Tour d'Afrique - Cairo to Cape Town by Bike

Me...desert. Too cool!

A bunch of Egyptian kids posing for the camera. That poor donkey hauls many loads and apparently gets used as a jungle gym!

We left Safaga the other day showered and excited to hit some climbing. I wore short sleeves for the first time because we heard the day was to start with a 40km long sustained climb. We left camp in two groups and the Egyptian Police escort (they won't let you go anywhere here without a police escort; it is to secure the tourism industry) decided that they knew a shortcut to where we were going so 5km out of town, they turned around the 2nd group and took us back into town to go the other way. Luckily, we ended up meeting the other group at the intended spot and no one was worse for wear, but the poor tour organizers had a little stress added to the morning coffee.

The reports were right, we did start with a 40km long climb, but as it turned out the grade wasn't too steep and we had a tail wind (again) in certain spots. We were averaging around 25km/h on the climb so it didn't turn out to be too stressful. Once at the top, we enjoyed the ride winding through the mountain tops and out on to the desert plateau where we stopped for a picture of the first natural tree we had seen in a long time! Myself, Patrick (South Africa) and Rémy (Montreal) eased our way along as a threesome until we caught another group in the last 30km where we worked as a team to fend off our first head winds.

We camped at an oasis that night. What an oddity it seemed! The landscape was the barren, desolate, dry desert we have become accustomed to, but we were in a small circle of greenery providing us with a commodity we had become foreign to: shade!

The next morning (this morning) we descended back down to the Nile again at Qena and turned south toward Luxor. My original plan was to stop with some others in Qena and take a look around, but once we arrived there, it was clear that the police wanted no part of that. I then decided that this would now be my last racing day since I figured there was nothing else to see along this road. Wrong was I!

Luckily (in an overly optimistic sense), I bent a chain hammering to catch up to the lead pack. I and some others got a little left behind when a pothole surprised us, I hopped it, others hit the brakes and went in the dirt, but no one went down. I cursed at my decrepid chain, repeatedly, then went to fix it watching my draft and my vie for a stage win spin into the distance. Whilst fixing my chain, a few locals came by to see what was going on and to try to earn some tips by offering assistance. I got going again with Patrick whom came back for me when he realized I wasn't in the peleton and with Rémy who had a flat on the start line and just caught up as I was finishing fixing my chain. We went along at a comfortably quick pace which in retrospect was a great way to spend the day. Now out of the desert and into the fertile and populated band surrounding the Nile, we were bombarded with "Hello!" "Hi" "Welcome" and the inevitable "Money, money, money,..." from what felt like thousands of people on either side of the road for the entire ~60km between my chain failure and Luxor. I can only imagine how alien we must look to them using things that they don't see often like sunglasses, bikes under 50lbs. and colourful spandex. Poor Dean, our mechanic who manned the lunch table alone had a large gaggle of ~20 kids around constantly asking for money or food from the table. We stopped for a little while to talk to the kids there, took pictures of their asses (there were two donkeys there) and the like. Remi had his multi-tool stolen from his under-seat bag without any of us noticing. We made the feeble attempt at spanning the language crevasse using the few Arabic words we know to ask who may have taken it. That was when the men with rifles yelled something at the kids and they all took off. Oh well, it was only a multi-tool.

We have our first rest day tomorrow in Luxor and we have some tours planned of the Valley of the Kings (incl. King Tut's tomb), Valley of the Queens and other historic sights. We only have two more riding days in Egypt, then we finally get to put the knobby tires on and hit the "roads" of Sudan. I am very excited for that since cruising at 40km/h along pavement doesn't make for too much challenge.

Next time from the sands of the Nubian desert (well, figuratively of course)