Sunny Places
Red-whiskered Bulbul
Our original goal to travel to a few, safe countries on the African continent did not work out as planned. Partially because we have been in most of them (the safe ones) 20-some odd years ago and have no interest to revisit them now; mostly because we had arrived at the beginning of the rainy season, which we were told is really tough – muddy roads and hills and wild life hard to spot as the animals will have water everywhere so not congregating at the water holes as during the dry season. If we would have hung out for a few months in South Africa, it would not have been an issue. Yet our goal was to return to Munich by the beginning of summer. Now was the time when all the lodge owners go on vacation themselves, and so in the end, we chose another path to slowly return to Europe and leave interesting African countries for a more suitable time.
After bustling around in Cape Town and the vine valleys, where the weather was pleasant, we opted for some time to relax on an African island in the Indian Ocean: Mauritius!
I just cannot resist big pools!
Famous idea how Mauritius should look like - and it does
Although the island is rather large and certainly interesting, we chose to pause exploring for a bit and focus on fitness instead. We stayed at one resort with a very nice gym, and I met a fitness trainer daily focusing on stretching, cardio, and some weights. Then I swam many laps in their enormous pool.
Al fresco dining - no choice, all is outside
The national dance of Mauritius is called Sega and made it into the UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list. Born from the soul of exiled slaves in the 18th century, it was a way for them to express their joys, sorrows, and defiance. It is an integral part of Mauritian identity, reflecting a joie de vivre (joy of living) and is frequently performed at social gatherings and tourist resorts like the one we stayed in.
True fact: for every hotel on a beach that has a huge pool, the beach is usually really bad for swimming and snorkeling.
Tough to go swimming or snorkeling, as we had very strong currants due to high tidal differences, which also did not help when you are too low to snorkel over some sea urchins
We rode a boat to a nearby snorkel reef that was enjoyable, yet we both did not feel like scuba diving even though the fishes we observed were temptingly beautiful and unusual.
Mauritius for sure is a pretty island - great weather - Indian Ocean - we stayed too short!
Our time was also preoccupied with our search for new destinations. We had booked a beautiful 10-day stay in Saudi-Arabia (Riyadh, AlUla, Jeddah) days before the war broke out and so did not feel comfortable continuing those plans as the conflict dragged on. We also heavy-heartedly skipped our time in Jordan (all planned out) for the same reason. So, we headed straight for our final African destination: Cairo!
In April, the weather in Cairo in our opinion is extremely pleasant: sunshine, of course, but comfortable warm temperatures and endless blue skies. Randy and I visited Egypt before we got married, like a test, if we would be good travel (and life) partners. So, this country holds a special place in our hearts. Those many years ago we traveled all the way down the Nile from Cairo to Luxor, Valley of the Kings, Aswan and Abu Simbel. This time, we focused specifically on visiting the newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum, and to see the new being built capital of Egypt (which has not yet been given a name, and until then is known as the New Administrative Capital (NAC)).
The museum did not disappoint: vast, modern, innovative, flawed, and yet very informative. We were truly intrigued by the many kingdoms and gods over the many thousand years, by so many items on display and details uncovered by archeologists that were well organized and explained.
The square with the main entrance to the left and the hanging Obelisk of Ramses II on the right. It’s near the pyramids of Giza and part of the ancient site of Memphis
Not to overload ourselves, we planned to come back on a second day and focus on another part of the museum, which turned out was the complete exhibit of everything recovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Big entrance hall with the two statues to the right and the large staircase/escalator to the further left. Lots of retail shops to the right, but not many are already occupied. Same with the food possibilities - not many, but tons of ice cream stores, all in the building part to the right
View from the rear of the Grand hall towards the entrance
4m high statues of a Ptolemaic King and queen, found in 2000 about 7 kilometers of the coast in the underwater city of Heracleion, the main Mediterranean port city for Egypt, six meter underwater. The city’s heyday was from the 12th to the 1st century BC, at which time it slowly disappeared in the ocean and was gone by the 2nd century AD, loosing its importance as a main port city to neighboring Alexandria.
A statue of statue of Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479 to 1457 BC
The statue is crafted from red granite and depicts the ruler in a masculine form, bare-chested, wearing the traditional false beard, striped royal head cloth and the royal kilt.
The Grand Staircase, like an open-air gallery. It is full of nearly 60 big artifacts, including statues, stelae, columns and sarcophagi. To the right are two very low angled escalators. The Main Galleries are starting upstairs, on the upper (6th) floor. The upper floor has two parts: to one side the Main Galleries, to the other side the Tutankhamun Galleries, which exhibit everything aka 5000 artifacts that were found in Tut’s legendary tomb.
The flat crown (back) symbolized dominion over the Nile Delta in the north while the rounded crown (middle) represented the southern Nile Valley. The crowns were unified (front) to show that Tutankhamun ruled over a unified kingdom.
Ancient Egyptian stela with lots of hieroglyphs
The decorated burial chamber of the tomb of Henu, an ancient Egyptian official from the Sixth Dynasty, was discovered in 2022 near the pyramid of King Merenre I in the Saqqara necropolis, some 30 kilometers away. Saqqara pyramids are about 2000 years older than the famous one’s in Giza.
