Sunrise at Sharm El Sheikh
Kom-Ombo Temple
Lone tree hill - St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai peninsula
The Moonhouse
Fresh Indigo - I don't recommend mixing this with your saffron
Sunday, February 05, 2006
A few more pictures from Egypt
Sunrise at Sharm El Sheikh
Kom-Ombo Temple
Lone tree hill - St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai peninsula
The Moonhouse
Fresh Indigo - I don't recommend mixing this with your saffron
Friday, February 03, 2006
Egypt - In Summary
I'm going to add some more pictures and maybe a bit more detail to the Egypt posts but now that I'm home it's time to summarize the trip. In a word: Fantastic.
The folks at American Photo's Mentor Series did a great job of keeping everything moving along which is particularly difficult given that Egypt is far from Switzerland in terms of efficiency. The people running the show, the mentors, Bob and Pat and the other trekkers were all a lot of fun and it was great to get to know them all. I definitely would like to do some more treks in the future.
To make one stop shopping easier, here are links to each of my posts about the trip in chronological order.
Made it to Egypt!
Greetings from Egypt
Another day at the pyramids
Camel shopping
Hello Bakh Shish?
Flying high again
Oh look! More hieroglyphics
I miss ice
Where was I?
A few more pictures from Egypt
Also, if you want more detail, David did a great job of blow by blow for each of the days we were there on his blog.
The folks at American Photo's Mentor Series did a great job of keeping everything moving along which is particularly difficult given that Egypt is far from Switzerland in terms of efficiency. The people running the show, the mentors, Bob and Pat and the other trekkers were all a lot of fun and it was great to get to know them all. I definitely would like to do some more treks in the future.
To make one stop shopping easier, here are links to each of my posts about the trip in chronological order.
Made it to Egypt!
Greetings from Egypt
Another day at the pyramids
Camel shopping
Hello Bakh Shish?
Flying high again
Oh look! More hieroglyphics
I miss ice
Where was I?
A few more pictures from Egypt
Also, if you want more detail, David did a great job of blow by blow for each of the days we were there on his blog.
Where Was I?
Home again. Yay!
The Egypt trip was really fantastic. I met some really great people took a ton of pictures (over 2700 raw files in case you're keeping score but only about 10% have been processed so far) and saw some absolutely amazing sights.
One of the big surprises was how interested everyone was in the technical sessions that Josh, David and I did. It really drove home that digital photography is not just about framing great shots or just knowing how to manipulate them in Photoshop (or Digital Image Suite ;) ) but to be really successful as a digital photographer you need to have a broad knowledge of both the technical and artistic aspects and the three of us provided insight in ways that really complemented the professional mentors on the tour. We had a couple of sessions covering things like workflow, organization, backup and color management and as much as possible we covered both Windows and Mac solutions. The feedback was really positive so we will definitely be looking into doing this again in the future, particularly for some of the shorter domestic workshops with the Mentor Series.
When we were out shooting, Josh had a GPS unit hooked up to his Nikon D2X that would embed the GPS information into each photo so that we could later go back and map these photos to where we were when we took them. Canon does not yet have this functionality (though I hope they do soon) so David and I were out of luck -- until I fired up Visual Studio and wrote a cool little app that will pull the GPS info out of Josh's files and map them onto my files based on the date taken properties in both files. Since we were all reasonably close to each other while we were out shooting the locations will be close enough as long as the date taken properties are within a few minutes (30 at the moment) of each other.
The application is working now and it covers most of my pictures. It also allows Josh to fill in holes in his coverage where he couldn't get enough satellite coverage like when he was indoors or in some of the temples with lots of obstructed views of the sky. It does point out some interesting problems though. First, even though we tried to sync our clocks on our cameras when we got there, Josh's pictures are all offset by 2 hours - possibly because the date time was set to the GPS time which was GMT. Second, I borrowed Adam's 5D for a few shots with my memory card and his clock was off by 5 hours in the opposite direction so I need to correct each of those before I can get good GPS values. The good news is that once we have good GPS capabilities in cameras, it should be easy to start to get cameras to automatically set their own clock since the GPS satellites broadcast this information. We'll just need to make sure the time zone is correct and that can be determined by the location info.
So now I can really tell where I was when I was taking the pictures even though I didn't have a GPS unit strapped to my camera and the accuracy is certainly good enough to be able to tell if a picture was taken at Edfu or Kom-Ombo or Karnak. This is a good thing because after a while, the hieroglyphics start to all look the same to me.
