Wells Gray March 04 to 09, 2024

Day One

It is the first time we have been to Wells Gray Provincial Park. It is British Columbia near Clearwater. Clearwater is our jumping off point and we catch the heli there. The trip is just short of ½ an hour. The lodge is located on the edge of a huge sub-alpine meadow at around 1,900M. The view from the front window is of Fight Meadows. The cabin was built about 1986, is 2 floors with the sleeping area upstairs, it has a propane stove, heating, fridge and sauna, there are solar panels that provide the lighting and one charging station, and can accommodate up to 10 people.  The heli drops us off, Tay, one of the owners and her daughter, who were there opening up the lodge, get on and poof we are alone in the wilderness.

Fight Meadow cabin

We are the first people to use the lodge this winter so we have to set the uptrack  and navigate to skiable terrain. Our first destination is Fifty Two Ridge. We didn’t know what we were looking for or what to expect. We arrive at the top of the ridge and there are numerous open glades 30 or 40 turns long. The slope is very shallow but the snow is light and fast. The skiing on the first day is a success.

 Day Two

We use the uptrack we put in yesterday extend it a little and make our way to the top of Fifty Two Ridge. The sky is clearing and the vista is truly spectacular. From our vantage point we can clearly see our goal, ‘Battle Mountain’. The south side of the mountain is quite skiable and we find our way down from the ridge across a valley and up Battle Mountain. Before we enter the trees we set a compass reading and uptrack without vision but head up. We find our way to the bottom of a wide open glade and track our way to the top. The trip down tells us the snow is as good as yesterday. Another trip up our set track and the second run is right to the valley bottom. We uptracked and skied our way back to the lodge. Every turn was through fluffy, soft boot top snow.

Our tracks down Battle Mountain

Day Three

Debbie takes the day off. M and I head to an unnamed ridge SE across the meadow. It turns out our objective is a long way. Two hours of trekking and we find some skiable terrain. We are standing on top of the ridge and can see for many miles. There are several very skiable open glades on all sides of the apex. We ski the north facing slopes putting one set of tracks down each. The snow is perfect. What I would call ‘hero snow’. It is impossible to have a bad turn. It is so pliable that every err is easily corrected.

Instead of following the uptrack home we decide to traverse above the cliff face we followed on the way in and find a route down through the rocks. A bit of searching and a skiable route is found. A couple of cautious turns and the terrain opens in front of us. A whoop and we’re headed down. The skiing is fantastic, open trees, great snow and a perfect pitch for skiing. Honestly it was one of the best runs I have had in 55 years of skiing.

Day Four

We are headed to ski up the north face of Fifty Two Ridge. The slopes are a bit steeper than the south face which makes for much better skiing. We choose an area and test it with a run. Again the snow is great and the slope is perfect for Debbie. Set an uptrack and use it for the rest of the day yo yoing that slope and ones adjacent. We made enough runs to trash a good portion of the slopes and headed home for the night.

On the top of Fifty Two Ridge

Day Five

Four days of long touring have taken their toll and we are all bagged. It took a while to get out the door today and our goal is to follow the route we took on the first day and ski the same area in the south facing glades off Fifty Two Ridge. There is some wind effect and the snow in the open areas is quite stiff. We change our objective and since the trees are spread apart we decide to ski in the trees. The trees protected the snow and it is still soft and fluffy. The slope is very shallow but we still have a good time. Heli comes tomorrow.

We’ve had a good few days, wonderful snow and outstanding scenery.

View from the cabin
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Namibia and Egypt Photos

A selection of photos from our trip to Namibia and Egypt is now posted to the blog.

To view photos, hover over “Photos” until the drop down menu appears. The photos are under the “Africa” subheading. Hover over “Arica” and another drop down menu appears with “Namibia 2023” and “Egypt 2023″listed. Click on either in the drop down menu. Wait until the photos load. Click on the first photo and a “slide show” view will appear. Scroll through the photos using the arrow on the right hand side or the arrow key. Click on the “x” in the upper right hand corner to exit out of the slide show. Enjoy!

