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Catch Up, Chill Out

Posted: April 28, 2004

DAY 185:  For my stayover in Malawi’s capital city Lilongwe, I gave myself the day to figure out my plan of attack in the country, a day to just chill out and run the errands that I might not be able to do outside of an urban area.

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A Long Way From Lilongwe

Posted: April 28, 2004

DAY 186:  Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city wasn’t the reason why I came to the eastern African nation.  While stoners may know Malawi for its “gold,” the mainraison d’être is Lake Nyassa — more commonly known as Lake Malawi — the lake between Malawi and northern Mozambique so big that when looking at the horizon from shore it looks like an ocean.

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The Malawian Feel

Posted: April 28, 2004

DAY 187:  Lonely Planet says that people have described the vibe of Nkhata Bay as “Caribbean,” yet still retaining a “Malawian feel.”  What this “feel” was I didn’t know about prior to my arrival, but by the end of the day, I felt the gist of it.

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Tummy Aches

Posted: April 28, 2004

DAY 188:  If you’ve kept up with The Blog since the beginning, you know that when I mention issues of the stomach I sometimes feature photos of my own diarrhea.  Fans of these photos (as “sick” as they are) may be disappointed at this entry for this day was filled with others having stomach problems, and I didn’t exactly follow them to the toilet with a camera.

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More Than Just A Lake

Posted: April 28, 2004

DAY 189:  If you look at the cover of any recent Lonely Planet guidebook, you’ll see that on the bottom they write a catchy subtitle relative to the destination that is being covered inside.  For Malawi, the subtitle reads, “More than just a lake.”

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One Last Lake Day

Posted: April 29, 2004

DAY 190: It was up in the air whether or not I’d leave Nkhata Bay that Monday.  What was also in the air was water because overnight and all morning, it poured like there was another lake hidden in the clouds, spilling over and down to earth.

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Racing The Sun To Tanzania

Posted: April 29, 2004

DAY 191:  My goal of the day was to make it to the southern Tanzanian city of Mbeya, 120 km. north of the Malawian/Tanzanian border.  I questioned whether or not I would make it before the sun went down so that I wouldn’t arrive in the uncertainties of darkness.  Anel, who had made her way down from the north, said I’d make it to Tanzania’s border by nightfall, but not Mbeya.  Frank said I’d make it by 7:30 at night, but not to worry because a nice hotel was just across the street from the Mbeya bus terminal and that I wouldn’t have to stray too far at night to find it.  I supposed that was the worst case scenario, but I still tried to make the effort to get there before the sun beat me to it.

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Mad Dash to Dar

Posted: April 29, 2004

DAY 192:  Before the sun was awake, I was awaken around five in the morning by the chants and Muslim prayers coming from two different sets of loudspeakers from what I gathered were in two points of town, one somewhat far away (but still audible) and one right across the street because it was blaring through my window and into my hotel room.

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Tomorrow in Tanzania

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 193:  For most of my days on The Global Trip 2004, I often wonder what the next day will bring.  While some people need to plan a long way in advance and know what they’ll do the next day — or even the next week or next year(!) — it’s somewhat refreshing not to know what the future holds until it becomes the present.  People have asked me, “Erik, what are you going to do when you get back home?”  The reply is always the same:  “I don’t know.  I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow.”

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And We Clik!

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 194:  Peter, also known as Goba, a Tanzanian rastafarian I met in Nkhata Bay, Malawi, referred me to the Tin Tin Tours agency in Moshi, Tanzania.  Although he didn’t have one of their business cards with him, he wrote some information on the back of another to show them that I was:

from Goba — Nkhata Bay
And we clik!
[sic]


(It may be of note that the only reason why we clicked was because I had a brief conversation with him over lunch about rapper 50 Cent.)

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Cashless.

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 195:  On Easter weekend, I found myself stranded in Livingstone, Zambia without any money because all the in-town ATMs only accepted Visa/Plus/Electron-based bank cards and my Citibank ATM card was on the MasterCard/Cirrus/Maestro network.  It’s true what the Visa company says in their ad campaign:  Visa.  It’s everywhere you want to be.  (However, I’m told MasterCard is accepted in more places than Visa in Southeast Asia.)

