Since it took a while to get this blog started, there are pictures and stories from the past that will be appearing along with the events of the present. For now, here is a story of a recent present.
Almost every weekend, we get a chance to travel to different tourist attractions of Egypt. On the one hand, we get a nice break from studying while we play at being tourists. But, at the same time, it is just another distraction from all our studying and paper writing. Last weekend, our tourist activity was a Nile cruise. Now, fiction books are full of tales that should scare anyone away from wanting to cruise the Nile. (Think Death on the Nile, Anthony and Cleopatra, etc.) Well, if those stories aren't enough, here is ours.
We left Agouza late in the evening to take the night train down to Aswan to meet our cruise boat. On the train, everyone got plenty of studying and sleeping done, that way we didn't feel bad about not doing any work for the next three days of vacation. After eating lunch (the first of 9 meals on that boat) we went to the temple of Philae. So far so good. The next post will have picture of the temples. This post is intended to give you cruise willies…
Every meal was served as a buffet line that began with an assortment of 6-7 salads. Our interns warned against touching them, but a few hearty souls ate them anyway. The first casualties appeared late the second day of the cruise. 2 or 3 people started to complain of general malaise. By breakfast on Friday, several more were sick. While those of us who were feeling okay visited Karnak temple, everyone else lay on the boat and drank Sprite. After lunch a few more people opted to skip Hatchepsut's tomb and the Valley of the Kings in the afternoon because they were feeling queasy. I was feeling just fine up till 15 minutes before I threw up on the bus floor. While everyone else visited Tut's tomb, I relaxed on the cool marble floor in the museum and wandered through the tourist shops outside.
By dinner time, several more people were feeling iffy. In the morning, we all got up early and got off the boat as fast as possible. We were in the process of getting off the boat when Suzanne fainted on the sidewalk from dehydration and fever. In the midst of that commotion, some of the boat's crew snuck into one of our rooms and stole a bag of candy that our guide had given as a good bye gift. We finally got onto our train and everyone dosed up on Immodium and settled in for a 9 hour train ride. Instead of racing north at 100 km/h, our train proceeded to crawl along at 50 km/h and stop at every train station no matter how small. In the end, out trip took almost 12 hours. Fortunately, the medicine worked and no one was sick on the train. Just as our bus was delivering us and all our luggage back to Agouza, Jay spewed in the bus. A number of other exhausted students barely reeled back to their flats before collapsing.
All told, 24 out of the 28 members of our group were quite sick for at least a little while in the course of the cruise. Even our Egyptian guide who had been doing cruise tours for years got sick. It didn't matter that some people had been careful what they ate, even they got sick. Fortunately, everyone was sick on the boat where there were decent bathroom facilities instead of on the train where the bathroom was just a smelly hole that opened onto the track. Plus, we had Claire who found out from Diaa what medicine everyone needed, found a pharmacy, dosed everyone at the right times, and got us all Sprite and crackers to eat.
Did I mention that we were on this cruise on Valentine's day?
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