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Cairo, a last look

There are lots of cats and dogs in Egypt that do not belong to anyone. In Cairo, it is the cats that are a nuisance around the outdoor cafes, and everywhere really. Under tables, around my feet, pawing at my leg for scraps of food. Someone is going to have to get busy and do something or the cats will take over the city, or maybe they have already!

Cairo, Egypt

Downtown Cairo is laid out like Paris. Apparently French architects were commissioned by Khedive Ismail to design the city so that is was the jewel of the orient. Our hotel is on a five spoked intersection with a statue in the hub. The buildings look just like ones found in Paris. 

Many of the streets in Cairo have been changed to one way to enhance traffic flow. They do not have lane lines as the drivers don’t follow the lanes anyway. Saves on line painting costs. The one ways are easier to cross too. We follow our trusted method and attach ourselves to a local and cross with them. Sometimes they are completely unaware that we are doing this. Walking slowly, within inches of the moving vehicles can be disconcerting to a westerner but the system works. We have had no issues with crossing the streets. The cars and motorbikes are constantly beeping, but it is mostly to say “I am right behind you”, or sometimes “Get out of my way!”. The traffic will be so quiet once we get back to Canada.

Cairo, Egypt

When we first arrived in Cairo, we stayed at a large chain hotel. Not much character, standard western look and services. Right now, we are staying in a small local hotel called the Cairo Inn. It is clean and safe, the staff very friendly and the rooms definitely have character. This is so much more fun than a big chain hotel with their thousands of tour group tourists.

Cairo, Egypt

The typical meal schedule for an Egyptian in Cairo is breakfast between 9 – 11 am, a snack between 2 – 3 pm, lunch between 6 – 7 pm, and dinner between 10 – 11 pm. Lunch is the big meal and dinner is a lighter meal or maybe leftover lunch or grilled cheese. We were not following this schedule, of course, as we were comatose by 9:30 pm every night!

Tonight we start our journey home. But why does the flight have to depart at 2:00 am? Gruesome start to a 24+ hour journey. I do know why, flight leaves here at 2:00am and arrives in Frankfurt at about 6:00am, when the airport opens. I bet it has something to do with fees and what time flights arrive. Anyway, we had a nap this afternoon and are now chilling before we go for supper. Then shower, pack and taxi at 10:15pm to start our homeward journey.

Cairo, Egypt
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Downtown Cairo Food Tour

Murray and I meet P, our guide from Bellies En-Route, who is going to take us on a food tour of downtown Cairo. Joining our group is E, a young Italian currently living in London. P explains there will be eight stops with two adventure stops, if we dare. She also says to pace ourselves, as far as eating is concerned, as we are going to try many foods.

Bellies En-Route was started about 2016 by two women who love food and want to share the local Cairo food with others. There are tours every day in downtown Cairo and Heliopolis. They have 14 guides working for them now who share their enthusiasm for food and Cairo with folks from all over the world.

Our first stop is a shop that sells freshly made potato chips and a variety of pita with a falafel patty and tahini inside. The chips are slightly spiced and very yummy, but I only have a few when I could have eaten the whole bunch.

Next stop is Arabic coffee from Yemen, which only E has as we do not drink coffee. It is very pale in colour in the cup due to the process used to make it, but E says it is delicate tasting and very nice.

A small eatery is next where we try vermicelli rice, white beans in tomato sauce, zucchini, spinach and roasted chicken. 

Cairo, Egypt

P tests on our fruit juice knowledge and slowly gives us eight different juices to try. Coconut with milk, tamarind, sugar cane, mandarin orange, honey dew melon, hibiscus, pomegranate and mango. My fav is the mandarin and the surprise is the tamarind.

Koshari
Koshari

Our next two stops are small restaurants. The Felfela serves dishes of eggplant, baba ganouche, fava beans, steamed falafel balls and something called molokheya served on rice, which is a mixture of jute leaves and coriander prepared in a very specific way.  The second restaurant is the Abu Tarek, which serves koshari, which we had eaten when in Cairo two weeks ago.

