Egypt

Next stop Egypt. First stop Cairo, a week or so before we arrived the government decided to 'interupt' a protest and subsequently killed 20 or 30 people...so we were a little weary coming here. All was good though. The Pyramids and Egyptian Museum were awesome, we rode our way around the Pyramids and Sphinx on camels, we barely saw a single person while we were there...The Museum is just enormous, 300,000 + exhibits including the artefacts of Tutankhamun's tomb and a dozen or so mummies. We were exhuasted by the time we finished, went out for dinner and Steph got some food poisoning that lasted on and off for a couple of weeks...ewww. We sleeper trained down to Aswan for a Nile Cruise and tour of the East and West banks of Luxor...but before the cruise we headed down by overnight Police convoy to Abu Simbel, and happened to stumble across a celebration that happens twice a year, and features some statues at the back of the inside of the temple being lit by Sun at sunrise....talk about some exact architecture.
The tours of the temples and tombs of Luxor was great....Ancient Egypt is to be seen to be believed - Abu Simble was the highlight for us.
We then flew to Sharm El Sheikh to head to Dahab for some backpacker style diving for a couple of days before heading to Sharm for some more Red Sea action including the world's most famous diving shipwreck - The Thistlegorm.

Our guide took a serious of  photos....

most of them cheesy...

especially this one....

Abu Simbel

One of the temples of the east bank

The Ramasseum

The propellor of the Thistlegorm

Gun on the Thistlegorm

Old school jeep IN the Thistlegorm

Pretty....

Morocco

We spent two weeks travelling to Casablanca, Marrakesh, Essaouira, and Fes. We caught up with a couple of mates, spent endless hours wandering through the chaotic streets of medinas across the country and ate some good (and very rich) food. An honorable mention for the mint tea they drink constantly throughout the day - that they have named "Moroccan Whiskey" - like they think we all drink whiskey all day everyday....It is very nice but very sweet - 3 or 4 teaspoons of sugar for every glass... The markets were crazy, cheap food, heaps of crap to buy, snake charmers, monkeys doing tricks, and no alcohol in sight. We got out into the mountains for a strange day trip to visit some waterfalls, with the guide stopping at all his friends shops all day to try and make some sales and commission - everywhere we went with a guide the shop would be charged a 'finders fee'. We had a guided tour of the medina in Fes, a warren of 9000 streets - we would of been stuffed without the guide. More weird and wonderful stalls there, including witnessing a live chicken order and subsequent beheading...ewwww. Essaouira was the favourite, a chilled out beach town, with the strangest ocean mist that slowly crept over the city every afternoon.The PT across the country was really good, catching trains backwards and forwards across the country was cheap and very easy. A lovely country, just a shame about the hassel and rudeness of alot of the people - minus one of the hundreds of Mohammeds we met - a taxi driver. He spent a couple of hours with us while we tried to send some junk home, including three stops, some translating, and a supermarket junket -  yet he tried to only charge what was on the meter.

Morrocan Tajine - Lamb and Prunes, my fav

Snake Charmer in the madness of Marakesh

Steph wandering through one of the millions of stalls of the Medina

The food stalls that magically appeared around 5pm each night in the centre of Marrakesh

Steph & Ro at one of the food stalls

Chameleons were kept in cages around the place....he was a little grey and unhealthy looking

The crazy sea mist and sea birds of Essaouira

The delicacies of Steph's cooking class in Fes

Sarah & Steph with our street food feast as well as some wine we smuggled into the medina in Essaouira.