Well, I will make this my last blog entry.  32 days away from home was a long time, but went by quite fast for us.  I now have to think of my top and bottom five.  The top five are harder than then bottom five so I will start there.

1.  The molly worm.  I think that is what it was.  Kirsten and Chris seemed to think that this staple food was something we "Just had to try".  Wrong.  Still get nauseated thinking/writing about it.

2.  Second of two 11 hour flights coming home.  Crying children for 8 of the 11 hours.  Natural selection would argue that humans should be extinct after the number of children I flushed down the toilet on the airplane.  Sorry a dream interjected there....

3.  The general disrespect for the Nile River in Egypt by the people that live on it.

4.  100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I don't care where it is.  It sucks!  Especially with high humidity.

5.  unpaved roads.  Especially if your sphincter is trying to hold back 200 P.S.I. of liquid.

Top five.  

1.  Victoria falls with high water.  This is something that is difficult to describe, and so I won't try.  Truly a magnificent place on earth that was worth seeing.

2.  The great pyramid.  It isn't much other than a big pile of rocks, but when you get next to it and climb on it, it is out of this world.  Just trying to imagine how even one of the blocks was placed is a task in of itself.  I feel sorry for those who placed them.

3.  Animal diversity in close proximity.  A lot of freakishly odd animals living with each other in balance is hard to fathom, but right there to see....  I agree with others, that the elephant was my favorite of those I got to see.

4.  The sights and views of Cape Town.  South Cape Point, Table Mountain and others.  If you can put aside the poverty and left over disparities from apartheid (think of the U.S. 40 years ago..... not that we don't have a long way to go ourselves), this is an amazing place on this earth, and a great place to visit.

5.  Spending 32 days with my daughter Kelly and not killing her!

Anyhooo, hope you all have enjoyed the adventure with us!  It has been a lot of fun, and I will look forward to the next one.  However, back to work in the morning : (

coming home tomorrow!

Coming home tomorrow is not entirely accurate since we leave here on the 8th and arrive in Portland the 9th twenty six hours later. Ugh.
Yesterday we went with Kirsten, Chris and family for a day of surfing and sight seeing. Pretty fun, though I hadn't really had that on my agenda for this trip. Definietly a good surf place to surf, allthough the water requires a short wet suit. I could have been out a half hour to an hour without one I suppose but it did have a bit of chill to it.
We only stayed an hour. I spent the first half hour helping Kelly and Sarha do some lessons, and then went out for about 20 minutes into the crowded line up and caught a couple of nice shoulder high waves taking the last one to the beach. It was only one hour because just as I was about to go back out and loud siren went off, and everyone scrambled for the beach! It was a shark sighting. Appartently they have people dedicated to watching for them, and they sound the alarm and raise a white flag with a black shark on it. I guess it is quite an uncommon occurance as a guy I was talking to said it was only the 3rd time in 15 years that he had been called out. Another said it was the third time this week. I don't know where the truth lies there. Anyway, we were in a place called False Bay, and another fellow told me that this is where most of the video/photos of Sharks getting seals comes from. There is a Boil in the ocean a few miles out that the locals call the sharks snack bar. The only injury I got was when Sarha fell of the surf board sitting squarely on my head with all of her weight. I could hear the grisle in my vertebral discs as the flattened momentarily. A little stiff today with a skid mark on my head.
Adding to the blis (it really was fun) was the fact that it was another 100 degree day. Leaving surfing, we went from the beach to large garden called KirstenBosch. It had an enormous nnumber of plants and trees, and undoubtedly a nice place when it is under 90 degrees, but we were melting and didn't stay long.
Mercifuly, the temperature dropped into the 80's today and was more tolerable. We just wondered around looking for last minute souveniers finding a few. We have a final dinner with our compadres tonight, and may watch a bike race in the morning with them.
There is apparently a large bike race with over 30,000 entrants. We will see. Anyway, be seeing you all soon.... JK
Still no luck getting photos from here sent. We will try to flood you from the airport if that becomes an option...

Sorry that you are not getting photos. The server has prevented any from getting on there for some reason the past two days. Today was 25 degrees above normal at over 100 making for a dreary day. There is also a lot of smoke in stagnant air apparently due to a large inland fire, and very little wind. "Africa hot" applies here...