People carrying bread baskets.
The Main Galleries were taking us from prehistoric times, mainly from the time before 2034 BC, on, to the Roman era of Egypt, divided into twelve galleries narrating roughly four time periods with the main themes being Society, Kingship and Beliefs. It is well done, seeing the differences from one dynasty after another, slowly and well narrated how the different kingdoms differed from each other over time.
When I saw that, I thought: oh yes, that look’s familiar! A couple at dinner, having to decide what to eat from the (stone) menu
Here is one of Tut’s golden caskets. I think he was in 3 different coffins, one bigger than the other, like the wooden nesting dolls, then in a stone sarcophagus, and then in three nestled wooden, highly decorated shrines in that burial chamber out South in the Valley of the Kings. He died in 1327 BC. All on display - pretty impressive!
View down from the upper floor from one of the two connecting walking bridges, looking down the Grand staircase towards the main Grand Hall on the ground floor.
This museum opened last November and has lots of space to grow. As this new museum is in Giza, a suburb of Cairo, we also got the advantage to see the pyramids again – from afar as we still held fond memories from visiting them decades earlier and felt no compulsion to return.
Old Cairo impression
Instead, we toured old Cairo downtown, where we visited several mosques and old historic buildings and walked along the busy streets.
Entry to the mosque and madrassa of Sultan Barquq, a historic Islamic complex, built around 1385 AD with beautifully decorated halls and interesting history
Reading up on history…
Egyptian people are very friendly, polite and honest – to our impression, unless ---- they are taxi drivers. But that is another story. Unfortunately, too, one cannot discuss anything political in this country, local politics, not at all; foreign - also better not. Therefore, a lot of discussions about food.
Street baker
Bayt al-Suhaymi Above the arches in the background is an oriel window (a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground). In Egypt those windows with carved wood latticework are called Mashrabiya and are traditionally used to catch wind and for passive cooling. This was a big family home in the 17th century, with a courtyard and fountain to keep it cool in hot Cairo
Of course, we had to take another food tour, knowing already that we like Egyptian food, and we got really lucky with our tour guide: a very easy going, joyous person, showing us around all the food stalls and shops Egyptians regularly visit for breakfast or lunch. He took us in a tuk-tuk ride through busy, non-touristy neighborhoods and stopped at a lot of smaller, but to Egyptians well known, places. Bread is everywhere, and in the back of a bread shop, we watched all the steps involved in baking that warm comfort food/ fork-substitute.
The beginning of making bread, which is done all day long
Outside the little bake place is where the bread is sold. Warm fresh bread is sold everywhere on the streets of Cairo
Transport on regular and motorized bikes
Evening life happens outside in the streets
Historical landmark Sayyida Zainab Mosque in the background
As the sun was setting, and still part of the food tour, we boarded an Egyptian sailboat called a Felucca to enjoy some tea while dancing to Egyptian music on the Nile. Such a fun time!
New capital cities are often created for different reasons: like with Indonesia, because the old one, Jakarta, is drowning in the rising ocean. For Cairo, the traffic must have been so horrendous that in 2009, the government opted to design a new capital out in the desert, half an hour away, and much farther from the airport. There is already a city nearby called New Cairo, which is a very nice and looks rather wealthy, busy place, more like any big European city – pleasant.
One of the gates through which one must drive to enter the NAC
The NAC is being built is for the government and military buildings foremost; phase 1 is largely completed; the Egyptian Parliament and several ministries relocated in 2024 and at the moment 6000 people live there already.
Their main construction was done by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation
Various Ministry / Government buildings
The streets are still rather empty. The New Administrative Capital is being built as a smart city with over 6,000 cameras monitoring the streets.
This year, Egypt officially opened a new monorail with 22 stations, connecting Cairo City with the NAC. There is still a lot that can be built…
It is planned to house 6.5–10 million people to reduce Cairo's population density. Housing communities are partially finished and is still being constructed for hundreds of thousands more people, and the city layout is …. how to say it politely …. somewhat unusual.
These are half-way finished, empty housing communities
The central, cylindrical skyscraper is the Iconic Tower, which is currently the tallest building in Africa. The skyscrapers are part of the new Business District. The area also contains a Grand Mosque and a new Coptic Orthodox cathedral.
People's Square in the Government district of the NAC. Obviously, the design of these columns is directly inspired by ancient Egyptian temple architecture - at least this one is nicely done…
It needs to be seen whether people will occupy the places created for them – only time will tell. Very interesting to keep an eye on after seeing it firsthand.
Being dependent on transportation with Uber all over Cairo, we encountered the problem that most cars have only Arabic letters on their license plates, which made it really difficult in busy areas to find our drivers. Only after a few days we made photos of the few that had Roman letters on them (like above), and we started to learn the Arabic numbers which was actually a lot of fun, then driving through the streets, checking with each other if we remembered correctly. In the end we got all 10 numbers down perfectly.
So, in the end, we remained a relatively short time in Africa. But when we are based back in Europe, the flights to different African countries will not be so long and still in the same timezone, so we plan to return. With the remaining time available to us since skirting the Middle East, we came up with something really unusual and exciting for Randy and me. But more on that soon to follow.