The Egypt trip was really fantastic. I met some really great people took a ton of pictures (over 2700 raw files in case you're keeping score but only about 10% have been processed so far) and saw some absolutely amazing sights.
One of the big surprises was how interested everyone was in the technical sessions that Josh, David and I did. It really drove home that digital photography is not just about framing great shots or just knowing how to manipulate them in Photoshop (or Digital Image Suite ;) ) but to be really successful as a digital photographer you need to have a broad knowledge of both the technical and artistic aspects and the three of us provided insight in ways that really complemented the professional mentors on the tour. We had a couple of sessions covering things like workflow, organization, backup and color management and as much as possible we covered both Windows and Mac solutions. The feedback was really positive so we will definitely be looking into doing this again in the future, particularly for some of the shorter domestic workshops with the Mentor Series.
When we were out shooting, Josh had a GPS unit hooked up to his Nikon D2X that would embed the GPS information into each photo so that we could later go back and map these photos to where we were when we took them. Canon does not yet have this functionality (though I hope they do soon) so David and I were out of luck -- until I fired up Visual Studio and wrote a cool little app that will pull the GPS info out of Josh's files and map them onto my files based on the date taken properties in both files. Since we were all reasonably close to each other while we were out shooting the locations will be close enough as long as the date taken properties are within a few minutes (30 at the moment) of each other.
The application is working now and it covers most of my pictures. It also allows Josh to fill in holes in his coverage where he couldn't get enough satellite coverage like when he was indoors or in some of the temples with lots of obstructed views of the sky. It does point out some interesting problems though. First, even though we tried to sync our clocks on our cameras when we got there, Josh's pictures are all offset by 2 hours - possibly because the date time was set to the GPS time which was GMT. Second, I borrowed Adam's 5D for a few shots with my memory card and his clock was off by 5 hours in the opposite direction so I need to correct each of those before I can get good GPS values. The good news is that once we have good GPS capabilities in cameras, it should be easy to start to get cameras to automatically set their own clock since the GPS satellites broadcast this information. We'll just need to make sure the time zone is correct and that can be determined by the location info.
So now I can really tell where I was when I was taking the pictures even though I didn't have a GPS unit strapped to my camera and the accuracy is certainly good enough to be able to tell if a picture was taken at Edfu or Kom-Ombo or Karnak. This is a good thing because after a while, the hieroglyphics start to all look the same to me.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
I Miss Ice
One of the things about travelling in Egypt is that you really can't trust the water. If it comes in a bottle then it is fine to drink but anything with water from the tap is a big risk of picking up some sort of water borne illness. The tour guides told us repeatedly about people on previous trips who brushed their teeth with the water from the tap in the hotel room and were incapacitated for days. Not being able to trust the water, though, means more than just drinking from the bottle instead of the tap. It means that you can't eat fresh vegetables that may have been washed using that same water unless they have been cooked. It also means no ice. Fortunately, the drinks are usually refrigerated but there is something unnerving about needing to make sure that drinks do not come with ice or that you avoid that piece of tomato on the falafel or pretty much the entire salad area at meal time.
While we're on the topic of food, I have to say that I have been pretty disappointed with the food in Egypt. The limits set on what you can eat based on the water problems was a big part of the issue and perhaps the places we stayed were another part but each meal was remarkably similar to every other meal. It got to the point that when we arrived at St. Catherine and got to our dinner buffet, David and I were able to accurately guess every single one of the 6 covered dishes without first peeking. Beef, Chicken, Fish, Rice, Potatoes, Pasta. By the time we got to Sharm El Sheikh we were seriously jonesing for a pizza or anything different from what we had been having so we went looking and found a felafel restaurant.
After a couple of weeks of being extra cautious I was feeling pretty safe. We ordered lots of felafel at the restaurant in Sharm El Sheikh but the without any vegetables they were pretty dry so I added a tomato slice and a few bits of onion to one of them. David gave me a "are you really sure you want to do that?" look but I thought "feh - it's just one slice and some of the other folks are doing it so it should be safe." It certainly tasted better.
Now you probably know I wouldn't be writing about this if everything was just fine and dandy. Around 3 am I woke up with that uh-oh feeling. Sure enough, a few minutes later I was on my knees in the bathroom dealing with my own attack of the killer tomatoes. The good news was that shortly afterwards I felt much better and that was the extent of my incapacitation. Three hours later I was up and out on the beach shooting the sunrise over the Red Sea. Another lesson learned in Egypt though I'm glad it waited until the very end.
