The Pyramids

Taking the desert road from Alex we arrived at Cairo to be greeted with the absolutely amazing sight of.... Carrefore - a French Tesco! I'm sure my brother would be horrified being an ardent fan of the corner shop and a Tesco hater, but roughing it like we are you sometimes need lifes little luxuries, or in our case dishwasher tablets... So a couple of hours later, stocked up on Pilgrims Choice Extra Mature, fresh milk, McVities and Cadburys chocolate we came over the brow of a hill to be confronted by the sprawling mass that is Cairo, complete with smoggy cloud and peaking through the haze the Pyramids.

Finding the campsite proved straightforward but Jon has now given up being the polite English " after you sir" driver and when a car stopped in our lane to use his phone got within an inch of his bumper and leant on the horn in true Egyptian style. Sure enough the driver moved on rapidly! The camp is near the pyramids and you can see their tops from our plot. Unsurprising the site had us and 2 cars on it both of whom were heading to South Africa, 2 Brits Katie and Alex (fourwheelsaround.blogspot.com) and 2 SA Jaques and Mandy who were en route to SA from Australia. (www.seeyouwhenwegetthere.com).

Cairo is home to 22,000,000 people about half of which are Policemen and the other half follow the tourists around pointing out the obvious and then ask for a tip for doing so. Unlike Libya it is simply impossible to enjoy a historic site without a constant stream of people selling things or trying any trick in the book to get you to part with a tip. They will pretend doors are locked and they have a key, often asking you for your ticket first to make them seem official. It took us a few days to figure out most if the scams and cons but it is almost safe to say anyone who approaches you and says more than Hello, Welcome is a con man or Bacsheesh merchant, this includes many of the Tourist Police. That aside we have enjoyed Cairo, the Egyptian Museum was stuffed full of treasures and the King Tut room was fabulous. The general exhibits though are often poorly lit and the labels appear to be the same ones my dad may have seen 40 years ago when he was in Cairo as they are on yellowing paper and typed on a typewriter. The number of coffins and statues is overwhelming.

The citadel set on the hill overlooking the city gives a fantastic feeling for how enormous Cairo is. Buildings stretch in every direction as far as you can see and at the Call To Prayer the noise is deafening. We visited various mosques and the Coptic quarter too, even going into the Church where Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived whilst hiding from Herod. We strolled along the corniche and went up the Cairo Tower for another great aerial view. We've lived on felafel and home made crisps which have been excellent and last but not least, Visited the Pyramids, complete with camel ride, Sakkara, more temple and step pyramids and Dashur, a bent pyramid with the facing material still largely in tact and a red Pyramid. Too much walking, especially for Jons foot and some nights it has swollen up like an elephants, but it no longer hurts much and now we are heading off to the desert he will have a chance to rest it.

Lastly our social life is pretty hectic here! We managed to get some wine - a very nice Egyptian Rose - and shared some with Katie Alex Jacques and Mandy and heard all about their fantastic trips, we've been trying to meet up with Quentin and Julie again and David, the unimog Brit en route to Afghanistan has emailed us to try to arrange a meet as he is now heading up the Nile and we are heading down. As normal, we just meet such interesting and really nice people on our trips and in many ways it is one of the highlights and main reason for traveling like this. It is fantastic when you pull up somewhere and there are other travelers there too. Their nationality is irrelevant, we are all travelers and love to exchange stories and tips, where to avoid, road reports, great spots etc.
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El Alamein and the coast

We had a very peaceful night at Siwa and looked around the old town, had a drink in a cafe and visited the Hill of the Dead seeing our first Egyptian tombs and paintings before heading back to Marsa. No sooner had we arrived than we got a text from Quentin and Julie saying they had just arrived in Siwa!

