It’s a Dry Heat and a Dry Country – Morocco
For the last week in addition to my 50 lbs of luggage, I’ve been toting around eye drops, lip balm, and alcohol – welcome to Morocco. It’s dry here…the orange ground begging for water, the sun burning brightly every day. My eyes are thirsting for liquid as are my lips and my skin. The sun beats down on us every day as it climbs into the high 90’s F. You have a constant, unquenchable thirst…for something cold…very cold. I honestly haven’t seen a single cloud in the sky since I arrived here. Read More

Sand in Every Orifice – The Sahara
We had been driving for about 4 hours when we turned off the bumpy road onto the flat expanse of desert. You could see for miles – it was totally flat. There were no roads, just a few tire tracks and a bunch of signs sticking in the sand advertising various hotels that were nowhere to be seen. I was anxious – similar to the feeling I had when I first turned into a game park in Kenya for my first safari. I was entering a world in which I had only previously seen on television and movies. A world that I never thought I would experience in my lifetime. A world that was unthinkable to me. Read More

The Grand Puba of Morocco – Fez
Prior to 10 months ago, the only time I had anyone utter the word fez was on Happy Days. I’m sure that you all remember Mr. Cunningham and his Grand Puba group – as a member of the Grand Puba, he had to wear a fez hat which depicted his membership into the group. That image of the red hat and the tassel had stuck in my head for my lifetime…one of my few experiences with the exotic Arabian culture to date. Read More

Goats in Trees!
Since I really didn’t have a book about Morocco, I was learning things as I was experiencing them, as well as learning about things through my other travel partners that had ample books on Morocco. After the first week, someone in my group mentioned in passing something about the Moroccan goats that climb trees.“What?, What did you just say?” “In southern Morocco there are goats that climb trees to eat the fruit. Wouldn’t that be cool to see?” They proceeded to show me a picture in their travel book of about 14 goats hanging out high in the branches of a tree. Read More

Turning down the volume…Tangier, Essaouria, and Chefchaouen
The last week of travel through Morocco was when I finally hit my groove…I had started to get really comfortable with ‘real’ travel again. When I first arrived in Morocco – I was rather tense, on guard, and untrusting. Marrakech was a crazy place full of grime, strange people, strange culture and religion – it was a shock to my system. However – after about 2 ½ weeks, you get used to it – you acclimate to the environment around you. The people don’t seem scary and dangerous anymore – instead they are intriguing and you work your best to try to get through that initial exterior shell so you can see their real personality. Read More

Moroccan Rainbow – Final Thoughts
I’m sure you might be surprised that I didn’t use the obvious title choice for this Moroccan send-off post – Rockin’ the Kasbah… I did actually think about it, but that’s not what I think of when I examine my parting thoughts about Morocco. From the moment I started journeying around Morocco – I was struck by the color…brown. I kept imagining that if the world were a painting palette, Morocco would represent the brown splotch of paint. Read More

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Kilimanjaro
WARNING: Just a friendly warning before you start reading this post…if you have any issues regarding reading about bodily functions…I suggest you look at the pictures and don’t read this post! The mountain was CHALLENGING…and your body is taxed in many different ways! As most of you know – I’m not shy about telling it how it is…so you do get a little glance into my gastro-intestinal organs and some of my inappropriate humor! Read More

A Sister’s Perspective – Kilimanjaro
This is a note that my sister sent out to her family and friends regarding the climb! She has a great perspective on the whole thing – so I thought I would add this to the blog so that you could all get the perspective from someone who actually made it to the top of the summit! So – This post is by Cyndi Sommerfeldt…enjoy!!! Read More 

Beyond the Mountain – Zanzibar
Tanzania was similar to Kenya in many ways – people were still walking everywhere, agriculture was the main ‘industry’, tribal life was the norm and the heavy meat diet was the staple. However – strangely enough Tanzania had some other issues around electricity. Read More 

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Cape Town
Arriving in South Africa was stunning – I felt like I had been ship wrecked for a month and all of a sudden I was dropped back into modern society. The 3rd world to 1st world switch was abrupt and I felt a sense of relief to see normal roads, ATM’s, fast food places and malls – but at the same time I felt sad to be leaving the ’simple’ life. Every day in Eastern Africa put my brain synapses in overdrive – I was redlining with thoughts on what I was seeing every day. On the other hand – the thought of a country with uninterrupted electricity was sounding pretty good to me! Read More 