Now we're getting ready to fly home and I am surprisingly excited to get to Amsterdam and have some ice in my drink and maybe have a salad.
While we're on the topic of food, I have to say that I have been pretty disappointed with the food in Egypt. The limits set on what you can eat based on the water problems was a big part of the issue and perhaps the places we stayed were another part but each meal was remarkably similar to every other meal. It got to the point that when we arrived at St. Catherine and got to our dinner buffet, David and I were able to accurately guess every single one of the 6 covered dishes without first peeking. Beef, Chicken, Fish, Rice, Potatoes, Pasta. By the time we got to Sharm El Sheikh we were seriously jonesing for a pizza or anything different from what we had been having so we went looking and found a felafel restaurant.
After a couple of weeks of being extra cautious I was feeling pretty safe. We ordered lots of felafel at the restaurant in Sharm El Sheikh but the without any vegetables they were pretty dry so I added a tomato slice and a few bits of onion to one of them. David gave me a "are you really sure you want to do that?" look but I thought "feh - it's just one slice and some of the other folks are doing it so it should be safe." It certainly tasted better.
Now you probably know I wouldn't be writing about this if everything was just fine and dandy. Around 3 am I woke up with that uh-oh feeling. Sure enough, a few minutes later I was on my knees in the bathroom dealing with my own attack of the killer tomatoes. The good news was that shortly afterwards I felt much better and that was the extent of my incapacitation. Three hours later I was up and out on the beach shooting the sunrise over the Red Sea. Another lesson learned in Egypt though I'm glad it waited until the very end.
Now we're getting ready to fly home and I am surprisingly excited to get to Amsterdam and have some ice in my drink and maybe have a salad.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Oh Look! More Hieroglyphics!
We've been visiting lots of temples since we left Cairo. Philae, Kom-Ombo, Edfu, Karnak, Luxor and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Each of these are covered in hieroglyphics telling stories and proclaiming the greatness of Egypt and its rulers. At first, these are amazing things to see. They have been there for thousands of years and in many cases are spectacularly sharp as if they were just cut today. Some of the temples still have original paint on them and you can just start to get a sense of how awesome the original temples must have been. After a couple of days of seeing so many sites rich in these hieroglyphics you can become numb to them. Just like when we were toodling around Germany after Photokina a couple of years ago and the numerous castles dotting the countryside first made us stop each time we saw one and later we would zip past them with a brief "Oh look - another castle... Yup."
Many of the temples create some unique challenges for photography. The sun and shadows intermingle on walls, pillars and the floors creating very compelling scenes but there is so much dynamic range that it is nearly impossible to capture what you see. If you expose for the sunlit parts, then the shadows will be too dark and you won't see any detail in there. If you expose for the shadows, then the sunlit areas will be blown out and again you lose the details. Shooting raw helps because at least you can play around with some of the exposure settings when processing the image but often it is not enough. We've been playing around with high dynamic range images where you take anywhere between 2 and 7 pictures at different exposures and they merge them together to create single image that can selectively render the detail in different parts of the image. The result can be pretty flat but with some work in Photoshop you can start to get pretty good results. I'm still working on a bunch of those shots.
Again it is Bob and Pat who made the temples and their inscriptions come alive. I am typically running from place to place trying to get a unique view on the ruins but when I see them standing by some wall full of writing I usually stop just to listen to his storied of the events that unfolded nearby or how the priests or pharoahs or just about anyone else lived. Bob is himself a bundle of energy -- rushing from spot to spot saying things like "Oh! This is interesting..." or "There's a really great shot over here - this is the only place you'll see this..." It's really too bad that I can't keep all of the annotations of what Bob and Pat shared with us during the tour.
One interesting tidbit. When later civilizations came upon the temples, they would often co-opt them for their own use. The early Christians (the Copts) would often chisel out the faces of the Egyptian gods and pharoahs and add their own coptic crosses on the temples. It is from this practice that the word "defacing" is derived.