Next morning we moved on to El Alamein passing mile after mile of Hotel Resorts. By the time we reached Alexandria we had passed in excess of 80kms of non stop resorts around half of which were under construction. Alamein itself is just a small town tagged beside the non stop resorts. The hills are rapidly vanishing as the diggers use them as quarries but fortunately the war cemeteries are still havens of tranquility. Both the Italian and German ones are overlooking the only piece of undeveloped beach this side of Alex. The Italians have build a chapel with marble plaques lining the walls with names on and the Germans have gone for the fort style they used at Tobruk. We stayed the night here and spent an interesting evening chatting to the caretaker family who have lived on the site since before the war.

The Commonwealth cemetery is a traditional design and huge. The greeks is a small site not as well tended as the others but still peaceful and fronted by a pair of Greek columns and temple style roof. In the grounds of the commonwealth cemetery is a monument to the Australians and another to the South Africans.

The museum is not too big and has certainly benefited from the Imperial War Museum assisting in the translations in the British wing. Some of the plaques in the other wings are almost completely indecipherable! Overall though it is a very good museum with the most fascinating part being about a truck found in the desert in 1999. The truck was almost fully in tact with ammo and condensed milk tins etc. The engine even started!

We left Alamein and tracked down the tiny station (the soldiers called it "Heaven") which is now crumbling but still recognisable. A new station sits next to it but the original - complete with a tree to give some shade was in fact very moving to be in. Sitting under the tree with the railway lines in front of you you could almost picture the soldiers getting on and off the trains.

Alexandria! It sounds such a grand place, filled with history and Linda had got it in her head that this was going to be European Mediterranean like city. The roads in were manic. It made Tripoli look like a drive In the country on a Sunday afternoon. The roads split, joined, merged and ended with no warnings, there were potholes that Minis could go in and never come out, ruts That if it rained you'd need a ferry to cross and speed bumps the size of the Cotswolds. Add to that you usual mix of microbuses and cars racing and hooting, then get us lost so we end up driving down a tram line and find ourselves in the middle of the souk and you could safely say it was not pleasant.

We did eventually find a parking place next to the fort and taxied off to see the Library - a wonderful futuristic new building that is worthy of the history associated with its name. A wander round the heaving streets and a stroll down the promenade and a nice meal and cake in the poshest patisserie in town and we thought Alex was quite nice, at least on the shoreside. In land it is a sprawling mass of multi story apartments and ports. It looks extremely poor and run down.

We get back to Taffy and found the juice bar that was about 30cm from our van was open to 3am and had the loudest most distorted radio in the world playing. If it had been selling booze we could understand it but OJ? Midnight and the place is heaving and people knock on the sides try the doors shake the van and bang their heads on the mirrors - that OJ must be strong stuff. We can actually see the point of not selling alcohol here, if they get this crazy on OJ and Candy Floss I'd hate to see them on shandy let alone anything stronger! So we up sticks and set off for Cairo. Fortunately Jon spotted a truck stop near the port and asked if we could use it. We were ushered into a warehouse to wake up the next morning and find our selves locked in and at the front of the warehouse seats set up tarpaulins draped on the walls and orange spook suits laid out. All it would need was a video camera and a couple of hooded men with Kalashnikovs and you'd have recognized it from the news. Needless to say we hadn't noticed any of this when we drove in and slept like babies!
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Siwa Oasis

We left Marsa at the same time as our French friends in different directions. They headed to Alexandria and we headed into the desert for Siwa oasis. Leaving Marsa you almost immediately lose the greenery and houses the land changing to desert, not the Hollywood rolling sand dunes but flat barren coarse sand hardpacked and a light rust in colour. You also immediately get faded, easily missable signs at the side of the road -"Minefield".