Of course I found myself stranded in another NMCZ (No MasterCard Zone) and on another bank holiday too; the first of May is Labour Day in most countries around the world.

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Harder Than They Say

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 196:  Mount Kilimanjaro, known locally as “Mt. Kili” or just “Kili,” contains the African continent’s highest peak at 19,338 ft. (5896 m.) ASL.  Some guy at the Tanzanian National Parks Department with a penchant for superlatives also boasts it is the “world’s highest free standing mountain” since it isn’t a part of any major mountain range.

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Into Thin Air

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 197:  In 2001, Blogreader oogy and I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru to the archaeological site of Machu Picchu, high up in the Andes Mountain Range.  This four-day trail took us to altitudes of just over 13,000 ft. (4000 m.) ASL, but we already started feeling the nausea and head pains of altitude sickness around 12,500 ft. (3750 m.) ASL. 

On Day Three of my Kilimanjaro trek up the Marangu Route, I would ascend into the thin airs of 15,520 ft. (4750 m.) ASL, the highest I had ever been to that date.

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Surviving Kilimanjaro

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 198:  Perhaps it was Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella The Snows of Kilimanjaro that spawned the popularity of trekking the African mountain; each year hundreds of tourists flock to Tanzania with plans to “conquer Kili.”  However, the mountain that Hemingway glorified through prose is not without its dangers.  According to my guide Jimmy, in the first four months of 2004 three people died in attempts of reaching Uhuru Peak, its highest summit.  In 2003, Kili claimed six, three of which were porters.  Kili knows no nationalities and takes its toll on locals as well.

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The Path Of The Other Coin

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 199: On Day 193: Tomorrow in Tanzania, it was up in the air where I would go after Dar-es-Salaam.  I had boiled down my plethora of options to just two:  1) go to the touristic town of Arusha and organize a trek and safari combo with a Mr. Jalala of Kilimanjaro Crown Tours (recommended by fellow travelers Frank, Francesca and Yvonne in Nkhata Bay, Malawi); or 2) go to the smaller town of Moshi to meet American expatriate Tony (referred to by Cristina in Lusaka, Zambia) and organize a trek/safari with Tin Tin Tours (recommended to me not by a fellow traveler, but a Tanzanian rasta named Goba).  In the end, it boiled down to a simple toss-up and rather than just flip a coin, I played the laws of probability in a more mystical way.  Like randomly picking one of two stones out of my pocket as done in the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, I blindly picked one of two coins — a Malawian and a Tanzanian — the former representing Moshi, the latter for Arusha.

Malawi came up and my path from there was decided.  But little did I know at the time that the path of one would lead me right back to the path of the other one.

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Modern Maasai

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 200:  You may have seen footage of the Maasai tribal people of eastern Africa in movies or documentaries.  These people of the Tanzanian-Kenyan border region have maintained their cultural identity for centuries, often seen wearing red cloaks known as shukas, holding big staffs to lead a herd of cattle, or jumping up and down as high as they can in what looks like a contest.  The Maasai are best distinguished by their jewelry and ornamentation in their “self-deformation” of the body:  elongated or torn ear lobes and stretched out lips.

While these images are true to life, they aren’t the only way the Maasai people live.  Like many other “primitive” tribes in the world, people have learned to adapt to modern society.

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Crater Of Life

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 201:  Two million years ago, lava erupted from a hole in the earth’s crust in what would later be known as Tanzania.  The lava spewed out and cooled, layer after layer until a big volcano was formed, just east of what would later be known as the Serengeti.  Over time, the eruptions ceased and the volcano collapsed, leaving a huge crater in the earth where plant life flourished, providing food for the lives of all the African animals that climbed up over the rim and inside.  These herbivores attracted carnivores and thus, a self-sustaining “crater of life” was born.  Known as the Ngorongoro Crater, this self-contained biosphere was formed in an area that would later been known as the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, coincidentally where 2003’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life was filmed. 