Hieroglypics from the Temple of Edfu
An obelisk at Karnac meets the lens baby
Hieroglyphs at Philae
A coptic cross at the Temple of Philae
Many of the temples create some unique challenges for photography. The sun and shadows intermingle on walls, pillars and the floors creating very compelling scenes but there is so much dynamic range that it is nearly impossible to capture what you see. If you expose for the sunlit parts, then the shadows will be too dark and you won't see any detail in there. If you expose for the shadows, then the sunlit areas will be blown out and again you lose the details. Shooting raw helps because at least you can play around with some of the exposure settings when processing the image but often it is not enough. We've been playing around with high dynamic range images where you take anywhere between 2 and 7 pictures at different exposures and they merge them together to create single image that can selectively render the detail in different parts of the image. The result can be pretty flat but with some work in Photoshop you can start to get pretty good results. I'm still working on a bunch of those shots.
Again it is Bob and Pat who made the temples and their inscriptions come alive. I am typically running from place to place trying to get a unique view on the ruins but when I see them standing by some wall full of writing I usually stop just to listen to his storied of the events that unfolded nearby or how the priests or pharoahs or just about anyone else lived. Bob is himself a bundle of energy -- rushing from spot to spot saying things like "Oh! This is interesting..." or "There's a really great shot over here - this is the only place you'll see this..." It's really too bad that I can't keep all of the annotations of what Bob and Pat shared with us during the tour.
One interesting tidbit. When later civilizations came upon the temples, they would often co-opt them for their own use. The early Christians (the Copts) would often chisel out the faces of the Egyptian gods and pharoahs and add their own coptic crosses on the temples. It is from this practice that the word "defacing" is derived.
Hieroglypics from the Temple of Edfu
An obelisk at Karnac meets the lens baby
Hieroglyphs at Philae
A coptic cross at the Temple of Philae
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Flying High Again
My first hot air balloon ride was remarkable not as much because of the views of downtown Albuquerque but because it was in the midst of hundreds of other balloons dotting the skies with striking colors. Today David and I got to take another flight which was remarkable because it took place along the Nile near Luxor.
We left the boat we are taking down the Nile around 6:00 am and took a ferry across the river and were then driven to the balloon launch site. Like the launch in Albuquerque, we were the second flight of the day and we arrived to find a gondola full of other tourists just back from their hop. We switched out groups a few people at a time to keep the weight in the balloon pretty consistent (lest it float away) and after a quick lesson in assuming the landing position we were away!
We flew over the small villages and past the Ramesseum and the Collosi of Memnon chasing our shadow across the sugar cane fields. It was a bit hazy in the morning so the pictures were not great but it was a really great way to see a different perspective on the ancient ruins.
As we came in to land in a field, the gondola bounced a couple of times and came to rest right against a sugar cane field. We had to wait for the ground crew to come and literally pull us back across a very muddy field (they were up the their knees in gooey muck as they dragged us) so that we could get out and they could deflate the balloon. We hiked a bit to the van and were soon on our way back across the Nile and to the next temple.
The Ramesseum from above
Flying past the Collosi of Memnon
Gliding across the sugar cane fields
This guy was just standing there as we landed. Seriously... he was just standing there.
We left the boat we are taking down the Nile around 6:00 am and took a ferry across the river and were then driven to the balloon launch site. Like the launch in Albuquerque, we were the second flight of the day and we arrived to find a gondola full of other tourists just back from their hop. We switched out groups a few people at a time to keep the weight in the balloon pretty consistent (lest it float away) and after a quick lesson in assuming the landing position we were away!
We flew over the small villages and past the Ramesseum and the Collosi of Memnon chasing our shadow across the sugar cane fields. It was a bit hazy in the morning so the pictures were not great but it was a really great way to see a different perspective on the ancient ruins.
As we came in to land in a field, the gondola bounced a couple of times and came to rest right against a sugar cane field. We had to wait for the ground crew to come and literally pull us back across a very muddy field (they were up the their knees in gooey muck as they dragged us) so that we could get out and they could deflate the balloon. We hiked a bit to the van and were soon on our way back across the Nile and to the next temple.
The Ramesseum from above
Flying past the Collosi of Memnon
Gliding across the sugar cane fields
This guy was just standing there as we landed. Seriously... he was just standing there.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Hello Bakh Shish?
We arrived at a picturesque village near the Valley of the Kings near Luxor ostensibly to be taken to an alibaster factory and get some pictures of local life. Soon after we arrived, a large part of the tour went in to the factory/gift shop while the rest of the group broke into smaller clusters of 4 or 5 to go shoot the village. The light was good and the village was amazing. The buildings were either exposed mud and straw brick shacks or larger buildings painted yellow, beige or blue and the occasional accent window was a bright blue, green, red or some combination thereof. Colorful laundry was hung out between some of the houses adding yet more contrast to the surrounding desert and rocky hills.
As we started up one of the hills in the village, a couple of children came up to us saying "Hello bakh shish? Hello bakh shish?" Bakh shish is the word for tip and they were asking for a bit of money or whatever we had. I started with my standard "No thanks" and kept shooting but soon that crowd of children grew to 10 and then 15 -- swarming around our group like the flocks of little seagulls in Finding Nemo and going from person to person with increasingly urgent calls of "Hello bakh shish?" "Mine? Mine?" Eventually, someone in one of the groups would give in and give a kid something. Someone brought some balloons and started handing them out. A couple of people had colorful pencils for situations like this but these gifts only served as chum in the water as the seagulls turned into sharks at the first sight of bakh shish. They would surround anyone who had anything to give and grow more and more plentiful yelling "Hello bakh shish!!" until that person's supply was exhausted or they had been eaten. I didn't see anyone actually eaten but I'm pretty sure it happened at least once.
I tried the bakh shish giving just once. There were two kids standing next to me and I gave each of them a shiny penny. Suddenly there was a third and I gave her one too. Then a fourth out of nowhere. Running low on pennies, I needed a way out. Some of us came up with clever ruses to get away from the swarms. One particularly popular one was to point at other people in other groups and say "bakh shish! They have bakh shish!" and the swarm would run towards that person or at least be confused enough looking for them that you could make your escape. One of my favorites was to talk to them in nonsensical responses to their questions.
Bakh shisher: "Hello bakh shish?"
Me: "No, my name isn't bakh shish"
Bakh shisher: "One dollar?"
Me: "You are not a cat"
Bakh shisher: "One dollar?"
Me: "For me? OK - I'll take a dollar"
Bakh shisher: "Hello bakh shish?"
Me: "Nope, go fish. Do you have any threes?"
We kept wandering around the village shooting pictures of the buildings, people and swarms for about 45 minutes before we headed back to the bus. When we got there, the machine gun toting security folks who follow us around had shown up and the children went running back home. A few who tried to corner someone returning to the bus were sent running by the security folks yelling something at them.
Bakh Shishers attack!
As we started up one of the hills in the village, a couple of children came up to us saying "Hello bakh shish? Hello bakh shish?" Bakh shish is the word for tip and they were asking for a bit of money or whatever we had. I started with my standard "No thanks" and kept shooting but soon that crowd of children grew to 10 and then 15 -- swarming around our group like the flocks of little seagulls in Finding Nemo and going from person to person with increasingly urgent calls of "Hello bakh shish?" "Mine? Mine?" Eventually, someone in one of the groups would give in and give a kid something. Someone brought some balloons and started handing them out. A couple of people had colorful pencils for situations like this but these gifts only served as chum in the water as the seagulls turned into sharks at the first sight of bakh shish. They would surround anyone who had anything to give and grow more and more plentiful yelling "Hello bakh shish!!" until that person's supply was exhausted or they had been eaten. I didn't see anyone actually eaten but I'm pretty sure it happened at least once.
I tried the bakh shish giving just once. There were two kids standing next to me and I gave each of them a shiny penny. Suddenly there was a third and I gave her one too. Then a fourth out of nowhere. Running low on pennies, I needed a way out. Some of us came up with clever ruses to get away from the swarms. One particularly popular one was to point at other people in other groups and say "bakh shish! They have bakh shish!" and the swarm would run towards that person or at least be confused enough looking for them that you could make your escape. One of my favorites was to talk to them in nonsensical responses to their questions.
Bakh shisher: "Hello bakh shish?"
Me: "No, my name isn't bakh shish"
Bakh shisher: "One dollar?"
Me: "You are not a cat"
Bakh shisher: "One dollar?"
Me: "For me? OK - I'll take a dollar"
Bakh shisher: "Hello bakh shish?"
Me: "Nope, go fish. Do you have any threes?"
We kept wandering around the village shooting pictures of the buildings, people and swarms for about 45 minutes before we headed back to the bus. When we got there, the machine gun toting security folks who follow us around had shown up and the children went running back home. A few who tried to corner someone returning to the bus were sent running by the security folks yelling something at them.
Bakh Shishers attack!
