With 240 kms behind me, I still had a way to go to get to my destination...
The ride to Marsa Matrouh went by a lot quicker than I thought it would… I covered the 200 kms to the Alexandria turnoff, and just as the sea came into view, I hung a sharp left, and headed west towards the Libyan border, 540 kms away…
The highway from Cairo was far busier than it had been the week before, on my first little sortie to Alexandria. The Egyptian schools had closed the day before, and every Egyptian and his dog seemed to be heading for the coast… The queues at the two tollgates on this route stretched for miles, and I thanked my lucky stars that I was on a bike, and able to work my way to the front of the line pretty quickly…ignoring the frustrated hooting and grinning widely… You just gotta love it when you can pull one over on an Egyptian…and thousands of them at the same time was as good as it was ever going to get!!
I passed huge swathes of cultivated land, where vegetables and fruit were being grown… From the smell of these areas, I realized that the farmers were not using dung from any four legged animal to fertilize their fields… Riding through Africa on a bike, where the smells of the surrounding countryside come through the visor, you soon get to know when you have passed a “toilet area”… The cultivated lands northwest of Cairo smelt like one big toilet… I thanked my lucky stars that my stomach had held up over the last few weeks…
Billboard Porn... Three Egyptians pull up to take a closer look...
Porto Marina... Best seen at 120 kmh... Another eyesore on the costal road leading west from Alexandria...
All four lanes going north to Alex were chock full of traffic, and there was much “bobbing and weaving” as I forced the Big Fella through the chaos. West of Alex, there are only two lanes either way and traffic here was not half as bad… From the turnoff, the right hand side of the road is packed with massive beachfront developments, pretentiously named after places in Spain and France. Names such as Granada, Malaga, Cote Azure, etc… All very original…!
Massive billboards line the highway, advertising time share or another development in the progress of being built. These resorts stretch for over 80 kms, right up to an including Alamein, where I stopped to visit the War Memorial… Back on the main road after this visit, I passed both the German and Italian War Cemeteries, both of which had far more impressive structures to commemorate their soldiers who had died in battle here… I would have liked to visit these as well, but I was trapped in the wrong lane by a convoy of holidaymakers, and missed the turnoffs to both sites…
Sevice and Deliverance... Gotta love it...!!
The baking desert forces another rest and drinks break...
Now and again I was able to see a patch of the coastline, and usually this was through a gap where a development was in progress and had not yet killed the view of the sea from the highway… I would have like to turn off the highway and ride down for a closer look, but every turnoff goes into a resort, guarded by a bunch of security guards that took one look at me and turned me away with a shake of their heads… Clearly I did not fit the picture of an Egyptian visiting their seaside resorts…
There is a Shell “Ultra City” type complex just off the highway, and the signs advertising this had me laughing to myself… The sign read “Service and Delirerance”… I am sure they meant to write “Deliverance”, but used an Egyptian sign writer and accepted what they got… I wondered what the “Deliverance “part meant… What would I be “delivered” from if I stopped there…? From Egyptians perhaps…? That would get me grabbing a fistful of brakes for sure…!!
On the southern side of the highway, large areas have been planted with fig trees, and this was the first time I had seen this in Egypt. Figs are a very common fruit at this time of year. The only ones I have seen are the small purple type, and they are as sweet as those I remember picking from the tree we had when I was a kid. It is also Mango season here, and apricots, bananas and grapes are plentiful too…
The further west I rode, the less traffic I encountered, and I zipped along at high speed, wanting to get to my destination as early as possible. The fuel I had filled up with just outside Alex must have been cut with something, as the bike seemed to splutter a bit when I started it up after my frequent stops for water and a leg stretch… I had been told that the fuel in Libya was of a far superior quality than that which we was forced to use in Egypt, and I patted the Big Fella’s tank, telling him that soon he would be enjoying “the good stuff” again…
The corniche at Matrouh... This is what a holiday on the Med should look like...