Let the Wine Flow and the Wind Blow
I had an amazing day today – the kind of day I love – full of spontaneity. I woke up with no plans, I laid in bed wondering what I was going to do. I decided to tackle breakfast and then figure it out. I went to the main area in the hostel to get my yogurt and muesli. When I got there on of my new friends, Sara from Toronto, was leaving me a note saying that her and 4 other people were going on a wine tour today and I should join them. Hmmm – booze chat at 8 AM – I liked the thought! Read More

The Garden Route – My Path to Happiness
No zucchini or corn – but lots of rain on this Garden Route. I decided I should explore life outside of Cape Town so I made plans to take the Baz Bus across the Garden Route. I probably need to define a few thing from that last sentence. The Baz Bus is a ‘backpacker bus’ transporting backpackers (like me) around to popular destinations picking you up and dropping you off at various hostels. It was cheaper than renting a car so I figured I would try it out!  Read More 

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Kenya Transportation – bring comfortable shoes and patience!
We’ve made it to Samburu National Park/Safari which is wonderful but half the fun was getting here from Nairobi.  It was a 6 hour drive through Nairobi and the Kenyan countryside.  We were able to see the bustling city of Nairobi on a Monday morning.  There were people everywhere – like an army of ants going after spilled Kool-Aid.  Most people seemed to commute by foot. Read More

Kenyan Food – Bring on the meat!!
The food here is a vegetarian’s nightmare as well as a Atkin’s dieter’s nightmare – luckily – I’m neither of these so I am enjoying this meat heavy, carbo loaded Kenyan diet I am on! The food is hearty with many stew-like dishes with rice – yet the sauces they use have a distinct Indian flair as many Indian spices are used. This equates to yummy food! Read More

Safari – Are we going to move???
We’ve seen some amazing animals here – you can get so close with no boundaries.  When I was young we used to go on field trips to Wild Life Prairie Park outside of Peoria – there you see animals in their ‘natural habitat’.  It offered the animals large areas to roam – larger than your average zoo basically.  It was a kind of Central Illinois Safari I suppose.  However – there were fences.  We loved to go to the place – it seemed dangerous in a way – which made it exciting.  You had to walk a long way to the animals and the animals eventually got smart and they just hid from you. However, here in Samburu National Park – the animals can’t really hide – you go to them. Read More

Kenya Hospitality
Kenya was a real mix of classes – poor and ‘well -off’ – at times it was such a wide gap to take in – that it really kind of made your stomach turn. I can’t simply say that I just experienced this only in Kenya – I experienced it all over Eastern Africa. In the US – many people can go through their whole lives and never get exposed to the very poor/desolate or even the very rich. Heck – I must admit – in the US I went through my whole teenage years and never met a person of Jewish faith. Point being – you can be very sheltered in the US. Read More

Lamu
We arrived in Lamu yesterday via a small 20 passenger plane and a very good looking your pilot! When we arrived at the small airfield it was lightly sprinkling, but by the time they took our luggage out on a little 2 wheel wooden cart and wheeled it off the runway, it was pouring rain. Read More

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My only knowledge of Egypt really comes from an unlikely source – Charleton Heston. I can still remember my family all sitting around the one TV we had and watching the Ten Commandments. It was a huge event for us – we were even allowed to eat in front of the TV. Granted, the movie is not necessarily about Egypt but it is set around the Nile, Pharaohs, the Red Sea, and of course Mt. Sinai. All of these things were on the itinerary for my trip through Egypt so it didn’t surprise me that my memories of the movie came flooding back to me.

The movie wasn’t my only source of knowledge of the Nile River though – I have 4th Grade geography to also thank. I know the Nile is the longest river on the globe at 4,100 miles long and it runs south to north – that makes it unique and memorable. However, I still have this image burned into my brain from the Ten Commandments movie where the Egyptian princesses, Miriam, was bathing, washing, and socializing out along the Nile River when a little basket came floating by amongst the reeds with a baby in it…Moses. Therefore the Nile conjures up images of the decadent royal lifestyle, gold jewelry, and femininity – peaceful, yet grand. This is one of the reasons why I chose to tour through Egypt and not simply go to see the Pyramids. I wanted an adventure on the Nile!