Yesterday was my first day of driving on the wrong side of the road. Not all went well, but nobody died which is good. I am driving a stick shift with my left hand and have ground reverse while going from 2nd to 3rd enough times to assure the next driver that the teeth on the gears are just little nubs by now. The oil must be jet black with metal filings, and will come out like toothpaste on the next oil change.


That aside, so long as there are visual cues to remind me to be on the WRONG side of the road it has been fine. Only once have I found myself driving in the wrong lane perplexed by the blaring horn of the oncoming car in MY lane. I guess it wasn't my lane.... I didn't catch the expletives that the other driver was shouting as he went by, but they continued as he disappeared in my rearview mirror.


The only real mishap was hitting the curb on my left side in my first few kilometers or so (going about 35 mph at the time) destroying one of my hubcaps, and a few dings to the rim (no flat fortunately). I wonder what that will cost me.... Of note driving a used car (2000 golf VW?) is cheap though. $15/day, and only $10 to have them drop it off at my door step.


Regarding the mishap, I should have realized that that would happen when the guy who dropped the car off ran away as quickly as he could once he handed me the keys. Oops. I can tell you now that you really need to consciously be hugging the center line on your side from the get go as it is easy to crowd the shoulder.


Anyway, yesterday, we drove to the Cape of Good Hope. A beautiful but also desolate place. The ground cover (hardy green shrubs mostly) waves like an ocean in the high winds. I guess, it is quite windy 100 days of the year, and that was the case on our visit. If you leaned over the wall looking down cliffs hundreds of feet high, the wind had to be a steady 50 mph racing up the cliffs at times. Gusts could almost knock you off of your feet on flat ground as well. The visit was a good hike, and yet another highlight for us. It is not the southern most point of Africa, but close enough for us as the drive to the southern most point would take most of a day. On the way there, we stopped by a penguin colony which was fun as well.


Last night, we rejoined the Steketee/Morscheck crew for dinner as they have arrived to Cape Town. It was a good reunion, and we will be joining them today for a downtown visit. Having a great time, and must say that South Africa has a lot to offer as a destination. JK

A few more photos for you..... If the connection will make it happen.....

More photos!

As we have the access, we will post more photos. These are a couple of super heros in their own minds that will be fun to photoshop later. Old Cape Town, and more of table mountain views..... enjoy; as I can assure you we did. Very nice trip so far, and has gone of without much of a hitch so far, and we are closing on the finish. JK

We had terrific trouble renting a car, but if all goes well, I will be driving a used manual VW Golf tomorrow on the wrong side of the road (never done this before). The good news that is for three days it is only $80, and the dollar appears to be strong against the Rand here in South Africa.

It could be that they are using up my credit card as I speak from this third tier company. Apparently there is a bicycle race here this weekend, and there are NO cars available from anyone I have ever heard of. Imagine how it will be when the world cup for soccer is held here next year!

Anyway, we will try our hand at driving tomorrow and venture out from the city. Today we did a 4 hour tour, and took a cable car up to the top of table mountain. Very nice views, and a nice area to hike around for an hour. We then got shown the major highlights which will help us decide what we want to do this next few days. One stop included the firing of the noon cannon in a fort built by the Dutch in the 1600's. It was the little cannon that could as it was REALLY loud, and nearly knocked me of my perch for the video. The fort was quite fun to tour going back to a era long past. This city/country certainly has its share of history good and bad. I got my photos from the video loaded finally, and so will send a few along to catch you up on things. The mystery photo won't be such a mystery it you have read the other posts! More to come if we survive my driving! JK

