Archive for July, 2011
Giant Winged Flesh-eating Spiked Monsters
It was May. Roger came over with his trusty multi meter. He asked how we knew for sure that we had been struck by lightning. I handed him the remnants of our VHF antenna which had been blown off the mast onto our deck and recovered by Jaime. He said “oh”.
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We began tearing things apart, testing them individually and hoping to find blown fuses and other easy fixes. In this manner we methodically confirmed what we had already suspected, our electronics were effed.
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 01-May-2011 21:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
This may sound depressing, but actually getting a handle on things in this manner enabled us to quantify what we had labelled an unmitigated disaster into several expensive, but entirely fixable components. He also mentioned that a friend of his would be visiting soon from the US so anything we weren’t able to replace or repair locally could be sourced out in the States and brought out in a suitcase thereby avoiding unreasonable and totally prohibitive Turkish Customs tariffs. It’s a gesture that we remain grateful for to this day.
We generated lists, and I scoured the towns marine shops. I developed a first name rapport with most of the merchants. There’s scarcely a foreign sailor that can say they know the area better than I do, and in fact over the coming weeks I would share some of what I had learned (where to fix this, where to buy that) with several European sailors that had been visiting Marmaris for years. I learned who would work for cash, I learned who was a shyster, and I learned who was sympathetic to our cause.
As with all challenges we’ve encountered on the trip there was an upside. These were without a doubt trying circumstances, but instead of feeling the weight of some really bad luck we were starting to feel more like contestants in a really challenging game show. If there were any other participants we would have all had to meet at the end of a prescribed amount of time to find out who had the most work done, the best work done, and for the least amount of Euros, Turkish Lira, Dollars or Pounds. Having good friends around helped us to keep perspective and sanity, sometimes they were just there to drink beer and listen to us whine after a particularly bad day. Sometimes support came from friends that weren’t even there.
On one memorable night I was bleating on about the cost of this or the problem with that on a Skype call to my friend Chris. The amount of ocean miles under Chris’s belt is the equivalent of about 6 laps around the world, he’s crossed the Atlantic alone 11 times. I said “Chris, I swear if it wasn’t for bad luck we’d have none at all” to which Chris patiently replied “Really? I thought I was talking to a guy who owned his own boat that happens to be sitting in the Mediterranean”. Some nerve eh? Talk about a low blow. I was just frothing up some good self pity and with one little remark like that he takes the wind out of my sails. Suddenly it was tough to feel sorry for myself, I’ll always hate him for that.
Sometimes it wasn’t just friends that took our minds off things. Sometimes it was just the opposite, enemies. Blood enemies:
The next day Jaime screams and drops a drawer on the floor. We had suspected an unwanted presence, and in fact Jaime had actually caught the occasional glimpses of said presence on the boat from the day we offloaded in Marmaris. It seems that one giant mother of a cockroach had stowed away on Slapdash sometime during her stay on the BBC Everest. I had prudently scaled down Jaime’s claims of the giant winged flesh eating spiked monster but since she has made it clear from the very start that she is game for storms, seasickness, pirate threats, lightning strikes and whatever else might come our way on this adventure but vehemently draws the line at giant winged flesh eating spiked monsters (and somewhat inexplicably, flying fish) I nevertheless took the intrusion seriously. I had been stalking the beast since her first report.
While Jaime took up her defensive position backed into the corner of our cabin with a spatula, I surveyed the scene with flashlight and mirror. The beast was real. This was no pesky little sailboat cockroach. This was not even a typical Sri Lankan diner cockroach. This was one tough as nails bad assed commercial cargo ship sized beast. It was in fact a giant winged flesh eating spiked monster. Of course I didn’t let on, and instead said something like “what? This little thing”.
Fighting basic instinct to take up a defensive position armed with a kitchen tool I fashioned a more suitable and decidedly manly weapon. Spearing or crushing of the beast was out of the question, since as a vile disgusting act of defiance cockroaches are known to leave piles of eggs in their guts to propagate their filthy race. Instead, taking a page from my childhood heroes off the A-Team and McGyver I cleverly employed left over lightning strike shrapnel (the now celebrated VHF antenna) with a giant ball of duct tape fastened to the end and in this fashion would take him alive.
I took up a strike position while coaxing Jaime out of the cabin (this took some time) to slide the remaining drawer from its place in order to get a clear shot. Adrenaline had our senses honed to a knifes edge. We both held our breath as the drawer was slowly extracted. The world around us disappeared, time slowed down, you could have heard a pin drop. Inch by painfully suspenseful inch she slid the drawer back, each second exposing more of the den now occupied by a desperate and angry beast.
Before long the drawer was completely removed. Jaime stood there holding it above my head as I crouched even lower and followed my weapon deeper into the hole. There was still no sign of our prey. I said as much and continued the investigation, now with the aid of flashlight and mirror being careful not leaving any nook or cranny unchecked. After the tension of the past few moments we both loosened up and started discussing how something so big could have possibly escaped undetected. My face was deep into the hole now. I shifted my weight to increase circulation and ease up pain from the pins and needles from my now completely asleep left leg. Above me, still holding the weight of this drawer and its contents straight armed and as far away from her vital organs as possible, Jaime shifted around me to move the drawer into a more comfortable position. We were entwined in an uncomfortable game of life and death Twister. Me, crouched in a ball on the floor with my head stuck in a hole. Jaime still holding the drawer over my head. One of her legs was still on the cabin side, the other in the air half step over my back trying to find a place to put it down, and all of this in the 18 inches of hallway space in our Starboard hull. This was the moment that she discovered the beast, in true Hitchcock fashion it had clung to the back side of the drawer, invisible to us both waiting for an unsuspecting and seemingly innocuous moment to spring its shocking death trap.