We spent 2 days and 2 nights on a felucca on the Nile. A felucca is a single mast wooden sailing boat commonly used along the Nile. We were to sail down stream (to the North) from Aswan to Luxor. Upon my first view of the Nile – it was way different than my childhood memory. First of all it was much, much wider than the movie set river they used for The Ten Commandments. And there were no Eygptian women dressed in gold head-dresses doing their wash in it. However there were plenty of cows washing in it – as well as donkeys and young Egyptian boys swimming in it. There are a number of things written in travel books about swimming in the Nile – most recommend against it due to the fact that it’s rather dirty and full of bacteria. So – the Nile wasn’t really a royal river anymore – but it was still the Nile and it was our home for 2 days/nights.

A felucca isn’t necessarily a posh sailboat with a galley. Instead it’s a big wooden sailing boat with a flat deck area – and ….well….that’s about it. There are no other compartments of space. There are no bathrooms – there is no kitchen – there is nothing below deck – there is just a deck. We had two crew that operated the large felucca; they were the captain and first mate, plus the cooks, and the entertainment. The dinners they put together were quite good – considering they only had 2 gas burners and no kitchen space.

We stopped for the first night along the banks of the Nile along with a few other feluccas. That night we enjoyed a bon fire with the passengers and crew from other boats and listened to the Nubian locals play drums and sing for us. I settled down with my sleep sheet, earplugs, and eye mask for my first night of sleeplessness on the Nile.

The second day we continued floating down the Nile like Moses, which included some stops along the way to see temples and a camel market. And even though the camel market was not operating that day, we still walked around the small camel trading town of Daraw. Now this was ‘real Egypt’ – a town with no tourists. We stopped there for some sugar cane juice and were able to walk around the small town and explore for about 30 minutes. This was probably my favorite location in all of Egypt…because it was real. I walked around the market and soon had a group of school children begging me to take their picture. In addition, the men from the fruit and meat stands all wanted us to come over and take their picture. What made this town real was the simple fact that they didn’t ask for money after I took their picture – they simply wanted to look at it. They were just genuinely happy to view themselves on the screen.

The Red Sea was next on our Moses Tour. This was my favorite part in the movie. The water even looked red in the TV version and Charleton Heston’s ability to part it was truly a special effects miracle. We crossed into the Sinai region of Egypt by ferry from Hurghada (unfortunately no one knew how to part the sea and simply drive to Sinai) then we drove way north to a little white sand camp called Sawa. This camp was remote – not necessarily because it was in the middle of nowhere, instead it had no electricity except for 4 hours of generator in the evening, no fresh water (salt water showers), shared bathrooms, and a bamboo hut to sleep in with a sand floor, small mattress and no air circulation. This was roughing it. However – my little sand filled bamboo hut looked out over the Red Sea – and that was all I needed. I could see Saudia Arabia from my little sand and ant filled mattress, and I was no more than 300 feet from some of the best coral reef in the world. I was even able to fit in a morning hike through a nearby cannon called Color Canyon.

Color Canyon was a treat – it was spectacular. The wind had formed the sandstone into a canyon – sometimes wide, sometimes very, very narrow. As you walked through the canyon and followed the path of the wind, you would see the various types of rocks, colors weaving through the sandstone as if it were a Paint –n-Swirl work of art. The canyon got so narrow at one point that we had to crawl through a small opening blocked by a boulder.

That night we watched the sun set over the mountains. As you looked East over the Red Sea – the sunset light bounced off the Saudia Arabia mountains giving the sea in front of you a deep red glow!Our final pilgrimage on the Moses roadtrip was the rock that started it all…Mt. Sinai. We left the Red Sea coast and drove into the tourist trap…umm…..I mean holy land. The town and monastery of St. Katherines was teaming with tourists – big tour buses, and tons of video cameras. Our first stop was at the base of a mountain where Mohammad pointed out a rock formation in the shape of a cow…the golden calf. Apparently the gold from the calf had long ago been stolen – so the rock formation was left.

However – the real draw there was the burning bush….yup…that’s right….I saw the burning bush…supposedly. Who really knows if that was the bush or not…but it was good enough for me…it looked old. I can’t say that God spoke to me – but it was certainly hot enough outside that I thought I was going to burst into flames…so why not that bush?