The term “ngorongoro” is a Maasai onomatopoeic word for the ringing of a cow’s bell — the Maasai are permitted by the Tanzaznian government to graze their cattle within its bounderies — although I really don’t get how they got “ngoro” after hearing the rings from under a cow’s neck.

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Stranded in the Serengeti

Posted: May 11, 2004

DAY 202:  The Serengeti, the vast grassland measuring over 9,100 square miles (over 14,700 sq. km.) in the northwest of Tanzania, is home to a multitude of mammals, reptiles, birds and insects all living in a grand circle of life.  The name “Serengeti” is derived from the Maasai term siringet, which means “land of endless space.”  Nothing accentuates the feeling of endlessness of the Serengeti than being stranded in it for an unforeseen amount of time.

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Migration

Posted: May 12, 2004

DAY 203:  Every year, the wildebeests (a.k.a. gnus) of the Serengeti plain migrate back and forth between Tanzania and Kenya, following the rains that grow the grass they require for survival.  The month of May being the rainy season in Tanzania, all the wildebeests were around feeding; they would remain until mid-June when the grasses dry up before heading up north to greener pastures.

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Straight From The Source

Posted: May 12, 2004

DAY 204:  Lake Victoria, Africa’s biggest (and the world’s second largest) lake, encompasses over 42,000 square miles (68,800 sq. km.) within the boundaries of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.  With the force of gravity, its millions of gallons of freshwater flow northward all the way to the Mediterranean Sea on a mighty river called the Nile.

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The Man And The Refrigerator

Posted: May 12, 2004

DAY 205:  “Wow, I haven’t seen one of these in a while,” I said to Tony in the kitchen as he made his morning coffee before going to work.  I went to get some milk.

“What, a refrigerator?”

“Yeah.”

After being on a non-stop tour for ten days in a row in the wilds of Africa, climbing mountains and going on safari, it was nice to come back to the conveniences of modern life.

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The Ultimate Day

Posted: May 12, 2004

DAY 206:  In the morning I had no plans to do much in and around Tony and Ted’s apartment while they were away at work (Ted was feeling better, so he went in too) other than continue to catch up on Blog duties.  Little did I know then that the day would be an “ultimate” day.

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Apologies and Farewells

Posted: May 14, 2004

DAY 207:  “How was your safari?” Jimmy, my Kilimanjaro guide asked when I ran into him on the road when walking around Moshi town to run errands.

“Oh…” I groaned with a smile.  “It was… memorable.”  I told him about the whole fiasco, how the first two days were great and then the next three turned into a safari from hell.  I told him how unprofessional it was conducted, from the faulty vehicle to the somewhat shady guide.  Although Jimmy wasn’t directly involved with the safari, he apologized on behalf of Tin Tin Tours, the Moshi-based company that had sent me to the Arusha-based Kilimanjaro Crown Tours when they didn’t have enough clients to warrant a cost-effective safari group themselves.

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The Zanzibar Connection

Posted: May 16, 2004

DAY 208:  I suppose a lot more good things came out of the mugging at knifepoint in Cape Town than bad ones.  Ever since the incident, my itinerary had been sent on a tangeant that led me to connections I might not have made if nothing happened.  The mugging led to flight cancellations, which led to going overland through Zambia, which led to Shelle, which led to Cristina, which led to Tony, which led to one connection no one could have predicted in Zanzibar.

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Street Boys

Posted: May 20, 2004

DAY 209:  The touts of Stone Town usually hang around the main ferry port area where tourists come and go on the two-hour ferry ride to and from mainland Dar-es-Salaam.  Most of these touts, which Willie refers to as “Street Boys,” are good-for-nothing drug addicts usually strung out on crack cocaine, desperately using a facade of charm or friendliness to score any cash from unsuspecting tourists with bogus tours.  A suspecting tourist can usually tell a Street Boy a block away; they often just look all drugged out, or they reek of booze, and they look all disheveled like they just got out of bed.  Street Boys make Stone Town look more like “Stoned Town,” and I’m sure any suspecting reader might have seen that pun a mile away.