Victoria Falls and now March 2nd in Cape Town

I type to you from Cape Town. Our final destination has been reached! We even have Internet included in our accommodations if you can believe that! Victoria Falls was truly stunning to see and experience. We arrived the first day and went straight to the falls which were right next to our hotel. It is my understanding that they are actually dry during the dry season, but the water was medium high on our visit and ROARING over 300 feet to the bottom. There was so much mist that it created a downpour of rain in most areas unlike any I have experienced. Really quite hard to describe, and as I don't have a water proof camera with me, not easy to photograph either! We are hoping to get some of our electronics back on line, so we can post photos of them. We went back the second day in just swim suits as any attempt to stay dry if you get into the thick of it would be futile with vertical, horizontal and up flowing rain driving at you from all directions. Anyway, a definite highlight for us. There is a good reason it is called the "smoke that thunders".
The second day in the morning we went white water rafting below the falls a few miles on the Zambezi River. Quite a few class 4 rapids. They said 5's for two of them but I would have to say they were 4's. Anyway, that was great for me and Kelly. We were with two English couples (50's) and one Australian gal who was probably 30. All of us were tired after hiking to the base of the canyon. Especially the older ones. One of the English gals looked absolutely terrified for most of the trip. There was no turning back after we got started down this great canyon, so I was feeling quite bad for her quivering lip frequently over the next 2 hours of rafting. We stopped to jump off of a 35 foot cliff (I was the only one to jump from that height) and Kelly and a couple of others jumped from about 15 feet. There was also a rock water slide and just a lot to see. That evening we took a rather boring evening cruise on the upper part of the river, but it was relaxing. That brings us to this morning. One more visit to the falls, and the enjoyment of eating with thieving monkey's that are warded off with limited success by staff with slingshots. They would make dashing runs across the restaurant and steal food off of tables right in front of people. Very entertaining to say the least.

February 24th.
Another tardy post. Time has been going by very fast on our adventure. We spend a lot of time on the road doing either safari, or driving between parks/lodges. Anyway, I type tonight with the obligatory delayed posting from the SOPA lodge in the Serengeti National park in Tanzania. I aploogize for the long time between what will be many posts, as they chard ridiculous rates as I have said before.

We didn't see much today other than a sleeping leopard at a great distance, and a hyena so fat his belly nearly dragged on the ground. The Serengeti however is really an impressive isolated place to be. The view this evening as the sun set was nothing short of spectacular.

The previous two nights were at the Sopa Lodge at the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. It is perched at 7800 feet on the rim of a crater that was a former volcanic caldera. It is about 15 miles across, and again a stunning site to see. We spent a good part of the day in the crater itself, and saw a Black Rhino. Again at a long distance, but an impressive animal to see in the wild none the less. We also had the imprinting on our minds (ranging from 8 to 47) of a couple of Baboons "getting it on" about 20 feet in front of our vehicle. Some may have been scared by this site as it was quite a blatant display that happened quited unannounced in front of us. Kelly was the only one who missed it. This was evident by the fact that she repeated several times "what? What is it?" The rest of us stood with our mouths dropped stunned unable to answer. The only thing missing was some cheesy porno music! The Baboons as you may well know have really nasty backsides to them. The males are frequently playing with themselves as well, often tugging on their appendage and playing it like an air guitar for the benefit of any who will watch. I can only assume that they think we do, as they frequently do it when you just drive up much like a greeting. JAMBO!

Leaving the crater this morning, we stopped by the archaeological site of the Dr's Leaky who discover 3.5 million year old missing link fossils. It was an interesting diversion en route to our current location. The guide at the museum who gave us the lecture apologized to anyone who was a creationist among us as it was clearly just not possible given the evidence available that the earth is only 5000 years old.

February 20th. I apologize for the reverse order of things, but am just getting these previous writings posted. This was written on the 20th.

Yesterday was memorably painful. I awoke in the morning having been visited by montazuma's African cousin. COLOBLO. As all Swahili words end with a vowel, the N and W were dropped from the English words "colon blow"when this African deity was named. To make matters worse (Much worse) we drove for a grueling seven hours over REALLY bumpy roads causing me to go into lactic acidosis from colon cramps. When we arrived at our destination below Mount Kilimanjaro, I was completely exhausted and in a sweat from the long battle with my own sphincter. I Immediately ran to the closest bathroom where I severely mistreated the facilities and the surrounding air for a Kilometer. Kelly was relentless in her comments about being unable to breath the air in our room for a couple of hours. I felt absolutely ill that night with aches and chills, and severe whinitis. Thankfully though the powers of Immodium, pepto bismol, and a few rounds of worship to COLOBLO in the sacred bathrooms (which Kelly will tell amplify sound greatly), I awoke this morning significantly improved and by mid day was back to normal.
We did another game drive this evening, and the excitement of seeing a baboon, giraffe, or zebras has waned some. For those animals the only thing that can improve their beauty for us would be to see one of them chased down and eaten. Nothing personal.

