Spain 2007
Voyage is nearing an end, and if I could click my heels and get back to Kansas, I would do it in a heartbeat. Crossing the Atlantic on this rolling ship ain’t gonna be fun.
Cadiz and Barcelona were great cities to round out a very busy and exciting adventure. We arrived early as usual on the morning of Nov. 23rd, and I headed directly to the bus station to buy two tickets for Sevilla where Patty Wattenmaker and I flew to Barcelona from. My Spanish turned into Italian in various places, but we finally managed to arrive in downtown Sevilla, and after circling the city square, caught the airport bus.
Barcelona by night (and Christmas lights as a bonus) found us in Catalunya Pl. trying to find the Eurostar Gaudi hotel…convenient to the Sagrada Familia, but not to the center of the city. Took some photos at night and couldn’t sleep wondering what this famous church would look like in the daytime. And there it appeared next morning, its spires visible from our hotel balcony!
Work on Sagrada Familia began in 1882, but Antoni Gaudi did not become the official architect until two years later. He stuck to the basic Gothic cathedral cross-shaped ground plan, but devised a temple 95m long and 60m wide that was able to seat 13,000 people. What I thought interesting about the church (one of a hundred things), was seeing a large church in the process of being built. I’ve seen many cathedrals in Europe, Middle East, Mexico, etc. built during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but never one that was being constructed before my very eyes.
The church is quite open to the elements at this stage, and the concrete forms, tools, etc. are lying on the floor waiting to be hauled up to the ceilings and towers. Everyone looks busy doing something to get the building finished by 2015. There are stained glass windows, sculptures depicting the nativity and crucifixion…angels, trumpets, vegetables on the towers, columns in the shape of trees, stairways in the shape of chambered nautiluses. George Orwell once described the church disdainfully as a gigantic mess, but fortunately other architects did not agree, and continued to design and build more of Gaudi’s dream.
I loved the organic feel of the building…it was obvious Gaudi was a very religious man, but he also loved, appreciated and studied the forms of nature to build this church. His talents are observable all over Barcelona…in apartment buildings, parks, houses and all have his imprint of wavy lines, beautiful wrought iron, whimsical chimneys, and beautiful furniture. On our last day we visited the Parc Guell in northwest Barcelona, and I felt like a small kid roaming through the snake benches (Banc de Trencadis), feeding the lizard fountain, and looking up at mosaics in every enclosed space. There is a Hansel and Gretel style gatehouse at the main entrance, a “Hipostila” room with a forest of 84 stone columns (some of them leaning), intended as a market. There is also a house now called the Casa Museu Gaudi where Gaudi lived for most of his last 20 years that contains furniture by him and other memorabilia. The man was undoubtedly a genius, but unfortunately was hit and killed by a tram in 1926.
The Picasso museum is in the Gothi district of the city where small alley ways, interesting shops, cafes, gelateria, churches abound. I found the museum interesting because it was a retrospective of Picasso’s work, but starting when he was a late teenager. The earlier sketches and paintings were representations of nature and folk in his village, but one could see the forms and colors beginning to take shape for his later abstract years. Very few images from the blue period and also very few from his older years.
I wandered the alleys, had another dose of calamari and white wine and ended up in the Ramblas or main promenade leading from Catalunya Pl to the harbor. It was a beautiful fall day, and families were out strolling and watching the busters along the way. Cafes were full to the brim and the shops were doing a hefty business. Made it down to the harbor and the Mare Magnum, a large nouveau shopping center built down near the thousands of yachts tied up for the winter. Starbucks and Ben & Jerrys are there.
I forgot to mention the football game the previous evening. Barcelona is 2nd it its league, and I was anxious to see how the fans reacted at all the plays, ref calls and goals. Nothing was disappointing. There were 98,000 fans in the stadium, blowing horns, yelling, (smoking, ugh!), eating hot dogs. It reminded me of a bullfight I once saw in Spain except there was no bull to get bloodied up and stabbed. Much saner and more fun.
Flew back to Sevilla and Cadiz on Monday, got some chores done on ship and next day headed out for a great day in Cadiz city. Friends had told me that there was nothing special about the city, but I found out otherwise. Anne Shine (friend from D.C.) and I started roaming at around 10 am and did not return to the ship until 8 pm. We had a very long lunch at a restaurant called El Faro…many fish tapas and lots of white wine. Cadiz may be the oldest city in Europe, perhaps founded around 1100 B.C. and called Gadir.It began to boom after Columbus’ trips to the Americas. He sailed from here on his second and fourth voyages. Cadiz’s golden age was the 18th century, when it enjoyed 75% of Spanish trade with the Americas. It grew into the richest and most cosmopolitan city in Spain and gave birth to Spain’s first progressive, liberal middle class. Lots more happened over the years to plunge the city into a decline from which it is still recovering.
There is building and renovation going on all over the city…scaffolds up, windows boarded, lots of interesting graffiti. We poked our heads into a few doorways to catch a glimpse of the tile work the Spanish are so famous for, some fountains and wrought iron gates. There are many public parks, some in front of beautiful churches, others surrounded by cafes. They provide some breathing space between the huddled streets of the old city. Walked out to the harbor and an old fort…the sky was clear blue and lots of men were fishing. It was the most pleasant of days to experience before boarding the M/V Explorer bound for Miami.
This has truly been the trip of a lifetime. I’ve met many fascinating people, enjoyed being with students from all over the U.S., and thought a great deal about ways in which people learn about new cultures. For deep immersion I still go with staying in any one place for months and even years so that every day life becomes a habit, language becomes easier to learn, shopping in the market becomes pleasurable because one can cook at home. However, visiting as many ports as we did gives one a good global perspective on economies, religions, history, etc., etc. ad infinitem…at least enough information to question whether the whole world needs to become one whole melting pot. Do we have to have dozens of Starbucks, Macdonalds, KFC, Dunkin Donuts in every city in the world? Does everyone have to speak English? Is the world getting flat enough for people to lose their cultural heritages? And what about the global environment? Can every country in the world band together to clean up the air and water for mother earth?
I return home with more questions than answers, and yet a better understanding of why everyone in the world can’t be part of one big happy family….too many self interests. I used to think that not remembering history makes people repeat all their mistakes and go to war. Now I know that we do remember history and simply ignore what we know to be true for reasons of self-interest.
I recommend Peter Maass’ Love Thy Neighbor; a story of war. There is a particularly good quotation from Rebecca West that reveals one of life’s truisms:
“I have been struck again and again by the refusal of destiny to
let man see what is happening to him, its mean delight in strewing
his path with red herrings.” ( From Black Lamb and Red Falcon, 1993)
The world continues going round and round in spite of the things we do to it and to ourselves. But aren’t we lucky to be a part of its history and development.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Croatia 2007
I can hardly believe this journey is nearing its end, but what a great way to close it out…Croatia. We docked early on Nov. 13th in the new harbor of Dubrovnik. It had been almost 40 yrs. since our boat, the Jadran, docked in the old port of this old city when we were able to walk immediately into the Placa and visit with the women who were knitting, sewing, crocheting in the main square. This visit we were about 2 kms away from the old part of town that meant walking for an hour or so before entering the Pile or main gate. Dubrovnik has turned into chi-chi, Versace knockoffs, and expensive jewels. But there are still great cafes, ice-cream shops, and small museums to keep a visitor busy for a few days.
In Global Studies class we were told that Dubrovnik was caught in the cross hairs of the civil war that ravaged former Yugoslavia, and pummeled with some 2000 shells in 1991 and 1992. The extent of the damage was severe, and I thought we would not see the beautiful old city I had seen in 1965. One of the first and most urgent problems was repairing the city’s tiled roofs in order to prevent water damage from rainfall. The rosy terracotta tiles that had topped all of Dubrovnik’s buildings were originally produced in a tile factory in Kupari, south of Dubrovnik that had long since closed. Agen, France provided for around 2000,000 tiles, then Slovenia, before finally settling on Bedekovcina in the Krapina River valley. Looking down from our hotel terrace one could tell where all the repairs had been made. Restoration work is still going on and there are scaffolds all over the town. However, the town is slowly regaining its charm and glory.
Weather was cold and rainy, but that made the cafes even cozier. Lots of calamari and white wine. I played rummy with some Croatian men who cheated. Found a small hotel, the Stari Grad, in mid-town that has only 8 rooms and we picked the top floor near the terrace. The views were marvelous…bell tower, cathedral dome, great wall, central placa. Dubrovnik is simply a wonderful town to hang out. (I even saw saints’ bones and pieces of the true cross in the reliquary of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin.)
Next day appeared a wonderful driver who took us south to Cavtat for a stroll, coffee, and vistas of the sea. It was our one sunny day on this trip, and we walked around the curving bay, and then hiked up to see the mausoleum of Viaho Bukovac, one of Croatia’s most renowned painters. Also visited the modern museum in Dubrovnik to see some of his work that reminded me a bit of Renoir’s soft colors and beautiful faces. Robert was anxious to tell us about how horribly the Serbians had treated the Croatians during the civil war. Houses were burned, cattle confiscated, people murdered…but that’s another whole story having different episodes depending on the teller.