Felfela Restaurant, Cairo
Felfela Restaurant

We stop in the market to try Parmesan type hard cheese and bread dipped in a molasses and tahini mixture. The dip was very sweet but the tahini moderated the molasses taste.

A sweet shop is a must so we stop there to try a number of small pieces of baklava and other delights.

Cairo, Egypt

Murray and I pass on the adventure stop, but E tries liver in pita and passes on the cow brains.

Our last stop is for drinks in the Rooftop Garden on top of the Carlton Hotel. The hotel was built in the 1930s and has the grandeur of that time period. It was a very enjoyable time trying local foods and chatting with P and E about live in Egypt, London, Italy and Canada.

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Egypt Olio

Here we sit in a 5 star hotel in Aswan waiting for a plane ride back to the chaos of Cairo. The room temp is a 28C. It is amazing how the body adapts. Several days in the outdoors at 30C+ and a temperature that is normally much too hot is quite comfortable.

We drove through the Nubian Desert, which is part of the Sahara Desert. It is different kind of desert compared to Namibia. Tan coloured sand with black rock outcroppings every so often. It is mostly flat, whereas in Namibia, it is quite undulating.

Nubian Desert
Nubian Desert

The Egyptian government is heading up a project called The Desert Land Reclamation Project. They are constructing some 60 km of canals to carry water from the Nile and Nasser Lake to irrigate agricultural land. Crops are growing in the sand, using great arms to water them. Wheat is the predominant crop, which resulted from the inability to obtain wheat due to the war in the Ukraine. The crops are mostly large circles as the irrigation arms move in a circular fashion. If you check out Google Maps, just north of Abu Simbel, you can see how many crop circles there are. Just think if the whole desert were to be growing crops, the food shortage would be history!

Crop Circles!
Crop Circles!

Many lunches and suppers are a choice of fish, chicken or beef. Either grilled or tagine. Tagine, chicken say, is pieces of chicken cooked in a small clay pot in broth, or gravy, very similar to a stew. Tagine is served with rice and cooked veggies. The meals are usually also served with appetizers of bread, tahini, eggplant and some soup. Too much food!

My favourite refreshment here is a lemon mint drink. Basically, lemonade with mint and a touch of sugar. Very delicious after a hot day in the sun touring temples.

Here in Egypt, paying for the use of toilets is the norm. Not much makes me annoyed when we travel, but this practise does. We stop at a “rest stop” on the way to Abu Simbel. I think the owner makes more money on the toilets than he does selling coffee, trinkets, chips and chocolate bars. I can see the reasoning behind this model, but I do not like it. In a museum or temple, sometimes there is a person handing out TP for 5 or 10 Egyptian Pounds (25 or 50 cents), so I pay. This person may not get a wage and his earnings are what he collects in a day, which might be quite a lot at a busy temple.

On our group tour we get up early. I think the earliest is at 5:00 for a departure at 5:30 am, with breakfast after we get back. This early hour is to watch the sunrise at the Temple of Karnak. We are the only group there at 6:00 when the gates open, take beautiful photos and we are on our way out when the masses arrive. Our intrepid guide is very good at getting us to temples before the main rush, so for that I will get up early.

Hatshepsut’s Cracked Obelisk
Hatshepsut’s Cracked Obelisk

We stop at two quarries on our travels, one limestone and one granite. The limestone quarry is beside the Nile and we see where great blocks were chiselled out and moved down to the water’s edge. The granite quarry is in Aswan and away from the river slightly. It is the quarry where an obelisk for Hatshepsut was being carved when it cracked and thus discarded. It is still laying in the quarry after all the centuries.

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Abu Simbel

Today, after about a three hour drive south of Aswan, we arrive in Abu Simbel. The reason why we are here is the temple to Ramses II, with its imposing four seated figures.

Ramses wanted a temple close to the Nubian border to show power and strength, and it does do that. There is also a temple for his wife Queen Nefertari.

Inside Ramses’ temple are scenes of the great battle of the Hittites around 1260 BC. There is one scene of Ramses in his chariot with his pet lion running beside him. The temple is awe inspiring.