We rested during the hot part of the afternoon as we needed to prepare for our greatest ‘Moses-like’ adventure yet – climbing Mt. Sinai. What took Moses 40 days to do, we were going to do in 4 hours. We started up the mountain around 4:30pm planning to make it to the summit by sunset. It was a challenging walk – 3,000+ rock stairs that were relentless. The hike was spectacular and the mountain range was beautiful. We made it to the top with plenty of time to see the golden colors of the sunset bouncing off the mountains and the small chapel at the top. Then we made it down the mountain by flashlight via the camel path in time for a large dinner buffet and cold showers.

During my stay in Egypt I reveled in childhood memories of my family watching the Ten Commandments – memories that I hadn’t thought about for ages. In a way, I suppose it was a spiritual journey for me as those memories are precious. After all, family memories are carved in stone, but they are worn away over time – until something jolts you back to them. My jolt was Moses!

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I mistakenly arrived in Egypt thinking that it would be very similar to Morocco. That’s like thinking that California and New York are similar. And having lived in both – I know that’s not true. Sure, the two countries are in Northern Africa, they are both suffocatingly hot, their language is Arabic (with minor differences), they have the same religion, and they even share the Sahara Desert – camels and all. But beyond that, they really aren’t the same. The difference is that Egypt is all about history – temples, tombs, relics, hieroglyphics, and royalty. Because of that, you tend to see more tourists in Egypt and it is a little more developed in general.

I met up with my new Intrepid tour group in Aswan, Egypt near the southern most border of Egypt and Sudan. That afternoon we went on a hot walking tour of Aswan. Aswan was really a good place to lodge for the night on the way to the famous temple of Abu Simbel (close to the Sudan border). The Nile River flowed through Aswan and it had a large Nubian population. The Nubians are the old nomadic tribal people who inhabited southern Egypt and northern Sudan. They had fought turf wars with the Egyptians many years ago as well as turf wars with the Nile as it flooded their land. We took a boat ride on the Nile, visited an old Nubian village, rode some camels, and had dinner with the locals at the village. We finished the evening dancing with the local kids before we boated back to Aswan for a good, but short night’s sleep.

The next morning, at the wee hours of 4AM, we joined our first convoy – no, not a camel convoy or a semi convoy – a bus convoy. Since Egypt has had a recent history (within the last 10 years) of terrorist attacks on their tourism industry, the government has tried to put in place programs to improve the safety of tourism in the country. They understand that tourism dollars are a huge piece of income, and you can’t just expect people to come to see the pyramids and old temples and risk their lives doing it. Therefore, they set up a program of convoys to move tourists throughout the country. When the tourists are on the roads in Egypt (outside the large cities), they are to be escorted by security and only allowed to move by vehicle as a part of a convoy.

The convoy mainly consists of tour buses, minivans, medium sized buses, and a number of security personnel in trucks carrying automatic weapons as if they were toys. The caravans would have up to 80 vehicles in it and when you crossed over into another regional section of the country, you would all have to stop and wait for a new security team to take over and lead you into the next region. We joined the convoy to Abu Simbel at 4am. This was a large convoy and I honestly slept most of the way. It was a 3-hour ride, and at about 7am, I woke up from my bus slumber to the most magnificent temples in Egypt.

I must admit – I knew nothing about these temples prior to the bus stopping and letting us out. I hadn’t even seen a picture of them before…but I prefer it that way. I had no idea if these temples were big, small, made of gold, on the water, or had a moat. All I knew is that Ramses the Second had built them here near the border of Egypt and Sudan to warn all of the Sudanese to stay away – this was Ramses’ land.

We entered the temple area from the back where it just looked like a big pile of dirt. However, when we rounded the corner and came to the front, I was struck by the size and grandeur of the temple. It was massive – there were actually two temples – one for Ramses and a smaller one for his Queen, Nefitari. Both had entrances that were lined with huge statues of Ramses himself. I barely was the size of his big toe.

We moved on to see a few more temples before returning to Aswan for a much needed siesta. I’ve determined that it is a necessity to take a siesta in these hot countries as it’s inhuman to be outside doing anything during the hours of 1PM to 5PM as temperatures were 110+F. If you didn’t take time to slow down and drink plenty of liquids you’d end up with heat stroke. While traveling through Morocco and Egypt I think that every single person that I was traveling with was sick at least once…and I don’t believe that it was necessarily from the food – I think it was from the heat – it’s lethal.

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