Jaime screamed and dropped the drawer. I jumped up and bashed my head. In a rain of measuring cups, wooden spoons, vegetable peelers and bottle openers we spastically scrambled, slipped and slid around the galley floor. Recovering my weapon I began stabbing at anything that moved. Soon my duct tape ball had recovered cutlery, a pot holder, ripped out a patch of my leg hair and amazingly, improbably, astoundingly (despite our best efforts to screw it up) one certified and vilified giant winged flesh eating spiked monster.
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We happy danced our way outside, took a commemorative photo (this only because Jaime decided that even a stuffed and mounted cockroach would not be allowed on the boat) pulled the tape ball off the end of my antenna spear using an old rag and hurled it as far as possible out to sea. We returned to the cabin, poured drinks and drank to the death of all giant winged flesh eating spiked monsters.
We finished our drinks in the cockpit and happily watched the tape ball slowly drift out to sea. He was a worthy foe, but we were smug in our demonstrated dominion over unwelcomed winged exoskeleton bastards. Then something incredible happened, and I’m sure you are going to think that I’m making this part up. We noticed little ripples emanating out from the tape ball. The rag had long since drifted off, so when the ball surprisingly righted itself our nemesis was clearly visible, right there wriggling away on his back. Even at this distance we could tell that he was pissed. Somehow the bug pulled itself off the tape ball (losing a wing in the process) rolled off the side, took a quick bead and then began swimming directly back towards the Slapdash! He was swimming hard too; there was even a little wake behind him. We were in shock. Fortunately he was far enough away that we had time to arm ourselves, Jaime took a dinghy paddle and passed me the boathook. At the last moment I abandoned the boathook and grabbed another rag instead. Once he was close enough I used it like a net and scooped him up out of the water quickly crunching it into a ball. I squished it as hard as I could before putting 4 wraps of duct tape around it then threw it again. We sat there, no drinks this time, it was all business. We watched until the improvised cockroach tomb sank, and only then did we put down the paddle and boathook.
True story. And you know what? That whole afternoon that lightning strike was about the furthest thing from our minds.
Thunderstruck
A cultural meeting point described as a bridge between continents, 72 million people call Turkey home. Bordering Greece to the West, Iran, Iraq, and Syria to the south, this is literally where east meets west. We arrived in Istanbul on a cold and rainy April 25th unsure of what to expect.
Istanbul is massive, 16 million people live here. The airport is serviced by a modern train system and, with no bags to wait for, we hopped on and were on our way in minutes to the heart of Old Istanbul. Sultanahmet. Bordered by the mighty Bosphorus it’s also a very beautiful and historic place. The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Hippodrome, and Grand Bazaar are all within walking distance so it really doesn’t take long to get a sense of the rich history still on display here. We soaked up the cafe culture and reveled in the civility of the city. What a contrast from Cairo!
27-Apr-2011 00:52, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 200 |
26-Apr-2011 21:12, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.6, 10.34mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
27-Apr-2011 01:29, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
Rooms were plentiful, vacancies were not. What rooms we were able to find turned out to be incredibly expensive. For some reason prices in Turkey are posted in either Turkish Lira (TL), US dollars, Euros or even English Pounds. The closest we came to an answer had something to do with currency stability and the retailers wish to pass along the cost of exchange to the consumer. It always takes a bit of time in a new country to learn how to calculate exchange rates in your head quickly to keep from being ripped off.This added complication didn’t help.
27-Apr-2011 00:23, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 10.34mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 80 |
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26-Apr-2011 23:52, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 200 |
The cheapest room in town was a little hostel that racked and stacked snoring backpackers in bunks separated only by sheets hung between the beds. It was the type of accommodation you might expect to find behind a sweat shop. The 18 Euro per person price tag would have been laughable in any of the last 8-10 countries we’ve traveled through, and indeed that was our first response to the proprietor , but we soon found out that we were in a neighborhood where the average room would set you back 100 Euro so it turns out that the hovel was priced fairly and we came slinking back. We handed over the money, stuffed our bags under our bunk, and went outside to explore.
26-Apr-2011 21:59, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
27-Apr-2011 02:23, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Apr-2011 21:18, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
We hit the street and the weather hit back. It was windy, damp, and bitterly cold despite the sunshine. I’m sure it was nothing compared to the weather anywhere in Canada on the same day but context is everything. For the past year we had been sweating it out in tropics and deserts. To us a cold spring night at these latitudes may as well have been the Arctic. We turned around and went back inside to redress and regroup. There would be no wandering around this night. We consulted with some backpackers in the hostel who had been here for a few days and from them we gathered the precise kind of intel we would need in order to minimize our exposure. Our second sortie was an unswerving b-line sprint to our target area; a purveyor of beer, food, and warmth!
26-Apr-2011 21:58, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 10.34mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Apr-2011 21:54, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 6.53mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
The next day under the warmth of the sun we discovered that Istanbul is one of the world’s great cities. It has a really nice blend of the old, the ancient, the modern, and the kebap’s. Cobblestones and sidewalk cafe’s, fascinating history and funky bars. We would have spent more time there but we received an email from the shipping agent stating that the Everest would be arriving in Marmaris sooner than expected, like in 2 days!
Istanbul is a long way from Marmaris but we managed to find an overnight bus leaving the same day so quickly made the necessary arrangements and hustled off to the terminal. We were met by an airport-like experience; tickets were exchanged for boarding cards, seat assignments were given, clear directions to clearly marked loading bays were issued. There was a pleasant cafeteria prior to the boarding area where we were able to stock up on provisions.
27-Apr-2011 05:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 200 |
When it was time to board, we were shown to our seats by a uniformed attendant who then asked if we would like a drink. He folded down our table trays before disappearing to retrieve our order. He returned with our drinks and provided us each with a moist towelette, politely wished us a comfortable trip, and told us to ring the call button if we needed anything. We slept soundly and fully reclined, we stretched our legs during a couple of short ferry rides, and woke up with the sun in Marmaris. If comparing this with our last bus experience (in Egypt), I’m certain that no greater contrast exists.
Marmaris had been described to us as coastal and an “unabashed touristic town”. We could certainly see the potential. Nice beaches were lined with dozens of bars. This was the end of April though. It was pre-season and totally dead. If our random encounters were any indicator, then the largest group of visitors in Marmaris that week were the other boat owners waiting for the BBC Everest to show up.
We found a place to stay and went down to the water to see if we could spot Palapa. Roger’s boat was bouncing around in a bit of nasty wind that had filled in a couple hundred meters off shore. This was a very exciting moment for us because he had no idea that we were even here. The last Roger had heard from us we were still in Male preparing for passage to South Africa. Now that we had a visual confirmation we could get on with the second phase of the operation; getting him to shore under false pretences.
28-Apr-2011 03:49, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
We found a cafe with free wifi and I sent him an email. We were in luck! Roger was on line and replied within a few minutes. Over the next 30 minutes or so a complicated flurry of emails went back and forth, me pretending to still be in Male trying to convince Roger that a friend of mine happened to be there in Marmaris and was anxious to meet him. I’m not sure which was the harder sell; persuading Roger that I actually had a friend, or once I did, that he would actually want to meet Roger.
Under my alias I gave directions to the cafe and offered free beer to Roger if he would come to shore. It was a tough sell because the weather was really gnarly by this point. A dinghy ride to shore was not a comfortable proposition. So I had to pour it on thick; free beer, gorgeous women, etc until he eventually took the bait. In the distance we could see a little black speck hopping off the transom and into the dinghy. Watching waves crash over top of him as he surfed down each steep face before being blasted with spray from the next one almost made us feel sorry for him… almost.
We left our table and circled around behind him as he approached. We got so close that we were literally able to bump into him and say casually, “hey Roger, what are you doing here?” Hook line and sinker, and remember, we hadn’t seen the guy since Thailand. Roger was completely speechless and just stood there gawking at us while his brain tried to reconcile the image. Once it did he started hitting me. I’m not sure if it was out of surprise or if it was because I wasn’t the imaginary friend I had claimed to be surrounded by beautiful women giving him free beer, probably a combination of the two. So we bought him a beer which seemed to calm him down enough to fill him in on our previous few months.
28-Apr-2011 04:06, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
A very wet dinghy ride back to Palapa later and we were running the same charade on Karli who had her Mom out for a visit. While we celebrated she had the challenging job of trying to explain to her Mom who the dripping wet Canadians were and why they were here. We got the feeling that Karli wished we actually were on our way to South Africa instead of dripping puddles of salt water all over the clean dry boat and drinking up all the booze with Roger. We managed to power through it though, and that night Palapa had two additional guests on board.
In our still damp clothes crusted over with salt Roger gave us a lift back to shore in the morning. We met some friends for breakfast and bumped into the shipping crew. BBC Everest would be in later that day and they were here to oversee the unloading.
Despite some people’s efforts to make things far more complicated than they needed to be, all boat owners were eventually matched up with their boats. The unloading went well. Being one of the last boats to load, we were scheduled to be one of the first to unload. The lift down was just as nerve wracking as the lift up but in the end just as smooth. We flicked the switches and turned the key and the boat sprang to life. We could tell that she had missed us, and were in the water just after lunch on April 30th. She was a dirty girl but in fine shape. We steamed over to the same anchorage in front of town where Palapa had been and spent a few hours commissioning the Slapdash.
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That afternoon Palapa returned from a Karli Mom day sail. The Mom left and they sportingly invited us over for round two. Despite our sneak attack we apparently hadn’t managed to wear out our welcome quite yet. With things sorted out on Slapdash we celebrated the reunion in earnest aboard Palapa as the storm clouds rolled in.
The weather had been mostly crap since we arrived in Turkey so the looming black clouds were no surprise. Lightning started crashing all around us though, one so loud and close, with no time between crash and flash, that it made us all jump. Intensity usually equals brevity with these things, and this was no exception. In a few minutes it had passed over and we forgot all about it.
