Egypt has landed on our vacation like a ton of jello. From Cairo to Aswan (our only two data points), Egyptians appear to be excessively noisy drivers and pushy shopkeepers, friendly but disrespectful, and helpful but they want their cut. Everything seems like a rip-off or a scam: “set” prices for tourists are at least doubled, and every ten feet some one will shout “Welcome! You want a [hotel, taxi, falucca, camel, donkey, guide, scarf, spices, or cigarette]?” Touts stand by the doors of tourists sites, demand to see your ticket, then guide you (all the while insisting that they are from the government, their services are free, and they just want you to be happy) into a waiting sale pitch. Flame is constantly getting cat-hisses, “I love you!”’s, honks, and other attention that ranges from irritating to frightening. The most chilling part for me is seeing women in full black hajabs looking like specters of death. The streets are a nightmare, with cars that accelerate at people crossing, and frequently too many lanes of traffic to cross without weaving between headlight-less cars. Cars honk for every reason and no reason, creating a constant cacophony reverberating for miles even in the middle of the night.

All that said, we’ve managed to do quite a bit in four days, and I think avoided the worst of it. Egypt has been exciting and intense for me as a culture shock—a place I could easily imagine living, for all its problems, just to experience a life of such a different grit.

Our first impression of Cairo was of how dusty it is—at times you can’t see more than a couple of blocks through the haze. Our hostel in Cairo was super-helpful, calling dozens of other hotels to find us a room when we arrived too late for the one we reserved. That night we walked through a solid mile of clothing stands to the European expat island of Zamalek for some fine Italian dining at half the European price.

The second day was a huge string of successes. We uncovered the right bus and braved the camel-toting touts to see the pyramids. Then we used a microbus, a metro, and many people’s broken English to find a recommended lunch restaurant. Then we struggled through solid humanity and nameless alleyways to find our way into and back out of the Khan Al-Khanili Bazarre. Then we secured two sleeper car tickets to Aswan, the details of which (e.g. that we would need to get them today), we only heard over breakfast this morning. And we finished the day with tea and sheesha at one spot and takeaway Mediterranean food from another. And finally we stumbled to the safety of our hostel in one piece, with the possible exception of our feet and calves.

Day three was for the tourist-crawling Egyptian museum, with so much exquisite ancient art that every step I wished we were able to use our camera. After another visit to the island for French-Italian delights, we wandered around Cairo’s old city, a mix of cement-formed entrances to touristic markets, and a grid of run-down buildings, dirt roads, playing children, and hookah-smoking old men. The train to Aswan was a nerve-racking half-hour late (we watched each train pull out wondering if we should be on it), but an unexpected comfort as our hotel-room-on-wheels started and stopped without concerning us at all until the butler-like Joseph told us to pack our things out the next morning.

The area around Aswan is a fantastic discontinuity between barren desert and fertile farmland. The Nile is deep blue, peppered with small ferries and faluccas, and bordered with river-smoothed boulders and palm forests. The pedestrian market street down the middle of town is lively and colorful, but the attitudes of shopkeepers may have poisoned our experience there. We took the public ferry to Elephantine Island (we were the only ones who seemed to pay), and wandered blindly between mud-brick and herds of goats to Abu, a sprawling 3rd millennium BC city, lovingly excavated and reconstructed. Finally, a long walk along the hills south of town brought us within sight of the famed First Cataract at a quiet Nubian restaurant that all the tour buses had just left.

We find our heroes wandering about Turkey, in search of a cute coffeeshop and some decent vegeteryan food. We’ve now visited the phallic formations of Cappadocia, the whirling religionates of Konya, the mineralogical metropolis of Ephesus, and the seaside settlement of Ayvalik. As we turn homeward for a plane from Istanbul to Cairo, we remember fondly some of our best Turkish moments.