Well today was the last day of our safari. We are currently in Lake Manyara in Tanzania. We part ways tomorrow, with Steketee and crew off to Zanzibar, and Kelly and I off to Victoria Falls for two nights (one lay over night in Johanasburg tomorrow the 27th). Internet connectivity has been difficult at best and probably won't improve until we get to Cape Town. To make matters worse the pre-typed blogs for previous days are trapped in this micosoft machine until we have time to fix the problem. Likewise, we have had two camera failures (one broken and another possibly needing a new battery) and are down to one (Video and good stills that I can transfer to this computer yet) until we can get to civilization, so any photos we send will be before this week if we get enough time to upload some.

Those difficulties aside, we have been having a lot of fun and have been exposed to the genitalia of more animal than we expected. We have now witnessed (hard to turn away) Baboons, Lions, elephants, monkeys, and gazelles procreating. Any notion that I thought I would ever have to tell Kelly about the birds and the bees is has been addressed on this trip! I will need to tell her though that there is some intimacy involved with humans, and not only time for business. This is apartenly true in the animal kingdom.

Here is a photo of a Rhino and its calf. Sort of wild. Transplanted from South Africa to the park it is in. Lake ??? I will correct that later! Blurry photo of a leopard. Didn't know it was that bad. Will correct that later too! Anyway, I got to turn this over to Kelly.....

February 17th and 18th. Well we have had a day an one half of safari and have seen a lot of animals. A highlight yesterday was over 100 elephants in view at one time. Really stunning, and our guide of 17 years said

he had never seen so many in one place in this area. very impressive to say the least. All of us including the children were particularly impressed by the 5th leg of one of the elephants..... Holy crap! That appendage was nearly as big a whole person. We have also seen a lot of poo, in fact, we have come up with over 20 words for excrement, and have concluded that the English language has more words to describe poo (pardon the pun) than any other language we can think of.

CRAP, DROPPINGS, SH_T, CACA, #2, WASTE, DUMP, EXCREMENT, GUANO, POOP, POO, POO-POO, GROWLER, FECES, B.M. (bowel movement), SCAT, TURD, MANURE, TOILET PAINT, DOO DOO, FERTILIZER, RECYCLING, GROUND PASTRY'S (cow pies generalized), ROAD APPLES, STOOL, and probably many more.

In addition to elephants, we have seen a variety of hoofed animals, Hippos, Giraffes, warthogs, lions, cheetahs, various birds, and have over a week of safari left. It is certainly something to be able to see these animals in their natural environment first hand. It is remarkable how they all share the same space. That depends of course on whether or not you are prey or predator!

We traveled today the (19th) to lake Nakaru. The vistas here have been stunning. Our lodging has been very nice everywhere. Excessive really, but we haven't minded. The food has been generally quite good as well. However, as we are captives in lodges that are in national parks, anything extra costs plenty such as $4 beers, and $20-30/hour Internet access, which is so slow that it is impractical for using for blogging. I would put that as the only negative so far given the significant expense of this trip already invested. That aside, the weather has been prefect. Not too hot, and an occasional rain squall that comes through. Our current location is much dryer however, and we don't expect rain here. JK

Jombo, Jombo, Jombo (Hello, Hello, Hello).
We have arrived safely in Nairobi Kenya. We were fortunate to have secured a separate row for each of us on the plane, and so we each got 2-3 hours of sleep by laying down (as much as you can at 6 foot 2 inches on three plane seats) for our 10 p.m. four and a half hour flight.
The guy behind us in customs used to live in Salem (Battle Creek area), and had been to Ketchikan, so w e sat with him and his friend for an hour or so waiting for another plane with two of our companions at the airport. A pleasant visit. They were both on vacation from Cairo where they are learning Arabic and living. Certainly have had more opportunities for conversation since we began our travels to Kenya.
The weather has been fabulous our first day herre, and the accommodations have been very pleasant. Saw a few huge birds on the way from the airport but that is all of the animals so far. We are after all in a city of 3 million. In contrast to Cairo with its stagnant air, there is a cool breeze here, and the sky and clouds are brilliant. In the city at least the streets are clean and there is very little litter to be seen. A very nice change from Cairo for us green minded travelers. Anyway, I include for you a couple of photos from our little oasis here in Nairobi, and the group of eight that we now are. Needless to say, we are very much looking forward to our coming days of adventure, and will do our first safari late tomorrow afternoon….. JK

