hurghada, the land of wafeek

APRIL 6: CAIRO TO HURGHADA (bus)

we were sad to leave the city but it was a good day to leave because there were strikes in cairo. the first in 15 years! probably because it is illegal in egypt. the campaign was for a general strike prompted by low wages and increasing prices. we walked past dozens of police officers in riot gear on the way to the bus station. happily. plus, we used the 6-hour bus ride to catch up on journaling and sleeping.

once in hurghada, we headed straight for the fruit section. we fought our way through eager taxi drivers and crossed the street to the grocery store. the most determined cabbie waited for us in the parking lot. he got our bid. and how lucky we were!! he was a riot, speaking broken english (mostly broken by laughter), blaring the music, yelling to other cabbies at traffic lights, pumping his brakes to the bass line... he was too much. we laughed all the way to our hotel!

unfortunately, we stopped laughing the minute we walked in the hotel. the moon valley owner does not like americans. so i inflicted immediate diapproval and bad graces. eesh. i have never felt so pre-judged and i have never been so poorly treated by a reception. as soon as we were in our rooms, i suggested that we change into our suits quickly and get out of there, down to the beach. but, to top it all off, the beach was closed by the time we got there. crap. back to the hotel pool.

a few hours later, on our way to dinner, we had the fortune to run into jamal. yes, the owner. he invited himself to sit down with us and proceeded to tell us all about himself until our food arrived. then he took off, but wanted to come back for coffee after. fantastic. luckily, after dinner we had an "optional" meeting with a travel agent provided by the hotel. we went begrudgingly, but this is how we met wafeek! our buddy, wafeek! we had a quick meeting with wafeek and made a plan for our stay in hurghada. we tried to make the meeting last longer so we could avoid the inevitable meeting, but it had to happen. we met jamal for sheesha and coffee on the terrace. he, again, told us all of his opinions, experiences with women, prejudices towards different cultures, and taught us all about how to run a business. i'm not even sure he knew our names. you may wonder how i could argue a taxi fare with seven men in broken arabic at 5am in cairo, but i couldn't avoid this hotel owner. me too. i guess i felt he was the only person in hurghada who i really needed on my side if anything were to happen while i was there. he was the second person living in the town which now has a population of 40,000. he knows a lot of them... anyway, we eventually got away from him when our eyelids were drooping.

APRIL 7: HURGHADA, ADVENTURE #1

we woke up in time to enjoy the breakfast buffet before we met wafeek in the lobby at 8:30. he took us on a drive out to the pier for our snorkeling trip. much to our disappointment, it was too windy for the boat to go out. luckily, our buddy proposed a desert safari instead! and we had time to relax at the hotel pool for a few hours before we had to get changed for our outing.

he picked us up again about 1:00 to meet our safari jeep. we were in the back of a jeep with three women from bulgaria! we were disappointed that it was a covered jeep.... until we started traversing the desert. that would have been MISERABLE! not far into the desert we stopped to check out a mirage. it really looked as if a swollen river was flowing across the horizon. our next stop was at an outcropping of rocks. sheena and i climbed up for an aerial view. our final stop was at a bedouin village.

the bedouin are a nomadic people, continually searching for fresh grazing for their camels goats and for water for their families. the men and women are both covered in long flowing clothing and they both wear head scarves - his is wrapped around his head and neck to slow dehydration and protect his skin from the sand, she wears a head cover and a veil. bedouin live in tents of goat and camel hair panels that the women have woven on their narrow ground looms and stitched together. they first welcomed us with a cup of tea. they we rode their camels around their village, watched a woman make bread from scratch (and got a taste!), met their big boss and toured his part of the camp, learned about their local herbal remedies and artwork, visited their well, and watched young women weave goat and camel hair rugs and purses. what a simple life. i can't imagine what they must think of tourists who come to their camp. and i certainly can't imagine the lives of the bedouin who have never seen anyone outside of their particular community. it's amazing.

we had time to relax before dinner so we created a type of dart board on the ground and convinced two egyptian men to play dartboard-horseshoes with us! just as we finished our game dinner was served. then we climbed a mountainside next to their camp to watch the sunset. a few of the children came up with us and were happy to have their picture taken. the magic hour followed us back down to the camp where we were all invited to watch a traditional song and dance performed by the young men of the community. laughter and clapping carried us back to our jeep and across the desert, back to the tourist town of hurghada.

back at the hotel we had two rounds of sheesha and talked about life.

APRIL 8: HURGHADA, ADVENTURE #2

we got to go snorkeling! and weren't we glad we didn't go the day before... just outside of the marina we passed a boat that had sunk in the storm the day before. yikes!!

being in a country where the national language is egyptian arabic, but most people we see speak a variety of other languages, we never know what to prepare ourselves for. though we were able to pick up several arabic phrases, important things like:
"we are not stupid tourists"
"egypt is very beautiful"
"please" and "thank you"
"i want a peanut" (i thought i was saying coconut)
"how are you" and "i'm okay" (in slang)
"i love egypt"
"cheers"
"i want beer"
"friend"
"let's go"
"never in your wildest dreams"
"it's okay"
"do you speak english"
"go to your momma"

anyway, everyone on the snorkeling boat was russian so we were nervous we weren't going to understand what was happening all day. lucky for us, the guides all spoke in the worlds language. english. how lucky are we to be native speakers?! we took a boat ride through the magnificent red sea, which is not red at all, by the way. first stop, paradise island where we relaxed on the beach and braved the cool water for a quick swim. next, we anchored and snorkeled along a coral reef. there was a bit of a break in communication and we thought we were swimming to the snorkeling spot so the whole first half of the swim we didn't have our heads under water. plus, the other girls hadn't snorkeled before and they were having trouble with their goggles and tubes and the waves.... it was still quite choppy! back at the boat we had yet another buffet lunch as we motored toward our second dive site. this time everyone had goggles and tubes that suited them better and we took off with the guide. this site was more calm and shallower so we saw loads of colorful fish, corals, urchins, and jellyfish. i asked saïd if the jellyfish were dangerous. his response was to swim away. i also took off, feeling misunderstood, swimming along the coral, until i felt a tap on my shoulder and he held his hands out for me to take a gift. a jellyfish!! a beautiful, purple, soft jellyfish! i was thrilled so he tried to show me anything else he could. he dove down and came back up with a crab in a fist-sized bulbous shell. next was a delicate piece of coral decorated in a pink, spiral pattern which had broken off of the larger organism. on our return to the boat he invited me (in the famous snorkeling gesture language) to dive down with him. on his count of three we dove and he showed me a sea cucumber. of course i love touching new things so i stroked its leathery back, safe enough. my next move was a disaster; i felt underneath and came away with a nasty surprise. my hand was covered with sticky vein-like strings. i mean COVERED! it took me the next two hours to pull it all off! the dive ended with a relaxing swim back to the boat, sheena and i hand-in-hand, pointing out exceptional fish along the way.

back at the pier, wafeek was waiting for us. he took us back to the hotel to clean up for our last night in hurghada. we ordered pina coladas and strawberry sheesha to enjoy until the sun went down. then we indulged in beer and pizza until wafeek came back to spend our last night in town together. he took us to a cotton shop and then to a quiet part of town to enjoy sheesha and drinks. he is a super guy, a real gentleman with a heart of gold.