide. Of course little miss Adrenaline Junkie wanted to do everything, so we got all suited up & strapped in - they are reassuringly safety-conscious there - & stepped off the bridge into 4 seconds of free-falling terror. Basically there's a rope running across the gorge with another rope looped around it - we were on the 2nd rope. Once you fall enough there's no more slack & you start swinging off the 1st rope. That's the fun part. The falling is actually quite horrible, especially since we literally stepped off the bridge & fell feet first for what seemed like days. It was so fast we couldn't even scream. After it was over & we weren't dead we felt exhilarated though. The slide was a bit lame, great view of the gorge, & then it was bungee time. Now I was scared & SE was excited. I had a vivid recollection of my stomach being around my ears from 10 minutes before & almost wasn't sure I wanted to do that again. Bungee is better, though, because you "fly" off the platform & can see where you're going instead of falling. It was amazing.

We had a calm, sober night at the hotel. Their lapa was quite good & so was the Ndebele dancing, not that I know much about it. They have some scary-ass costumes.

We played Scrabble later - my 2nd time ever - & I managed to beat SE. He's very good at it so I was well pleased with myself. We went to bed early so we could go to the actual Falls early before our flight on Sunday, since we hadn't actually seen them up close. They were really wet, even though it was the dry season, & quite overwhelming in their sheer volume. I got my fill of rainbows & we got photographic proof that someone has taken the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Or maybe that's just in Zimbabwe - someone has clearly taken their electricity & water as well. We were told it was "rationing" to help the farmers but we had our doubts.

Northeastern South Africa: 8/10

So we got back from Vegas early Saturday morning. We had about 6 hours to pack for the next 4 weeks, although I'd got most of my things together already, & also we had to make sure everything was taken care of for the rest of the month. I managed to stick to my schedule fairly well, despite my extreme tendency to procrastinate when faced with such a large block of time. I arrived at SE's with suitcases in tow early enough to run out & get Travel Scrabble. Yes, we are big dorks who do crosswords, play Scrabble & read the Economist. We got to JFK & through security without mishap & just had to wait a lot. It's 17 hours from New York to Johannesburg - they stop for an hour's refueling in Senegal - which is a hell of a long time. I tried to sleep a lot & power through back issues of the Economist. I've calculated that each issue is roughly the equivalent of a 200 page book, which makes me feel better that I always get behind on it. It comes out every week! I was distracted, however, by lots of naps, Tetris at my seat, & Lady Chatterley's Lover. I can't remember why I thought that book was good the first time I read it. It's not terribly well written, plus Lawrence says some really offensive things about women. I should have remembered that I thought Women in Love was crap too.

We got to Jo'burg after nightfall. People had warned us that it's a very dangerous city & on no account should you stop at traffic lights when it's dark because you might get mugged or carjacked. We rented a car, & let me tell you, Jo'burg is not a good place to get lost at night. They have hardly any street signs, unless we just couldn't see them, & you do have to stop at some lights because other people are going. Usually we only stopped at the ones where there were other cars around though. We were trying to get on a highway & couldn't find the on-ramp! We could see the road above our heads but kept getting lost in dodgier & dodgier areas until we were passing people huddled around small bonfires in tires. At that point I was trying to figure out how to read the map without holding it up or turning on the light so as not to look like tourists & therefore targets. SE's navigational skills prevailed in the end, & we got safely to Thulangi Lodge in Melville, an area of Jo'burg. They were very friendly & our room had a canopied bed! I've wanted one of those since I was a little girl. We had dinner at The Loft, which was great. We just picked it because it looked the nicest & it turned out to be fantastic. The dessert called something like "Mom's homemade" is a must. They have very inventive cocktails as well.

We played Scrabble when we got back to the room & tried to stay warm. South Africa has quite a pleasant winter - it's up to maybe 70˚ during the day - but it gets really cold at night. The bathroom was so frozen by morning that we were like, "Forget it, we'll shower when we get to the next place." We needed some supplies so we stopped by Sandton Mall which was supposed to be quite nice & was. It took about 4 hours to get to Kruger National Park. The N4 highway is reallly nice, better than roads in America. It's very smooth, hardly any cracks, & just seems to unspool for mile after mile. We noticed that South Africans love to tailgate though. (The driving-too-close kind, not beer & hamburgers.) No wonder they have such a horrible accident percentage. The speed limit was usually about 120 kmph (~70mph) & the other drivers were definitely not leaving enough distance to brake without causing a pileup. There were very few cars on the road though, which may have had something to do with the tolls or it being a weekday.

Around evening we finally got to Kruger Park Lodge, after some confusion over whether Skukuza Road was actually the Paul Kruger Gate Road we were looking for. The Lodge is a large complex of chalets including a hippo & crocodile area, its own golf course & a herd of impala. Since it was the off-season we were lucky enough to get a 3-bedroom chalet to ourselves. It was quite overwhelming. We should have brought some friends.

