The following day, I got on a Felluca (see photo) which happened to have my mates which I met the day before on the Abu Simbel tour on. This was great. 2 days mindlessly sailing down the Nile on a traditional sailing boat. We all had a fantastic time, until the last night, when our captian and crew hand gotten very drunk and had been smoking marijuana all night. It wasnt quite funny in the morning, a groggy kid (he must be 13-14, although he said 17) gets up and climbs the mast to untie the sail. One other person was up, hears a giant THUD, and i hear a mate yell ‘OH SHIT what do we do?’. At that moment i was well out of my bed with my med pack in hand. I knew just what had happened. The kid fell a good 8-9m from the mast and landed on his face on the deck. It wasn’t pretty – 2 teeth through the bottom lip and who knows what else…

The Captian woke up, and whilst we were giving him the available first aid, he started making us breakfast and didn’t care about the boy. Typical egyptian…To make things worse, there was no wind so we couldnt sail very fast – ended up using the oars. Oh man… we tried to wave a cruise ship, but the stupid tourists just took photos of us. Then at the shore the captain told us not to do anything, it would make things worse (for him), but i didnt care and found some help. It was good to give it to somebody else to deal with. More interesting detail happened, but i’ll wait for the face-to-face story.

Then arrived back in Luxor, and travelled to Hurghada, caught a disgusting ferry to Sharm el Shiek (everyone was sea sick), and a bus up to Dahab. Dahab is a sea side bedouin town where everyone sits on the side of the beach eating excellent food very cheaply. I was there for 4 days, climbed Mount Sinai (photos) and saw a truly brilliant sunset. Went snorkelling at the blue hole, which was a little disappointing (barrier reef is too good!), and a couple of days laying about.

Moved over into Jordan for 2 days, where I went to the incredible rock city of Petra, featured in the Indian Jones movie!! I have been desperate to see that movie for weeks now .

More importantly, after Jordan I returned to Israel, spending about 90 minutes at the check point watching the security empty my bag etc etc…. Missed the first bus to Jerusalem, then the next one because I forgot to buy my ticket and it sold out. Arrived quite late at night, and went to a newly made friend’s (from the bus) house, where he made me tea! He walked me to the old city and showed me free accomodation (woo!). I have been in Jerusalem for the last week (with a 2 day side trip to Tel Aviv), with Beck mainly, exploring the old city, eating food from the Novotel for free (thanks Academy), and meeting up with people who we havent seen since we finished school. It’s great to be in a place which I feel so at home in so instantly. My hebrew is improving, still understanding a lot more than I can speak, but hopefully it will get much better soon.

My MDA program starts on Jan 02, which both Beck and I are looking forward to immensely. It should be nothing short of an incredible experience allowing us to see the not so touristy side of the promised land.

Keep well, and stay in touch
Seb

Sorry I have taken so long to write my first email, but i wanted it to be full of fun stories, and lots of content. I will do my best to be brief about things!

Firstly, 28 hours of flying was exhausting, but I entertained myself by teaching a Syrian athletics team how to play hacky sack in the airport of the Jordanian capital, Amman. I thought it was very funny!

Geting out of Cairo airport was easy enough, and i caught a bus into the city centre. Unfortunately for me, i caught a local bus, which was a great adventure considering the price tag (US$0.08). Had it not been for a generous local who spoke some english, who knows were i would have ended up! Met this cool Aussie guy in the hostel (Wayne), so we have been going around Cairo together. Today we visited the Pyramids at Giza, which was just incredible! The size of those pyramids is simply monumental. We arrived at 7am, and left around 2, after entering the pyramid, riding some horses around, and climbing one of the smaller pyramids to the top . Yes, it is illegal to climb a pyramid, but Egypt is the land of moustaches and rules which nobody obeys! We had people yelling at us from the bottom, so we came down to find out what as going on, just to have them hassling for some bakshish – a bribe! We simply laughed and walked away!

We also walked around the back streets of Cairo around the pramids – the people who live in Cairo are very friendly, always talking to us and smiling when we pass. Then they try and take your money!!!

Later that afternoon, we went to the Old Cairo city, looked around the old churches and an incredible synagogue, followed by a tiring game of soccer with some local kids in the street. If you are ever overseas, i urge you to try it – find some kids and start playing soccer, it’s a lot of fun!

Visited the Egyptian museum, where there are so many artifacts it would take more than 3 years to spend 1 minute at each. To amuse ourselves, Wayne and I pretended to take photos of Tutankamuns gold with our cameras (strictly none allowed!), and got jealous eyes from particular tourists and eventually an interrogation by the Egyptian police. We were in hysterics.

All in all, Cairo is a disgusting city with great people and great food! A jay-walkers paradise where chaos rules the streets and traffic lights are a pedestrians holy grail.

I had started writing this email in the Biblotheca Alexandrina, in the largest open space reading area in the world, overlooking 10 levels of books, people and computers. Unfortunately i was distracted and went back to reading my Tin Tin comics. Situated in Alexandria, Egypt, the library has been built to remember the original ancient library which was destroyed. A Medierranean port, Alexandria doesn’t really have much to it, except for fresh fish and a sea breeze. The city was destroyed many times by warfaring nations, such as the Romans and the Greeks.

After a 12 hour train ride to Luxor, kown as the city of Thebes in ancient times, I have spent the last couple of days exploring the glorious ruins of Karnak and by walking over the mountains from the Valley of the Queens to the Kings’ counterpart with my mate Will from Canada.

I met two incompetent South African girls who are travelling Egypt by themselves on an over priced tour by a random local from Sinai, who didnt know the value of anything in the country and had an infected sting with nothing to do with it. They looked at me with saving grace when i pulled a tube of svalon from my medikit… Will and I had a good laugh at them with all their hilarious stories.

I haven’t decided what I will be doing for the next couple of days. I am going to be going to Aswan and to Abu Simbel, and possibly catch a 2 day felluca (local nile sailing boat) back up to Luxor before heading over to Sinai and go diving!

Anyhow… all this writing has given me an appetite! Time to go and buy some shwarma($0.70) and felafel($0.15) for a hearty dinner before going to bed. I will leave you with the bit of arabic i know – yallah – go to the beach or something, but remember: Don’t apologise for long emails, and NEVER apologise to the Egyptian police for anything you do.

Hope everything is well at home, Seb

ps – i got a photo of myself wrapped in toilet paper out the front of some archeological sites! The mummy is back!