Farewell Cairo...We'll miss your honking...

The end grows near...

Back again in Cairo...complete with death-defying taxi ride...this one was unique in that our bags were tossed haphazzardly upon a "roofrack"(I use that term loosely) with no form of tie-downs other then our driver occasionally reaching his hand out the window to ensure they were still up there...I'm still not convinced he cared...but we, despite the odds against us, arrived at the hotel in one piece... with our luggage!
Sue and Deb:1 Cairo: 0

Sharm El-Sheikh was amazing..it was very relaxing...5 days to sleep in and suntan and feast upon the buffets!!!

We went snorkelling again the next morning at 9:30pm when it was high tide and the sun was still low over the ocean which gave good light. It was 100X better the the first time!!. You don't realize how many fish are in there until you put your head under the water...hundreds of them and the most brilliant colors!! There are neon fish, touquoise fish ,huge schools of bright blues ones...I can't really do it justice. I brought a underwater disposable camera with me and before I got in I didn't think I would be able to fill 27 pictures of fish....but I could have taken 100 pictures easy. I must have seen 25 different types of fish and each was more colorful then the next.

Yesterday me and Sue went parasailing! It was Sue's idea and she was just going to do it alone but when we went to sign her up there was a tandom para-sailing option for a cheap price so I joined in! Para-sailing is when you are attached to a parachute which is drug behind a boat with a rope that soars you about 100feet in the air. I was really scared before we took fight but once we were up it was really fun. It felt like you were just floating in the air...like at the top of one of those amusement rides where they raise you up and hang you there for a minute while you wait for it to drop you to the ground in a free fall....It was funny cause it was Sue's idea and the whole time she was the one who was terrified...When we looked afterwards at the pictures they had taken with my camera and zoomed in on our faces: Sue had a look of shear terror on hers and I am smiling....it is really funny.

We took a bus back to Cairo today..a 6 hour cramped bus..it is nice to be off of it!!! I still have to get organized for our trip home tomorrow. Aunt Afaf is picking us up at 11am tomorrow and is going to entertain us for the day. I'm not sure what exactly is in store. I really wanted to go to the Khan a Khalili Souk and do some souvenir hunting but is sounds like Afaf can't take us there because there is no parking and there is no time for us to do it before she gets us...which is my lesson not to leave all my shopping for the last day. At least I picked up a few things in Luxor so I won't come home completely empty handed. Afaf and Hassan are nice enough to take us for the day and drive us to the airport at midnight so that will be a good trade off. She said she can probably take us to some shops for some of the specific things I want and get us a fair price, I held off getting perfume because the prices are so inflated, as is everything else in the tourist areas, so hopefullly I will come home with some.
Our plane leaves Cairo at 4am(what the...) and then we have a 6.5 hour layover in Frankfurt before our flight home. We get back to Calgary at 3:55pm. It will be nice to be home again...seeing how poor so many people are here and how little they have makes me very grateful for my house and my city...and most of all: my traffic laws....

I wil post pictures once I get home. They had places that could burn my photos from my memory card but was too scared they would somehow get erased accidentally. So this will be my last post from Egypt and if you check back in the next few days the pictures will be up for viewing...hopefully by the evening of the 9th!

Get your hairdryers out and start melting the snow for me...could someone pre-heat my electric blanket....

See you soon...thanks for reading, hopefully I entertained the masses and allowed you to live vicariously through me while being buried in snow:)

Deb