The next morning we arranged evening & day safaris. We had some time before the trip that night & wandered around the very scenic Lodge & into the surrounding town of Hazyview. We also tried to play golf but I didn't have a collared shirt so they wouldn't let me. Finally it was time for our first safari. A guy drove us to the Lion Sands private game reserve right next to Kruger & we were off in a very big Jeep. We had a guide, Andrew, & a spotter, Kruger (yes, I'm sure that's why). It was just me, SE & 2 trainee guides in a Jeep that could comfortably hold 12, so it was great. I pestered Andrew with tons of questions as we looked for animals. We spied a duiker briefly, which is a type of antelope. Then we saw an elephant in the distance. SE & I started snapping pix, amazed at our good fortune since in winter it's not always easy to find the animals. We thought that was cool - Andrew said, "Let's get a closer look!" & vroom drove right into the bush! As we smushed small trees & acacia bushes he explained that the latter have been known to rip holes in tires but elephants chomp happily away on them without any apparent discomfort. We pulled up maybe 30 feet from the elephant, a young bull. It didn't seem bothered at all by our presence, & in fact ate its way closer to us, so close that I really wanted to touch it.
Interestingly, though the animals can see us, the Jeep just looks like a unit to them & they don't really differentiate the people from the vehicle. If you stretch an arm out or stand up, though, they do, & will either run away or charge so everyone has to stay seated at all times.

Some more bush driving later, we saw a mother & baby giraffe, which were just as cute as in cartoons. Next was one of the highlights of our whole trip. We saw a leopard! They are nocturnal & elusive so seeing one up close during daylight is really rare. They are so beautiful. We followed this one around for a while - it was a male that had fed very recently - as it padded lazily along for a bit & then decided on a good lick & nap in a likely patch of tall grass.


Unbelievable. We quickly stopped getting excited about impala, which were as ubiquitous as deer in the US though much lovelier & more graceful. Their legs are so slender they look as though they should break on impact & they have intelligent little faces with very high cheekbones. We also checked off kudu & bushbuck, which are like bigger-boned, wider-eared impala. Andrew pointed out a funny bird that people call the "vomit comet" because that's what it looks like. I guess maybe if you eat blueberries.

As evening fell, we found a skittish rhino family. We tried to get closer but Mommy & Baby wheeled & ran. In the distance we also saw a zebra herd, which was surprising because the South African winter is too cold for them & they should have been up north already. They were even more skittish than the rhinos. Our last big sighting - so 4 of the Big 5* - was 2 males & 1 wounded female lion. The poor thing was limping along on 3 feet, quite gracefully considering. It was pretty much dark & cold at this point, though we managed to spot a bushbaby (tiny weird squirrel-looking thing) & a mongoose. We had dinner at the lapa at the Kruger Gate Protea Hotel which was good. A lapa is a big barbecue-type setup with cold, stew & dessert buffet sections too. SE & I got home tired & happy.
*Leopard, lion, rhino, elephant, & buffalo. These were chosen because they were the most dangerous animals in the area to hunt.

The next morning a guide picked us up at 5:45 for our safari in Kruger proper. Winter is no joke there - we were frozen until about noon. I had on a sweater, down jacket & blanket & still couldn't stop shivering. This is where we learned the difference between private game reserves & Kruger. There's no offroading on government property & everyone with a car is welcome to drive through looking for animals. There are a lot more regular cars without guides, which means that they sometimes do silly things or get in the way. We got lucky with a rhino fairly soon & saw some more giraffes & elephants before seeing #5, the buffalo. They are not very interesting to watch, although our guide told us that they are fierce fighters. Apparently a buffalo kept 8 lions at bay once, by goring them & staying in front of a big tree. We didn't see any aggression though. They seemed to be chewing their cud, carrying their enormous balls, & letting little birds eat their ticks off. Later we saw a group of male impala fighting. They make funny grunting noises & actually lock horns. We saw some vervets, which are small adorable monkeys, & also baboons with their babies. When female baboons are in estrus they get the most unattractive-looking red butts.

We even saw warthogs, which are very hairy & nowhere near as cute as The Lion King would lead one to expect. & speaking of lions, we saw a whole family! Mommy & 2 cubs were walking on the highway, which seems to be easier on their paws, & Daddy brought up the rear. Mom & babies quickly ran away from the procession of cars but Daddy padded along majestically. He was even closer to us than the elephant & leopard the day before - it was amazing. We caught sight of some hippos quite far away on the riverbank as well.

The next day it was time to say goodbye to our lovely chalet & head back to Jo'burg. We drove up to Blyde River Canyon & God's Window, which has a small rain forest at the top. I have no idea how that's possible, but I think it's natural. The drive back was pretty uneventful; we decided to stay at the airport InterContinental this time because we had an early flight to Victoria Falls & it just didn't make sense to test our luck in the city again. The hotel is wonderful & the room was such welcome luxury. It's really expensive though, so not for backpackers. We played in the pool which overlooks Jo'burg, then had dinner downstairs at Quills. So yummy. The service was a bit slow but the food more than made up for it. Plus, compared to the absolutely crap food at the Lodge it was like manna from heaven.

I was going to do this post on all of South Africa but decided that would be too long. I deducted points for being freezing cold & the mediocre Lodge food. It was amazing overall though, & I definitely recommend it for everyone who's got at least a week to look at animals & explore.