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Dolphins, Monkeys and Queen

Posted: May 20, 2004

DAY 210:  A German ex-pat named Thomas living and doing PhD. research in the other main Zanzibar island of Pemba was sitting in the back seat of a minivan.  With him was only his visiting friend Volker from their hometown of Heidelburg, until I arrived.  The three of us had signed up for the Dolphin Tour from different tour agencies, but it being the low season, we had been pooled together for efficiency.  Our driver and guide drove us to the south east of Unguja Island for the beginning of a day full of Dolphins, Monkeys and Queen.

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Spice Island

Posted: May 20, 2004

DAY 211:  What would the world be like without spices?  For one, Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken would have eleven less ingredients to put in his secret recipe and probably be out of business.  TV chef Emeril Lagasse probably wouldn’t have a career involving yelling the word “BAM!” and would probably be a janitor somewhere.  And you could forget about going out for Thai food entirely.  (God forbid!)  In short, a world without spices would be a pretty boring and bland world.

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The Things Up North

Posted: May 22, 2004

DAY 212:  When Kazim took us to the beach as part of the Spice Tour the day before, there were two British guys that refused to go in the water.  Their reason:  they had spent some days up at the beaches in the north and after that considered anything else inferior.  I, along with Jess, the American girl I also met on the Spice Tour, was soon to find out what all this hype about the north was all about.

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Kendwa’d Without Ken

Posted: May 22, 2004

DAY 213:  The Mnemba Atoll, the coral reef and island pair off the northeast coast of Zanzibar’s Unguja Island, is arguably one of the world’s premiere scuba diving destinations, sporting an impressive display of tropical marine life.  Most people have come to the atoll with scuba gear to see just what beauty lies beneath, although some privileged people — i.e. “missing” Enron corporate criminal Kenneth Lay — have been rumored to hide out at Mnemba Island, the privatized part of the Mnemba Atoll which costs $1200 per night (in embezzled money from government funds of course).

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Caught Up In Stone Town

Posted: May 22, 2004

DAY 214:  The north coast of Unguja Island, Zanzibar is the kind of place you go and sort of realize, “Hey, I think I might just live here and do nothing.”  While that idea was promising, it was detrimental to my plan of writing a blog around the world.  Realizing that I couldn’t stay forever in Kendwa, I figured the dread of leaving it all was as inevitable as being Kendwa’d, and that I might as well rip off Kendwa from my soul like a band-aid on a wound.

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Closure In Tanzania

Posted: May 22, 2004

DAY 215:  My plan for the day was to continue to stay in my room, chill out and work on the arduous task of writing, but little did I know when I woke up that morning that one event would send me off track, making it my last day in Tanzania.

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A Long Way Since the Eighties

Posted: May 24, 2004

DAY 216:  Ethiopia has come a long way since the 1980s when a famine caused by political and economic struggle got worldwide attention, prompting American musicians to sing “We Are The World” as a benefit.  The news of the famine also spread to the United Kingdom, prompting British musicians to band together in a similar collective known as Band Aid and ask in song, “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”  My thinking is that the Ethiopians did know it was Christmas; the majority of the population is Christian after all.  (However, in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, which uses the Gregorian calendar, Christmas is actually celebrated on January 7.)

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Cradle of Humanity

Posted: May 24, 2004

DAY 217:  Ethiopia lies in a region known as the Cradle of Humanity, the corner of the globe where it is speculated that Mankind was born — this speculation is supported by paleontological evidence.  Many cultures derived from this Creation of Man in Ethiopia, the earliest written history of it recorded in the Bible.  With such rich roots to explore in early Man and biblical civilization, Ethiopia’s history blurs the line between reality and folklore and has become a gold mine for paleontologists, anthropologists and archaeologists alike.  For tourists, it is also a gold mine; in fact, some consider Ethiopia to be “travel’s best kept secret.”

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Dominoes

Posted: June 02, 2004

DAY 218:  With the weekend over, I could finally get the wheels in motion for my pilgrimage to the Ethiopian holy sites north of Addis Ababa.  All my bookings were put on hold until I could confirm with Egypt Air that I could switch my flight from Addis Ababa to Cairo to a later date — after that, everything would fall into place like a set of dominoes.