We went up through Konavle, but the town only echoed the dances and costumes of the folks who dance there every weekend during the summer. Croatian skimps on vowels and it was nearly impossible to pronounce the names of the towns we passed through to get to Gruda for lunch. How can one pronounce names like Brdo, Skoj, Drvenik, and Ljuta! When we finally reached our destination up in the mountains, the scenery was amazing. A Roman aquaduct, grist mill, waterfalls, mossy wood, and autumn leaves. Lunch was trout caught in front of us by the master chef, cherry brandy, carpaccio, cheeses, freshly made country bread, and a spectacular white wine….all made locally and lovingly. Robert dropped us off at the old town later that afternoon, and my friend Audrey and I walked the Placa once again and had some gelato until rain forced us inside for a good night’s sleep.
Next morning we walked the town walls built between the 13th and 16th centuries and still intact today. From the ramparts there are glorious views of the Adriatic, and I took lots more photos of tiled roofs, bell tower, small gardens, cafes….charm oozes out of every alley way. There is a small museum of modern art that had a display of modern photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwin. I was the only visitor for about an hour and it was pretty amazing to be within inches of some of the prints I had seen only in photography books. Remember the image of the Great Dane with a Chihuahua within its front legs…crazy.
Audrey and I had dinner later in the evening and then attended a concert in a very small chapel near the Pile Gate. A little Bach, Chopin, Gounod and Paganini and we retired to the Stari Grad for a well earned rest.
The last day in Croatia took six of us in a van to Montenegro about an hour south of Dubrovnik. Border crossing was easy as Robert once again guided us to a walled city that must have had five thousand steps down to the harbor. It was Sunday and most of the town was strolling. A noisy wedding party sped past in a series of horn-honking cars. And then we were off farther south to an area that looked to me like the Norwegian fjords. The inlet rested with mountains dipping down into the bay, very calm water, small islands of monasteries, and one restaurant to die for. We spent the afternoon eating mussels, calamari, red snapper, and more. And then we went even farther south to a mountain town that seemed a mile high with castles, winding roads, and churches. I must come back in summer. I wanted very much to visit the islands of Mjlet and Korcula, but the ferries were few and far between, the weather windy, rainy and cold and the wineries closed. Seeing those islands has to be the next reason for wanting to return.
Croatia is extravagantly beautiful, and I can imagine its glamour during the summer months when the Adriatic literally sparkles, the sea is the color of precious gems, flowers are blossoming and cafes are packed with visitors gawking at each other wearing the latest mod stuff. It’s pretty hard to find traces of the bitter civil war here, but it is still uppermost in the minds of its inhabitants, and they find the time to talk openly about its horrors. There is a War Photos Limited museum managed by former photojournalist Wade Goddard. The photos on display concentrate on the subtleties of human violence rather than on its carnage, but one has a very good idea of the horrors by studying the faces of the war’s victims….ordinary citizens trying to escape the bombardments.
Snow is already falling in Split and Zagreb, and many of the buses cancelled their routes during our stay. Still the visit was filled with good and interesting days, pleasant (but not overly welcoming) Croatians. They seemed worn out from the long summer days catering to tourists from all over the world. We left port on Sunday Nov. 18th with good memories and one last port…Spain..to visit. I will be most ready for Miami in Dec.! And when I return to Prescott I will tell all about SAS that has never been included in these blogs. Stay tuned for the great mysteries.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Turkey 2007
This amazing journey is continuing, and just when I think there is nothing left to astound, I encounter the likes of Turkey. First off, let me say that I really had not a clue about the country’s strategic location. Look at a map and see Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria as eastern borders, and then travel lengthwise to the west and see the Mediterranean….Turkey becomes the middle man of the European/Asian continents. Wars and battles have been fought here for centuries, and on one trip we visited one modern (Gallipoli) and one ancient (Troy) strategic battle site.
But first a day in Istanbul. Took the tram into the old city ($1.30) and stopped at a small café for chicken kabobs…more than delicious. Then walked through winding alley-ways over to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia….popular tourist destinations in the city. The mosque is a city unto itself, no shoes allowed, beautiful Turkish carpets within, call to prayer, huge marble columns, smells of the centuries. Then over to Hagia Sophia that was once the great basilica of the Byzantine empire. It was strange to see a Romanesque church that has been reft of its altar, icons and mosaics and is now a stark Moslem mosque (a museum, really.) I took photos of some of the golden mosaics still remaining, but all in all the space seemed devoid of any spiritual significance. The architecture is of course overwhelming with its gigantic pillars of marble, stained glass windows, and vast areas of space, but nonetheless rather barren of religious feeling. There is a large set of scaffolds climbing up to the main dome, and I assume they are for repairing the central mosaics that have disintegrated over the centuries. Who can blame the grande dame for looking a bit forlorn after kings, popes, emperors, sultans, pashas, et al have been fighting for her and carrying on long sieges at times.
It started to rain and my friend Kathy and I headed for the Grand Bazaar, the most famous in the world. There are 4,000 shops within the confines of some very old arches and fountains and we made friends with about 2,000 of the shop keepers and were plumb worn out. The central corridor of the bazaar gleams with tons of gold featuring some of the large harem type necklaces, bracelets and rings. The side alleys are filled with rug dealers luring one in with questions like “Where are you from?” “What are you looking for?” “Are you looking for very good price?” The usual tourist items, key chains, shot glasses, inlaid boxes, pashminas are there for the bargaining. I, of course, searched for beads for my beloved beadmaker in Jackson Hole. Allah wakbar (sp.) could be heard everywhere, but no one in the market seemed to be praying…they tell me Turkey is a very secular country with church and state very clearly separated. I believe that.
Died and went to heaven in the spice market because we were invited to sample everything as we went along. I tried all kinds of pistachios, dried fruit, Turkish delight, coffee, tea, saffron, pepper (sneezed, of course), honey, bread (bought hot pretzels), and baklava. Walked through the open market past the vegetables (eggplant is in season bigtime), fish, fruit and didn’t see any meat.
We searched for the tram station to get back to the ship and found a kabob restaurant at the top of a very tall building, and settled in for a great meal, good wine and splendid view of Istanbul.
Bright and not so early we left by bus for Gallipoli, Troy, Bursa and Iznik and views of the agricultural hillsides and coastline. If you’ve seen the Mel Gibson version of the battles at Gallipoli, you know how vicious and insane the siege was during WWI. The Brits ordered the Aussies and Kiwis to land at a certain section of beach in Gallipoli that opened them wide open to the Turkish army. The first wave was killed. The second, third and so on made their way up the hills, dug trenches and fought the Turks for entrance to the Dardanelles for almost a year. Thousands of soldiers were killed and the Turks led by the famous Ataturk were ultimately victorious. There are a series of memorials to the fallen soldiers visited by the Australians and New Zealanders in April of every year, and a grand statue of Ataturk, founder of modern day Turkey at the top of the mountain.
We were very quiet and respectful at the graves.
Truva was our next stop and trip back to ancient Greek/Trojan fighting. (See, I told you there were many wars fought in Turkey.) I was told by my archaeologist friends that there was not much to see in the Trojan ruins, but I found the opposite to be true. I climbed the dumb, fake horse, walked in Schliemann’s trenches, stood on the hill looking down at the plain, turned and saw Mt. Ida, imagined myself Priam watching his city burn. It was simply grand. It had been a lifetime dream of mine to visit the setting for the Iliad, and remember how much damage Achilles caused with his out of control anger It’s not easy being the son of a deity!
On to Bursa, another medieval town, having a silk market that really contained silk. I spent part of the evening just going from shop to shop feeling fabrics, and it seemed to be ok with the shopkeepers. Visited the Green Mosque there, so called because the tiles were very specially made in Iznik that we visited next. Inzik craftsmen and artists are attempting to bring the town back to its former glory as a center of tile making during the 15th-16th centuries. The clay for the tiles is mixed with quartzite to create a beautiful texture and sheen to say nothing of the unusual paints used to make the designs. I can’t resist pottery and bought some.
Iznik is the modern name for Nicea, and I remember from my Roman Catholic history that the Council of Nicea was a very important dogma turning point for the growth of Christianity. However, I have not done my specific research for this blog, and I’ll have to wait myself to explore this statement in detail.
I’m back in Istanbul on the ship, up in the faculty lounge looking out at the harbor and the ferries plying back and forth from the European and Asian sides of the city. There are heavy clouds overhead, the air is quite cold, and off and on torrential downpours. I can see the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia watching over the harbor as patriarch and matriarch, and the water changes constantly from a Nile green to cobalt. I’m away from all the traffic and noise, but about to venture up the hill with friends to the Ritz Carlton for an afternoon tea. Wanted to get this blog off and running before we set sail for Croatia tonight because we’re getting to the end of term, and the library will have to be decommissioned (whatever that means) in the next few weeks. I’m not going to have much time on the ship to write. Still have some adventures to go….very much looking forward to a trip to Barcelona, and then to Miami on Dec. 7th. Forgive the edits that should have been made before I pressed the send button on this one; will try to do better next time.
