Egypt, Day Three and Four

Day 3: Well our alarms went off….except we forgot about a little thing called day-light savings…..we woke up at 5 instead of 4….Well Joy and I did….Ish and Michaela had their international phone and so when they came to check if we were almost ready we were just getting up. We decided that taking the next bus wouldn’t mess us up too badly so we got ready and went to the bus station to find out what time the next bus left….9am. So we waited in the bus station with all of our luggage. We then looked for a place to eat since we had not had breakfast and didn’t know when the next time anything to eat would be available. We found this little “café” and had “pastries” and tea. The funniest thing about that café was that they had menus out on the table and they had Hot Chocolate spelled as Hot Shoklet…..it gave us a good laugh for a long time. We saw this a lot while we were in Egypt….Egyptians sometimes spell English words out how they say them….we don’t want to poke fun, but it’s pretty hilarious.


We boarded the bus and got ready to start our “what we thought would be a 6 hour bus ride”….little did we know that this wouldn’t really go as planned. It’s quite a long story….so I will sum it up to make it better to read and make it less boring. Pretty much this is what happened…..our 6 hour bus ride turned into 9…little did we know we had to stop at every little check point to get our tickets or passports checked…..met some interesting people….a man named Dr. Pip was a psychologist that moved from Holland to Egypt because he said why would I want to stay in Europe or go to the US, their economy is crap….talked to him for a good while…he gave us tips on where to go, what not to eat or drink if we still want to continue to have a good vacation and not get Hep C, and shared some of his stories. Nice guy….a little different…but nice. Also met a guy named Daboo….looks wise he would fall right under Bradly Cooper on my list…and he was very intelligent. He was an Egyptian who lived in Cairo….but it was very clear about how he dressed and how he talked that he would rather be an American. When we first asked him where he was from he said unfortunately Egypt…and then he said No, I am proud to be an Egyptian, but I am not proud about many things that happen in my country. His dad works for a tourism business and it was very evident that they were well off. He said that he spent a lot of time around his dads business when he was little and that is why he can speak about 5 or 6 different languages. When he said “well Russian was the hardest language I have learned” all of our jaws probably dropped. I’d say he was 22 or 23.

So back to the quickness of this story….we landed in Nueva…of course three hours late…therefore we missed out fairy and had nowhere to stay. So we were stranded in this small town that really didn’t have anything right on the coast of the Red Sea with two weeks of luggage and nowhere to go. Oh and did I mention that finding someone in the little boon-dock town that spoke English was basically impossible. So we tried looking for a hostel…or the two streets that this town had….found nothing. Then we found this restaurant with a guy that spoke English and his wife was German so she spoke English as well. They basically gave us two choices….you can either sleep in a hut on the beach (which we had no camping supplies or anything...which was needed in this case) or the Hilton. We hated to be those people, but we chose the Hilton. We got the taxi driver who had been following us around since the moment we stepped off the bus to take us to the Hilton, and we went to go check in to a room. The cheapest thing that they had was a Villa on the beach….so we got two double rooms (which included a free buffet dinner and breakfast and free drinks …which by the way was amazing food). Even though we were ticked about missing the fairy we told ourselves that we would make the best out of staying here and try to have fun….plus it was clean beds and a clean shower….which he really hadn’t had for a couple days. The Villa was very pretty…about 150 feet from the Red Sea.


Day 4: The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and took a taxi back to the port to see if we could get the first fairy out. Turns out that the next fairy didn’t leave until 3 in the afternoon (It was currently 9am) and it would cost each person 160 US dollars to use the fairy for a round trip. So after talking this over we decided that spending that amount of money for two days in Jordan wasn’t worth it. And that is where out Jordan fairytale ends. But it is ok, because not going to Jordan opened up a lot more for us. So after leaving the ticket building for the port we tried to ask a couple policemen where the bus station was…just a little word of advice…if you ever end up in Nueva and the policemen say they speak English…they really mean that they don’t. We probably looked like idiots trying to describe how we needed a bus back to Cairo….so after a while of working through our language barrier we were pointed in the right direction. We spotted the buses and began walking in that direction. As we are walking up to the big lot with buses one bus was pulling out…and as we were passing it, it stopped and the driver got out…..it was our same driver from the day before! We couldn’t believe it....he couldn’t speak English either, but with all of his hand motions and such he basically said I am leaving now you guys can through your luggage in and just come with me. We quickly payed him, which we are all pretty positive he pocketed since we didn’t even make it up to bus building to buy proper tickets, and we got on. Even though it may have been “illegal” for him to do that…it was a blessing because we knew him and we knew that we would return to Cairo that night….even if it took us an extra three hours.


