Egypt, Day 4

Next morning we got on our coach again and headed through the heavy traffic (and a lot more car horn honking) towards the old town. These are pocket camera snaps from inside the coach again.





Would have loved to have some time to wonder around in the old town, but alas, we were on a tight schedule. (The joys of package tour travelling...)








We visited the most famous Coptic church in old Cairo, The Hanging Church (El Muallaqa).







From there we walked to Ben Ezra Synagogue (where photography was not allowed, so this is just a side street I happened to have a glimpse of when following the past-paced guide).



Another candid from the coach.



This photo gave me a chuckle when I had a closer look afterwards and saw that the driver had been playing sudoku; and not on any old ready-made sudoku grid, either, but a hand-written one!



Then we headed back to Taba and the Red Sea. This time I was awake when we went through the tunnel under the Suez Canal!



Coming out of the tunnel. (On the way to Cairo Miles got a great photo of a ship sailing in the canal, looking like it was sailing in the sand in a middle of a desert. But I didn't get as lucky with the timing.)









This is one of the many check points along the journey. I came across these check points first when I was in Egypt about 15 years ago and was travelling between Cairo and Aswan. Well, I guess it's good that they keep an eye on who is travelling on their roads. Not that they have managed to avoid tourist killings that way...



While they were checking whatever they were checking, I noticed that this check point was a lot more interesting than others:





After the huge expand of flat(ish) desert, we drove across the hilly part to get to the coast.





...and enjoyed the evening light show from our balcony.

Egypt, Day 3

I've been asked to show what Egypt is like, so I'm going to include some pocket camera snap shots in this post. The following photos were happy-snapped through the window of our coach on the way to Cairo. (Whenever I wasn't asleep, that is.)

Two day trip to Cairo

Set off: 4 AM. Ugh. Oh well, it's all worth it. The journey is going to take us about six hours.

So we are driving from the blue dot (Taba) on this map to the green dot (Cairo) across the Sinai desert peninsula. Click on the map to make it bigger.



And this is what it looked like just after sunrise.









Just after we had gone through the tunnel under Suez Canal, we stopped for a few minutes to stretch our legs.



Approaching Cairo and its mad traffic.











Did you know that Egypt is the fifth largest garlic producer in the world? And that they have been munching on the divine onion at least since the time the pyramids were being built?



Here we are about to arrive at the Pyramids of Giza, in the outskirts of Cairo.



...and I take my SLR out.

It's the usual story: lots of tourists and camel ride sellers...



This guy just wouldn't leave me alone unless I took his photo.



But it didn't take long for the tourist police to come and chase him away. It's the first time I've seen a police use a whip as a weapon of choice. Well, OK - it's the first time I've seen a police riding a camel, too.



The obligatory shots...







Wasn't quite sure whether it was OK to take this guy's photo. But didn't want to ask him, either. The weapon looked well used.



Some street candids, taken from inside our coach with my 100-400mm lens.







We arrived at our hotel by the river Nile just at the time of sunset.



View from our hotel room balcony.



Wish I could add sound to these photos; imagine a constant cacophony of car horns honking. I liked the sound of it - it was kind of mad and exotic, but at the same time I was quite thankful for the sound proof French windows in the room.

Egypt, Day 2

So, it's the first day in our resort in daylight. Obviously we have to go and see what the beach looks like.



Hmm, not so keen on lying on the beach all day... Much more interested in other things, like this cunningly disguised radio transmitter.



Here's a little confusing image for my (straight) male readers, but see if you can work it out. Can you see a camel in this picture?



We were walking along the 1,5 mile beach of the holiday resort Taba Heights, shared by the five different hotels along it.



We see lovely lounging chairs and parasols, people wading and snorkelling in the water here and there... And suddenly we come across this sign:



Did you miss that? It was:



Huh? Well, we decided to walk on and check out another "sea entrance" further along the beach: the long jetty.







Once we got to the end of the beach, we continued walking up the hill.



...but couldn't go to far as we didn't have drinking water with us. So, just had a look at the view...





...and turned back.

Back at sea level... A local dove (exact species not identified by me yet)



Yellow wagtail.



Late lunch and a drink at a strange HDR'ed place in the "village" of Taba Heights.



And back to the hotel via the beach camel. If you are going to read all the posts from our Egyptian trip, prepare yourself for a lot of camel photos. I can't help it; I've always loved camels.



Most evenings we sat on the balcony watching the changing light take the colours of the sea, sky and the mountains through a fascinating show of different tones and colour combinations. And here is a ridiculously long panorama (of 15 frames) from our balcony, mainly to demonstrate Photoshop CS3's fabulous stitching capabilities! All you need to do is stack your photos one on top of the other (all photos in one file, each photo in its own layer), hit Edit -> Auto Align Layers, and after that, hit Edit -> Auto Blend Layers, and as if by magic, you have a perfect panorama without ANY visible seams. (Provided that you have done the right thing and used same manual settings - aperture, SS and focus - for all the photos and used long enough focal length to avoid barrel distortion). All you have to do is crop and adjust levels, if necessary, and that's it. It's truly an amazing tool. Click on the photo to see bigger version of it.