Before leaving Palapa that night we agreed to leave our VHF on channel 10 so that we would have contact between the boats, so once we were back aboard Slapdash Jaime flicked the switch and nothing happened, oh great, we thought, welcome back to boating.
It was late and we were exhausted, not to mention more than a little drunk, so wisely went to bed and left this pesky issue for a more suitable hour and state of mind.
The next morning I looked at the VHF again. Yep, still broken. It had been working fine the day before so this didn’t make much sense. Thinking perhaps there was a battery problem I tried a few switches on the panel. A slow feeling of horror backed up all the way into my throat as my damaged brain cells put two and two together. That particularly loud crash we had heard from Palapa the night before, the one that seemed to strike right behind the boat, the one that made us all jump… oh shit!
Yes indeed, Slapdash had been struck by lightning.
We collected our senses and began a systematic check, tallying up the score. We were still working on our plan to pay for the enormous shipping expense, when within the next hour we learned that before leaving Marmaris we would now need to fix or replace:
- VHF
- VHF Antenna
- Propane fume detector
- Running lights
- Anchor light
- Stereo
- Speakers
- Wind instrument
- Wind transponder
- Depth instrument
- Autopilot
- Battery monitor
- Engine instrument panel (gauges, switches etc)
Looks like lightning took the round.
There was some good news though; a few big ticket items (chart plotter, battery bank) escaped injury. We were anchored beside a town that had every conceivable marine retailer and repair shop. There was no structural damage apart from the VHF antenna being blown clear off the mast. Nobody was hurt. We weren’t in Egypt. The engine started up. Roger is an MIT educated electronic engineer.
A brief interlude so that I can offer up a little advice; if you ever by chance meet someone who’s boat has recently been struck by lightning never use the term you are so lucky in any sentence, even if you just mean that nobody was hurt. Remember, we’re talking about being struck by lightning here, inarguably a very unlucky occurrence. Instead try using could be worse, which is equally as annoying but at least true. Even better try something like; who should I make the cheque out to?
Another good statement to avoid, one that really surprised us is; it’s sure a good thing our boat didn’t get hit, we have way more electronics than you. Seriously? That’s like saying to someone whose house has just burned down, boy it’s sure a good thing your house burned down, we have way more stuff than you!
Back to the story.
We became celebrities in a victims of a car accident on the side of the road kind of way. Cruisers would stop by in their dinghies and fake concern so that they could hear about the carnage. I swear, as we went on about fried and frizzled electronics it was all they could do to keep from drooling. More often than not the aquatic rubberneckers would cheerily decide that they hadn’t quite taken up enough of our time and that we were clearly in the need of a totally fictitious story. They would then begin relating a laughable urban legend (that they heard from a very reliable eleventh hand) about a boat that was completely and catastrophically vaporized by lightning. The characters, location, and boat name always changed but the moral of the story was always the same. After dramatic pause this moral was invariably delivered with strong eye contact and the somber slow voice of a patronizing school teacher, “so as you can see, you are both very lucky after all”.
This was a point to which I generally replied by stabbing them in the eyes repeatedly with whatever sharp object I could get my hands on.
I’ve claimed an “irrational” fear of lightning in several previous posts. At one point the topic even served as conversational fodder for a good Bintang session with Roger, Kirk, and a couple other captains while drinking beer back at the Bali Yacht Club. It was a lively and relevant discussion as most of us (all except Kirk who is now on his way to the Cape of Good luck!) were about to transit the Malacca Straight, infamous for its lightning storms among other things.
We had compared known first hand lightning strikes with the estimated number of boats we had ever had contact with, and then combined our totals. Basically how many boats do you actually know of, and how many of them have been hit? I can’t remember the exact numbers that resulted from this SWAG methodology, but it was a percentage so minuscule I remember saying, “good, I can stop worrying about that now” and then added jokingly, “we`ve probably got a better chance of being pirated!” and then I probably stole some of Rogers beer.
There’s an old sailors superstition that goes like this; once Neptune marks a boat or a sailor for payment there is no way to avoid the debt. They are marked. Only by taking up the life of a landsman can they avoid this fate, but if they return to the sea for any reason, payment is inevitable. Sometimes at the peril of those unlucky enough to be on the same ship.
If that’s true then perhaps by shipping the boat through the Gulf of Aden we sidestepped some unknown calamity that was waiting for us. This strike was Neptune’s speedy reconciliation.
I don’t really believe any of that of course but you have to admit it is a bit weird… only 8 hours had passed after crew and boat had been reunited before being struck by lightning.
We took little comfort from the local Turkish captains who told us how remarkable and unusual this strike was. On the other hand, I did notice that not one of them told us how lucky we were.
Egypt
Young men who like their comforts, or who wish to pass their time pleasantly in the company of women, must not go to Arabia.
- Carsten Niebuhr, Description of Arabia, 1774
Aqaba (Jordan) appears to be booming with big money developments, but there’s still a kind of small town beach vibe that worked for us. Coming from desert to sea was a nice transition and we filled in a few days with easy exploring; walking the beach, finding the best cheap street food, and inventing ways to sneak beers past nosy Muslims.