What makes these two temples very unique is the fact that, when the Aswan High Dam, was being constructed, the temples were moved to higher ground as they would have been flooded behind the dam. UNESCO and five countries aided in the deconstruction, move and reconstruction of the temples. The temples were cut into about 1,000 pieces for the move. Two great domes of concrete were constructed, the temples built and then rock was laid over the concrete to look like hills, or mountains. It is impressive. It took over four years to complete with many thousands of workers and engineers.

The temples look over Lake Nasser or, as the locals call it, The Nubian Sea. It is a huge body of water that was created by the Aswan High Dam and supplies water to Egyptians all the way to the Mediterranean.

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More Egypt Bits

High relief
High relief

There are two types of relief used on the temple walls. High relief, where the background is flat figures and objects are raised. Deep cut, or low, relief is where the figures and objects are cut into the stone and the background is higher.

Deep cut, or low, relief
Deep cut, or low, relief

Our small group have visited two separate households along the Nile. This is what makes the tours with Wild Frontiers so special. The first one is with a young woman named Esma, who invites us into her home and serves us tea while we chat about her life and the community around her. The second visit was with Syad and his family. He is quite humorous but very knowledgeable about what is going on in the world. The village where he lives has 300 people, who are farmers and fishermen. His family has two acres to farm, where they grow various crops to sell and to consume personally. It is a very enjoyable visit and we run overtime and could have stayed longer.

Egypt

We visit the site of the Daraw camel market, but unfortunately the market is not on today. A fellow shows us his “barn” where he has four camels, a horse, some cows, sheep and goats. The camels are two mothers and two youngsters. They seem content and weren’t bothered by us tourists. Most of the camels in Egypt come from Sudan and are used for transportation, meat, milk, breeding and tourism. Rather sadly, the camels in the tourist industry (like in Giza near the great pyramids) are not treated as they should be.

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Egypt Bits

The biggest insect caution we got when coming to Egypt was mosquitoes. I haven’t seen one in over a week here. What drives me crazy are the flies. They are incessant. They fly at your face, nose, ears, and mouth. Swish them away and they are back in a second. There are not many inside the air-conditioned hotel and there are not any hanging around the boat. I think the coolness of the AC and the constant breeze set by the moving boat are deterrents.  

Egypt

If you do any research prior to your trip to Egypt you will most likely be apprehensive about setting foot outside your hotel for fear the touts will overwhelm you. I have not found this to be the case at all. There are touts. There are touts that will try to interest you in anything saleable. Some folks will show you something ‘really special’ and then expect to be paid for doing it. I have yet to follow any of them. Others have wares that you might ‘need.’ Really, all these folks are just marketing the way they know how. I have run into very few that are aggressive and most of the time ‘la a’(no) or ‘la a shukran’ (no thank you) is sufficient enough for the tout to cease pestering you. I always try to be polite and in the long run I approach the situation as good fun, part of life in Egypt. Walking though a market would be terribly boring without these people.

When visiting Bhutan, we were about to go into the umpteenth temple in two weeks and I turned to Debbie and said ‘I’m zhonged out’. The temples in Bhutan are zhongs and they all started to look the same and I had no more capacity to absorb any more Buddhist lore. It has been 7 days since we landed in Egypt and my brain is full. The temples are starting to look the same and I cannot sort one God or ruler from the other. There are kings that are famous for some reason or another and some that are obscure. There are warriors and there are builders. There is the first, the second and the third and right now the are all muddled together. I’m templed out.

Egypt

Prior to leaving on this trip I got a phone call from a friend saying I should give him a call. He had been in Egypt in the spring. I called. He told me the trip was very good, the boat down the Nile was exceptional. He did feel he should give me a warning. “Don’t go outside the hotel compound, Egypt is really sketchy.” I am always leery when I hear things like that. I have heard it so many times I take it with a grain of salt. Somehow this fellow had been informed or convinced that because there are many armed policemen at varying street corners in the cities and armed guards at the gates of the hotel that Egypt is unsafe. The guides and folks we have met all say Egypt is a very safe place to be. We have been wandering around Cairo and Luxor and frankly I think the warning could not have been farther from the reality. Not once have I felt threatened or in any kind of danger. I have turned on my spidey sense and it has not tingled at all. One day I may get burned but I must believe that the vast majority of people are good and you can’t live your life based on the action of a few bad ones.