After scrambling over the hollow mountains of Goreme’s Open Air Museum, filled with 8th century fresco masterpieces and 10th century cave scribbles, we decided to visit one last cave-church. After trying the cave’s bolted door, we found the attendant, his dog, and his stovedrum boiling tea. The price, he said, was 8 lira, per person. We shrugged at his one mountain (we had just seen twelve such for 15 lira), and started to walk away. “Okay!”, he called, “For you, special deal—8 lira for both.” We accepted, and he led us into the cave and explained the dilapidated frescoes. Could we take a picture? “Normally, no. Well, okay. You argue well.” As we were leaving afterward joining him for a cup of tea, he said, “You want to come back tomorrow? I show you The Secret Church, hidden. Special for you.”

In Konya, we were confused by the dedicated pilgrims at the former home of the whirling dervishes. Their mosque is packed with the trappings of dozens of these dancing scholars, but since when do performing artists get centuries of devotion? We didn’t think to wonder why the site is called the Mevlana Museum, until we sat for tea at a hotel (which had great food, which we had scoffed at earlier in the evening, when we were set on finding another restaurant and ended up a t a ghetto fast-food joint). They gave us a nifty pamphlet for the hotel since Flame wanted to know the Turkish names of every food. The pamphlet gave a brief history of Mr. Mevlana, father of a more open, accepting form of Islam. We could have learned something from him a few times that day.

We met a nice Brit, Ed, in Selçuk, who kept Flame company as I got lost among some forbidden ruins. As we were parting ways at the bus station, a bus agent approached him and asked him where he was going. “Pammukale,” said he. “Why don’t you give your bag—this is your bus!” the agent said. Ed protested: the sign in the bus window had it bound for a town on the way to Pammukale, but he had gotten a direct ticket. The agent stepped away and talked to the driver, who reached under his dashboard and pulled out a “Pammukale” sign and stuck it to the window under the other one.

For our bus from Selçuk to the Greek cobblestone maze called Ayvalik, we were first offered a price of 65 lira. A novice bargainer, but suspecting a gringo tax, I offered 60. The agent got on the phone, and after a long talk said that, seeing as it was the first of the year, he could make me a special offer: 55 lira. Okay, so I handed over a 50 lira note and a 10 lira note, and rather than give me change he took the 50 note and said, “That’s enough.” By now we realized we were paying way too much, but it wasn’t until the larger bus depot at ?zmir that we realized how much. The driver walked us to the bus for the rest of our journey, where we got a new ticket: it said it cost 27 lira. And the bill that Flame saw the driver palm over for the ticket was a 20.

We just arrived in crazy Cairo, where the midnight sounds of honks and Arabian music echo all around us. The streets are a deathwish, which we’ve already braved more times than we ever want to remember, but tomorrow is a whole new day!

You could say it’s now Istanbul night two, but this was our first daytime here, and if it was our second day of international traveling, it was our first of walking around and exploring. I love its steep-and-narrow cobblestone streets, its stores overflowing with belt-buckles or socks, its endless cycle of doner kebab and cute cafe.

I feel like I grok this city’s energy, but there’s a lot I’m missing. Like, how do we get cups of tea in glass vases like everyone else, at restaurants, in stores, on streets? Why is there a chestnut roaster on every corner, when no one every buys? What makes shop keepers think that yelling “Want to see the menu?” (pointing to the enormous platform I had to step into the street to get around) or “Spend money!” won’t chase me away? And the language is big barrier (particularly to getting decent prices)—I only managed to successfully say the word for “thank you” on my 58th try.

I really like our neighborhood. We’re staying across the bridge from the old city, about 1 km from the super-busy Taksim square. A short trek up our street, past five bookstores, four relaxed-looking cafes, and three art galleries, is Istiklal street. Parts of Istiklal look like the main shopping street of every other large city, but local businesses far outnumber chains, and almost every person in the constant packed flow is Turkish (which could be a winter effect). The streets coming off Istiklal are much more interesting, though, filled with clubs, cafes, and restaurants and plenty of competition to have both good food and atmosphere. Our hostel, Neverland Hostel, is heel-to-toe with peace, anarchy, and anti-corporation murals and band posters, with a cafe-atmosphere common space playing international indie music.