Egypt 2007
Six days in Egypt have left me completely stunned, exhausted yet ironically exhilarated, and this blog is a meager attempt to describe what thousands have written so thoroughly about for centuries. Oct. 30th found SAS at the entrance to the Suez Canal, and at a lecture the previous day we were told that the ship would anchor with a convoy near Port Suez. We lined up at about 6 am and waited for about an hour to enter the canal along with a whole string of container ships. On the port side were many small villages and guards posted; on the starboard, the Sahara and occasionally the tanks/guns left from the six day war in 1967. Poor Egyptians got routed. Seeing land was a relief after spending eleven days at sea including an unnerving passage through the Gulf of Aden where we expected pirates to board….not such an unusual occurrence, I am told.
The Suez seemed a whole trip all by itself. Started in the 6th Century BCE, the canal claimed the lives of 120,000 workers before the project was abandoned after an oracle predicted that only Egypt’s foes would benefit from it. Those were the good old days when decision making was easier and folks believed in oracles. The Persian emperor, Darius, completed the first canal in the region linking the Red Sea and the Great Bitter Lake, and then later the Mediterranean. The rest is a rather long story beginning with a design by Ferdinand de Lesseps and ending with completed construction in 1988. The Suez crisis in 1956 and then the 1967 war disrupted traffic for awhile and the canal was closed to shipping until 1975. I remember it being a periodic conversation piece in the early seventies when I was living in Lebanon as ships had to go around Africa to get to the Mediterranean from the east. Israelis on one side and Egyptians on the other until Israel withdrew from the Sinai. The port of Alexandria was a sight to behold when we finally finished our passage.
We left the ship at around 10:30 Oct. 31st morning (after an entire day of sea Olympics that was a hoot) and headed for the Pyramids Pre-port lecture had us convinced that since Egypt is a Muslim country we should dress modestly, i.e., no slacks…wrong. I had on a long skirt, shirt and jacket and it was hotter than hell. First notice was a camel ride, and didn’t I look fetching climbing over the hump and trying to get comfortable when my young camel erupted without warning. Arms flailed as I had no way to hold on or balance myself…miraculously I held on with my legs, and made everyone laugh. The scene at the Pyramids is very commercial, and as I remembered the well behaved and coifed camels from Morocco last year, I felt some pity for the Egyptian beasts. The camel drivers, however, were great fun, and when I sputtered my few words in Arabic (the nice ones!), they called me mama and we were off and running…literally. “You smile, mama. I want make you happy.”
The pyramidal structures are on a plateau overlooking all of Cairo, and our guide gave us a brief lecture on what to expect once they were in view. But nothing can really prepare one for the size and dimensions of those critters. (Two big, one medium, one small and three tiny.) They stand out like cosmic chess pieces on a board of sand waiting to be moved around as the sun casts different shadows during the day. Their orientation in the desert is no accident. The wonder for me was seeing the whole environment where they stand, the relationship to the desert, to the city, and the sky, and feeling miniscule. There are actually tombs within and I can’t imagine a better send-off. My imagination had Lawrence riding across the desert to meet Saud (white horse, black horse, yin and yang) Bedouin tents and camel caravans. Instead, the images left at the end of the day are of circus hawkers trying to foist post cards, beads, wood carvings of camels, et al on the tourists who come just to see the famous Pyramids….one of Egypt’s most famous shrines. The men are galloping around on mostly old camels and horses trying to impress all the young tourist fillies, offering them 250 camels (pretty good price) for a marriage, buses of many colors, and general confusion. By this time, I’m cool; the afternoon was great fun.
A short trot down the hill and the big man/lion sits surveying Cairo at a lower level.
I am truly in love with the Sphynx who sits arrogantly eying ignorant tourists like me who try various tricks of photography to make him look silly. He is really big! And he has a long tail that curls around down in back of him. Moreover, pollution and the bullet holes in his face from Turkish target practice have not robbed him of his inner spirit…that of the desert and a few thousand years of crazy human history. In the evening there was a sound and light show in front of the Sphynx, and I was carried away with stories about the pharaohs, Romans, Turks…Sphynx stays and men die. Overture from Aida and I’m jelly in the hands of sound and light producers. The air was temperate, sky dark blue, and desert was absorbing the great tales of kings and warriors. I was falling head over heels in love with Egypt. (I’m a pushover for drama and historical romance.)
Up at 2:30 the next morning to wend our way to the airport and the trip to Luxor. The view of the Nile from the plane was spectacular, a green serpent twisting and turning in a caramel colored desert. We visited three of the Royal tombs amongst which the famous tomb of the young king Tut-Ankh-Amun can be found. The tombs are in the middle of bloody nowhere, and the greatest miracle is how they were ever discovered in the Valley of the Kings…especially by the robbers who pretty much wiped out the treasures from all the Ramses structures. The hieraglyphics and paintings in those tombs have lasted for thousands of years, and one can still see the beautiful indigoes and cinnamons covering the walls. I spend a good deal of my time looking at the paintings on the ceilings and picking myself up from the floor after tripping on small stairs. I have to pinch myself to think I was inches away from masterpieces of history.
Next a visit to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, the only woman ever to be considered a pharoah. There’s a long story to that one according to our Egyptologist guide, Bachat, something about her having a fake beard and a few centuries of destruction when her predecessors tried to wipe her images from all the temples in Egypt. What a woman had to do to get a little power back in the day! On to the Colossi of Memnon (statues of Amenophis III), standing like true giants in a field of corn, overlooking a small stand of coca cola bottles, sun hats and embroidered shirts. But I should not mock their majesty…. still god-like figures among us mere mortals.
In the afternoon (as if three pharaoh haunts were not enough for one day), was a visit to the breathtaking Karnak temple. I’ve seen my share of Greek and Roman temples, but this one staggers the imagination. (We are still in Luxor!) The columns, paintings, carvings….everything was too grand to describe, and difficult to capture the perspective of scenes on photographs, but once again I have in my mind’s eye Karnak’s place in its environment of rocky soil, deep blue sky and lovely palms. When I look at images of the temple in books, I can well picture its place on the earth, and I sincerely hope the pharaohs are somewhere looking down at visitors, and applauding themselves for recruiting thousands to build such awesome structures. We spent the evening at Luxor temple, a little smaller and less grand than Karnak, but nonetheless impressive. Sunset and then spotlights gave the temple an eerie feeling of ghosts lurking behind pillars. What impressed me was a small room in the southern part of the temple that contains evidence of a small Coptic chapel, a place of refuge for the early Christians. Those of us who grew up Roman Catholic often forget about the earliest Christian sects who sweated out their faith in the desert trying to escape persecution. Folks…I’m already one day into the trip and have not yet described food! Not much time to eat.
Another early wake-up call and we were on our way to Aswan by bus. I was delighted to have a bus trip along the Nile because it gave us a chance to see the small villages, lush shrubs, fertile fields, men in dish-dash, and loads of donkeys carrying sugar cane, bananas, fire wood, and much more. Once in Aswan we were ferried over to the Temple of Philae, the romantic and majestic complex of buildings dedicated to Isis. The day was crystal clear, blue sky, and not too many other bodies to get in the way of meandering. Moved from its original island and rebuilt on neighboring Agilika, to save it from the waters of Lake Nasser, the shrine dates from the 4th century BCE. The goddess Isis reigned here, and the temple was the most important pilgrimage center in Egypt. Philae was the last functioning temple of the ancient religion and was not closed until the reign of Justinian in 550 CE. It is a fusion of Egyptian and Greco-Roman architecture, built in harmony with its natural surroundings. Weird to see columns that look Corinthian but have papyrus carved at the very top.
We continued on to Aswan High Dam, an engineering masterpiece built to regulate the flow of the Nile and to counter the unpredictable annual flooding. Back to the hotel for lunch and a cruise on the Nile aboard a felucca….quiet, serene and simply lovely. In the future I can imagine myself saying “When I was sailing on the Nile in a felucca…..” and everyone saying “Yeah, right! She is sooo obnoxious.”
Market at night and I had great fun with the shop keepers who inflate the prices of everything just to have fun bargaining with tourists. The spices were mounded into unusual shapes at each shop: thyme, saffron, indigo, turmeric. Each was a beautiful palette of delicious smells, and it was very frustrating not to grab handfuls and take them home. Hookas abounded but our students are not allowed to bring them aboard…considered drug paraphenalia in the U.S. At any rate at sailing time, the crew collected a whole garbage can of them that they tried to smuggle aboard, and cut all the tubes. They should have given them back to the Egyptians who were looking in from behind the fence.
