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Red Sea Coast And Other Stories
We wander around the unfamiliar territory of a resort hotel like two kids on their first day at a new school, not knowing what we’re meant to do or how the whole thing works. When researching where to stay round here, we’d had to Google the term “animation team”, as it meant nothing to us. It’s one of the things on our learning curve now. The barman speaks to us in German and is amazed when we say we’re English. He’s delighted, too, whispering that he’s a bit fed up with bad manners and it’ll be nice to have some “polite English” to serve for a change – make of…
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Egypt So Far: The Not-So-Good Bits
Three weeks into this North Africa adventure and we guess that in a way we’ve hit the pause button. Followers will know that we are now in the previously uncharted ground of a resort hotel, out here on the Red Sea coast, kind of into international tourist territory and outside of authentic Egypt. This is most unlike us, we never thought we’d be taking the resort hotel option, not in a million years. Apart from the practicalities – it was indeed hard to find a viable alternative – it’s fair to say that there have been other influences on this decision which mean that taking a break from Egypt isn’t…
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Aswan Days
Sunrise in Aswan is fuzzy. The sand drifting across the Sahara and around the Nile Valley turns everything into an ochre tinted blur into which anything in the distance shimmers in and out of view. And at the end of the day, the sunset hints at beauty, but then turns a strangely pale yellow as if its paints have been thinned with water. In between the two, that ochre tinge to the day rarely departs. We had some pre-conceived ideas about Aswan which have proved to be completely inaccurate. Far from finding an increase on the rustic scale, Aswan has a river frontage sporting a number of hotels, a thoughtfully…
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Further South: Luxor To Aswan
Luxor is definitely quieter as Saturday morning dawns and heralds the start of the sacred month of Ramadan. We’ve been told several times that the first day of Ramadan is a time for families, as first they fast together, and then later celebrate the passing of the first day with a convivial family meal as soon as the sunset call to prayer sounds. True to form, in the last few moments before sundown, the previously bustling streets of Luxor are akin to those of a ghost town: no tuk-tuks, no taxis, no horses, litter blowing down the market street which yesterday was rammed with people. Then, two hours or so…
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Concluding Cairo: Time To Move On
Having visited parts of North Africa and the Middle East before, we know how common it is to see people spend a whole evening at an outdoor cafe table and only buy one mint tea all night, but here in Cairo there is another custom which has taken us by surprise: bringing your own food. Friends or families will occupy a cafe table all evening, order minimal coffee, tea or even just water, while tucking in to a bagful of food they’ve brought in from the bakers or from a takeaway, or even had delivered by courier to their table. How do these coffee houses make any money!? And as…
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First Days In Cairo
It’s somehow passed us by that BA are no longer providing meals on short haul flights, and it seems a 5-hour flight is classified as short haul. So there’s nothing, and by the time we make Cairo we are living up to our hungry travellers moniker. Cairo isn’t a traffic jam, it’s a complete gridlock, a gridlock of drivers who possess neither patience nor any lane sense and it takes well over an hour to inch and nudge our way from airport to downtown apartment. Dusk arrives on the way, and the air fills with the echoing and haunting call to prayer from the multitude of mosques around the city,…
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Farewell To Cornwall: Next Stop Cairo
As ever, we have loved this visit to Cornwall. Spring seems to have dawned before our eyes, colours have intensified, and Padstow, the estuary, the coast path…have all been as wonderful as ever. We always feel so at home here. We conclude our time here by climbing to the top of Brea Hill, the highest point in the area and consequently one of the best places from which to view the estuary. As we climb, we are again at low tide, vast reaches of golden sand either side of the river’s narrow channel where in just a few short hours water will stretch right across the divide. Windshields and windows…
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Hungry for more……
It’s nearly three weeks now since we returned from our Costa Rica and California trip, three weeks in which we’ve visited family, spent time with Michaela’s Mum, hugged granddaughters and taken in a couple of football matches. In other words, three weeks in which we’ve covered most of our reasons to be in England and so now we’ve started to once again get itchy about travel. It goes without saying, now anyway, that the two years since we retired to travel the world haven’t quite gone according to plan, but we think we can look back and say we’ve been pretty resourceful and, in fact, the travels we have managed…
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Karolina’s Coincidence
When we first met Karolina, she was upside down. Looking out across the spectacular desert scenery of Jordan as the sunset swathed the rock formations in ochre shades, but upside down nonetheless. But then yoga people do seem to spend large parts of their day in positions which are fairly alien to the rest of us. Karolina isn’t just a lover of yoga, she is an exponent of acroyoga, a somewhat more exotic and expansive yoga form – and, what’s more, she’s a big fan of yoga-ing in exotic locations around the world and posting beautiful photographs on her Instagram site @acro_yoga_engineer After a brief and slightly disconcerting chat with…
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Adventures & Adrenaline In La Fortuna
We’ve had some pretty amazing adrenaline adventures before – whitewater rafting, tombstone dives, even a bobsleigh run – and now La Fortuna goes into our history as a place where we have matched or even surpassed those thrills. Ever thought of coming down a mountain via zip wire? Nor had we, until the temptation was just too strong…. It’s on the Monday that whoever is in charge of La Fortuna weather throws a few switches and changes a few dials. Heavy cloud cover replaces bright sunshine, regular bouts of torrential rain flood the soakaways and send everyone running for shelter, and the imposing Arenal volcano disappears from view completely. The…
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