Friday, January 27, 2006
Camel Shopping
Yesterday, the whole group headed back to the pyramids and the Sphinx on the Giza plateau. It was our first full day of the tour and this was the first time we would have a chance to shoot with the mentors and get the ancient Egyption lowdown from Bob. We had taken a bunch of shots there on Wednesday so we were looking for something different today and it largely came in taking pictures of OTHER people being taken for a ride. Heh heh. Certainly a cost savings for us and we knew this time how to say "No thanks". Let's just not talk about how much less they paid for their rides than we did.
Bob was fantastic, giving lots of information about the site including, among other things, the latest theories on how the pyramids were built (perhaps a ramp on the inside? Studies are upcoming though I still have my money on alien technology), where they fell in the history of Egypt (very early) and what actually happened to the Sphinx's nose (wind erosion - not Napoleon's army taking target practice). It was like having a backstage pass to the one remaining ancient wonder of the world.
Today we had a full day scheduled. While IM'ing with Leslie this morning, I told her we were headed to the Camel market and asked if she needed me to pick anything up. "Yes, two camels. A blond one and a crunchy one." Okie dokie.
We left at 6 am and arrived at the camel market outside Cairo just as the sun started rising. If you've never been to a camel market (and unless you were there with me today, I doubt anyone reading this has) I highly recommend it. Hundreds of camels hopping about. Hopping because they bind the front left leg to keep them from being able to run very fast and get away. Lots of locals trying to keep the herds in order and together. And today - about 70 photographers running hither and yon trying to get the perfect shot while avoided being trampled by camels. I'm not sure which was more interesting - the camels or the people. It was our first opportunity to see a real slice of life. Not a crowd of people dedicated to extracting every last piastre from us but people engaged in their daily work...
Auctioning camels.
Not long after we arrived, the auctions began. Camels were huddled together and the auctioneer would be yelling out bids and offers in Arabic, while others would circle the camels with big sticks, whacking them from time to time if they started to get out of order. I busied myself taking pictures of the frenzied activity while trying to avoid accidentally buying a camel or two. I'll say this: they are very cool animals but I have no extra room in my luggage and they are way too big to share my seat on the way home. In case you're wondering, they go for about $1,000 and up with the top of the line racing camels selling for upwards of half a million US dollars though I didn't see any of those today. Nor did I see any crunchy ones.
After the market, we went to the Egyption Museum and saw many of the items I had been reading about in preparation for this trip including the Narmer Palette and a replica of the Rosetta Stone but the big hits were the mummies and the relics found in King Tutankhamon's tomb. I've seen books about the treasures of King Tut but seeing them in person is much more impressive. The incredibly ornate jewelry, masks and coffins were amazing. Even more interesting were the actual photos of how everything was just stacked together in the small tomb. If they put this much stuff in this little nothing of a king's tomb I can only imagine how amazing the tombs of Ramses or Khufu must have been.
I'll post a few pictures but they are pretty much all from the camel market since we could not bring cameras into the museum. Tomorrow morning, we are headed for Aswan to begin our cruise down the Nile. No idea if we'll have internet connections there but next time I find one, I'll post more.
We arrived just as the sun was rising.
The camels were having their breakfast.
Yum!
The handler is getting ready to bind this camel's leg
Dancing camel
The auctioneer
Bob was fantastic, giving lots of information about the site including, among other things, the latest theories on how the pyramids were built (perhaps a ramp on the inside? Studies are upcoming though I still have my money on alien technology), where they fell in the history of Egypt (very early) and what actually happened to the Sphinx's nose (wind erosion - not Napoleon's army taking target practice). It was like having a backstage pass to the one remaining ancient wonder of the world.
Today we had a full day scheduled. While IM'ing with Leslie this morning, I told her we were headed to the Camel market and asked if she needed me to pick anything up. "Yes, two camels. A blond one and a crunchy one." Okie dokie.
We left at 6 am and arrived at the camel market outside Cairo just as the sun started rising. If you've never been to a camel market (and unless you were there with me today, I doubt anyone reading this has) I highly recommend it. Hundreds of camels hopping about. Hopping because they bind the front left leg to keep them from being able to run very fast and get away. Lots of locals trying to keep the herds in order and together. And today - about 70 photographers running hither and yon trying to get the perfect shot while avoided being trampled by camels. I'm not sure which was more interesting - the camels or the people. It was our first opportunity to see a real slice of life. Not a crowd of people dedicated to extracting every last piastre from us but people engaged in their daily work...
Auctioning camels.