The piece de resistance on the fourth day was our trip south to Abu Simbel
dedicated to Ra-Harakhte, the sun god; Amun, patron god of Thebesm; Ptah, god of the underworld and, of course, to Ramses himself. Ramses II had four statues built (he and his fellow gods!), and the message to the Egyptians was that he was also a god. The statues in the front of the mountain are gargantuan and just for fun I took a photo of one foot…sans body. It hardly fit on the lens viewer. The temple was precisely oriented so that the sun’s rays reached deep into the mountain to illuminate its sanctuary on Ramses’ birthday and the anniversary of his coronation.
Now that’s a worthy monument to one’s ego!
Tthe monument had to be moved in 1964 from its original site because Lake Nasser created by the Aswan Dam would have swallowed it. The temples were cut into 1041 sandstone blocks weighing up to thirty tons apiece, hauled and then reassembled 210m behind (and 61m above) its original site, a false mountain being constructed to match the former setting. We were told that the project is still being paid for since the cost was approximately $40 million.
The smaller temple, Temple of Hathor, is dedicated to the cow-headed goddess of love and built in honor of Ramses’ favorite wife, Queen Nefertari, supposedly the most beautiful women in Egyptian history…not to be confused with Nefertiti. It is the only temple in Egypt that portrays a woman at its entrance. The sculptures and the frescoes within are legendary, and once again it was a luxury to see them in their original homes.
Our last day was a trip back to Cairo to visit the National Museum and a bit of the city. I don’t know how many people live in Cairo, but it’s too many. The streets are crowded with cars, and traffic keeps everyone at a standstill at most times of day. We passed Mubarak’s house, a few mosques with beautiful mosaics, and then came to the museum building that looks like an old train station. Granted the Egyptians are building a new museum (another one of those biggest in the world structures), but the present one is quite awful. The rooms are dank and dark; the labels on exhibits are on paper that is yellowing.
King Tut’s gold is on display as are many, many mummies, sarcophagi, amulets, statues…the place is teaming with antiquities and millions of tourists. I went off by myself and visited the “small things.” Lots of tiny amulets representing Egyptian mythology. I was surprised to see an old leather copy of the St. John gospel in one of the cases, dating from the 1st century…I wanted to steal it but not spend time in a Cairo jail. Driving past the new library I was impressed with the fact that Egypt is coming fast into the 21st century world of technology. The new library of Alexandria is built over the remains of the old which I believe was destroyed by fire many centuries ago, and built to seat thousands with tons of computers. It is another Egyptian wonder.
How do I love Egypt? Let me count the ways: the gregarious people, sultry climate, memorable architecture, the smell of incense in the markets, horse-drawn carriages, gold cartouches, and the beautiful river without which Egypt and its glorious history would never have happened. Let’s hear it for just plain water; it sustains and, indeed, blesses us.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Egypt 2007
Egypt 2007
Six days in Egypt have left me completely stunned, exhausted yet ironically exhilarated, and this blog is a meager attempt to describe what thousands have written so thoroughly about for centuries. Oct. 30th found SAS at the entrance to the Suez Canal, and at a lecture the previous day we were told that the ship would anchor with a convoy near Port Suez. We lined up at about 6 am and waited for about an hour to enter the canal along with a whole string of container ships. On the port side were many small villages and guards posted; on the starboard, the Sahara and occasionally the tanks/guns left from the six day war in 1967. Poor Egyptians got routed. Seeing land was a relief after spending eleven days at sea including an unnerving passage through the Gulf of Aden where we expected pirates to board….not such an unusual occurrence, I am told.
The Suez seemed a whole trip all by itself. Started in the 6th Century BCE, the canal claimed the lives of 120,000 workers before the project was abandoned after an oracle predicted that only Egypt’s foes would benefit from it. Those were the good old days when decision making was easier and folks believed in oracles. The Persian emperor, Darius, completed the first canal in the region linking the Red Sea and the Great Bitter Lake, and then later the Mediterranean. The rest is a rather long story beginning with a design by Ferdinand de Lesseps and ending with completed construction in 1988. The Suez crisis in 1956 and then the 1967 war disrupted traffic for awhile and the canal was closed to shipping until 1975. I remember it being a periodic conversation piece in the early seventies when I was living in Lebanon as ships had to go around Africa to get to the Mediterranean from the east. Israelis on one side and Egyptians on the other until Israel withdrew from the Sinai. The port of Alexandria was a sight to behold when we finally finished our passage.
We left the ship at around 10:30 Oct. 31st morning (after an entire day of sea Olympics that was a hoot) and headed for the Pyramids Pre-port lecture had us convinced that since Egypt is a Muslim country we should dress modestly, i.e., no slacks…wrong. I had on a long skirt, shirt and jacket and it was hotter than hell. First notice was a camel ride, and didn’t I look fetching climbing over the hump and trying to get comfortable when my young camel erupted without warning. Arms flailed as I had no way to hold on or balance myself…miraculously I held on with my legs, and made everyone laugh. The scene at the Pyramids is very commercial, and as I remembered the well behaved and coifed camels from Morocco last year, I felt some pity for the Egyptian beasts. The camel drivers, however, were great fun, and when I sputtered my few words in Arabic (the nice ones!), they called me mama and we were off and running…literally. “You smile, mama. I want make you happy.”
The pyramidal structures are on a plateau overlooking all of Cairo, and our guide gave us a brief lecture on what to expect once they were in view. But nothing can really prepare one for the size and dimensions of those critters. (Two big, one medium, one small and three tiny.) They stand out like cosmic chess pieces on a board of sand waiting to be moved around as the sun casts different shadows during the day. Their orientation in the desert is no accident. The wonder for me was seeing the whole environment where they stand, the relationship to the desert, to the city, and the sky, and feeling miniscule. There are actually tombs within and I can’t imagine a better send-off. My imagination had Lawrence riding across the desert to meet Saud (white horse, black horse, yin and yang) Bedouin tents and camel caravans. Instead, the images left at the end of the day are of circus hawkers trying to foist post cards, beads, wood carvings of camels, et al on the tourists who come just to see the famous Pyramids….one of Egypt’s most famous shrines. The men are galloping around on mostly old camels and horses trying to impress all the young tourist fillies, offering them 250 camels (pretty good price) for a marriage, buses of many colors, and general confusion. By this time, I’m cool; the afternoon was great fun.
A short trot down the hill and the big man/lion sits surveying Cairo at a lower level.
I am truly in love with the Sphynx who sits arrogantly eying ignorant tourists like me who try various tricks of photography to make him look silly. He is really big! And he has a long tail that curls around down in back of him. Moreover, pollution and the bullet holes in his face from Turkish target practice have not robbed him of his inner spirit…that of the desert and a few thousand years of crazy human history. In the evening there was a sound and light show in front of the Sphynx, and I was carried away with stories about the pharaohs, Romans, Turks…Sphynx stays and men die. Overture from Aida and I’m jelly in the hands of sound and light producers. The air was temperate, sky dark blue, and desert was absorbing the great tales of kings and warriors. I was falling head over heels in love with Egypt. (I’m a pushover for drama and historical romance.)
Up at 2:30 the next morning to wend our way to the airport and the trip to Luxor. The view of the Nile from the plane was spectacular, a green serpent twisting and turning in a caramel colored desert. We visited three of the Royal tombs amongst which the famous tomb of the young king Tut-Ankh-Amun can be found. The tombs are in the middle of bloody nowhere, and the greatest miracle is how they were ever discovered in the Valley of the Kings…especially by the robbers who pretty much wiped out the treasures from all the Ramses structures. The hieraglyphics and paintings in those tombs have lasted for thousands of years, and one can still see the beautiful indigoes and cinnamons covering the walls. I spend a good deal of my time looking at the paintings on the ceilings and picking myself up from the floor after tripping on small stairs. I have to pinch myself to think I was inches away from masterpieces of history.
Next a visit to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, the only woman ever to be considered a pharoah. There’s a long story to that one according to our Egyptologist guide, Bachat, something about her having a fake beard and a few centuries of destruction when her predecessors tried to wipe her images from all the temples in Egypt. What a woman had to do to get a little power back in the day! On to the Colossi of Memnon (statues of Amenophis III), standing like true giants in a field of corn, overlooking a small stand of coca cola bottles, sun hats and embroidered shirts. But I should not mock their majesty…. still god-like figures among us mere mortals.
In the afternoon (as if three pharaoh haunts were not enough for one day), was a visit to the breathtaking Karnak temple. I’ve seen my share of Greek and Roman temples, but this one staggers the imagination. (We are still in Luxor!) The columns, paintings, carvings….everything was too grand to describe, and difficult to capture the perspective of scenes on photographs, but once again I have in my mind’s eye Karnak’s place in its environment of rocky soil, deep blue sky and lovely palms. When I look at images of the temple in books, I can well picture its place on the earth, and I sincerely hope the pharaohs are somewhere looking down at visitors, and applauding themselves for recruiting thousands to build such awesome structures. We spent the evening at Luxor temple, a little smaller and less grand than Karnak, but nonetheless impressive. Sunset and then spotlights gave the temple an eerie feeling of ghosts lurking behind pillars. What impressed me was a small room in the southern part of the temple that contains evidence of a small Coptic chapel, a place of refuge for the early Christians. Those of us who grew up Roman Catholic often forget about the earliest Christian sects who sweated out their faith in the desert trying to escape persecution. Folks…I’m already one day into the trip and have not yet described food! Not much time to eat.