It looked touristy but we didn’t see many. I guess it’s either off season or more likely set up to be more of a local’s destination. Maybe that’s why we were able to enjoy it without feeling ‘packaged’. A good way to illustrate what I mean is with this picture, yes you will find a McDonalds here but the all too familiar golden arches float above Arabic script and you are likely to see a couple guys on camels strolling past the drive through (there’s another good juxtaposition coming up in this post, spot the several thousand year old monuments framed by the franchised logo of a popular pizza purveyor).
20-Apr-2011 01:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 80 |
There was surprisingly little drama returning our tiny white rental car. At one point the guy did try to charge us an extraordinary drop fee so we just put him on the phone with the dude back in Amman who we picked it up from. After a bunch of back and forth in Arabic the guy eventually backed down and left with a ‘oh well, no harm in trying’ kind of look. It’s hard not to think about how many people just open their wallets for these scams. Saying no has almost become a reflex now, a survival skill. Start with an uncompromising ‘no’ and go from there. Take note if any of you are planning travel in the Middle East; basically everything is a scam until proven otherwise, the prudent traveler will place the burden of proof on the person asking for your money.
Our plan was to travel to Egypt over water. We had assumed that this would be possible from looking at a map printed on the back of the rental car contract. Our notion was supported along the way by people who pointed us towards Aqaba, and once here towards the ticket agencies. The good news was that our plan would be possible. The bad news is that the ferry is pricey and notoriously unreliable. We paid for our tickets and since the ferry didn’t leave until 10PM, left our bags at the hotel and killed some time in town. We negotiated a ride to the terminal and before long were on our way to the docks with the bald Jordanian cousin of the guy at our front desk.
The terminal turned out to be a massive commercial harbour well outside of town. Thousands of containers waiting for ships were lit with huge yellow flood lights. Hundreds of big trucks were lined up. It was windy and very cold. Our ride sped off into the night and we stood there with our bags taking in the scene and wondering why our lives always seem to resemble an episode of The Amazing Race. What to do next? Like moths we instinctively shuffled towards the light. Over the next hour and a half we managed to find various unmarked officials in various unmarked buildings. Line up, pay for something, get a stamp, go to another building and line up again. During the process your senses dull as your mind instinctively slips into a vegetative state in preparation for what is sure to be a nightmare of a travel experience.
At some point along the way we exchanged quick tips and information with a couple that were trying to get on the same ferry. We were at different stages in the ‘line up and pay for something’ program so there wasn’t much time for small talk. The next time we saw them they were speeding past us in a bus as we stood shivering on a curb wondering what to do next. We waved, they recognized us and replied with a bunch of frantic gestures that could only mean “your asses really need to be on this bus”. We started chasing them on foot and could see them moving up the aisle towards the driver. Whatever they said or did worked because the brake lights came on and the bus lurched to a stop. Fifty heads swivelled around and were treated to the site of Jaime and I galloping across the tarmac with straps dangling, bags bouncing and flip flops flapping. We thanked our saviors, and the driver for stopping, and grabbed onto the overhead bar for a trip across the big loading bays towards our vessel.
We found seats on the massive ferry. It wasn’t hard because we appeared to be the only foot passengers. The rest would trickle up over the next several hours (yes, several hours) as they loaded all those trucks and cargo. We eventually dozed off and woke up to an entirely different scene. The cabin was stuffed and stuffy. Smells from the meals, feet, farts and burps of a million Egyptian and Jordanian truckers now occupied every available inch of the cabin. The guy behind us treated everyone around him to selections of tinny sounding Arabic music played at full volume through tinny cell phone speakers. Beside us a fight broke out over what appeared to be a seating dispute. The clock ticked past midnight and we still were sitting there tied to the dock.
Conditions in the cabin were moving quickly from unpleasant to nightmarish. We were counting out our sleeping pills to see if there were enough for both of us to commit suicide when a uniformed crew member tapped me on the shoulder. He asked “how many are you?” The noisy cabin fell silent and a million smelly truckers made no effort to appear inconspicuous as they leaned in to see what was going on. I said “two” and he said “follow me please”.
We gathered our things and reluctantly left our seats. A glance back confirmed our fears that they had instantly been usurped by the hordes, nature abhors a vacuum. There were already two fat truckers belching hummus at each other and yelling something over a thousand heads at an unseen friend on the other side of the boat as they farted contentedly into our former real estate. We were wholly committed to this new development and struggled to keep up with our mysterious guide as he expertly weaved through the sweating hordes.
Our departure was queue for the cabin to return to full volume chaos, the contrast from the momentary hush while we were being rooted out of our seats made it sound louder than ever. We trailed behind the uniform certain that we were either being kicked off the boat due to an immigration problem or subject to a scam that would involve further attempts at separating us from our money. We weren’t in the mood for either, and I began working up a head of steam in preparation for a good showdown. We jostled, pushed and shoved our way through the masses, went around a corner, through a door, up some stairs and into a crew area. Was he taking us to see the captain? With a whoosh two big doors swung open into a large room. There were giant padded first class reclining chairs, wrap around booths along the side with tables, televisions and a coffee maker. Our mysterious crew member began to look like an angel and for a moment I thought I was dreaming. We had just left the seventh ring of hell and been led into this hushed inner sanctum. The angel said “I trust you will find this a little more comfortable” and then disappeared. I almost cried. We didn’t care if it was a scam. We were prepared to pay anything to stay here, anything!