We did not plan to visit any of the tombs inside the pyramids but we had the opportunity and took it. Jasmine our guide told us if we wanted to do that we should go to the bent or red pyramids. It was free to go into those where as the three more famous and more visited pyramids there was a charge. The caveat was that the bent pyramid had the hardest passageway. It is very low and long and there are many ups and downs. This of course is a challenge if I have ever heard one.

Debbie entered first. The corridor shrank in height very quickly. The first part of the passage was about 1M in height. We didn’t have to bum slide but we were crouched down, folding our body in about half. Our legs were screaming but the time we reached the first place we could stand. The next section has stairs and was vertical. Another long shaft with even less height than the first but not quite as long. At the next place of reasonable height we were not sure we would be able to stand ever again. The next stairs were in an elevator sized shaft and about 10M high. It was a short trip to the tomb from there. Frankly it was not worth the tremendous effort required to get there. Getting out was easier in my opinion. I could support myself on the handrails in a more horizontal position which did not stress my legs so much. The journey was not too bad and although our legs were spongy when we exited it was the next two days that were hell. Neither of us could walk up or down stairs without grimacing . It took us three days to recover. Ouch!

Fruit box construction
Fruit box construction

In the ancient Egyptian calendar had 10 days in a week, and three weeks in a month and 12 months in a year with five days of celebrations for a different god each day. There were three seasons – the flood, cultivating and harvesting.

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The Nile

The first day of our Nile tour we meet our tour mates – our two Sherwood Park friends, three folks from the US and four from the UK. All lovely people and the group gets along very well. And then we are off to the Valley of the Kings. Right away we notice we are on a major tourist trail. Hordes of folks, all different nationalities and languages, doing what we are doing. The Valley of the Kings has numerous tombs of the kings of ancient Egypt. We walk through three tombs, the best one being Ramses IV as it has some of the original colour on the walls. The walls are inscribed with scenes of the king doing various things – getting blessed by the gods, holding an enemy’s head in one hand and a dagger in the other, making offerings. Some of the inscriptions are of items that he will need in the afterlife – food, servants, a boat. We start to see the same images in a number of tombs as the artists would “copy and paste”.

Hatshepsut’s Temple
Hatshepsut’s Temple

Our next stop is one I am looking forward to. It is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. It is built into the side of a mountain and blends in very nicely. The architect was ahead of his time in the design of the temple. It is massive and commanding. Unfortunately, after Hatshepsut died, Tuthmoses III, her son and successor, destroyed a lot of her images because she basically stole his rule from him, long story.

Egypt

As we drive through the countryside we pass fields of sugar cane. Sugar cane is grown for five years, then after the harvest, the debris is burned, tilled into the earth and then alfalfa is grown for 3 to 4 months. This process revitalizes the soil. After the alfalfa is harvested, sugar is planted again. The other crops we see are corn, bananas, date palms, wheat, barley and household veggies.

Dahabiyat
Dahabiyat

We visit a number of other temples and tombs over the two days and now we have a change of pace. We are sitting on a dahabiyat, a flat bottomed boat with a water level deck for eight guest cabins and the upper deck with dining area and lots of lounge seating. We are being towed up the Nile by a tug boat and when the wind picks up, the sails are unfurled. We have an easy day today, mostly cruising down the Nile with one stop at a temple along the way.

Egypt

Our stop is in Edfu, to wander through the Temple of Horus built by Ptolemy III, starting in about 200 BC. The story goes something like this:

The gods Osiris (good guy) and Seth (bad guy) fought, and Seth killed Osiris and buried him in the Nile. Osiris’s wife, Isis, and her sister, Nephthys, searched and searched for him and found his coffin in the reeds next to the Nile. They prayed to the gods and he came alive. Isis  and Osiris lived in the reeds, away from everyone and soon had a child, Horus. Seth found them and fought Osiris again and killed him again. Seth cut Osiris’s body up in 16 pieces and spread them over Egypt. Once again Isis and Nephthys searched and found all the pieces and through, magic if you will, brought him alive again but alive in the afterworld. Horus grew up, became a man and sought out Seth and battled him, killing him. 