The drive is straight, 300kms of desert interspersed with phone masts every 25km and rather strangely Ambulance stations every 50km or so. There are no towns, no houses, almost no vegetation and once you pass the last oil rig, very little traffic. Suddenly, just as you are thinking how attractive the scenery is around Sutton Bridge the road drops off the plateau and you are confronted with multi colour gorges, lakes and palm trees. Siwa is a sleepy town, 40c when we arrived at 3pm and most people are hiding from the heat. We stop at the Police and ask where to camp and get directed to a hotel car park. Fine as a reserve but we came here to see the lakes. We head off in Taffy using the 3g phone network to get google maps working and promptly end up at a dead end. Surprising how those irrigation canals look like roads on google! 2 boys in a Donkey and cart signal us to follow them through some tiny streets past half fallen down homes. We go as slowly as we can but they are so excited by us that they start overtaking other carts and the our donkey Is going at a fair old rate. Eventually after ensuring we will never find our way home we arrive at the enormous lake and the view is fabulous though the mozzies look ravenous. We've now walked to the end of the road through the palms and along a sandy track to end up at the sunset cafe! We are almost completely surrounded by lake and the sun is slowly getting ready to set while we drink a coffee that will keep us awake for a month. There are all kinds of birds in the lake and mountains on the far shore a few miles away. Time to enjoy the sunset....
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Libya to Egypt

We left Leptis and began the long trip towards Egypt. Ali our escort told us we could get to Aydabiya in a day easily, we disagreed but it seemed we had no option but try. We arrived in the dark around 9pm and the last couple of hours of driving was a mixture of good road and horrendous road works. To add to this we had seen about 10 dead camels by the road and at night they are very hard to see. Here we met up with the French family we had met earlier as our escort wanted us to all travel together as he was unfamiliar with Eastern Libya. Again this appeared not to be optional. Robert Natalie Lisa and Anouk are lovely so we didn't really mind at all. It gave us a chance to talk to other people and feel closer to home.

Over the next few days we visited Benghazi (not worth it), Tukrah - an old Greek Necropolis and church and Italian fort right on the beach, Cyrene - the greek Roman city set on the edge of a Cliff overlooking the plains and sea below and Apollonia another Greek / Roman city actually half underwater now and largely falling into the sea but in the most picturesque setting possible. It was here that our patience with Ali began to run out. Everyone you meet travelling in Libya say the same things about their escorts. They try to control you all the time, they don't want you talking to locals and they want you to do exactly what they say at all times. This includes what time you get up, how long you spend at a site, where you camp and they even try to tell you what to take photos of. They also appear frightened of stepping out of line with the Police (possibly understandably in Libya) so they will try to stop you doing anything not on your program. The way to deal with this we found was to simply accept somethings that we could not change then ignore the escort when he talked about time related issues. Getting Jon up early is difficult enough for Linda so poor Ali had no chance and as for spending only 45 minutes at a site - we hadn't driven 7000 kms for that!

Just after visiting the Knightsbridge Commonwealth war cemetery which is on the site of much of the fighting during the seige of Tobruk we were overtaken by a lorry going at what must have been in excess of 80mph. He misjudged his line and smashed into our mirror making a noise like a shell going off. He stopped and the Police arrived and after examining the damage - he lost all of his mirrors, we have just had the main mirror glass cracked and a bit of the plastic surround broken - decided to not take the Police up on their offer to charge him. So we shook hands and continued on our way.

Our last stop in Libya was Tobruk where we had a nice farewell meal with our French friends and visited the war cemeteries (which must be the best kept things in Libya).

We arrived at the border with Egypt around 4pm thinking it may take between 5 and 12 hours to cross. 2.5 hours later we were through what appeared to be organised chaos. At the border we had met 3 other British motorhomes doing a similar trip to ourselves. These 3 turned out to be part of The Silk Route Club, a small group of highly adventurous motorhomers who have toured virtually all over the world. In fact their web site has been part of the inspiration for us actually coming here! We ended up spending the night with them and Jon fell out of the van (sadly not due to us getting a drink) and badly sprained his foot. Fortunately it was his left and Taffy being automatic he does not need it to drive. He is unable to walk at the moment but we have again bumped into our French friends who are doctors and have very kindly made him a strap for it.