We dozed peacefully and comfortably still not sure what we did to deserve this but we weren’t asking any questions either. Every once in a while I would open my eyes and there would be a few uniformed officers sitting around one of the tables sipping at tiny little cups of steaming aromatic Arabic coffee’s. At 4AM we finally bumped into a dock in Egypt, we gathered up our things and as we exited the expected bribe attempt never came. In fact we didn’t even see our saviour again. How he found us, why he did it, and who was behind it remain a mystery to us.
Soon we found ourselves in a crappier version of the same enormous commercial shipping yard that we left behind in Aqaba. It was shabby to the extreme, unlit and there were tiny cinderblock shacks pretending to be customs buildings. It’s how you would imagine a commercial port in a post revolution African country to look, maybe because it was a commercial port in a post revolution African country.
We guessed which way to walk across the expansive tarmac and ducked between idling rigs which were waiting to load. Big trucks rumbled past us blending diesel fumes into the dry dust. We pulled our shirts up over our faces to try and filter some of the diesel dust before inhaling, but holding our breath until they passed proved to be the only effective strategy. The trucks turned out to be a necessary evil. They pointed out the direction to a potential escape route, and their fleeting lights gave a brief opportunity to spot obstacles like ditches, pipes, cinder blocks and boulders otherwise unmarked and invisible in the dark. Occasional clusters of glowing orange dots were exposed by the passing headlights as groups of shadowy men smoking cigarettes hand rolled in scrap paper.
This was Nuweiba on Egypts Sinai peninsula. Somehow we had negotiated our way through the dark concrete maze, found the world’s oldest functioning ATM, had our passports stamped and all without being robbed, cheated or run down by a sleepy truck driver who would likely be unaccustomed to seeing wide eyed breath holding Canadian couples trotting along with shirts pulled up over their faces. This felt like quite an accomplishment as we sipped scalding hot strong Arabic tea out of tiny cups while waiting for the sun to come up.
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We were occasionally bothered by rowdy, pushy, Egyptian bullies blatantly lying to us through smiles full of gold teeth. “My friend, the busses have been cancelled come with me and I will help you” or “please, you must go with my cousin who will be driving straight to Cairo, you pay him nothing”. All bullshit of course. They had a practiced answer for any objection you put up and the sell would escalate through what became a very predictable pattern. First the friendly greeting, the harmless questions, an introduction and warm welcome followed by their pitch. When you refuse the tout changes tactics. Pleading for the sake of a dying relative, taking a bullying and aggressive approach, trying to wear you down with relentless repetition were all standard devices. We had been in Egypt for little more than two hours and had already been exposed to the most shameless and brazen tout scum that we had encountered in our lives. Little did we know that this would be the norm not, as we wrongly assumed, the embarrassing exception perpetrated by desperate vermin at an outlying rugged commercial port.
The sun came up with a vengeance. Our cold dark squalid wasteland turned into a hot and blindingly bright squalid wasteland. Nuweiba looks better in the dark. By the time our bus finally lurched to a dusty stop in front of us we had spent five hours enjoying this fine neighbourhood.
20-Apr-2011 18:47, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
I’ve been on some nasty busses, really nasty, but this one really made an impression. Mismatched tires, flattened suspension, dirtier than dirt, torn seats and windows painted over; it would be our home for the next 8 hours. The trip to Cairo slipped past in dream like slivers of consciousness. We passed deserted hotels, camels, tanks, and at some point I’m pretty sure a guy with a machine gun was standing in front of me with his hand out. He was probably asking for my passport but the combination of prescription strength codeine and scotch helped me to just close my eyes and watch him melt away. It may be a bit crude, but it works. Egyptian travel survival skill number two: always carry earplugs, an eye mask, and enough drugs to tranquilize a horse with you because you never know when the need to render yourself unconscious may come up.
21-Apr-2011 01:25, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.7, 11.76mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 80 |
We arrived the same afternoon just before dinner time. The bus may have stopped somewhere for food, I have a surreal memory of Jaime offering me a spoonful of steaming yellow turd curry surrounded by bleating goats and dusty moonscape. Whether or not this was a drug induced hallucination was the topic of animated discussion but it didn’t matter, we were starving.
After a taxi, two hostels, several blocks of walking and waving off countless scam artists we found a place to drop our bags. We chose “The Canadian Hostel” which is unsurprisingly staffed by a bunch of Egyptians who have never been to, nor know anything about Canada. It was in the city center a block or so from Tahrir Square, a name popularized by news broadcasts during the recent revolution. We headed out to get acquainted with the city of 18 million by sampling its food.
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A few things stood out to us from our visit. The traffic was chaotic, no rules and lots of horns. Crossing the street is an extreme sport and spending time anywhere near the main roads will fray your nerves and shorten your life expectancy. Fortunately our time in Sri Lanka prepared us well. The skills we picked up were put to good use on Cairo’s streets. For no good reason we expected the city to be in better shape. There’s I guess we hadn’t really thought too much about it before arriving and so were surprised at the crumbled shabbiness of the place. To be fair certain sections retained an old world kind of charm. There are plenty of beautiful old buildings and I’ll even admit that in some fleeting moments between fending off a pushy lying scammer, dodging an out of control taxi, and gagging on the smell of sun dried urine or a long dead animal that nobody has bothered to move, the spectacle of it all can be quite striking. The rest of the time it’s a nightmare.