We finally got back to Cairo and since we didn’t know what bus stop to get off at we just randomly picked one hoping for the best. As soon as we got off the bus we had a taxi driver in our face asking if we needed him….all we needed to do at that moment was to call the hostel that we had been at two nights before and ask them if they had room for us for the next couple days considering we wouldn’t be using our hostel in Jordan. They said that they had two rooms open and that we could head that way whenever we wanted. During this whole process this taxi driver was still all over us and part of me wanted to just look him in the eye and say Please Sir, we really don’t need you, I am sorry….but we just went with the flow and after getting our reservations we began to walk to the street to look for a legit taxi….and of course he followed us….so we said fine you can take us but we are setting the price….he didn’t like our price….so we haggled for awhile…but he wasn’t being easy about it…his persistence of taking us with his price was quite entertaining and just made me laugh….we still didn’t even know if this guy was even a taxi driver cause we had yet to see his car. All of this negotiating happened to be taking place in front of a couple of police officers…they were laughing and getting a kick out of it too….and then one of the policemen looked at me, smiled, and said this guy is a really nice guy….so we finally decided on a price with the cab driver, loaded up our stuff and headed towards to hostel.


This cab ride was probably one of the most hilarious memories in Egypt. The cab driver new English very well and was an absolute hoot. His name was Jimmy, and when he introduced himself he said I’m Jimmy! Not Jimmy Carter, Jimmy the Egyptian!! It was soo funny. We had a good discussion about are presidents….he loves Obama….along with the rest of Egypt …and hates Bush….also along with the rest of Egypt. Then he said “I like Clinton, but Clinton like too many women”…haha. He then began to give Michaela and Ish tons of crap about being a couple and he clearly let Ish know that Joy and I were going to be his considering he already had a women. At the end of the cab ride we got his number just in case we needed his assistance again and went and checked into the hostel. Its instances like this that we are glad we just went with the flow…because even though Jimmy was a little too much to handle at first, he turned out to be an awesome person that we are all glad we met.


That night so of the guys that worked at the Hostel invited us out to a bar for some drinks. We said that we would go but we wanted to get something to eat first. So Musa…one of my favorite people we met on this trip ( he is an Egyptian, but lived in Canada for 18 years so he has the Canadian accent, and is very outgoing and hilarious) took us to this restaurant, ordered for us, and said he would be back in 40 minutes to pick us up and take us to the bar. This just shows how nice the people we met really where….they took care of us a handful of times….so greatful. We had a delicious dinner (and cheap for the amount of food we got) and then we met up with them again and they showed us the way to the bar.

Musa had said that there was other Americans at the bar that were staying at the same hostel that we needed to meet. So we got to the bar, they ordered us some beer, and we all sat and chatted. The two American girls where from Philly and DC area. They were friends that had known each other for a long time and they both had breaks so they were traveling for about a week and a half. One was in her first year of residency to be a Neurologist and the other was Structural Engineer. Both very bright and very nice. It was fun to be out with locals and new friends and just to have the chance to sit and chat. After I had finished my beer, Musa looks at me and he says “WOW she drinks like a FISH” with his Canadian accent this was hilarious…then he looks at the bartender and yells from across the room “Get this lady another beer!”….I didn’t think drinking one beer by myself was that impressive but since Michaela and Joy shared one…maybe to him it was. That whole night was just a hoot. Musa and the other guys from the hostel were telling joke after joke and we were all constantly laughing. Then Musa and his friend (we like to refer to him as the guy in red coat that was creepy nice because he flirted with Joy….because we still don’t know his name) led us back to the Hostel and we showered and hit the hay because in the morning we were planning on having a day trip to Alexandria.