Egypt

The adventure of ancient, exotic Egypt is just a THREE hour plane ride away & only one hour time difference from Bahrain. We are in our final months in the Middle Eastern region. It was time to stop dreaming, and start packing! How could we not check off this major bucket list item?

A SOLO mom trip: Between Roman's school & Nick's work schedule (requiring major approval for this travel), it dwindled down to just Nicolette and I taking this trip ourselves.

With the ancient Pyramids, the Spinx, King Tut's tomb awaiting, we set off on our first mother-daughter vacation!! I've never traveled internationally on a completely solo vacation before -usually it's to meet up with Nick or family. It was a little lonely in the evenings when Nicolette was sleeping but it provided a lot of opportunity for personal growth and bonding between us.

First thing in the morning, admiring this wonder of the world. To this day, they do not exactly know how the pyramids were built. The stones are SO large and so heavy.. it's truly a wonder. 

SAFETY:  This is the #1 most asked question and concern about our trip, Is Egypt safe?
 In my opinion, nowhere is completely safe anymore. Personally, I'm a seasoned traveler (24 countries and counting). I've seen third world countries, and big cities.. I'm experienced with using public transport and using private companies. I used a trusted and known tour guide that came on personal recommendation from a few people who had recently returned from Egypt. I felt safe enough to go there given all the information I had. We did chose to avoid churches and mosques due to a travel warning issued by the state dept.

Egypt has many safety precautions in place and they value tourism in their country especially since tourism has declined so much over the last five years. Living in the Middle East for the last two years minimized any culture shock I may have had in Egypt... the majority of the population is Muslim and that I am familiar with both Arabic and the Muslim religion. I found Egyptians to be very friendly, and they have amazing hospitality!  After hearing recent trips from others, I think I may have also had a upper hand as being a solo mother. I was not hassled for tips or haggled by sales persons like some experience.

We mostly had good times.. roaming the sights, walking the expansive property of our hotel that had pyramid views from both our room & the pool/dining area. Waking up to a pyramid view while the sun rises, is epic!! That doesn't mean the trip did not go down without a few hiccups! 

OUR "ADVENTURES":  There were a few unexpected adventures that made for some great stories AFTER the fact... starting with our first night. I woke up to hearing rapid gunfire in the night, at least a minute of shots going off, which turned out to be a illegal celebration for a nearby wedding. In the moment, I was honestly quite scared but I was prepared in advance for all situations. Thankfully, we were safe! 

Camel Riding, is not for the faint of heart! These big creatures stand up hind legs first. That means, You're hoisted at least 10 FEET up in the air at steep angle. Next, they stand up on their front legs and you even out. It's really normal and common there for children of all ages to join on camel rides.  Nicolette was NOT a fan as you can see in the picture above! I handed her off to our trusty guide and went for my ride solo. We opted for horse carriages for the remainder. 

BEDUIN DINNER: I'm going to write up a entire post on this one day. A beduin dinner is a popular tradition in the Middle Eastern region involving dinner in the desert. Typically, it's a big celebration with music (sometimes, dancing), food and conversation. I went about this from a personal recommendation of someone who just traveled to the region. The dinner was very unlike most Beduin dinners in the region & unfortunately, not what we had expected to experience.

I'm not sure this photo even needs a caption ;)

We rode out on horse buggy through the local village which was eye-opening. There is a lot of poverty in the villages and within Egypt. The way of life is just - unique compared to what I have seen before. There are so many people riding their camels down the streets, young boys riding donkeys that are carrying their groceries... Many, many horses and camels lined up along the walls. It was filthy, but intriguing. We headed out into the desert. There we were alone, eating food cooked over coals on a tiny grill, by hand. Eating with our hands, surrounded by beautiful views, but also epic amounts of trash (Egypt has a tremendous amount of liter) and stray desert dogs, a cat, donkey, horses, camels. That's not to say that the views weren't beautiful and the experience was definitely one for the books. I was imaging the people who traveled these deserts and built pyramids that were just a mile away... I was terrified of getting food poisoning but I'm sitting on the ground eating a meal with the man who cooked it. I could not be rude, so I ate it and prayed for the best! I mean, when else can I say - I ate dinner in the middle of the Egyptian Sahara.

