Merry Christmas from Uganda!

Joyeux Noel.... French.  Feliz Navidad... Spanish. 
Mele Kalikimaka... Hawaiian

I wish I knew how to say Merry Christmas in Lugandan.  It's okay, everyone here speaks English, so a plain "Merry Christmas" will do.

It's almost 8pm in Uganda and Tom and I are making calls home and writing this blog.  We finished a special "Christmas Meal" at our camp, and will likely join the loud crowd and louder music for a beer (or two) before bed.

We've had a great time over the past week in Uganda.  The highlight has certainly been gorilla tracking.  We hiked through the rainforest for about 2 hours to find a family of gorillas then spent an hour with them.  It was a really unbelievable experience, one we'll never forget.  Unfortunately we can't share any pictures with you until we get back to Cairo onto our computers.  We promise we'll put some up though.

Another thing we loved was paddling and camping on Lake Bunyoni, a lake with many many islands.  We paddled a dug-out canoe, which was a great workout.  It didn't glide quite as nicely as Willow (our Canadian canoe).... not for us anyway... the Ugandans who paddle them everyday didn't seem to have any problems at all... not even the woman carrying the baby.  Still, being on the water was really relaxing.

We're now back on the East side of Uganda, ready to visit waterfalls, do some white water rafting, a sunset cruise, and a safari (including a game drive and boat launch).  We'll update you (photos and all) when we get back to Cairo.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Black and White

 
There are so many types of beauty in this world.  In Canada we love to paddle to beautiful forested areas overlooking lakes.  We have visited some countries with beautiful architecture, like France, and beautiful mountain ranges, like Peru.  We recently spent the weekend in the Black and White desert, probably the most unique landscape we've ever visited.  Although there is almost no vegetation there, it is one of the most beautiful place we've ever been.

The black and white desert is exactly what it sounds like, a desert that is black in white.  Actually it is two separate deserts, one black (from magma coming up through cracks in the earth's surface).  One white, from the limestone.  The photo above is at the beginning of the white desert.

We went on this trip with ten other teachers, to make our group of twelve.  The first day was mostly spent driving through the black desert to the white desert, with fabulous sunset stop atop a sand dune.  After a big meal, some games outside in the desert, and a night of camping under the stars, everyone was shockingly chipper in the morning.  We all got our Bedouin guides to tie scarves traditionally on our heads.  It's good to keep you cooler as I later discovered.  If you can't tell, I'm center left, and Tom is on the far right.  (If you haven't figured it out yet, you can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.)

Our second day was fun, we stopped at a sand dune, a natural rock bridge, and a cold spring.  The meals were good, the company was better, and I even won a game of Settlers of Catan (nerdy but true!)  Tom and I tried to climb a big mountain, but it turns out that climbing limestone is very difficult.  Everytime I would try to grab onto something, it would break off.  The evidence is all over my gray pants!  We did manage to climb up this white desert "mushroom" for a photo before we were told that it is forbidden to climb them.  Oops!

Our second night was awesome.  After playing games we sat around the campfire, sang some arabic songs (who knows what we were saying?!) while our guide played a drum, and had roasted marshmallows and traditional mint tea.  We were still asleep by 11pm.  It's amazing how cold it can feel at night when you were sweating under the sun all day.  I guess that's part of being in the desert.  We brought our warm sleeping bags from home, so we managed to stay very warm through the night. 

Our last morning was quite cold, but Tom made all the ladies happy by preparing hot chocolate.  After breakfast we just headed back to the entrance, and soon back to Cairo craziness.  The white desert was probably the "whitest Christmas" we'll be getting this year as we fly to Uganda tomorrow for the holidays.

Sweet Movember!!!