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In ‘Baghdad Without a Map’ a great read for anyone contemplating a trip to Arabia, Tony Horwitz describes Cairo as a “giant overturned ashtray”, which we would eventually come to consider a generous description.
We wandered up and down the Nile, visited the Cairo Museum, and ferreted out some great little eateries and sheesha bars. The city has a lot to offer, but after only a couple days it just wasn’t worth the hassle anymore. From the moment we stepped onto the street to the moment we closed our hotel room door behind us we were shamelessly harassed. You can argue economics and unfortunate circumstance but our experiences in much poorer countries would indicate that this has nothing to do with it. Even with 30 years of civil war in Sri Lanka and decades of harsh trade embargos in Cuba we were left charmed by so much pride and dignity. From the persistent old ladies in Indonesia to the flirty laughing Thais there is typically some kind of underlying mutual respect between hawker and traveller. Treat them like the entrepreneurs that they are and have a laugh. Most are quick to mark whether or not you are a potential customer and then get on with it, business is business. Sure we’ve had our frustrating moments but they have exceedingly been the exception.
Egyptian hawkers and touts were something completely different.
They were angry, pouty, and aggressively plying their trade with absolutely no respect for you or apparently any shame or self respect for themselves. They colored our entire Egyptian experience with the awful but necessary impression that anyone being nice to you is lying to you, and if you are visiting their country then you are simply expected to endure their unrelenting shit and abuse. We have never experienced before (or since) the kind of consistent malice, trickery and childish tantrums that were served up in Egypt with dependable regularity. Surprisingly, their behaviour was acceptable and apparently supported. There were always plenty of locals around to witness the countless times Jaime put up with lewd comments, or we were grabbed at, pulled, pushed, or lied to and nobody would say a thing… unless it was to win your trust in order to run a scam of their own. The Pharaohs would roll over in their sarcophaguses.
To illustrate the point I’ll tell you about our trip to Giza; we were about 10 minutes away when the first group of men flagged our taxi down. After a quick exchange with the driver the guy leaned in the window and said “come with me”. I looked at the driver and he just shrugged. The guy tried to open my door, I slammed it shut and locked it. I asked what he thought he was doing, to which he replied “my friend, this is the entrance to see the pyramids, I help you”.
We were pulled over on the side of a road with traffic whizzing by and no pyramids in site. Pretty confident that this was not the entrance to the pyramids and that my new friend had no intention of helping us I rolled up the window and asked the driver to carry on.
We drove for another 60 seconds before another group pulled us over. Their story was that the pyramids were closed today but not to worry because they knew a secret entrance and would be happy to show us in. This time we didn’t roll down our windows or unlock our doors so this was all yelled at us through the drivers’ window. It was all getting very tedious so once underway I asked the driver to roll up his window and lock his door. He was pretending not to speak any English at this point but did as asked.
Less than a minute later the third group was flagging us down. I told the driver that if he stopped we would get out and not pay him anything. He understood that well enough and swerved around the thieves. It worked but we were within sight of the next group who witnessed the evasive manoeuvre and knew what to expect. They countered by literally throwing themselves in front of the car! With the windows up and doors locked they had no way to get at our money or tell their ridiculous stories so started banging on the windows and jumping on the bumpers out of frustration. The whole scene was unbelievable and rapidly escalating.
The stunned driver looked very unsure and frozen there with wide eyes and hands gripping the wheel. I kept saying “drive drive” and pushed down on the knee of his right leg to illustrate my point. He snapped out of it and we bumped a few out of the way to get back on the road. We were all laughing nervously, surprised at how quickly the situation had flared up. We were a kilometre down the road now looking ahead for the next ambush when Jaime shrieked from the back seat. We spun around and saw that one of the guys from the last stop had jumped onto the back of the car! He had been hanging on the whole time and was now beating on the window and screaming at us like we were in a bad horror movie.
Panicked, the driver began lurching around and throbbing the brakes trying to shake him off. With his eyes on the rear view mirror he didn’t see the next blockade. We were about to plough through four Egyptian men standing in the middle of the road. I yelled and put my hands up expecting one to come through the windshield, the driver slammed on the breaks sending our uninvited passenger spinning off the side as we screeched to a halt 3 inches from the guys in front of us. Surprisingly they weren’t the least bit concerned about how close they had just come to being road kill. They were too busy fighting over which one we would choose to be a tour guide. I could see the gates ahead so we paid off the driver and jumped into the melee.
We held hands and literally pushed our way through this horde to the gates. Fat barking liars would take turns standing in front of us yelling about closures, guides, dead relatives, camels and discounts. The tempo, volume, and intensity reached a crescendo as we approached the queue at the ticket window. Even while I was asking the guy behind the counter for 2 adult tickets I had a jackal chirping away on each side of me. Finally we made it through the gates expecting some relief, but this was only beginning.
Here we were suddenly face to face with the pyramids, the pyramids! Perfect geometry, impossible scale, so many secrets wrapped up in these 4000 year old mysteries. A sight so fantastic and astounding that you need a few moments of contemplation just to take it all in, but here`s the thing; you don’t get a few moments. We were pestered, nattered at, harassed and tugged at the whole time.