THE SHAKEDOWN: While riding down the local village alleyways, I was taking Go-Pro videos of the surroundings. Unknown to me in advance, I was not in a area that is highly frequented by tourists. This is not the area were the buses of tourists get dropped off either. I had a private driver and private tour guid which meant I was getting a little more of a local experience. Maybe more than I bargained for!

She said to me "Your Welcome!" as I took this. Maybe I should have asked... I'm used to people just taking photos of us all the time without asking while we travel too. You'd be amazed how intrigued other cultures our with our fair skinned & blue eyed children! 

 We turn a corner and before I had a chance to react, there was a police check-point. There was a large armored vehicle and about 10-15 guards/police. These check-points are very common (even within Bahrain where we live so I was not shocked), although, this was not a tourist police check-point like I had seen so far in Cairo & Giza, but a local police check-point. From my understanding, not just anyone can go into the desert, you need to have a license (or something like that!)

The police did NOT like that I was filming. They took my Go-Pro, took it apart (and subsequently turned it back on which they did not realize, so when they set it on the desk, it was actually filming the whole thing!! Took my purse, dumped it out- asked me a bunch of questions such as who am I, why am I there, where am I staying, etc. What they were very interested in was my cameras and whether or not I was a journalist. Apparently, a solo mom with "fancy" cameras is not the most common tourist to be seen in this area.

Watch out, solo mother tourist coming through. 

I was a little shaken up because this is not really normal procedure. The guide that I was with, told me afterwards, maybe they just wanted to speak English with me. Or, Maybe they were just messing with me for fun (based upon the look on their faces).

I took this photo of the village we went through on our way to the desert dinner. This was a common sight throughout our trip.

It appeared the primary form of transportation outside of the bigger city within the villages is by ANIMAL! Whether it's riding horses, riding donkeys or camels! You will see kids of all ages riding their animals down the streets! I was amazing to see young boys riding their own camels through the town.

Another interesting sight, was how they use vans without the doors on them, for people to hop in and out / off like a bus. 

THE MISSED FLIGHT: After touring Giza, we were supposed to fly to Luxor to sail the Nile and see the Valley of the Kings. My tour company hired a driver and "guide" to take us to the airport. Traffic in Egypt is notoriously bad but this morning, was especially bad. It took us THREE hours to get near the airport. 

The driver starts having an argument with my guide, and over the phone with someone, in Arabic. I hear "Taxi" 100x throughout this altercation. We pull over on the side of the road twice for over 10 minutes while the driver is completely losing his mind on the phone (hand gestures, yelling- the works). I'm in contact with Nick on my phone, and the tour company. After the second stop, the driver kicks us all out of the car on the side of the road and my "guide" gets us a unknown taxi- which was kind of a no-no. But, our options were stand on the side of the road with our luggage in a busy- somewhat sketchy area- or hop in the taxi. We took the latter. 

We missed the flight. I decided to book a return flight home. We went on a hunt for a Starbucks to add to our mug collection which involved more Uber's & taxi's than I can count. I got the mug!!!  The irony: there was a Starbucks next to our gate at the airport. Ha. 

After a nice nap and shower at the airport hotel, we headed back out to get home. The flight back was only 2.5 hrs and the best part, the flight attendants were my age and curious about my adventure with Nicolette alone in Egypt. They always wanted to go visit but were unsure about it. Nicolette was fussy on the flight so they let me stand/sit in the back while feeding her every snack the plane had to offer and we chatted about my whole trip till it was time to land! 

The most unfortunate part, was the sudden onset of extreme motion sickness for Nicolette. She's had minor bouts here and there (i.e see South Africa post), but Egypt basically set off an all time high. For the entire trip, the poor thing was sick in the car 50% of the time. I learned a valuable lesson in how helpful diapers can be in a vehicle with unexpected sickness (your welcome). Upon returning to Bahrain, we are still deep in this battle unfortunately. Traveling with kids may have gotten much harder for us now.. but we are hopefully this phase will end as quickly as it came up- no pun intended!

Without further ado.. here is a quick recap video of our adventure by video!