It starts...

We arrive in Cairo at 0.30 and by 0.31 we’re confused. We’ve hardly slept all week and we left home 18 hours ago, coming here via Tampere, Bremen and Köln. It’s stiflingly hot, the airport looks like a refugee camp, we have to fill in forms without a pen and the officials want to go home. We’re trying to work out how to get out of the airport to meet Ruben’s friend Natalie who’s arriving from Prague. Eventually, having worked out that we need to buy our visas from a bank instead of the immigration desk, we are escorted to our bags by some guy who promptly demands a tip. Welcome to Egypt ! A quick glance at the arrivals screen lets us know that there is no flight from Prague and more confusion follows until we are told to try Terminal 1. We barge our way out of the dimly lit airport, crawling with people like a termite mound after heavy rain, and get a free shuttle bus to Terminal 1, where Natalie’s flight has just landed. We’re relieved not to have missed her….

…and an hour and a half later she finally emerges. We find a taxi and the handler demands a tip. We find the hotel and the taxi driver demands a tip as well. Really, welcome to Egypt !
It’s not so bad though – the welcome at the Dahab Hostel is warm, and I’m relieved to finally see a bed. Apart from a small interesting accident where Maaka’s face lotion has exploded in her bag and alcohol has seeped through her bag and her clothes, forcing an hour-long clean-up operation, the night is uneventful and we get to bed at 5am. By 10, we’re up again.
Cairo is a big, loud, dirty, crowded, hot city with action on every street corner and everywhere in between, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Everywhere you go, someone is either grabbing your attention to greet you and welcome you to Egypt, or to sell you something or other. I’d usually be quite interested by a city like this but after the week I’ve just had, it’s overwhelming and exhausting. A trip to the Sudanese embassy for our visa application is unsuccessful as we’re too late and don’t have a letter of recommendation from our own embassies (and finally, I suppose, we will see our rewards from not living a life of crime – we can be recommended ! Hurrah !). We resolve to come back in a few weeks when we are next in Cairo. The train station gives us a little more success despite having to queue at several booths to get our tickets for tomorrow night to Aswan. Our lucky break comes when a guy in front of us in the queue starts chatting to me about football and then helps us out, asking around and pointing us toward the right ticket desk before leaving on his way, no bakchich required ! We end up walking around Cairo aimlessly but I’m getting increasingly impatient with constant stops to check out the guidebook or the map or take pictures for half an hour and realize that I just need to get some sleep and get my normal let-it-go attitude back. Cairo definitely isn’t a city to be impatient in and I don’t really want to push it so I eventually niggle my way back to the hostel and for once, at 11pm, I’m in bed and writing and aiming to be asleep soon ! Tomorrow : Pyramids, usual other touristy crap, night train to Aswan, better mood…..

Despite it all I’m happy to be out here, excited about the trip ahead and sure I just need to catch up on all the sleep I missed out on recently to get back into the swing of things. Maybe a stay in a smaller, quieter town like Aswan will help me with that too.

J-2

One of those days.

One of those days where you wake up knowing there's a lot of packing to do and you curse yourself for having had that last glass of wine last night, the one which led to you hopping (in a manner of speaking) into a taxi and then having to ask the driver to stop so you can throw up against a tree. He didn't seem to mind - probably seen it many times before. I do mind - I'm feeling atrocious today and there's a lot of stuff to do. Stuff to put into boxes, the scrubbing down of the whole apartment and the washing of the couch which we're leaving to the guy who's moving in next.

I'm an idiot.

All things said and done though, it was a topical and classy way to sign off from the portion of my life which I've lived here in Helsinki for the last 4 years. I'm off to the shop to buy some hangover juice and then it's back to the grindstone... 63 hours until we land in Cairo and the adventure begins....

J-5

Here we go again !!!

In 5 days M and I are saying goodbye to Finland as we jet off to exotic Bremen. From here we'll take a train to Köln airport, meeting up with our Ruben, our travel buddy for the first 2 weeks, on the way. From here, we'll leave everything we know behind for however long we can, and the next time we touch the ground will be in Cairo International Airport.

M and I get on very well in general except when we travel and have conflicting ideas on what to do next. In the hope of avoiding such scenarios we've assigned an honorary President to each country.

Egypt - Directed by Special Guest Rubén Carralero Celis
Sudan - "Evil" T
Ethiopia - with a nose like the Ras Dashen, it's T
Djibouti - Small and expensive - it's M
Somaliland - People think he's dangerous, but he's not - it's T
Kenya - Wild Animal M
Uganda - M's Resistance Army
Rwanda - "I can't make a joke about this which isn't bad taste, even for me" T
Burundi - The heart shaped country is run by the man with the big heart - T
Tanzania - The land of explosive volcanoes - M
Malawi - Small and sweet - M
Mozambique - Big and gangly - T
Swaziland - Directed by absolute rule by a polygamist - who else ? It's T
South Africa - With an odd number of countries on our list, we were bound to have one left over. Hence here we are both in charge. There will be some colourful language in the "rainbow nation"
Madagascar - Bringing in our 2nd Special Guest - Simon "The Bat" Sheridan will be hunting lemurs with us.
Lesotho - Taking you higher than ever before... M
Namibia - Hot hot hot. M
Botswana - Hotter hotter hotter. M again.
Zimbabwe - Doesn't have 2 cents to rub together and collapses on regular occasions... it's T
Zambia - "The Smoke That Thunders" - M
Congo-Kinshasa - Big, Bad and Dangerous to Know - T
Congo-Brazzaville - Who ??? T, apparently
Gabon - Africa's biggest champagne consumers. So appropriately enough... M
Cameroon - T can use this time to think of funnier jokes for the next trip.
Nigeria - Africa's anarchic centre of activity. Who else ? It's M

And after that.... who knows ?