The temple has a huge wall with scenes of this battle between Horus, the god, and Seth, a hippo. Hippos were used to depict evil, bad guys. Anyway, hippo looses, good god wins.

Egypt
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Egypt Rant

A good portion of the last two days in Cairo have been spent on the road. I could not help but notice that driving in Cairo is chaos. But like all cities in the world where driving follows a very loose set of rules it is like an unchoreographed ballet. Everything ebbs and flows very organically. Everyone is very polite and it seems to me no one gets mad. You have to be aggressive and nudge your way into the spaces much smaller than your car but if you get the front bumper inbetween two vehicles the person behind will let you in. All this goes on at any speed. 10 kph or 80 kph.

The subtlety of all this is the drivers in Cairo have an amazing grasp of the dynamics of the roadway. They are very aware of all that is in front of them, beside them and behind them. They understand the differences in the speed of the surrounding vehicles and they understand how to react to them. Move over ½ a meter to the right, speed up slightly, slowdown quickly. It is one of the things I see wrong with the drivers in Canada. They have no idea how to read the dynamics of the road and end up stopping at a highway merge sign because they cannot read how the traffic is moving and make a seamless transition from one road to the next. They could not drive here.

The Cairo government has also found away to save loads of cash. They make the roads wide enough for X number of vehicles, pave them nicely and then skip the line painting. This saves on the cost of paint and the cost of labour. Nobody pays any attention to the lines anyway so why have them.

Debbie mentioned we spent a day with at guide at Giza and the pyramids. The guide was the one to choose the lunch spot. We ended up at an unmarked garden restaurant that she said only a few guides knew about. It is more or less a private home with a courtyard large enough to set up a few tables. The lady cooks up a standard meal that includes a variety of home-grown things, chicken and camel. We just left Namibia where we had eat a variety of game meat so I thought what the hell I should at least try camel. It wasn’t that bad! It was not gamey, not tough, it was in fact quite tender and tasted kind of bland. I don’t think it will become my go to meat dish but I would not gag if served it at a private residence and did not want to make the host feel bad.

Our flight to Luxor was with Egypt Air and we had to go through the domestic airport in Cairo. Maybe it was just the day but it was the single most annoying airport experience I have had. The night before the flight we tried to check in on line and there was some message that said there was ticket problem and we had to check in at the desk. When we arrived, we tried to use the kiosk and the same sort of message appeared. We had to pass through a security before we got to the check in counters. As we approached the x-ray machine some peon is asking me for money because, I don’t know???, he was going to help me put my bag on the conveyor???? He asked this standing under a sign indicating ‘do not pay anyone asking for money.’ I said no and continued on my way.

We get to the check in counter and the fellow at the desk looks completely puzzled at what came up on his screen. He didn’t explain anything, just picked up the phone and tried to hail what I presume was his supervisor. Seemed he go zero response. Soon we were asked to move to the person at the end of the counter. I think he was the supervisor. Egypt Air had cancelled our flight and we had no ticket. There is a flight at the same time but we were not on it. We were told we should have got an email, but we have not been out of email range for more than a day and we did not get any communication what so ever. We were told to take a seat and the fellow then proceeded to help the people in the line-up and ignored our issue all together. After a ½ and hour or so we did get boarding passes for the new flight and we told to proceed to security.

We arrive and were the only ones in line. The security person barked at us. Wait 10 minutes. There was no obvious reason other than they did not want to work. Another few people came up to the belt and got the same curt command. When we finally did get through, I was told to get the tray off the table and return it to the pile return pile. Sorry, not my job. I did finally run into a super nice fellow from Egypt Air at the gate. The last person of contact and it help get rid of the bad taste but I would not recommend the Cairo domestic airport if you can avoid it.

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