At Sea & Safaga Egypt - April 10 - 11, 2012



Safaga, Eqypt

Sailing the Red Sea is a great experience for us, evoking many thoughts about the long and rich history of this area.  Lots of coral reefs and fish life thriving in this sea as well with beautiful sandy beaches along the shore. We remained on pirate watch until noon on April 10, when we were told the ship was in safe waters and deck 3, the open deck with a walking surface, was completely available again.  A walk around the deck, in the shaded-but-open air, is an underrated and under-appreciated experience after several days at sea!

 The ship comes in to the port of Safaga early morning.  The first visit – ours, not the ship’s! – to Egypt!

Safaga is a port that allows buses to transport people to tours of Karnack, Valley of the Kings and Luxor - a 13 ½ hour roundtrip from the port.  Our decision is to pass on this tour and save our energy for the long bus ride and walking at Petra in two days.  In Safaga, our adventures take us on a Sunset Desert Jeep Tour.

Buses lining up

Driving out of the port, it is apparent that this place is in a depressed state.  There are a few stores and restaurants along the main road – only men, no women (not even in their black Islamic “uniform”).  The road seems fairly new but all the buildings along the roadway were either never finished or have been completely gutted.  We learn that Safaga use to be a nice tourist port (?) until resorts developed in the next major town north – Hurghada – which is billed as “a modern resort town which hasn’t lost its timeless desert ambience.”  Presumably, the “guts” of Safaga’s gutted houses were used to help build the resort community of Hurghada.  It seems a little twisted to me and yet in the desert there really isn’t much of a ready supply of anything, much less construction materials.  In fact, we see lots of garbage clumps along the roadway to our desert adventure.  I think there must be hope (and truth) that these will eventually be covered by sand.  Just think what an archaeological find this will be in 1,000 years.

Anyway, Safaga has reverted to its previous economic base:  An export center for alumina and salt products; an import center for Egypt’s near-insatiable appetite for Australian and American wheat.  Wheat to an Egyptian is what taco and potato chips are to us, a birthright.

Beauty of the Eastern Desert

Our “jeep” (aka Toyota SUV, as our fellow-traveling Japanese tourist points out), actually six-vehicle convoy with an armed guard, takes us off road about 33 kilometers from Safaga into an area known as the Eastern Desert (part of the Sahara).  We travel 18 more kilometers into the desert to a Bedouin settlement.  Once we arrive, we are entertained by an appropriately dressed trio playing traditional instruments.  First stop is a thatched pavilion structure (meant for the tours), which allows our tour guide to tell us where we are in the desert, a little about the Bedouin life-style and what we will find in our explorations of the settlement.  He also is truthful in that this particular Bedouin family is open to tourists taking pictures and walking around to see how they live because this is how they get money to support their continuing desire to live in the desert.  We are all diehard capitalists at heart!

Entertainment

Village w/Mountains background

Tea anyone?

Walking around the village we see a woman making bread, a typical Bedouin home with women and children and of course camels (actually one-humped dromedaries, and just kept for the tourists) available to ride.  Then there is the weaver and his loom armed with camel hair, and the small hut-type building containing various types of rocks and herbs from desert plants.  There is a small building for which tourists can make a reservation to stay for two nights.  And the toilet facilities are of that special-but-pervasive ‘oriental’ style.

It is difficult for us to understand why people might live here, in this day and age, when they are routinely bombarded by tourists displaying all the comforts and accoutrements of modern existence.  Especially the adolescents and teenagers, who after all, are simply adolescents and teenagers. 

Just making bread

Special oven

 

Camel ride?

More camels for riding

Kids are cute!

Kids playing around

The Eastern Desert consists of rough sand and jagged rock peaks comprised of volcanic, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks too numerous to remember.   It is a stark moonscape-like place with light-play that changes its character, unannounced, from hour to hour. It IS strikingly quiet and beautiful, and that’s just maybe why the Bedouins still make it their home.  It reminds us of Big Bend National Park and some other desert areas of North America.   The “jeeps” take us up the sandy side of a mountain where we watch the sunset and really get a great view of the local topography.

 

Lynn joining the Bedouins

Ready for Sunset

The return trip in the carbon-black of night, back to the main road that will take us to our ship, is eerie.  The SUV convoy splits up; we are all alone with Mohammed in the desert, rocking along at a relatively fast 45 mph across the featureless-but-wash boarded sand.  HHHMMMMM!  Does “Mo” remember how to get us out of here?  Why are the other SUVs falling back, fanning out in a broad arc, and then totally disappearing in the dusty dark terrain behind us?  Finally, the main road emerges, then after a short wait while Mohammed wipes the dust off our headlights, the rest of the convoy rises up out of the desert.  A smooth ride back to the ship and we are home again!

A Real Bedouin

The Bedouins

Sailing back into the Red Sea at 11 PM, the ship will have a day at sea to let people rest (those that travelled the long trip to Luxor need it!) and then we dock Friday in Aqaba, Jordan where we will disembark for our tour to Petra.  We anxiously anticipate this bucket-list adventure!