Egyptian Food

One of the neatest things about being in Egypt are all of the vendors that are out and about selling various tasty and interesting snacks at all hours of the day. Some of our favorites in Egypt have been popcorn (scooped into a plastic bag by hands that we don't even bother fooling ourselves into thinking are relatively clean), bags of boiled fava beans, bean paste in a pita, mango juice that you practically need a spoon to "drink", and prickly pears (the bizarre-looking fruit in the picture below).

We can get 12 pricklies, peeled by the vendor right in front of us, for about a dollar Canadian. They're extremely delicious but have a gallon of round, hard seeds in them that are impossible to spit out and have to be downed. At best, you kind of gum them up and swallow, but it's a great treat on a hot day!

Steve put a picture of Koshary on his Egypt entry, in case you were wondering what the weird-looking bowls of stuff were.

Anyway, stay tuned for Ethiopia!

Egypt

Well, here we are finished another adventure. After reading my last posting I realized that I must be careful of what I say, as it may come true. In Cairo we WERE hit by a car while riding in a cab, fortunately we were not on our bikes and neither one of us were hurt. Another unlucky incident was the major repairs that I had to do on my bike when I unwrapped it from our last flight.

Repair #1: Cracked back tire rim = new tire rim, hub bearing and spokes.

Repair #2: Damaged casing for ball-bearings in my handlebars = hours of trying to find a replacement in Cairo. After not finding the correct replacement, two more hours spent on repacking the casing myself....not good times.

Repair #3: Another torn cable shroud = easy repair.

We ended up spending about a week in Cairo with the repairs, Chinese visa issues, flight bookings and sightseeing. After a week's rest we were more than excited to get back on the road. The excitement didn't last long and after our first day of riding I was beginning to think we're crazy. Who in their right minds cycle through a desert with temperatures reaching 50C unshaded? We were tempted to take the easy way out and bus it down to Sharm El Sheikh but decided it wouldn't be true to our trip. So we ended up having 4am wake-ups and riding as much as possible before noon.

It was well worth it, for Sharm El Sheikh has excellent diving and the time here has been great! We're off to Ethiopia next and are looking forward to 15C and more adventure.

Turkey

Turkey was surprisingly fantastic!! Niether one of us thought we would enjoy our time here as much as we have. Maramis was the town we ferried into and it was a complete party scene, with bars stretched out for miles. The people have been extremely friendly and the beaches are pristine! The only downside to Turkey is the heat. İt has been above 40 the entire time. We thought Greece was bad but the heat here ıs stifling.

We had a great time riding through the country side where we ran into the cops, a very dırty shower stall, a "healthy" cat, a big rooster and even a forest fire. I attempted to fight off the flames with my little 2L water sac, but the inferno was too intense....my foresty buddies would have been proud. The shower stall was disgusting with tiny little "shower cobras" attemptıng to wriggle themselves into your toes.

The cops were nice, they ran over me with their car and then invited us in for drinks and snacks (just kidding about the car). Julia and the one cop, with the semi-automatic rifle over his shoulder, exchanged hunting stories where Julia bragged about the moose she shot last year with her Dad, and the Turkish policeman boasted hunting terrorists.

The cat and the rooster were HUGE and would have made nice bıg babies if they could mate. To answer a few questions in our guestbook: To Scotty yes, our asses are getting tight....thanks for asking and to Auntie Sandy the push-ups are going well. I tried to download an update but the Gigabytes were not big enough to contain the size of my massive pipes....I hope everyone understands.

Greece

Hello everybody,

This entry will be short, we have just under an hour to catch the ferry and these pictures take forever to download and organize.

After an interesting train ride through Albania, with a "poking the eye of a live chicken contest" and a few days more in Italy, we finally made it to Greece. There's not too much to say about it, except..IT'S HOT!! The average daily temperature has been 38 C. We've been getting in some early start times and then taking siesta's by mid-afternoon. This helps us acheive at least 60kms a day, which isn't much considering in Morroco we were able to do 100km+. Oh well, Greece has been about the beaches not the athleticism. Unfortunately our time here has been short and we'll be in Turkey by tomorrow evening. Until then, hope all is well and we really appreciate all the nice things you say in our guestbook. With comments like those it makes us even more grateful to be doing this amazing trip.

PS: The repair on my bike wasn't anything major. Just a torn cable shroud and easy enough to fix. We've been lucky with our bikes and havn't had to perform any "major" surgeries.

Albania

Albania!!!????......We decided to take the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It wasn't on our original itinerary, but since we'll be cutting out a few countries in South Africa we better make them up somewhere.
Albania has been interesting. It is similar to Morroco, in relation to the poverty, and doesn't feel like a part of the European Union. There is garbage thrown everywhere and the buildings have seen better days.

After 2 weeks of hard cycling we arrived here this afternoon. Tomorrow we will be taking the train to the coast (Durres) for a ferry back to Italy. Albania is still a bit dangerous so we've decided to head back to Bari for a break and then we will continue on our way with another ferry back to Greece. This way our cycling time here is short.

Montenegro

Montenegro was super!! Very scenic and easy to get around. We also ran into some other cyclists from France, who were taking a 1 month holiday from fire-fighting in Paris. There's a picture of them the third photo down.....It's the one where Julia has a big shit-eating grin. Has anybody ever seen her so happy?? If there was a power outage in Calgary and nobody could see, just throw this picture up and those pearly whites will be enough to see Red Deer. I don't know how I ended-up right in the centre of this.....chisled half-nakedness, but the next morning I started doing push-ups.

#11 Bosnia

There's not to much to say about Bosnia except they don't mess around. We ended up just doing a quick side trip to have lunch, but after 40kms and an 1850 metre mountain climb, we decided to spend the night. For lunch I ordered the mixed meat platter and ended up with every animal they had on my plate. I ate so much meat I was sweating protein for 2 days, and everywhere we went people were huge, not overweight, just BIG.

Bosnia:

Big Mountains, Big People and Big Meat Platters......equals no messing around!!

#10 Croatia

Croatia was good times!! We weren't expecting it to be so touristy, but it was nice with lot's of things to see and do. In the small town of Vrsar we decided to do some scuba-diving in the Adriatic Sea. We had an excellent instructor who was very patient with us as we tried to regain our buoyancy. We also met another cyclist, Matt, from Australia who spent a night with us and a day riding. It was good to have him around even if it was just for the day. He was very humorous and witty.