Not long after we arrived, the auctions began. Camels were huddled together and the auctioneer would be yelling out bids and offers in Arabic, while others would circle the camels with big sticks, whacking them from time to time if they started to get out of order. I busied myself taking pictures of the frenzied activity while trying to avoid accidentally buying a camel or two. I'll say this: they are very cool animals but I have no extra room in my luggage and they are way too big to share my seat on the way home. In case you're wondering, they go for about $1,000 and up with the top of the line racing camels selling for upwards of half a million US dollars though I didn't see any of those today. Nor did I see any crunchy ones.
After the market, we went to the Egyption Museum and saw many of the items I had been reading about in preparation for this trip including the Narmer Palette and a replica of the Rosetta Stone but the big hits were the mummies and the relics found in King Tutankhamon's tomb. I've seen books about the treasures of King Tut but seeing them in person is much more impressive. The incredibly ornate jewelry, masks and coffins were amazing. Even more interesting were the actual photos of how everything was just stacked together in the small tomb. If they put this much stuff in this little nothing of a king's tomb I can only imagine how amazing the tombs of Ramses or Khufu must have been.
I'll post a few pictures but they are pretty much all from the camel market since we could not bring cameras into the museum. Tomorrow morning, we are headed for Aswan to begin our cruise down the Nile. No idea if we'll have internet connections there but next time I find one, I'll post more.
We arrived just as the sun was rising.
The camels were having their breakfast.
Yum!
The handler is getting ready to bind this camel's leg
Dancing camel
The auctioneer
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Another day at the pyramids
It's been a really busy day back at the pyramids. I don't have time to write much since we have a really early day tomorrow and I need to get some sleep but here are a few more pictures to tide you over :)
It is camel day
This guy almost stepped on me several times
Oh... hello...
Camel love :)
Resting
It is camel day
This guy almost stepped on me several times
Oh... hello...
Camel love :)
Resting
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Greetings from Egypt
The Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Cheops
While the rest of the tour group shows up this afternoon, Josh, David and I took advantage of our late night arrival to get a head start. We found a cab driver that would take us on a 3 hour tour of the Pyramids and Giza plateau for only 130 Egyptian Pounds (about 22 bucks...). His name was Ashraf and he did a great job of getting us to the sites and giving us good advice - some of which we apparently forgot at one point.
First he took us up to a spot to get a panoramic photo of the three big pyramids. His best advice of the day was when someone comes up to us trying to give us something or sell us something, just say "No Thanks" and keep going. We got a number of good shots from the panorama site and then headed down towards the pyramids where we walked around some more snapping happily.
As we came around a corner, we saw a guy on a camel. He asked us if we wanted to take a picture of it and we said "No thanks" (cuz we already had) but then he showed us another camel named Rambo. OK, actually it's name appeared to be Rabmo according to the embroidery on his...um...coat... but maybe he figured Rambo would get 3 Americans more interested. At this point, we made the mistake of not saying No Thanks and moving on. It was all a bit of a blur, but suddenly we were all sitting on top of camels wearing sheets on our head and the camel guys were taking pictures of us with our cameras. These guys are good. While they tried to get us to go for a 10 minute ride but we finally got our "No Thank You's" working and we were let down, separated, and asked to make them happy. Apparently, $20 wasn't enough since they wanted something closer to $100 each. I tried to get Josh and David together so we could do some collective bargaining. David had paid $40 so Josh and I ended up doing the same figuring that $5 was about right for the photos and $35 was an appropriate price to pay for the lesson of remembering to say no thanks.
We moved on and were much better at keeping the pushy sales folk at bay. While walking past the Great Pyramid of Cheops, someone approached me and asked where I was from. "France", I said, and spent the next couple of minutes trying to get past him speaking both French and English with a French accent. He kept offering me a cadeau but I declined. He stuck it in my hand and I kept trying to hand it back to him but he kept saying it was a cadeau. I kept walking and each time he spoke to me, I offered him back the gift "Non, Merci". No mercy was right. He kept going. Once he realized that I wasn't going to bite on any of his other offers, he asked for a little something for the cadeau. I handed it back to him and moved on. Phew!
We headed down the the Sphinx where we took a bunch more pictures and whenever we were offered more rides on camels, Josh was quick to respond "No thanks, we've already been taken for a ride today."
The actual tour group meets in an hour or so and tomorrow we will be heading right back to the same place to take more pictures but this time, I'm going to get pictures of other folks getting taken for a ride.
Wrong way David... ;)
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