Thursday 24^th June

Yes, well there is a reason for this as you will hear....

Our dear leader Hassan, who along with Dave and Kath are the redoubtable EMYR organising committee about whom I plan to elaborate tomorrow, managed to get today’s itinerary changed slightly to allow us all a very lazy slow morning with the chance to swim and enjoy a late and VERY nice breakfast. (I apologise to all the readers of this blog who feel that I mention food too often, but it seems to play a big part in the running of this event and the side effects of eating the ‘wrong’ local foods is a hot topic of daily conversation!)

Around 10.30 am we re-boarded our coaches and headed for the nearby Giza Plateau and its pyramids which were every bit as inspiring as I had grown up to imagine. There is a good deal more to the pyramids than piles of rocks and we spent a good hour wandering around this site with a total of 9 pyramids (there well over 100 across the country) before moving up to a panoramic position where we could get better photos. This also gave most of us the opportunity to have a camel ride a short way out into the desert and back. All four of us went for this option, but some others chose to ride horses and a few took the seemingly  less adventurous decision to ride in pony and traps. The camel rides were a great experience and very little prepares you for what happens, but with young lads to lead the animals for the most part, there was nothing too dangerous about this. Trevor however was shown how to steer his camel and set loose to make his own way with the young lad throwing the odd rock at the camel to get it to go faster! The two person horse drawn carriages certainly looked sedate when seen trotting along the roads, but our here in the desert, the drivers seemed to have a rather better developed sense of fun and these hurtled along with pretty wild sense of abandon. Various photo opportunities followed before we all made our way in an unruly train back to where we had started. Photos will be posted at www.rhbell.com shortly. We had only been in the saddle for half an hour, but quite a few people seemed to be walking a little stiffly after this excitement. What detracts from these experiences all the time slightly, is the endless requests for baksheesh which is just fine when it is deserved, but frequently it forms part of a minor scam that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. On this occassion most of us were keen to offer money to the young (8 – 14 year old) boys who led our camels and took photos of us with our cameras etc. but as we dismounted, adults would materialise and start to haggle the amount. We had of course already paid for the ride so this was merely a tip and yet they wanted to argue and demanded foreign currency. I insisted on paying the lad and thanking him personally and largely ignored the man demanding further payments, but I have no doubt that in the end the boy will have had to hand his money over anyway.

We then moved on a few hundred yards (by coach) to where we could get a good view of the Sphinx which is very much smaller than you might imagine. Lots of mystery surround its origin and purpose but by common consent it is deteriorating quite quickly and recent attempts to halt this process appear only to have accelerated this. The whole site is very impressive and one can only marvel at what it must have been like all those thousands of years ago when it was all new and the pyramids themselves were covered in polished marble that has of course long since vanished. That the site has survived so long given the almost total lack of protection by the authorities over the years is very fortunate.

At this point our group got back on board the coach but despite promises that this would not happen, a very small group went off in the tour operator’s support vehicle to buy some Egyptian cotton sheets or whatever. The upshot of this was that as the three coaches had to travel in a tight convoy at all times, we were all required to wait for their return. We assume that our guide tired of this and we set off slowly driving through Cairo and out onto the highway back to Port Said. However, because the last coach still did not catch us up, we drove slower and slower until finally the armed police support team made us stop and wait. The rather curious (and quite worrying) aspect of this was that we remained in what we would call ‘the fast lane’ of the duel carriageway for all of this time, including the bit when we were parked! Finally the third coach caught up and once again our convoy moved off only to stop again within the hour under slightly more dramatic circumstances. Our coach was second in the convoy, but Trevor happened to witness part of what happened next, which was that a young lad stepped out into the road and launched a large water melon into the path of the leading coach. This struck the vehicle on the side mirror and windscreen, breaking the mirror assembly and obscuring the drivers vision. He stood on his brakes which of course caused us all to have to brake as well. The poor lad could not possibly have picked a worse target for his prank as the armed security guards jumped off the vehicles and gave chase along with the armed military police. Suddenly we all felt just a little vulnerable as the guards seemed to have overlooked the possibility that the melon was only a ruse to bring the convoy to a halt and draw away the security screen and so we all sat still hoping that there was not a more involved plot in progress.... of course all was well and the police failed to catch the lad, which was just as well for him as his future for a short while had looked very bleak – and brief.

The convoy moved off again and we made our way to Ismailia and the marina/yacht club there. Ismailia is around halfway down the Suez canal and makes a good overnight mooring for yachts. Originally the lake (Lake Timsah) here was fresh water and it is named after its crocodiles, but once it was joined to the salt water canal they died out. The lake is a popular spot for bathing and has a number of private clubs as well as public beaches around it. We were the guests of the yacht club, which has no yachts as such but is a very welcoming place nonetheless and on our arrival we saw a huge trimaran belonging to the Sultan of Oman that was on its way to France where it will be taken over by a Frenchman for the next single handed round the world race. Then as we drank our free cans of cold soft drinks, we watched another trimaran that turned out to be Ellen Macarthur’s former world record record breaking ‘B & Q’ arrive and moor up. Ismailia was built at the same time as the Suez canal and became the home of Ferdinand de Lesseps who was the director of the canal during its construction. It was hard to ascertain the grandness of the town as again we were whisked through with policemen standing on EVERY street corner. The fresh water for irrigation and drinking water here and  as in most of this part of Egypt is carried on small canals fed directly from the River Nile. What is very surprising is the terrible condition these waterways are kept, which is full of rubbish of every conceivable sort. Some have been dredged out, but the rubbish strewn spoil is simply left along the banks to leech back into the water.

In due course we set off back to Port Said and this time our convoy was extended to include a police car with sirens and lights running ahead of the truck with the soldiers. Still all the crossings were police holding up all the traffic and so we had an swift trip through the city and back into the dockyard. We climbed off the coaches and had to walk past the yachts to line up at a door where they intended to get us all to pass back through the scanners again and show our passports. Someone in authority had the sense to recognise the futility of this and the idea was abandoned and we were allowed to return to our boats.

We dusted ourselves down and poured some very welcome G & T’s and before long were joined by Chris and Penny from ‘Karma Daze’ although after a couple of drinks each they headed for the noisy dockside party being held by Group 4. We enjoyed spaghetti with a very tasty tuna dish that Sarah cooked before we all headed to bed. Somehow I never heard another thing, but I understand that the dockside party ran very loudly until quite late.