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Journal of African trips

African trip [I]

Agelasto
2004-05-20 20:57:33

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not changed much in design for thousands of years. My particular felucca trip was
supposed to take me 75 km. downstream, but the captain (who had been paid in advance by
Amigo) apparently didn?t like to sail. His excuse was that the river conditions were not right for
sailing, in other words, he did not like strong wind that required tacking. A group of 7 Czechs, an
Australian and I arranged the trip with Amigo. The Czechs especially suffered, with diarrhea
probably due to the fact that the dishes were cleaned with Nile water (the Nile is the longest
sewer in the world). We went only 35 km and then were put in a ?service taxi,? a private hire
vehicle, that is common in Africa. Part of the trip in the service taxi (we sat in the back of a pickup)
was very dangerous. We were required to take a police escort (mandatory for all foreigners
entering Luxor from the south) which tailgated the pick-up in order to make the driver go faster.
(We were already going twice the posted speed limit for trucks!). In developing countries (which
is what Egypt is called, although socio-economic development was not clearly visible to me,
unlike China, and Egypt is better described as undeveloped or less developed) public
transportation is so undeveloped that an informal system springs up. People scrape together
enough for something that has 4 tires and an engine and room for passenger sardines. Traffic
accidents must be the leading cause of tourist deaths in countries like Egypt. I am surprised I
survived the four-hour journey.

When I got back to Cairo, I word-processed a 1000-word complaint at the Nile Hilton (I was
staying at a backpackers hostel in a single room, for US $10 a night, just a few hundred meters
across Midan Tahir, close to the Antiquities Museum.) The next day, I went to the Ministry of
Tourism to file the complaint, and the ministry officers sent ...