Spring 2012 - Our Journey Through Egypt
 

After summer in Germany and a few weeks back in the USA, we began to plan the next journey. We envisioned a visit to Egypt to savor the mild winter and then follow the spring to Jordan and on to Turkey. We planned to leave in early December.

At the end of November, Egypt's parliamentary elections began and soon there were more protesters filling Tahrir Square. Demonstrations grew and people were killed and injured. We decided to wait until after the elections were finished in early January and then reconsider this journey.

But where to go instead? Spain was a logical choice. The mild sunny Spanish winter would offer a welcoming alternative, we'd celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve, our 26th anniversary, there and then reconsider Egypt.
Click here to read about our time in Spain (opens in a new window).

By early January, 2012, news from Egypt indicated things were now quiet, the US State Department had no new warnings, and reviewers of hostels in Cairo wrote that they felt safe and were enjoying the smaller tourist crowds. We decided to go.

We quickly made plans to fly from Spain to Cairo for our introduction to this new and different place. We spent three days exploring this a chaotic, bustling, congested, exotic, dusty, polluted, noisy, but friendly and safe megacity. Then we traveled by overnight Sleeper Train south to Aswan.

The next morning, we were in another world - green fields of sugar cane and other crops, palm trees and small villages, the blue Nile not far away, with the brown sandstone desert in the distance, where the water had not reached.

In Aswan, we began to adjust to being in a developing country after living for so long in highly developed ones. We admit it was more difficult than we had anticipated.

Over the next month, we: