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Up and Over

Posted August 11, 2013

PART 15 (DAYS 33-35): “How’s everything here?” I asked Chris, the manager at Southern Laughter Lodge, when I arrived back in Queenstown for a day in order to catch a homeward bound flight early the following morning.

“Oh, it’s quiet. It’s finally slowing down,” he answered.

“Oh, is the ski season over?”

“No, the season can go all the way until October,” he told me. “But all the Aussie kids have gone back to university.”

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My Three Dives

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 17, 2004

DAY 239: Dahab was once an oasis for the hippies of the 1960s, where bohemian travelers sat on cushions and sucked up the haze of marijuana through the pipe of a hookah. But as Let’s Go states, “Now, Tommy Hilfiger is more popular than tie-dye and cell phones more prominent than the joints… More than any other factor, the diving industry has driven the changes in Dahab.” Nowadays, travelers come to Dahab to suck the oxygen from a tube out of an air tank.

Moses For A Day

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 17, 2004

DAY 238: “Uh, there’s a camel behind you,” I told Michelle in the darkness of 2 a.m. It sounded like the beginning of a practical joke, but lo and behold, fellow hiker Michelle turned around and saw a massive moonlit camel right behind her. She flinched back in surprise. Apparently, camels are quiet walkers in the desert sands and can really sneak up on you.

My New Paradise

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 17, 2004

DAY 237: Tourism in Egypt falls into two main categories: 1) sightseeing the ancient sites and 2) relaxing down the shore of the Red Sea. Of all the Egyptian shore communities of the Red Sea, nowhere is the scene more laid back than in Dahab, on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. Away from the “package holiday” scene of the bigger cities, Dahab has retained a hippy vibe with an Arabian flavor so relaxed that Lonely Planet states that many travelers to Egypt skip the ancient stuff and head right for the shore.

Valley Boy

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 14, 2004

DAY 236: While modern Egyptian civilization seems to be occupied with one thing — making a living by any means necessary — ancient Egyptian civilization seemed to be obsessed with only one thing: death. With strong beliefs in the afterlife — and the preparation thereof — citizens of all classes prepared for life after the living. Pharaohs were no stranger to this custom; in fact, they were the masters of preparing for the afterlife with all their goods, and no where in Egypt was this more concentrated than in Ancient Thebes, on the west bank of Luxor.

Follow That Shawl!

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 14, 2004

DAY 235: Like the mummies of ancient Egypt, seven backpackers lay in polyester and nylon sarcophagi until the sun god Ra woke them up. No, it wasn’t the afterlife; it was breakfast time.

The Special Felucca

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 14, 2004

DAY 234: “Are your parents retarded?” Cheryl said, telling us the first half of a pick-up line her friend used back home. “Because you’re special.” Little did we know when she said that, that being “special” was what probably the conception of our little felucca group that day.

Rush and Relaxation

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 14, 2004

DAY 233: “So are we just waiting for the sun to come up?” I asked minibus driver Yohannes in the darkness of 4 a.m. I, along with every tourist in Aswan that hadn’t gone already, was up by 3:30 in the morning to ride the 300 km. to the Temple of Abu Simbel.

“Sun?” he asked in confusion.

“Why are we waiting then?” Our minivan was just one vehicle in a long line of minivans, minibuses and coach buses lined up in the morning darkness waiting for I didn’t know what until Yohannes answered:

“For the police convoy to take us.”

My Nubian Rights

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 14, 2004

DAY 232: Nubia, the ancient civilization which bridged the Egyptians with the Africans, lies in the region between Luxor, Egypt and Khartoum, Sudan. While most of the ancient sites of Nubia were lost to earthquakes or flooding, several still remain. The starting point for seeing the remains of the Nubian empire is the city of Aswan, Egypt’s southern most city, populated by the dark-skinned descendants of the former civilization.

A Student in Babylon

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 12, 2004

DAY 231: I surrendered my passport to the security guard like I did the day before. It sufficed for the lack of a student ID card for entrance within the American University of Cairo’s campus, just off of downtown’s Tahrir Square. No I wasn’t posing as a student (yet); I just wanted access to their American bookstore. Fed up with Lonely Planet’s Shoestring Guide to Africa, I bought Let’s Go’s Middle East guidebook so I could further investigate my options for a 2-3 jaunt through Jordan after my Egyptian tour. Lonely Planet’s Shoestring Guide, trying to pack too much in one sitting, rushed and skipping a lot of things.