What do you think about that beautiful upper lip?!?!  First of all, if you are unfamiliar with the month of Movember you should really read the following webpage: http://ca.movember.com/about/.  I was approached to participate in Movember by a colleague who was trying to enlist every male teacher on our staff to grow a moustache over the month of November to raise money for prostate cancer research.  My first reaction was, “I can’t even grow facial hair!”  However, I believe in the importance of fundraising, finding cures for cancers, and brotherly fellowship so I begrudgingly agreed to participate.  There was only one male teacher on our staff who declined the invitation.  I must say that it was not an easy month for me.  My beautiful wife was not particularly enthusiastic about receiving kisses from my manly Mo and my upper lip was itchy and uncomfortable for almost the entire month.  However, I managed to “suck it up” and “take it like a man” and power through the month.  In the end I raised around 250 Egyptian Pounds from my students (which is less than $50) and I had my upper lip shaved by a fellow Mo Bro in front of a small audience of elementary school students.  I wish I could have contributed more to the cause but my students were particularly apathetic about the entire event.  Hopefully, this year’s event has formed the foundation for an even better event next year.  I’m not in a rush to grow another Mo but who knows what the future will bring.

Travels in Ancient Egypt

When Tom and I chose to move to Egypt I was imagining a land of pyramids, temples, pharaohs, and mummies. I didn't expect to see all these things on a daily basis, nor did I expect to see people walking with one arm bent in front and one arm bent behind, "walking like Egyptians".  Still, I thought Egypt would look a little more like you see it in books or on tv.  In reality, we live in a neighbourhood that looks a lot like a big city in Canada, with way more garbage and sand, and way less order and green. I suppose those big triangle things we drove by on the way to our science field trip did scream "Egypt!", but we're not seeing them very often.

With a week off for Eid-Al-Ahda, a religious Muslim celebration, Tom and I had the opportunity to visit more of Egypt and see many of those things that Egypt is known for, like temples and mummies (yup, we saw a real one!)  We had a busy week, visiting many (many, many) temples, museums, and even a botanical garden.  The vacation certainly was not as restful as many of the trips we've taken, but we saw so many interesting things.  Above is our collection of entry tickets from the trip. 


We began at the southmost point of our trip, Abu Simbel, a small town on the Nile, famous for its 2 enormous temples.  We stayed in a "hotel" room that I couldn't bring myself to shower in, and got up early to beat the crowds to the temples.  Although the 5am alarm was not my idea of vacation, the ends justified the means.  I don't think that words or photos can capture the size of these gigantic temples.  The temple of Ramses doesn't look THAT big with Tom and I standing in front of it. 

The camera was awfully far away from the temple.  Tom made me stand right in front of it for a picture, which gives a much better sense of scale.  What's more is that nearly every square inch of visible wall and ceiling in the temples is covered in hieroglyphs, the ancient Egyptian form of writing.  From small script to large pictures, the walls are all carved with impeccable detail.  I can't help but wonder if these temples are the first evidence of overactive male egos.  That being said, the second temple (not in these pictures) was dedicated to one of Ramses II's favourite wives:  Nefertari.  Supposedly he had many wives, and cose to 100 children.  In the very cheesy yet enjoyable Abu Simbel Sound and Light Show, Ramses II was described as a "verile bull".  It's amazing that he even had time to have these temples built.


The next stop on the Nile was Aswan, a larger city with a large Nubian museum (with too much writing for tired travelers) and a few nearby sites.  To be honest, my highlight in Aswan was the koshary, Egypt's national dish.  It is a vegetarian's dream dish, including rice, pasta, lentils and chickpeas, with a top layer of fried onions and a delicious tomato sauce.  All this for 5 egyptian pounds a plate (that's under $1).  Other than our two visits to the same restaurant for koshary, we saw the impressive Philae temple after far too much arguing to pay a reasonable amount for the 5 minute ferry to the island.  We also visited the much overrated unfinished obelisk, and the botanical gardens in Aswan.  It was really refreshing to walk around a very green area.  In Cairo we don't have greenery, we have "beigery". 