We are now plotted up for the next two nights next to the sea at Cleopatras beach and hope to visit Rommels beach and museum when Jon can hop in the nearby town of Marsa Matruh.
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After a lovely day in Tripoli spent exploring the medina and souks we headed south towards Algeria ignoring both the FCO and parents advice in the process. We stopped en route to visit 2 kasrs at Nalut and overnighted in a small town near Ghadmes where a child kindly lobbed a stone onto our roof breaking one of the solar panels. A roll of selloptape later and it was working fine! Ghadames has to be the highlight of our trip so far, we explored the underground town sunk beneath the Oasis and went dune riding in a 4x4 which would have failed an MOT years ago. We had sand bread and tea with the Toureg and sat on the dines and watched the sun set over Algeria. We had been invited to round the evening off with traditional music and dancing laid on for a French minister and US diplomat but when we turned up we found it had been cancelled because they were too tired!

A 780 km drive back in a day to Tripoli and 2 stops to see a stunning abandoned hill top village at Termeisa and an underground berber house at Gharyan is too much and arriving in the dark on party night was a bit stressful to say the least and yet another occasion we really regretted not smuggling a bottle or two through customs! We were rewarded with another day in Tripoli to wander around which was lovely. Our next stop was the quite astonishing Leptis Magna. This fabulous Roman city is breathtaking with literally 100's of columns still standing, some of the best preserved baths we've ever seen and a port, theatre market place and much more. The guides say if you only see one thing in Libya it must be this and 5 hours of walking later and 3rd degree sun burn on a cloudy day says they're right. Taffy: our grey water tanks are now stinking again and it looks like Jon will have to do some repairs again.

We crossed the border in 2 hours largely because we managed to talk our way through the diplomatic plates only channel and met our escort Ali who took care of our paperwork. We then headed onto Sabratha a magnificent Roman city right on the shore of the med. The theatre - largely rebuilt by the Italians is stunning set against the blue sea and sky. Next we drove into Tripoli at rush hour, which was the single most scary driving experience we have ever had. The drivers here are fast and reckless, they almost seem keen to die. Road markings are ignored, traffic lights are merely guides and pavements are designed for skipping to the front of a queue. When we had parked we met another Brit motor home - David - driving to India via Pakistan and Afghanistan (now there's an idea) who told us to always arrive and depart late at night.

Next day we walked around Tripoli to find the souks such a pleasure to be in. Shop keepers chat but never hard sell, people cone to talk to you out of the blue and you can pick an item up in a shop and put it down again without anyone giving you a special nice price, instead giving you free samples of cakes and free gifts when you did buy something. We bumped into a shop keeper we had met earlier in a Restaurant who then acted as our translator to help order a salad. Libyans have to be the nicest people we have ever met. We even had a man climb in our van today when we were having a cup of tea and invite us 1000kms south to stay at his home! While he was with us a 8 year old girl came in and joined us, sat with us shook our hands told us her name Saya -apparently it means beautiful day - and then left. Oh and did I mention 157 litres of diesel cost £12.50

We left northern Tunisia and immediately lost our Blackberry service and found that WAP was not set up on the phone despite O2 promising it was so we can no longer be tracked on Google Latitude or easily send our blog entries in. We're likely to not get our service at all in Libya either so it may be quiet for a while.

We've zig zagged down towards the Libyan border seeing some fantastic Roman ruins along the way. We've met literally hundreds of French motorhomes all going or leaving a rally in Tozeur as well as a lovely South African / New Zealand couple driving home to SA! We've tried some local foods even Jon and also the Black coffee, fought our way through souks and markets, cycled 2 km into the Sahara, spent 3 hours lying on the dunes in the sun in perfect tranquillity then headed to the nearest hotel to make use of the hot spring pool! 

We've even had to stop to let a herd of camels cross the road. Tunisia has been a great experience and the people outside the tourist centres helpful and very friendly. In the tourist zones the people are quite different, if they say a word to you it is because they want you to come into their shop, buy something or just want money. It gets a bit annoying and counter productive in the end as we tend to avoid the zones as we're fed up saying no thanks. Libya next...