February 13th

Well we have made it back to Cairo and are holed up in our room catching up on email and bloging. I was feeling cash poor becuase you have to tip (or at least it is expected) at the airport porters, the taxi driver, the hotel porters, our "handler" and for meals etc. I didn't anticipate the sheer number of $2-$5 tips never mind the suggested $10-$15/day for the guides. I joked with Kelly that I came to SEE EGYPT not BUY it. We have had to wrestle our bags from porters at the curbs as we don't mind bringing our own bags (one each with wheels no less) into hotels and airports! Anyway it this was ironic as if you have been with me from the begining, my friends who we will meet up with in two days in Nairobi emailed for money and everyone thought it was a joke! I suggested that they may just have callous friends which turned out to be the case!

Anyway, my ATM hasn't worked and I was becoming very worried before American Express came to the rescue. I didn't use my cell phone as it is very expensive, and was able to call them using Skype. If you haven't used Skype you don't know what you are missing. Anyway, I was able to get a transfusion, and not have all of my friends laughing at my desperate cries for help as a joke from the Kenyan scammers!

We are just hanging out today and tomorrow and getting rested for the red eye to Nairobi Kenya tomorrow at 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. That will be fun.

We will hope for scattered email access while on Safari if I don't post before then.

I leave you with a couple of shots from Aswan. JK

February 12th

We were in Aswan all day today. We toured a couple of ruins, one of which was by motor boat to an island between the old and new dams. This temple (and over a dozen others I am told) was moved when the newer “high dam” was built. It was reconstructed exactly as it was in its current location. The trip on the water was fun and the air is much cleaner here. There were again a lot of boats and so another traffic jam on water though. And this is the low season! We then went and saw the “High Dam” which had replaced the “lower dam” here in Aswan that was built in 1902 or so. The new dam is the only functioning one on the Nile River, and is very (nearly 900 meters) at its base. Much different than dams in the U.S. Enough about the damn dams.
In the afternoon we went to a botanical garden again by boat. This time it was by a sail boat called a Felucca (sp?). It was a pleasant ride in a sail boat and the cleanest air we have breathed all trip. Very quiet, and a highlight for me. Sadly, there is a lot of litter in the Nile, and the felucca brought us a lot closer to it. The banks up close are well lined with garbage… People just throw garbage on the road or in the river at least half of the time. Pretty disgusting really, and you would think that people who depend on this mighty river would take better care of it.
I didn’t read much about the history before coming. First the Egyptians ruled starting somewhere around 2500 B.C. with up to 300 gods to worship, than the Greeks with their gods followed by the Romans with theirs. Finally the Arabic people around 600 A.D. came and now about 85% of Egypt is Muslim, and 15% Christian. I didn’t mention the English occupation, or the Germans in WWII. It is amazing how many times Egypt has been occupied by foreign forces and religions including to this day.
It would be hard from my astute perspective (A militant agnostic…. I don’t know and you don’t either) to come and tell people this history (as our Egyptologist guides have), and discount the validity of the Egyptian religion as they seem to do, while not questioning their own. Near as I can tell the ancient Egyptians had a great system of governing if nothing else (gods and religion aside) that must have been fair to the people to have survived for thousands of years. If it were not for the ability of a superior force to conquer a civilization and impose its belief systems I suspect that they would still be around today. Anyway, we are back to Cairo tomorrow, and hopefully I can post these finally.

Pictures: our stateroom decoration by our attendant, and the type of boats and scene of the sailing trip to the botanical garden island in Aswan.

February 11th

We made it from Luxor to Edfu over night. We went through the the only set of locks (at least that is what they tell us) on the Nile just north of Edfu at 1 a.m. I think. It was hard to know because there were antelope running up and down the hall outside of our state room all night making it difficult to know if I was conscious or not. Needless to say the continuous migration in the middle of the night did a fair job of preventing us (me at least) from sleeping. I do recall opening the window at about at about that time though, and seeing a concrete wall moving by slowly. I think that was the lock. I would have liked to have seen the locks, but we had a 7:00 a.m. start today, and given the sheer number of boats in line to go through them at 11 P.M. when we had arrived, I figured it was going to be 3:00 a.m. or later so we went to bed.
The antelope in this case were a half dozen children taking shifts running back and forth in the hall outside of our room. They had to be taking turns, because it was nearly a continuous rumble for several hours. Did I mention that they were also screaming like howler monkeys at over 110 decibels too? Apartently it is a culturally acceptable thing to be as annoying as possible between the ages of 5 and 10 in Egypt. It turns out that this two week period is a school break, so about half of our ship is native Egyptians. This troup of children (if it is fair to call them that) reminds me of the Lord of the Flies! They showed no respect for others as near as I can tell, and their parents have done nothing to restrain them.