Another early wake-up call and we were on our way to Aswan by bus. I was delighted to have a bus trip along the Nile because it gave us a chance to see the small villages, lush shrubs, fertile fields, men in dish-dash, and loads of donkeys carrying sugar cane, bananas, fire wood, and much more. Once in Aswan we were ferried over to the Temple of Philae, the romantic and majestic complex of buildings dedicated to Isis. The day was crystal clear, blue sky, and not too many other bodies to get in the way of meandering. Moved from its original island and rebuilt on neighboring Agilika, to save it from the waters of Lake Nasser, the shrine dates from the 4th century BCE. The goddess Isis reigned here, and the temple was the most important pilgrimage center in Egypt. Philae was the last functioning temple of the ancient religion and was not closed until the reign of Justinian in 550 CE. It is a fusion of Egyptian and Greco-Roman architecture, built in harmony with its natural surroundings. Weird to see columns that look Corinthian but have papyrus carved at the very top.
We continued on to Aswan High Dam, an engineering masterpiece built to regulate the flow of the Nile and to counter the unpredictable annual flooding. Back to the hotel for lunch and a cruise on the Nile aboard a felucca….quiet, serene and simply lovely. In the future I can imagine myself saying “When I was sailing on the Nile in a felucca…..” and everyone saying “Yeah, right! She is sooo obnoxious.”
Market at night and I had great fun with the shop keepers who inflate the prices of everything just to have fun bargaining with tourists. The spices were mounded into unusual shapes at each shop: thyme, saffron, indigo, turmeric. Each was a beautiful palette of delicious smells, and it was very frustrating not to grab handfuls and take them home. Hookas abounded but our students are not allowed to bring them aboard…considered drug paraphenalia in the U.S. At any rate at sailing time, the crew collected a whole garbage can of them that they tried to smuggle aboard, and cut all the tubes. They should have given them back to the Egyptians who were looking in from behind the fence.
The piece de resistance on the fourth day was our trip south to Abu Simbel
dedicated to Ra-Harakhte, the sun god; Amun, patron god of Thebesm; Ptah, god of the underworld and, of course, to Ramses himself. Ramses II had four statues built (he and his fellow gods!), and the message to the Egyptians was that he was also a god. The statues in the front of the mountain are gargantuan and just for fun I took a photo of one foot…sans body. It hardly fit on the lens viewer. The temple was precisely oriented so that the sun’s rays reached deep into the mountain to illuminate its sanctuary on Ramses’ birthday and the anniversary of his coronation.
Now that’s a worthy monument to one’s ego!
Tthe monument had to be moved in 1964 from its original site because Lake Nasser created by the Aswan Dam would have swallowed it. The temples were cut into 1041 sandstone blocks weighing up to thirty tons apiece, hauled and then reassembled 210m behind (and 61m above) its original site, a false mountain being constructed to match the former setting. We were told that the project is still being paid for since the cost was approximately $40 million.
The smaller temple, Temple of Hathor, is dedicated to the cow-headed goddess of love and built in honor of Ramses’ favorite wife, Queen Nefertari, supposedly the most beautiful women in Egyptian history…not to be confused with Nefertiti. It is the only temple in Egypt that portrays a woman at its entrance. The sculptures and the frescoes within are legendary, and once again it was a luxury to see them in their original homes.
Our last day was a trip back to Cairo to visit the National Museum and a bit of the city. I don’t know how many people live in Cairo, but it’s too many. The streets are crowded with cars, and traffic keeps everyone at a standstill at most times of day. We passed Mubarak’s house, a few mosques with beautiful mosaics, and then came to the museum building that looks like an old train station. Granted the Egyptians are building a new museum (another one of those biggest in the world structures), but the present one is quite awful. The rooms are dank and dark; the labels on exhibits are on paper that is yellowing.
King Tut’s gold is on display as are many, many mummies, sarcophagi, amulets, statues…the place is teaming with antiquities and millions of tourists. I went off by myself and visited the “small things.” Lots of tiny amulets representing Egyptian mythology. I was surprised to see an old leather copy of the St. John gospel in one of the cases, dating from the 1st century…I wanted to steal it but not spend time in a Cairo jail. Driving past the new library I was impressed with the fact that Egypt is coming fast into the 21st century world of technology. The new library of Alexandria is built over the remains of the old which I believe was destroyed by fire many centuries ago, and built to seat thousands with tons of computers. It is another Egyptian wonder.
How do I love Egypt? Let me count the ways: the gregarious people, sultry climate, memorable architecture, the smell of incense in the markets, horse-drawn carriages, gold cartouches, and the beautiful river without which Egypt and its glorious history would never have happened. Let’s hear it for just plain water; it sustains and, indeed, blesses us.
Six days in Egypt have left me completely stunned, exhausted yet ironically exhilarated, and this blog is a meager attempt to describe what thousands have written so thoroughly about for centuries. Oct. 30th found SAS at the entrance to the Suez Canal, and at a lecture the previous day we were told that the ship would anchor with a convoy near Port Suez. We lined up at about 6 am and waited for about an hour to enter the canal along with a whole string of container ships. On the port side were many small villages and guards posted; on the starboard, the Sahara and occasionally the tanks/guns left from the six day war in 1967. Poor Egyptians got routed. Seeing land was a relief after spending eleven days at sea including an unnerving passage through the Gulf of Aden where we expected pirates to board….not such an unusual occurrence, I am told.
The Suez seemed a whole trip all by itself. Started in the 6th Century BCE, the canal claimed the lives of 120,000 workers before the project was abandoned after an oracle predicted that only Egypt’s foes would benefit from it. Those were the good old days when decision making was easier and folks believed in oracles. The Persian emperor, Darius, completed the first canal in the region linking the Red Sea and the Great Bitter Lake, and then later the Mediterranean. The rest is a rather long story beginning with a design by Ferdinand de Lesseps and ending with completed construction in 1988. The Suez crisis in 1956 and then the 1967 war disrupted traffic for awhile and the canal was closed to shipping until 1975. I remember it being a periodic conversation piece in the early seventies when I was living in Lebanon as ships had to go around Africa to get to the Mediterranean from the east. Israelis on one side and Egyptians on the other until Israel withdrew from the Sinai. The port of Alexandria was a sight to behold when we finally finished our passage.
We left the ship at around 10:30 Oct. 31st morning (after an entire day of sea Olympics that was a hoot) and headed for the Pyramids Pre-port lecture had us convinced that since Egypt is a Muslim country we should dress modestly, i.e., no slacks…wrong. I had on a long skirt, shirt and jacket and it was hotter than hell. First notice was a camel ride, and didn’t I look fetching climbing over the hump and trying to get comfortable when my young camel erupted without warning. Arms flailed as I had no way to hold on or balance myself…miraculously I held on with my legs, and made everyone laugh. The scene at the Pyramids is very commercial, and as I remembered the well behaved and coifed camels from Morocco last year, I felt some pity for the Egyptian beasts. The camel drivers, however, were great fun, and when I sputtered my few words in Arabic (the nice ones!), they called me mama and we were off and running…literally. “You smile, mama. I want make you happy.”
The pyramidal structures are on a plateau overlooking all of Cairo, and our guide gave us a brief lecture on what to expect once they were in view. But nothing can really prepare one for the size and dimensions of those critters. (Two big, one medium, one small and three tiny.) They stand out like cosmic chess pieces on a board of sand waiting to be moved around as the sun casts different shadows during the day. Their orientation in the desert is no accident. The wonder for me was seeing the whole environment where they stand, the relationship to the desert, to the city, and the sky, and feeling miniscule. There are actually tombs within and I can’t imagine a better send-off. My imagination had Lawrence riding across the desert to meet Saud (white horse, black horse, yin and yang) Bedouin tents and camel caravans. Instead, the images left at the end of the day are of circus hawkers trying to foist post cards, beads, wood carvings of camels, et al on the tourists who come just to see the famous Pyramids….one of Egypt’s most famous shrines. The men are galloping around on mostly old camels and horses trying to impress all the young tourist fillies, offering them 250 camels (pretty good price) for a marriage, buses of many colors, and general confusion. By this time, I’m cool; the afternoon was great fun.
A short trot down the hill and the big man/lion sits surveying Cairo at a lower level.
I am truly in love with the Sphynx who sits arrogantly eying ignorant tourists like me who try various tricks of photography to make him look silly. He is really big! And he has a long tail that curls around down in back of him. Moreover, pollution and the bullet holes in his face from Turkish target practice have not robbed him of his inner spirit…that of the desert and a few thousand years of crazy human history. In the evening there was a sound and light show in front of the Sphynx, and I was carried away with stories about the pharaohs, Romans, Turks…Sphynx stays and men die. Overture from Aida and I’m jelly in the hands of sound and light producers. The air was temperate, sky dark blue, and desert was absorbing the great tales of kings and warriors. I was falling head over heels in love with Egypt. (I’m a pushover for drama and historical romance.)