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The place has been an ancient tourist attraction since long before the Romans even came to town so to say that these hawkers have had some time to perfect their craft (and loose all sense of dignity and self respect) would be an understatement.
If you must see Egypt (and this will be one of the only times we would ever say this) then take a packaged tour! Arrive in a comfortable jet to the modern Cairo Airport, get whisked away in an air conditioned shuttle to an all inclusive chain hotel and let them put you together like Lego. Insulate yourself from the real Egypt and let some tour guide shuffle you around from monument to monument, snap some photos and move on to the next one. Independent travel in Egypt sucks and in our humble opinion is not worth the hassle.
The site itself is incredible. We began walking towards a plateau that would allow for an incredible view of the whole scene. There was a guy off in the shade waiting for his sons to gather up his horses. He was finished for the day and about to head back to camp, he was a Bedouin from an encampment just visible across the plains here to make money from tourists with his pretty looking Arabians (horses). We found his disinterest interesting and before long had talked him into letting us take a couple for a total of 60 Egyptian pounds (about $10). We would meet near the Sphinx, it was in the general direction he needed to go anyway which may help to explain the good price.
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Galloping across the desert on Arabian horses was thrilling to say the least. With the clap trap of the Giza plateau behind us and nothing but a vast desert in front of us it was easy to forget where we were. There were trains of camels in the distance and Bedouin camps here and there. We forgot all about the hawkers and hassles, instead out here surrounded by this blanket of haunting desert silence had a little peace for the first time in days.
At the top of the plateau we pulled our horses around and both gagged at the view, it was better than we had imagined. Up here surrounded by all this silence with just the smell of our sweating horses and nobody hassling us we took in the 4000 year old view while imagining who else had done the very same thing over countless centuries. Despite having spent most of the day already climbing in around and on the pyramids this was the first time that we really saw them.
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23-Apr-2011 02:27, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
We walked, trotted, catered and galloped our way back stopping here and there for a picture or to see the pyramids in a new light or from a different angle. We were subconsciously delaying our arrival. We made it back before sunset, handed the reins over to their Bedouin owner moments before being rudely swept back into the fray.
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We were told numerous times that trains and busses to Luxor were being stopped due to continued political rebellion in the South but our time in Egypt had already taught us that every piece of helpful information received was in some way a self serving lie, so we made our way to the train station the next day to see for ourselves.
Neither of us was prepared for the sprawling catastrophe that is the Cairo train station. Trains and their stations in Sri Lanka were better kept and far more organized, and that’s saying something. It’s worth checking out just to see how bad it really is. There is only one window that foreigners are allowed to buy tickets from, it took us the better part of an hour to find it only to discover that it was closed for no apparent reason. We turned around to see another couple waiting expectantly behind us, “lunch” the guy said with a shrug. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
We hung around and waited in a few line-ups to pass the time. Each time we spoke to someone at a ticket window we received different and conflicting information. In Egypt your request for a ticket anywhere may be met without explanation by a simple “no”. It’s then your job to painfully extract any further tidbits of information from wholly disinterested officials and public employees. Arranging transportation from Nuweiba to Cairo taught us that “no” could mean anything from not today, to not now, to something as simple as you are in the wrong line. If it wasn’t for our doggedness and constant probing questions, cross examinations and fact checking we would still be there now. After an hour of this we compared notes with the other couple trying to get to Luxor who had been conducting their own independent investigation in like manner. So the collective findings of 4 reasonably competent humans, all of which were experienced travellers amounted to this; there wasn’t a train today, but maybe there would be one tomorrow.
The most frustrating thing about this scenario is that if we had asked the right person at the right time in the right way, there very well could have been a train to Luxor that afternoon. We`ll never know.
We spent our last evening wandering around Tahrir Square. It has taken on a bit of a carnival like atmosphere with all manner of t-shirts, buttons and trinkets for sale commemorating the revolution. Anything big enough to have “Free Egypt” painted, sewed, pressed or stencilled onto it was available. Other guys were selling roasted peanuts or balloons but the police building that was burned during the protests was a gloomy reminder that things weren’t so cheery here a few weeks before.
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Twice I was asked by annoying kids that kept jumping in front of the camera if I worked for CNN when I tried to snap a few of these photos, they wanted to be on TV. In the park we managed to mix and mingle without too much trouble. There was a crackling energy and a lot of optimism there. People were only too proud to tell stories about their small part, and how the people stood here in defiance and together changed things. But nobody we talked to seemed to have a good idea of what to do next. We couldn’t help but wonder if anything would change, or if more likely they would see new faces present the same problems.
We checked out and walked to the curb. While waiting 30 seconds for a cab we ignored 3 different touts. When a cab stopped we made sure that the taxi had a working meter before getting in. The driver was incensed that we wanted him to turn it on and exacted his revenge by driving us around in circles. We were worn down and didn’t have the energy for another fight, instead just pointed in the direction of the airport (behind us at this point) while the driver mysteriously lost the English he commandingly demonstrated while negotiating our fare. It was so exhaustingly typical. Our Egyptian adventure would end the same way it began; being cheated and lied to.
I wish we had a better story to tell, but the truth is that our week in Egypt couldn’t end quickly enough. We looked over our shoulders at the country shrinking beneath us as our flight lifted off then quickly forgot about the whole mess. We were on our way to Turkey, to our boat!
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