After 510 kms of hard riding, we cruised into Marsa Matrouh, and what a surprise I got! The bay that the city is built around was crowded with holiday makers, the Corniche bustling with cars and pedestrians alike… Holiday season was in full swing, and Egyptians were letting their hair down.
The dress code was not as strict as it was further east, and many of the ladies were wearing long pants, and had ditched their headscarves… Smiles decorated almost every face, especially the men folk, who were being reminded what their wives and girlfriends looked like without their Ninja Gear… Naturally, there were still a few “party-poopers” around, who stood in small groups, muttering to themselves and “tut-tutting” every time a girl in a pair of pants walked past them… I sat watching the “doomsayers” from the sea wall as I sucked down a few sodas, enjoying the interaction of cursed mutters from the Ninjas, and the clicking of tongues from the “harlots”…
A solitary Ninja keeps a beady eye on her husband while he enjoys the crystal clear waters...
The Big Fella hogs the only bit of shade outside the Dareen Hotel...
The best thing about Matrouh was the unbelievable turquoise sea that lapped the beaches… It looked like something from the Caribbean… I tried to get a room in a hotel on the seafront, but they were either all full, or too expensive… I settled for a far more reasonably priced hotel, the Dareen, one street back from the waterfront, and right next door to the Tree Tops Internet Café, which stayed open 24 hours a day… I wrote and posted the El Alamein story from there, taking a short walk halfway through to compose myself, when the memories of my visit to the Cemetery threatened to overcome me…
The mobile bakery set up shop below my balcony...
From the balcony of my room, I could see a small piece of the ocean, and watched jet-skis cavorting in the choppy water, often coming dangerously close to the folk wading out into the shallow waters for a cooling swim… No rules here regarding specific beaches for jet-skis… Motorboats plied the deeper channel just a few hundred metres offshore, where the darker water was lined with rubber buoys… After the filthy beaches I had seen in Alexandria, this was a paradise in comparison… I think that the fact that it is so far from Cairo, has meant that fewer people visit this little town, and it has retained its pristine beaches and relaxed atmosphere…
Below me in the street, I watched in amazement as a large blue trailer pulled up, and within minutes, people began queuing at the back doors, buying bread that was being backed in the trailer! A mobile bakery!! What will these guys think of next!!
The Cook Door on the beachfront... Great food...strange name...!!
Near the beach is a large fast food joint, called the “Cook Door”… (Don’t ask…!! I have no idea…!! But I am thinking that a Franchise with a name like this might not catch on in other countries…) Despite the dodgy name, it serves great food, and I wolfed down a mixed grill, which in Egypt comprises of Chicken and mutton kebabs (Not a pork sausage in sight…!) with the usual rice and fries, a generous helping of Coleslaw, and more bread that you can shake a stick at…
I was invited to join groups of guys drinking tea at the many sidewalk coffee shops, both on the main drag and the side streets that I walked through to get to the beach. I sat down with them on two occasions, and enjoyed the sweet tea drunk from tiny glasses… One group could speak a little English, and we discussed the World Cup and countries I had visited… The other group spoke not a word of English, so we just sat nodding and grinning at each other, like a group of village idiots… From time to time they would hold up their glasses to me and mutter something in Arabic, to which I would raise my glass, and with a huge smile on my dial, say something like,
“Julle bliksems gaan my nooit weer sien nie !!” and “Môre is my laaste dag in hierdie blerry land! Hoorah!”
Three of them replied with a “Hoorah” of their own, which made me wonder if they would be just as glad to see the back of me…
View of the sea from my balcony... The hotel being built in the foreground will no doubt block this view...
I lay awake under the tiny fan that was bolted to the ceiling in my room, thinking about the border crossing I would have to endure in a few hours time… I hoped Libya would not turn out to be the “difficult” country it was said to be… I set my cell-phone alarm for 4.00am, which was only three hours away, and fell into a fitful sleep…
Little did I know that the 3rd of July would be “one helluva day”, that I would not soon forget…
©GBWT 2010
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