Up at 2:30 the next morning to wend our way to the airport and the trip to Luxor. The view of the Nile from the plane was spectacular, a green serpent twisting and turning in a caramel colored desert. We visited three of the Royal tombs amongst which the famous tomb of the young king Tut-Ankh-Amun can be found. The tombs are in the middle of bloody nowhere, and the greatest miracle is how they were ever discovered in the Valley of the Kings…especially by the robbers who pretty much wiped out the treasures from all the Ramses structures. The hieraglyphics and paintings in those tombs have lasted for thousands of years, and one can still see the beautiful indigoes and cinnamons covering the walls. I spend a good deal of my time looking at the paintings on the ceilings and picking myself up from the floor after tripping on small stairs. I have to pinch myself to think I was inches away from masterpieces of history.
Next a visit to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, the only woman ever to be considered a pharoah. There’s a long story to that one according to our Egyptologist guide, Bachat, something about her having a fake beard and a few centuries of destruction when her predecessors tried to wipe her images from all the temples in Egypt. What a woman had to do to get a little power back in the day! On to the Colossi of Memnon (statues of Amenophis III), standing like true giants in a field of corn, overlooking a small stand of coca cola bottles, sun hats and embroidered shirts. But I should not mock their majesty…. still god-like figures among us mere mortals.
In the afternoon (as if three pharaoh haunts were not enough for one day), was a visit to the breathtaking Karnak temple. I’ve seen my share of Greek and Roman temples, but this one staggers the imagination. (We are still in Luxor!) The columns, paintings, carvings….everything was too grand to describe, and difficult to capture the perspective of scenes on photographs, but once again I have in my mind’s eye Karnak’s place in its environment of rocky soil, deep blue sky and lovely palms. When I look at images of the temple in books, I can well picture its place on the earth, and I sincerely hope the pharaohs are somewhere looking down at visitors, and applauding themselves for recruiting thousands to build such awesome structures. We spent the evening at Luxor temple, a little smaller and less grand than Karnak, but nonetheless impressive. Sunset and then spotlights gave the temple an eerie feeling of ghosts lurking behind pillars. What impressed me was a small room in the southern part of the temple that contains evidence of a small Coptic chapel, a place of refuge for the early Christians. Those of us who grew up Roman Catholic often forget about the earliest Christian sects who sweated out their faith in the desert trying to escape persecution. Folks…I’m already one day into the trip and have not yet described food! Not much time to eat.
Another early wake-up call and we were on our way to Aswan by bus. I was delighted to have a bus trip along the Nile because it gave us a chance to see the small villages, lush shrubs, fertile fields, men in dish-dash, and loads of donkeys carrying sugar cane, bananas, fire wood, and much more. Once in Aswan we were ferried over to the Temple of Philae, the romantic and majestic complex of buildings dedicated to Isis. The day was crystal clear, blue sky, and not too many other bodies to get in the way of meandering. Moved from its original island and rebuilt on neighboring Agilika, to save it from the waters of Lake Nasser, the shrine dates from the 4th century BCE. The goddess Isis reigned here, and the temple was the most important pilgrimage center in Egypt. Philae was the last functioning temple of the ancient religion and was not closed until the reign of Justinian in 550 CE. It is a fusion of Egyptian and Greco-Roman architecture, built in harmony with its natural surroundings. Weird to see columns that look Corinthian but have papyrus carved at the very top.
We continued on to Aswan High Dam, an engineering masterpiece built to regulate the flow of the Nile and to counter the unpredictable annual flooding. Back to the hotel for lunch and a cruise on the Nile aboard a felucca….quiet, serene and simply lovely. In the future I can imagine myself saying “When I was sailing on the Nile in a felucca…..” and everyone saying “Yeah, right! She is sooo obnoxious.”
Market at night and I had great fun with the shop keepers who inflate the prices of everything just to have fun bargaining with tourists. The spices were mounded into unusual shapes at each shop: thyme, saffron, indigo, turmeric. Each was a beautiful palette of delicious smells, and it was very frustrating not to grab handfuls and take them home. Hookas abounded but our students are not allowed to bring them aboard…considered drug paraphenalia in the U.S. At any rate at sailing time, the crew collected a whole garbage can of them that they tried to smuggle aboard, and cut all the tubes. They should have given them back to the Egyptians who were looking in from behind the fence.
The piece de resistance on the fourth day was our trip south to Abu Simbel
dedicated to Ra-Harakhte, the sun god; Amun, patron god of Thebesm; Ptah, god of the underworld and, of course, to Ramses himself. Ramses II had four statues built (he and his fellow gods!), and the message to the Egyptians was that he was also a god. The statues in the front of the mountain are gargantuan and just for fun I took a photo of one foot…sans body. It hardly fit on the lens viewer. The temple was precisely oriented so that the sun’s rays reached deep into the mountain to illuminate its sanctuary on Ramses’ birthday and the anniversary of his coronation.
Now that’s a worthy monument to one’s ego!
Tthe monument had to be moved in 1964 from its original site because Lake Nasser created by the Aswan Dam would have swallowed it. The temples were cut into 1041 sandstone blocks weighing up to thirty tons apiece, hauled and then reassembled 210m behind (and 61m above) its original site, a false mountain being constructed to match the former setting. We were told that the project is still being paid for since the cost was approximately $40 million.
The smaller temple, Temple of Hathor, is dedicated to the cow-headed goddess of love and built in honor of Ramses’ favorite wife, Queen Nefertari, supposedly the most beautiful women in Egyptian history…not to be confused with Nefertiti. It is the only temple in Egypt that portrays a woman at its entrance. The sculptures and the frescoes within are legendary, and once again it was a luxury to see them in their original homes.
Our last day was a trip back to Cairo to visit the National Museum and a bit of the city. I don’t know how many people live in Cairo, but it’s too many. The streets are crowded with cars, and traffic keeps everyone at a standstill at most times of day. We passed Mubarak’s house, a few mosques with beautiful mosaics, and then came to the museum building that looks like an old train station. Granted the Egyptians are building a new museum (another one of those biggest in the world structures), but the present one is quite awful. The rooms are dank and dark; the labels on exhibits are on paper that is yellowing.
King Tut’s gold is on display as are many, many mummies, sarcophagi, amulets, statues…the place is teaming with antiquities and millions of tourists. I went off by myself and visited the “small things.” Lots of tiny amulets representing Egyptian mythology. I was surprised to see an old leather copy of the St. John gospel in one of the cases, dating from the 1st century…I wanted to steal it but not spend time in a Cairo jail. Driving past the new library I was impressed with the fact that Egypt is coming fast into the 21st century world of technology. The new library of Alexandria is built over the remains of the old which I believe was destroyed by fire many centuries ago, and built to seat thousands with tons of computers. It is another Egyptian wonder.
How do I love Egypt? Let me count the ways: the gregarious people, sultry climate, memorable architecture, the smell of incense in the markets, horse-drawn carriages, gold cartouches, and the beautiful river without which Egypt and its glorious history would never have happened. Let’s hear it for just plain water; it sustains and, indeed, blesses us.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I have been procrastinating about this India blog for a few days now ever since leaving Chennai because I know there is no way to formulate generalizations honestly about the country after spending a short week in any one state. Oh, I know folks say things like whatever one says about India, the opposite is true. And the usual… the country is disgustingly filthy and no one seems to care. I’ll try to choose some stories to tell, and let the reader decide if there is any truth to be taken.
My India journey began in Chennai where we docked on Oct. 15th, and after all the red tape, bureaucracy and stalling for four hours, the prisoners were released from the shackles and let loose on this port town formerly known as Madras. No madras woven here anymore; that’s done in Sri Lanka with whom India has been fighting for years. Does anyone else remember not being fully outfitted in college without having several pairs of madras shorts? However, Chennai is noted for some fine tailors and a surplus of fabric stores….both of which I never found. The port was covered with a black soot that attached itself with vigor to every part of one’s body, beggars were everywhere, dogs with teats hanging out from skin and bones, buildings covered in mildew, and junk sold on every street corner. Stopped at the post office to watch how to buy stamps and apply the animal pase to seal them to envelopes, and then visited some shrines in local banks. There is a god of money, after all.
Into a tuck-tuck for a hair raising ride through miles of tightly woven traffic and a visit to a make-shift mall that sold pretty much of everything. Could not find a place to stop and eat, and, besides, I had to make it back to the ship in time to catch a taxi to the airport. Sweaty and filthy I got back, washed and met my traveling companion, Patty (archaeologist from UVA) and we headed to the airport for a 6:30 flight to Cochin (also known as Kochi). Kingfisher Airlines actually gave us little plastic cases with pens and a decent dinner. Why can’t they let American airlines know that food is important to keep people happy?
