30. Alexandria, Egypt - 16 March to 29 March 2010 Back in Cairo, with a day to spare before we were to run the gauntlet of the Libyan Embassy again, we caught yet another taxi into the city to spend some time in the souq of Khan al-Khalili, a market which sells everything to anybody, both locals and tourists. It is a labyrinth of narrow alleyways and courtyards and easily confuses, but we found Fishawi's Coffeehouse, an institution which claims to have been serv...

29. Sinai, Egypt - 5 March to 16 March 2010 It felt good to be out of busy, bustling Cairo and on the hectic highway towards Sinai, where in no time the drab urban landscape changed to one of desert with occasional apartment complexes in the middle of nowhere. We were heading for the Suez Tunnel - just another tunnel - but definitely a different experience if you are lucky enough to sight a ship seemingly cruising through the desert, only visible from about the ...

28. The Western Desert Route to Cairo, Egypt - 23 February to 5 March 2010 Rather than the Red Sea coast, we decided to travel the Western Desert route to Cairo from Luxor, as we had heard it was a spectacular drive, especially the White Desert, famous for its brilliant white limestone formations that are the remains of microscopic marine animals deposited 80 million years ago. There are four oases on this Western Desert road. Magically, the water found in thes...

27. Aswan and Luxor, Egypt - 11 February to 23 February, 2010 Just before sunset, we had crossed the border into Egypt on Lake Nasser, aboard the ferry from Wadi Halfa in Sudan to Aswan. Once it was dark, we were rugged up in our sleeping bags, very snug and comfortable despite the flat hard deck underneath. Early in the night, we heard some activity around us, and sat up to see the awesome sight of the two temples of Abu Simbel on the western shores of the lake,...