Bathrooms and Bulls - Egypt [Day Four]

This is going to be a short one - as the majority of day four was spent relaxing, drinking beer and enjoying the sun.

One thing that became a problem quite quickly was the bathroom facilities - especially for the girls. The felucca had no bathroom, and there was a significant lack on the banks of the Nile (i.e. none). During one toilet stop, most of the girls jumped off the boat. Things were fine for about a minute, then we heard a couple of screams. A second later we saw girls furiously running toward the boat, followed by a farmer being dragged along on his stomach by a cow! It had to be the funniest moment on the whole tour.

Having not a lot to do while on the felucca, you start to notice things. The farmers along the bank are either really big, or the donkeys really small. Either way, it seemed quite wrong. Most of the time the farmers could have touched the ground with their feet. Poor donkeys!

Another thing I noticed, the Egyptians seem to love Bob Marley! There are flags everywhere, they even paint their boats in tribute. I guess you do get a 'Don't worry, be happy' attitude when your sailing such a beautiful place.


We stopped at a perfect spot for lunch. There was beautiful sand, palm tress, clear water - it looked like a tropical island. I had all sorts of horror stories from people on our tour about swimming in the Nile. Apparently there are parasites that get into you and do all kinds of bad stuff. Our tour guide assured us that although there are parasites, they only live in still water, so we would be safe. He then went on to explain that the crocodiles were the ones we had to watch out for... We quickly learnt not to take everything he said seriously. So those of us that were game swam, others just relaxed and soaked up the surroundings. We had lunch, then left our tropical paradise to once again set sail.

The afternoon consisted of more relaxing on board the felucca, before pulling up for some dinner. Some of the girls had devised a plan to avoid the issue with the lack of bathrooms - just stop drinking fluids all together. As you can imagine, its quite warm and dry in Egypt. So it all came tumbling down when one of the girls almost fainted. All I had to say was - 'you didn't think it might be a good idea to run this plan by someone else?'. Apparently not!

Later that night we lit a fire and the felucca crew got out their drums. Lots of us sat around the fire drinking and enjoying the music, while others got up and danced. After a while they had everyone up dancing and playing games - including a 'dance-off', which i filmed but unfortunately it was a bit dark. I'm not sure the participants would be happy if I uploaded it anyway.




The rest of the night we spent around the fire, then returned to our floating mattresses under the stars.

Next Post - 'Secret Passages'