Landing at the Cochin airport was like going back into a British colonial past. Beautiful woodwork, comfortable armchairs to await flights, taxi service to town, tea shops. However, another hair raising ride into town, but rest awaiting us at a fairly decent hotel with very polite and very helpful staff. We needed to plan adventures.
We were smack in the middle of town and from my breakfast table I watched men, women and children coming to work in their finery (and not so finery). Women were elegantly dressed in silk and cotton sarees, and outfits that had knee length dresses over long pants with scarves to match…not only match, but complement beautifully. Couldn’t wait to get to the shops where these were made if only to feel the fabrics and talk with the women who were wearing them. The buses were crowded, cows walked in the road, tuck-tucks everywhere, some bicycles, a few goats and what else? Some fancy cars and lots of people just trying to cross streets where no one stops for pedestrians. But the streets were clean compared to Chennai and only a few beggar women in sight..
Landing at the Cochin airport was like going back into a British colonial past. Beautiful woodwork, comfortable armchairs to await flights, taxi service to town, tea shops. However, another hair raising ride into town, but rest awaiting us at a fairly decent hotel with very polite and very helpful staff. We needed to plan adventures.
We were smack in the middle of town and from my breakfast table I watched men, women and children coming to work in their finery (and not so finery). Women were elegantly dressed in silk and cotton sarees, and outfits that had knee length dresses over long pants with scarves to match…not only match, but complement beautifully. Couldn’t wait to get to the shops where these were made if only to feel the fabrics and talk with the women who were wearing them. The buses were crowded, cows walked in the road, tuck-tucks everywhere, some bicycles, a few goats and what else? Some fancy cars and lots of people just trying to cross streets where no one stops for pedestrians. But the streets were clean compared to Chennai and only a few beggar women in sight..
India is not Chennai, not Kochi, not Delhi, not Calcutta, not Varanasi, Bombay, Mysore or Jaipur. From the stories I heard from fellow SAS travelers every state seems to be different with different religious majorities/minorities. A huge potpourri of philosophies, religions, politics, economies, for a start. Some are tidier than others, some more into 21st century technologies, some richer, some poorer, some matriarchal. All of my assumptions about the country have been challenged, and I certainly have no solutions to the problems of over population and poverty. What I did witness in the small city of Kochi was a society of Indians who were generally kind to us, anxious to tell us about their various religions, and anxious to show us their wares. They did not land on us like vultures to buy trinkets, but were rather interested in engaging us in conversations about where we came from, what religion we
believed in, how many children we had, etc. In short we met lots of Kochi citizens and they were generally very kind. The town was described to us as matriarchal.
Kochi is a coastal town to the southwest of Chennai known for its fishing industry, famous for its palm-fringed beaches (where no one swims), unique system of backwaters and canals, and its rolling estates of tea, coffee, rubber, and spices. The area has a rich history, containing the oldest Christian church and Jewish synagogue in India, as well as innumerable Hindu and Buddhist temples.. Its educational system is one of the best in India, achieving a literacy rate of 95%. We toured the churches and synagogue (which btw has only six families belonging…the rest migrated to Israel), walked the beach area with families and young children, and watched the fisherman untangle the famous Chinese fishing nets. A section of Fort Cochin has an area called Jewtown where all the merchants ply their wares….and the spice market is fabulous. Walking through the narrow alleys one can smell cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom…at least those spices I recognized. I imagined the scene to be the same five hundred years ago. The Communist party is credited with the equality in land apportionment.
Portuguese, Dutch, French, Brits settled Kochi at one time or other and the architecture is varied. There are spotless villas, shacks, cows, goats, chickens everywhere and people in every nook and cranny. But somehow the Indians make it all work and they seem happy doing their everyday chores, worshipping at shrines along the roadsides, eating highly spiced food with their right hands (bad to use left since that’s the hand that wipes the….), and driving like maniacs on narrow rutted roads. I could not stop looking and making comments like “awesome, amazing, nuts, and god please spare my life!”
Patty and I booked passage on a house boat for a day and cruised the inland lake watching shell fisherman collect clams for eating and for making calcium pills…a small cottage industry on one of the islands. We saw vanilla, cashews, cinnamon, cardamon, medicinal herbs growing, and the guide explained the gathering and use processes. Coconuts are the sustainable crop providing food, drink, fuel, and fiber for the inhabitants. People were very proud to demonstrate how they grow and how they are the backbone of their economy.. The boats were very quiet on the lake unlike the noisy motors we had in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam, and the morning flew by very quickly. The boatmen provided a delicious lunch of curries and chutneys, and we were passed on to a few thick wooden canoes to be punted through narrow jungle-like lagoons. The trip was magical, peaceful, interesting and a whole lot of fun. Our hosts made us laugh, tried to scare us with machetes, yelled out to the guys taking baths in the lagoons, and cut up some coconuts for us to eat. No hustle-bustle, just peace and quiet and four different species of kingfishers. No monkeys, snakes or alligators! I’m guessing now peace and quiet is a great luxury in India.
The traffic going back to the center of Kochi was pretty thick with cows, goats, children coming home from school in their uniforms, trucks, tuck-tucks, bicycles…the usual Indian traffic. In the evening we settled into a quiet dinner and a Kingfisher beer and went to bed early.
Our last day was devoted to the tailor and a return to Jewtown to do some last minute shopping. The one thing I loved about all of the shops was being able to joke with the shopkeepers, bargain and come away with some nice souvenirs from India: batiks, beads, soft cotton shirts, pillow covers and good memories. The next few hours would test our endurance and strength.
We raced back to the hotel in more traffic, picked up our gear and drove like hell to the airport in a monsoon rain just making it in time for security (which is first rate!) and a wait in the soft-cushy chairs. No plane…and no plane is bad for semester at sea folks. We watched the monitors that were looping with the same information for an hour. We were taken to a hotel for dinner and the lights went out, and suddenly everyone in the dining room was looking the same…men with dark skin and mustaches. No information and no encouragement…we were beginning to panic.
At midnight our plane arrived from Bombay (Mumbai) and we rushed to the vans to return to the airport. Boarded at 1:30 and arrived back at Chennai at 2:30 am wondering just how we were to return to the port in the middle of the night. Our driver got lost…we could see the ship, but not get to it. Guards were posted everywhere and finally we were left off at an outside gate where the guards would not let our driver through. In fact they thought it quite humorous that we had to walk in the dark, through the soot and homeless back to our gangway. They could not find our original papers from the previous three days and I grabbed the book and found them…not so smart. At that point a train pulled across the road and we could not pass into the port area! The guards still though it was funny…two “rich Americans” stressed out. Train passed and then the monsoon rains came and we walked 1/8 of a mile back to the ship. Walking, I lost the bottom out of my bag and everything fell out. In bed by 3:30 and up the next day at noon….Ship left in the early evening.
The next day’s stories ran the gamut from pure bliss to pure torment. Trains stalled on tracks, rats running rampant, inspiring cremations at Varanasi, homestays with the rich and famous, meetings with the Dalit (untouchables), crippled children in orphanages, rotary projects. There were as many opinions about India as there were different areas visited.
I’m very glad to have had the good fortune to visit a country of such contradictions, beauty and environmental degradation. It makes me realize the world is not always as I think it is or as it should be. Perhaps the path to enlightenment!
believed in, how many children we had, etc. In short we met lots of Kochi citizens and they were generally very kind. The town was described to us as matriarchal.
Kochi is a coastal town to the southwest of Chennai known for its fishing industry, famous for its palm-fringed beaches (where no one swims), unique system of backwaters and canals, and its rolling estates of tea, coffee, rubber, and spices. The area has a rich history, containing the oldest Christian church and Jewish synagogue in India, as well as innumerable Hindu and Buddhist temples.. Its educational system is one of the best in India, achieving a literacy rate of 95%. We toured the churches and synagogue (which btw has only six families belonging…the rest migrated to Israel), walked the beach area with families and young children, and watched the fisherman untangle the famous Chinese fishing nets. A section of Fort Cochin has an area called Jewtown where all the merchants ply their wares….and the spice market is fabulous. Walking through the narrow alleys one can smell cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom…at least those spices I recognized. I imagined the scene to be the same five hundred years ago. The Communist party is credited with the equality in land apportionment.
Portuguese, Dutch, French, Brits settled Kochi at one time or other and the architecture is varied. There are spotless villas, shacks, cows, goats, chickens everywhere and people in every nook and cranny. But somehow the Indians make it all work and they seem happy doing their everyday chores, worshipping at shrines along the roadsides, eating highly spiced food with their right hands (bad to use left since that’s the hand that wipes the….), and driving like maniacs on narrow rutted roads. I could not stop looking and making comments like “awesome, amazing, nuts, and god please spare my life!”