For a time yesterday, I had feared that these monsters (if I had called them Antelope earlier, I stand corrected, what I meant to say was heyinas) had killed their own parents because the partents were nowhere to be seen while I was running on a treadmill in the small exersize room on the ship whilst the mob climbed on and abused the remaining exersize equipment around me. I imagined that I was next….. This especially seemed true when I realized that they had chased everyone else off. Only then had I realized that I had been thinned from the herd.
On the entertaining side, when we arrived to the locks (it was semi-dark with only lighting from the locks and surrounding city), venders came out in small boats and pelted us with stuff they wanted us to buy, and again asked me how many camels for my daughter. Our mistake was to open the large sliding glass door on our stateroom as this allowed the unsolicited (unless opening a window is a solicitation...) pelting to begin. By pelting I mean that there was an almost immediate hail of unwanted merchandise flying through our window. What makes this more remarkable is the fact that our window is probably 20 feet off of the water, and yet they never missed. Each of them had one arm that was twice as big as the other. This of course was their throwing arm. Anyway, it was entertaining for the first 5 minutes...

The barganing was feirce and our will weakened from the near head shots as the stuff hurtled into our room. We were finally able to ward off the artillery (by bocking the window and throwing stuff back faster than they could get in the window pleading "We don't want anything" "Please don't throw anymore!" and "no thank you" in rapid succesion. When the tide was turned in our favor we quickley closed our window. Whew!

The photo is of the woman who thinks Kelly is a rock star, and her children (and others?) who were the Antelope. Sorry I meant Heyinas. Looking at the picture now maybe they were all her children. Is it possible that some people can reproduce every 6 months? She was actually very nice so no malice intended. The other photo is one of the twin pylons at one of the many temple that we have visited. More to come....

February 10th

We were delayed in our departure from Luxor by high winds today, (Tuesday February 10th). Only by an hour or so. Apparently the police here limit river traffic in high wind conditions which I would say were a steady 20 mph going across the river with a lot of dust in the air. When the word go came; 50 or more boats left all at once. All of them are similar in size (probably 40 feet wide and 200 feet long) and you can imagine the mayhem. It is probably a common occurrence but for us a treat to watch. It was like watching a race get started. First one to the locks (we have to go through a set of locks today) is the first one through them or at least in good position in the line. We had to go under the only bridge in Luxor after about 5 miles and everyone was jockeying for positions. It became essentially a game of chicken. We had another huge boat like our own at times not more than 20 feet off of either side as we approached the bridge with only room for two in our passage. I can proudly say that our captain (insane or has no peripheral vision) won, and one of the boats had to slow VERY hard to miss the bridge pylon. It was a zoo as no other I have ever seen in a maritime sense, and I am surprised that there is still a bridge here. I of course couldn’t understand them, but the captains and crew were screaming very angrily at one another. Easy to hear the anger when they are only 20 feet away. Pretty funny. I can only surmise that our captain is deaf as well. I guess you had to be there…..
Of note, I am typing this from the ship. If you are reading this, it means that our captain has delivered us safely. I must stop now as I have to brace myself for a potential collision!
I have decided to type these ahead of time because the internet connections have been very slow and spotty in availability. Another thing that we take for granted. Each picture has taken about 10 minutes to post for our blogs which has been frustrating at best.
Anyway, we are having a great time thus far. Tah Tah. JK