From Aswan, we took a felucca, an Egyptian sail boat, along the Nile to Luxor, a large city full of Ancient Egyptian sites.  We were on the felucca for two days and two nights, with 8 other people, plus the teenage felucca captains.  We met some incredibly well-traveled people.  We got pretty close (literally anyway) as we all lived, ate, and slept in very close quarters for our couple of days of travel.  I was glad not to be tall for this sleeping arrangement (left).  Does the eating space (below) look familiar?! 

One young American couple had been traveling through the middle east since February, after working for a couple of years in New Zealand.  They were headed back home to live in Texas in a couple of weeks, for the first time in four years.  (See moms, we could be worse.)  Another middle-aged couple were on their way up from South Africa, where they'd bought a jeep and travelled all the way north through Africa.  They would soon be headed "home" to Holland.  One Japanese man worked as a trekking guide all over the world.  There was a single Dutch girl who was "just on a short vacation" ... 3 weeks to be exact.  The British pharmacist was taking 6 months of leave to travel. he stories were amazing.  All of a sudden our living in Cairo seemed like a very stable and uneventful lifestyle.  We were able to find out a lot about potential travels, and will likely be headed to Uganda for our Christmas break because of the advice of many of these world travelers.  I'm sure that will merit a picture-filled blog.


We took a bus from the felucca drop off to Luxor, stopping at two temples on the way:  The temple of Kom Ombo, and the temple of Horus, in Edfu.  It's amazing how easy it is for the grandeur of these temples to start feeling normal.  Several times Tom and I stepped back and really took in the size and work that went into these temples.  They really are masterpieces.  In days with far less technology than we have now, it's incredible to imagine the building and carving of these enormous and detailed structures.

Luxor itself certainly contained the highest density of impressive sights, although the lowest density of nice people.  If our memory serves us correctly, we only spoke to one non-traveler in our three days in Luxor who did not try to sell us something (for a ridiculous price), or simply beg us for money.  In Luxor, the sights justify dealing with the people.   We spent our first evening at the Luxor temple, another enormous temple, right in the middle of the city.  You can see the Nile, plenty of restaurants, hotels, and even a squash court  from the temple. 

We got up early the following morning to visit Karnak, a temple complex about a half hour walk away from Luxor's city centre.  It turns out that if you don't go the right way, it takes closer to an hour to get there.   This enormous (I can't use the word enough) temple complex was really interesting as it was built in steps by different kings over a really long time period.  Different areas of the complex have very different styles of architecture.  This less ancient addition caught Tom's attention.  We were able to revisit this temple complex the following night for its "Hollywood-style" sound and light show.  The laser show was not quite as impressive as the one in Abu Simbel, but the reflection of the temple on the lake was awesome, and gave Tom a photography challenge (which he passed with flying colours in my opinion).  You can judge for yourself. 

 

We spent our last day on the West bank in Luxor, visiting the valley of the Kings (tombs for Ancient Egyptian Kings) as well as a few more temples, including Deir al-Bahri, which is built right into a cliff face.  We rented bicycles to get from site to site.  I think they were slightly newer than the temples we were visiting, but not much.  Nonetheless, we enjoyed riding around along the farmland, and not having to argue with taxi drivers to get around.  Tom's bike sounded like it was breaking with each pedal, but it made it through the day.  Mine was at the height for an 8 year old, but again, I was happy not to be any taller, so that my knees didn't quite hit me in the face with each pedal. 

The bikes did turn out to be excellent getaway vehicles.  We rode them to this spot on the side of the road to each lunch after we sat near a site and were surrounded by children holding out their hands and saying "money please, money, hello, money, welcome, money".  It's sad but annoying all at once. 

All in all we really enjoyed the trip, although we could have used a vacation to rest from our vacation before heading back to work.  Luckily we are just coming into a long weekend, and we will be heading out for some desert camping, a much more relaxing holiday (we hope!)  I realize that I failed miserably at blogging more in November.  My excuse is that Egypt failed miserably in providing me with reliable internet.  I hope to share our desert camping with you soon.