Patty and I booked passage on a house boat for a day and cruised the inland lake watching shell fisherman collect clams for eating and for making calcium pills…a small cottage industry on one of the islands. We saw vanilla, cashews, cinnamon, cardamon, medicinal herbs growing, and the guide explained the gathering and use processes. Coconuts are the sustainable crop providing food, drink, fuel, and fiber for the inhabitants. People were very proud to demonstrate how they grow and how they are the backbone of their economy.. The boats were very quiet on the lake unlike the noisy motors we had in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam, and the morning flew by very quickly. The boatmen provided a delicious lunch of curries and chutneys, and we were passed on to a few thick wooden canoes to be punted through narrow jungle-like lagoons. The trip was magical, peaceful, interesting and a whole lot of fun. Our hosts made us laugh, tried to scare us with machetes, yelled out to the guys taking baths in the lagoons, and cut up some coconuts for us to eat. No hustle-bustle, just peace and quiet and four different species of kingfishers. No monkeys, snakes or alligators! I’m guessing now peace and quiet is a great luxury in India.
The traffic going back to the center of Kochi was pretty thick with cows, goats, children coming home from school in their uniforms, trucks, tuck-tucks, bicycles…the usual Indian traffic. In the evening we settled into a quiet dinner and a Kingfisher beer and went to bed early.
Our last day was devoted to the tailor and a return to Jewtown to do some last minute shopping. The one thing I loved about all of the shops was being able to joke with the shopkeepers, bargain and come away with some nice souvenirs from India: batiks, beads, soft cotton shirts, pillow covers and good memories. The next few hours would test our endurance and strength.
We raced back to the hotel in more traffic, picked up our gear and drove like hell to the airport in a monsoon rain just making it in time for security (which is first rate!) and a wait in the soft-cushy chairs. No plane…and no plane is bad for semester at sea folks. We watched the monitors that were looping with the same information for an hour. We were taken to a hotel for dinner and the lights went out, and suddenly everyone in the dining room was looking the same…men with dark skin and mustaches. No information and no encouragement…we were beginning to panic.
At midnight our plane arrived from Bombay (Mumbai) and we rushed to the vans to return to the airport. Boarded at 1:30 and arrived back at Chennai at 2:30 am wondering just how we were to return to the port in the middle of the night. Our driver got lost…we could see the ship, but not get to it. Guards were posted everywhere and finally we were left off at an outside gate where the guards would not let our driver through. In fact they thought it quite humorous that we had to walk in the dark, through the soot and homeless back to our gangway. They could not find our original papers from the previous three days and I grabbed the book and found them…not so smart. At that point a train pulled across the road and we could not pass into the port area! The guards still though it was funny…two “rich Americans” stressed out. Train passed and then the monsoon rains came and we walked 1/8 of a mile back to the ship. Walking, I lost the bottom out of my bag and everything fell out. In bed by 3:30 and up the next day at noon….Ship left in the early evening.
The next day’s stories ran the gamut from pure bliss to pure torment. Trains stalled on tracks, rats running rampant, inspiring cremations at Varanasi, homestays with the rich and famous, meetings with the Dalit (untouchables), crippled children in orphanages, rotary projects. There were as many opinions about India as there were different areas visited.
I’m very glad to have had the good fortune to visit a country of such contradictions, beauty and environmental degradation. It makes me realize the world is not always as I think it is or as it should be. Perhaps the path to enlightenment!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Viet Nam
Viet Nam 2007
This is our last day in Viet Nam and I’m going to make a farewell “voyage” to the city and visit the big market again. A few days ago I was so astounded by its breadth and width that I wandered open mouthed…not a good thing to do around here. For the last three days we have been in the Mekong Delta visiting islands, floating markets, family factories and eating….yes, eating has always been my cultural treat anywhere I’ve visited and Viet Nam has put me into orbit. More later.
On Friday 19 left the ship and headed north to Cai Be to board another sea vessel (petit bateau), and motor to the islands in the delta. Stopped to see some rice farmers who were transplanting at this time of year and in the middle of the fields were tombs where the Buddhist farmers were buried. Their bodies remain there (on their land) for a few years, are exhumed and then cremated.
Then a typical tourist rest stop where I investigated the snack shop, and bought some delicious (!)looking green candy that turned out to be addictive. Made from some kind of plant leaves, coconut milk and nuts. Not sweet and really good.
Now that I’m an expert on Pho (Vietnamese soup) I was able to compare the soups we had at every breakfast, lunch and dinner….all different and succulent with fresh vegetables and herbs most of which I have never seen before. Perhaps I can find at Lee Lee’s in Phoenix. The mint and basil are all very different tasting than what we have in our markets, and indeed different in various parts of the country. You see them in the markets in giant heaps and, oh, how I wanted to take them home to Prescott with me along with the dragon fruit, pomelos, mangoes, bananas…all fresh and filled with flavor. (PS those were the ones I recognized.)
I learned how to make bricks in a huge, family owned pottery factory and candy (puffed rice and caramel) in another. On the river we saw Vietnamese life pass by: dirt from the river silt being delivered to farmers is filled with nutrients, charcoal for cooking, logs for building, fruit and vegetables for market, baskets of chickens and ducks, soda pop and washing detergent. The Mekong is truly the main artery and life blood of the country. Development of all kinds is occurring in Viet Nam. Americans, Germans, Japanese seem to be the main contenders and huge corporate parks are going up all over the country. I guarantee that 5 years from now Viet Nam will look something like Singapore.
Our little boat took us to an island where we were given bikes to toot around on, and I almost took a digger into the river where were on a narrow path of mud. My friend, Nancy, did it for me and we had to drag her up from the river bank covered with mud….but she did get back up on the horse. My great claim to fame on the island was holding a very large and very docile python that was also very heavy. I looked him in the eye at one point and was very glad he had eaten a chicken earlier in the day, and wasn’t interested in me for lunch. We had some tea at a little guest room ornately decorted, and there was also something like ouzo served….awful taste but not as bad as the snake wine offered later.
By this time I was drenched from the heat and humidity and hoping for a sudden downpour, but no luck with that until early evening. (I now will see The Scent of Green Papaya again and understand the sultry afternoon scenes.) Early evening we “parked” at our cottage on stilts, took cold showers that did absolutely nothing to keep me cool, rested in hammocks, and later learned how to make rice paper and spring rolls. Dinner presentation was elegant: an elephant fish served standing in a little fence of chopsticks covered in scallions with a beautiful orchid in its mouth, all kinds of green and yellow vegetables I have never before seen, langoustinos with roe, squid, vegetable soup and fruit for dessert. Later on in the evening I sat on our porch overlooking the river and watched as huge clumps of water hyacinth floated with the tide. I was told that the Vietnamese soldiers hid under the plants to camaflouge themselves from US helicopters. What a horrible war to have fought in.
From Vinh Lo to Can Tho took about an hour and we had lunch before setting out on another expedition (no moss growing on these trips) to a few Buddhist temples, one of which is Khmer and reminded me of the architecture in Pnom Penh years ago. ( I decided not to go to Cambodia on this trip because I still have the imagery of 40 yrs. Ago being in Seam Reap all by myself with a bicycle and a camera….exactly one week before the Americans started bombing in the country. Selfishly and naively, I want Angor Wat and Angor Thom to remain the same in my mind.) And we visited an orphanage of sweet-faced children all very anxious to practice their English. We brought them candy,but they were more interested in our cameras and holding hands with us. They were being well cared for and seemed very happy. Ferry ride was a challenge as we boarded the boat with around 200 folks on motor scooters.
And the floating market….what an experience. Each boat hoists the products it sells on long and narrow poles, and so one sees potatoes, onions, turnips, fruits swinging on high, docks alongside and buys the day’s groceries. We stopped alongside a pineapple boat and ate fresh fruit…I normally don’t like pineapple because it’s always sour and acidic. This was delightly succulent.
The land market was a revelation. Hold your stomachs…eels crawling in tubs, frogs having been skinned squirming with their heads cut off, tons of live crabs, coconut grubs (big and white and creepy-crawly), little white clams, snails, fish still swimming in pots, pigs legs, duck livers, and noodles of all shapes, sizes and colors. The odors were a bit overwhelming and at one stall I was thrown out by a woman I think hated Americans. Checked out of our hotel, ate a barbecue lunch cooked in bamboo vases and headed back to Saigon. This morning I’m headed back into Saigon to have more soup and do some shopping. The shuttle bus takes us right to the famous (or infamous) Rex hotel, hangout of reporters during the Viet Nam war, middle of town, front of the opera house. And tomorrow we set sail for Thailand. I will be flying up to Chiang Mai that is supposed to be a beautiful old capital city. Next installment in a few days. I’m not a weary traveler yet because it’s the adrenaline kick…I seem to recovery when at sea. No stomach problems yet even though I eat and drink everything put in front of me….must be from many years of eating forbidden fruits!
I do think if one visits Viet Nam five years from now, the country will have changed significantly. There are large investment firms putting their money into the country for development, citizens are industrious, and education is very important. These folks work very hard at sustainable agriculture, industry, and economics. I wish them much success!
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