Luxor Feb 9th and 10th

We are in Luxor, sitting in a McDonalds where there is free wifi. McDonalds in Egypt! Don't worry we are not eating here, just coffee and blogging.
Our "cruise ship" is pretty nice. I will send photos when we get out on the river and can see one that looks like it. If you want you can google "Queen of Hansa" and find it. We thought we were special until we saw over 100 boats like it here tied along shore. Over 400 of them on the river Iam told. Luxor is a 90% tourism based economy. Yesterday we went to the Valley of the kings, Karnac temple, Luxor temple, and others. It made for a long day. In any event the ruins are truely amazing engineering feats. I have been impressed, and they have left a memory imprint that should last.
Kelly has been a bit of a Rock star at times among some local youth. She blushes well. Others, (rude youth/middle aged men) are asking me how many camels I want for her. I keep trying to get 10, but they only will come to 8 camels so far through hard barganing. I will try harder today. Some of the local vendors (we call them predators or vultures) are rabid. It is as if they haven't eaten meat in weeks! Similar to Mexico experiences at times.
On a high note (for me anyway). We as yet have had no gastrointestinal distress. What I like to refer to as "spray painting the toilet" has not visited either of us. We have not had to start our malaria drugs yet, so perhaps that will change! Can't wait.

I have had one alcoholic beverage here. The shaking has stopped. I include a photo of a satisfied customer drinking a foul lauger (not my favorite). They may have invented beer in Egypt, but they certainly didn't perfect it! Any port in a storm for a thirsty bloke! More to come. Cheers..... JK

Well we have been in Cairo for a day now. The flight was uneventful, and we made our connections and contacts as planned. However the Jet lag is still washing away. We are now poised to go to the pyramids tomorrow. From there it is back to the airport (oh fun!) for a short flight to Luxor where the following day we begin down the nile river. I don't know what Internet access we will have there. In fact, if you are reading this blog it is because we got Ruth to paste it from an email as we couldn't access it. Anyway, we staying near the pyramids (we can see them 1/3 mile away) which are quite impressive. If not in their size but then when you think about all of the poor souls who built them. Cairo has a lot of people, and a lot of traffic that drives at 20-30 mph with only inches between them side to side. If they will fit 8 abreast then 8 it is until it has to funnel down to fewer; and then the jockeying begins. Impressive to watch, and I am surprised all of the cars don't look like hand pounded steel. Lots of smog and litter as well. The mosques prayers and loud speakers make it easy to remember to get up at 5 a.m.... We didn't do much today other than rest and a couple of short walks. Kelly is bored and ready to do/see something as am I. We will post when we can. JK
Two for one blog. We spent the day in Cairo and toured the pyramids and the main Museum. We are now at the airport with internet access!!! so here is a post. Will try to get more soon, but am going to let kelly go first.

     Well the time is approaching.  We are leaving in about a week now.  I have never been across the Atlantic Ocean, and am excited about this adventure.  This will be the longest vacation I have ever been on, and the longest time I have been away from work.  This is good, as I am about as sick of work (#@$&) as I can get which adds to my excitement about leaving for a month.  

     Still don't have all the itinerary fully set which has me a little nervous, but bought a bunch of new underwear, so that I will look good if I end up on a slab somewhere.  On top of that, I took my last Typhoid pill today and am getting sick.  Just kidding, but not sure about Kelly as she is partial to exotic illness.  However, an added benefit to the Typhoid pills is that I am now immune to Salmonella, and have been consuming copious amounts of peanut butter products in our house and those discounted at the local store dumpster due to the Salmonella outbreak taking the U.S. by storm.  Just in case anyone was wondering... you can in fact eat too much peanut butter.

     Anyway, a note I wanted to add was that if you get a bizarre email asking you to send me money, ignore it.  Apparently that has happened with my friends (Kirsten Steketee and family) who are already in Africa.   Several people have gotten emails from the Kenyan scammers (or my friends are actually in desperate need of cash and have callous friends).  If I need money that bad, I will call or say something in an email that only the recipient would likely know.  For example, "I like to smash my fingers with a hammer".  I think you get what I mean.

     Hopefully, my next entry will be from the Frankfurt or Cairo airports.  Gleefully sleep deprived and jet lagged.   JK

     OK, Myself and Kelly are taking a 32 day trip to Africa in a few weeks.  We just got our shots for Yellow Fever and Typhoid (on the 13th) which was fun given the needle phobia of one of us, and picked up all manner of drugs to help with any illness we may get along the way.  

      After being told that we may feel a little sick with the yellow fever shot (a live weak virus much like the flu mist or chicken pox immunization) Kelly IMMEDIATELY became ill and has been complaining of "yellow fever" for the past three days and feeling poorly.  Oh well, I guess we will survive in the end.  We will add more once we get going assuming neither of us has succumbed to Yellow Fever by then.....   Joe

Testing, testing, testing....  Ignorance passing slowly.