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Get A Room You Two

Posted: June 02, 2004

DAY 219:  With everything set up in a tight itinerary, everything was all set on my week-long journey that would ultimate bring me to the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.  In order for me to make it in my limited time, I didn’t have much room for error — which was a pretty dumb idea I discovered that day.  Had I forgotten I was in Africa where, as a guide in Namibia told me, “Nothing comes easy?”

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Change of Plans

Posted: June 02, 2004

DAY 220:  On Day 218: Dominoes, I ran around Addis Ababa trying to book flights, buses and tours in a tight schedule where one thing would lead into the next and to the next like a row of dominoes.  Doing so cost more money than it had to be; but I didn’t have the luxury of time, and time is money.  It was my last month before meeting people in Spain and I really didn’t have much of a choice — or did I?

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Sacred Lake

Posted: June 02, 2004

DAY 221:  “Philippines!” the street boy finally guessed correctly.  Since the day before it baffled him where my heritage was from and I had him try and guess.  He told me that it it weren’t for my eyes, I’d probably pass as an Ethiopian with the color of my skin.

The Ethiopian street boys escorted us to a restaurant nearby where we picked up some sandwiches for later and then to a fruit stand for some snacks.  We had to have enough provisions for us since there would be no places to get food on our full-day tour of Lake Tana’s monasteries.

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From Guess to Gondar

Posted: June 02, 2004

DAY 222:  Before I came to Ethiopia, my American conception of the country from from images of starving children showed on Sally Struthers commercials asking for money.  However this stereotypical image continued to deteriorate the more I “discovered” the “real” Ethiopia.  Present day Ethiopia may be developing from a state of famine, but past Ethiopia had already developed into former kingdoms, like the kingdom of Gondar in the Middle Ages.

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Holy Land of Honey

Posted: June 03, 2004

DAY 223:  According to legend, in the the 11th century, an Ethiopian king named Lalibela had a divine vision in a dream, which instructed him to building a bunch of churches.  And so, eleven churches were built in his name in a mountain town of his same name, and it it amongst the holiest places in all of Ethiopia.

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Where Am I From?

Posted: June 03, 2004

DAY 224:  Great, another trek, I sarcastically thought to myself as I caught my breath hiking up the mountain, trailing behind my 16-year-old guide Adam.  The two-hour uphill trek alongside faithful villagers took us to the Asheton Maryam monastery, carved out of the side of a mountain before King Lalibela ever had the vision to build his eleven rock-hewn ones down the hill.

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Passing Through History

Posted: June 03, 2004

DAY 225:  According to Hollywood folklore — i.e. Steven Spielberg’s 1981 Indiana Jones classic Raiders of the Lost Ark — the Ark of the Covenant was taken by an Egyptian pharoah to the city of Tanis and hidden in an underground temple known as the Well of the Souls, outside of Cairo, Egypt.  However, if you follow history as recorded by The Bible, the Ark was actually taken from Jerusalem to the city of Aksum by Abyssia’s (Ethiopia’s) first emperor Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba. 

Apparently, Hollywood was “digging in the wrong place.”

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My Life in Airports

Posted: June 04, 2004

DAY 226:  I had so many errands to run that day for when I got back to Addis Ababa that I had to make a checklist:  get a taxi from airport to hotel, pick up bag in storage to get ATM card, go to privatized Dashen bank to withdraw cash, go to Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to wire payback money to Nugusse, go to NTO office to straighten out rejected AmEx mess, go back to hotel to sort out photos, organize a transport to the airport, go to the internet cafe to upload at least the photos, go back to hotel and type until my airport transport at 1 a.m.

Simple enough.  And then my flight got canceled.

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An American in Cairo

Posted: June 04, 2004

DAY 227:  Cairo, Egypt is known around the world for its ancient historical past.  The ancient Egypt civilization was one of the greatest in the world, attracting millions of visitors around the world to see its pyramids, hieroglyphics and other ancient artifacts.  However for me, having been away from the conveniences of American modern life for quite some time, I was looking forward to Cairo’s fast food, movie theaters and other things that I took for granted back home in metro New York City. 

All this would have to wait, as getting passed Egyptian immigration proved to be my toughest border crossing yet.

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Then and Now

Posted: June 04, 2004

DAY 228:  Unless you’ve been comatose for most of your life, you already know that one of the greatest civilizations of ancient history was the Egyptian one.  You know of the pharaohs and the mummies and the pyramids and the hieroglyphics, which comedian Billy Crystal once theorized where just “a comic strip about a guy named Sphinxy.”  However, it’s one thing to read about all these things in a school history book, it’s another to be there in Egypt and see the old artifacts of ancient society juxtaposed to the modern one.

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Taken For A Ride

Posted: June 05, 2004

DAY 229: Blogreader and former “The Trinidad Show” cast member (Ecuador) Navid was in good spirits on Yahoo! Messenger when I logged onto my daily morning internet session to upload Blog entries.  Having been to Egypt before, he gave me suggestions on what I should see in my limited 12-day stint in the country of the former ancient civilization:  Luxor, Aswan, Dahab and other historical sites.  It was good guidance for when I would leave Cairo and explore Egypt on my own.

It was Friday, the holy day in Muslim culture, and most of Cairo was shut down.  In and around Tahrir Square, the usual traffic jams were replaced with almost empty streets.  I figured if one place would be open, it’d be the places of tourism draw, and no where in Cairo is that draw bigger than the Pyramids of Giza, not too far away across the River Nile.

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Dates in Egypt

Posted: June 12, 2004

DAY 230:  For some reason, a feeling of shame fills me whenever I cave in and sign up for a guided tour.  I feel like I’m “cheating” the Blogreader from stories of independent (mis)adventures, or defying the unspoken backpacker code or something.  For some reason, this scolding voice inside my head manifests itself in the voice of opinionated Lara (“The Trinidad Show” recurring cast member, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil), who always brought up the distinction of the “traveler” and the “package holiday tourist.”

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A Student in Babylon

Posted: June 12, 2004

DAY 231:  I surrendered my passport to the security guard like I did the day before.  It sufficed for the lack of a student ID card for entrance within the American University of Cairo’s campus, just off of downtown’s Tahrir Square.  No I wasn’t posing as a student (yet); I just wanted access to their American bookstore.  Fed up with Lonely Planet’s Shoestring Guide to Africa, I bought Let’s Go’s Middle East guidebook so I could further investigate my options for a 2-3 jaunt through Jordan after my Egyptian tour.  Lonely Planet’s Shoestring Guide, trying to pack too much in one sitting, rushed and skipping a lot of things.

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My Nubian Rights

Posted: June 14, 2004

DAY 232:  Nubia, the ancient civilization which bridged the Egyptians with the Africans, lies in the region between Luxor, Egypt and Khartoum, Sudan.  While most of the ancient sites of Nubia were lost to earthquakes or flooding, several still remain.  The starting point for seeing the remains of the Nubian empire is the city of Aswan, Egypt’s southern most city, populated by the dark-skinned descendants of the former civilization.

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Rush and Relaxation

Posted: June 14, 2004

DAY 233:  “So are we just waiting for the sun to come up?” I asked minibus driver Yohannes in the darkness of 4 a.m.  I, along with every tourist in Aswan that hadn’t gone already, was up by 3:30 in the morning to ride the 300 km. to the Temple of Abu Simbel.

“Sun?” he asked in confusion.

“Why are we waiting then?”  Our minivan was just one vehicle in a long line of minivans, minibuses and coach buses lined up in the morning darkness waiting for I didn’t know what until Yohannes answered:

“For the police convoy to take us.”

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The Special Felucca

Posted: June 14, 2004

DAY 234:  “Are your parents retarded?” Cheryl said, telling us the first half of a pick-up line her friend used back home.  “Because you’re special.”  Little did we know when she said that, that being “special” was what probably the conception of our little felucca group that day.

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SIXTEEN MONTHS AROUND THE WORLD (in chronological order):

PROLOGUE:

SOUTH AMERICA:

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EUROPE & RUSSIA:

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EPILOGUE:



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