Dates in Egypt

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 12, 2004

DAY 230: For some reason, a feeling of shame fills me whenever I cave in and sign up for a guided tour. I feel like I’m “cheating” the Blogreader from stories of independent (mis)adventures, or defying the unspoken backpacker code or something. For some reason, this scolding voice inside my head manifests itself in the voice of opinionated Lara (“The Trinidad Show” recurring cast member, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil), who always brought up the distinction of the “traveler” and the “package holiday tourist.”

Taken For A Ride

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 05, 2004

DAY 229: Blogreader and former “The Trinidad Show” cast member (Ecuador) Navid was in good spirits on Yahoo! Messenger when I logged onto my daily morning internet session to upload Blog entries. Having been to Egypt before, he gave me suggestions on what I should see in my limited 12-day stint in the country of the former ancient civilization: Luxor, Aswan, Dahab and other historical sites. It was good guidance for when I would leave Cairo and explore Egypt on my own.

It was Friday, the holy day in Muslim culture, and most of Cairo was shut down. In and around Tahrir Square, the usual traffic jams were replaced with almost empty streets. I figured if one place would be open, it’d be the places of tourism draw, and no where in Cairo is that draw bigger than the Pyramids of Giza, not too far away across the River Nile.

Then and Now

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 04, 2004

DAY 228: Unless you’ve been comatose for most of your life, you already know that one of the greatest civilizations of ancient history was the Egyptian one. You know of the pharaohs and the mummies and the pyramids and the hieroglyphics, which comedian Billy Crystal once theorized where just “a comic strip about a guy named Sphinxy.” However, it’s one thing to read about all these things in a school history book, it’s another to be there in Egypt and see the old artifacts of ancient society juxtaposed to the modern one.

An American in Cairo

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 04, 2004

DAY 227: Cairo, Egypt is known around the world for its ancient historical past. The ancient Egypt civilization was one of the greatest in the world, attracting millions of visitors around the world to see its pyramids, hieroglyphics and other ancient artifacts. However for me, having been away from the conveniences of American modern life for quite some time, I was looking forward to Cairo’s fast food, movie theaters and other things that I took for granted back home in metro New York City.

All this would have to wait, as getting passed Egyptian immigration proved to be my toughest border crossing yet.

My Life in Airports

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 04, 2004

DAY 226: I had so many errands to run that day for when I got back to Addis Ababa that I had to make a checklist: get a taxi from airport to hotel, pick up bag in storage to get ATM card, go to privatized Dashen bank to withdraw cash, go to Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to wire payback money to Nugusse, go to NTO office to straighten out rejected AmEx mess, go back to hotel to sort out photos, organize a transport to the airport, go to the internet cafe to upload at least the photos, go back to hotel and type until my airport transport at 1 a.m.

Simple enough. And then my flight got canceled.

Passing Through History

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 03, 2004

DAY 225: According to Hollywood folklore — i.e. Steven Spielberg’s 1981 Indiana Jones classic Raiders of the Lost Ark — the Ark of the Covenant was taken by an Egyptian pharoah to the city of Tanis and hidden in an underground temple known as the Well of the Souls, outside of Cairo, Egypt. However, if you follow history as recorded by The Bible, the Ark was actually taken from Jerusalem to the city of Aksum by Abyssia’s (Ethiopia’s) first emperor Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.

Apparently, Hollywood was “digging in the wrong place.”

Where Am I From?

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 03, 2004

DAY 224: Great, another trek, I sarcastically thought to myself as I caught my breath hiking up the mountain, trailing behind my 16-year-old guide Adam. The two-hour uphill trek alongside faithful villagers took us to the Asheton Maryam monastery, carved out of the side of a mountain before King Lalibela ever had the vision to build his eleven rock-hewn ones down the hill.

Holy Land of Honey

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted June 03, 2004

DAY 223: According to legend, in the the 11th century, an Ethiopian king named Lalibela had a divine vision in a dream, which instructed him to building a bunch of churches. And so, eleven churches were built in his name in a mountain town of his same name, and it it amongst the holiest places in all of Ethiopia.

From Guess to Gondar