Today was our Old City day: the Hagia Sophia was closed, but we exhausted much of the rest. The Blue Mosque is exquisite inside, with a seamless wall-to-wall rug that apparently hasn’t been spilled on once in centuries. The Grand Bazarre is suffocatingly touristy, but it’s also enormous: it took us a half-hour to make one path through it. After a long wander (including two more gorgeous mosques, and some hand-acted-out directions), we returned to familiar territory and checked out the more authentic Spice Bazaar. Then to Topaku Palace with a treasury of jewel encursted, mother-of-pearl inliad everything, and a harem completely detailed by the square-inch in vibrant colors—something like a mix between a convent and a castle. Finally to the Basilica Cistern, an enormous underground Roman koi pond, where almost every pillar was reinforced, but the constant drips from the rain puddles outside don’t stop you from wondering when it’s all going to cave in. Finally, dinner at a vegetarian cafe (Zencefil) back home near Taksim.

Tomorrow we explore the Asian side, and get on a train for Cappadocia! We made an important step in our planning today, buying flights from Istanbul to Cairo on January 3, and then to Athens on the 10th. That should give us time for a tight loop through western Turkey, before an Egypt trip including a couple days in Luxor and Aswan. Israel and Cyprus seem to be squeezed out of this trip, but I don’t think we’ll miss them too much.

I’m all set to go to Brasilia and hang out with two friends, and then to Rio for Natal, and then Bahia to party, then São Luiz to see it, then Belém for the Forum. But I can’t go anywhere until my new bank card arrives! International shipping is the pits.

I still need to write a post about life, which has been full of reflection recently. Suffice it for now that I’m working a lot; I’m inspired that my moon sign is Taurus and my ascendant sign is Leo; I love LiveMocha; I miss my friends; I’m considering going back to school in Geopolitics; and I’m the captivated owner of a beautiful new all-wire-strung black acoustic guitar.

I got a room in an a perfect part of Porto Alegre!

Brazil just had its Daylight Savings Time, so I lost an hour :(. But it got me thinking—it’s always so gratifying when you move west, because you get more hours, and life is so short. But the most you can get that way is 23 hours, if you were lucky enough to be born at the edge of the Siberia. But this daylight savings thing gave me an idea! If you keep switching between the northern and southern hemispheres, you could pick up both daylight savings every year, which amounts to a whole day every 12 years. THEN, if you can just do 182 of those cycles, plus the day you got from moving to Alaska, you’ll get a whole extra YEAR. What’s more, in that same time, every 12 years you get 3 days for free, from leap years (minus the ones on century-changes). That’s 1.5 MORE years. And by then, all told, you’ll be 1 Alaska day + 182 cycles * 12 years-per-cycle + 1 year + 529 leap days = 2186.5 years old!

I’m in water-logged island paradise state capital Florianopolis. I searched around for an apartment here, but all my threads frayed, so I’m headed to Porto Alegre today. Last night, we went to a sweet-if-corporate club. It had about six suited guards at every door, an incredible light, sound, and fog system, a pay-by-scan-code system, and a crummy second DJ. And we had an ESFP from Montreal with us, so it was bound to be fun.

Today was the first day I’ve seen the sun here, so I headed to the lake in the middle of the island—Lagoa da Conceição, the Lake of Making Babies. The main nightlife-centered village there is built on a sandbar that extends across the middle of the lake (are you getting the picture-perfectness of all this?). Needing to get away from the glamor, I headed out on the mountainous sandbar, and before long the only tracks in the sand were mine and those of some clawed jaguar-sized beast. It was very Sahara.

Just checking in, and doing some work on the site.

This last week in Rio has been a blast. I’ve been staying with my cousin’s girlfriend, Purebreed, pretending to understand Portuguese, and hanging out with two couchsurfers from Belem, Rabbit and Late Period, who came here to pursue their respective intimate interests and have their birthdays.

For Late Period’s birthday, we went hang-gliding over Rio—awesome. We flew across Floresta Tijuca, in the middle of Rio, past a favela and high-class homes, and out over the ocean briefly before a soft landing on the beach. Sadly, they don’t let you glide your own hang. You help take off—by running off a cliff, wheee—and you help land, and otherwise you just hang around.

On Wednesday, I participated in a small “Free Hugs” campaign, in the middle of Rio. We took over a spot between a metro station and a busy intersection, all with “Abraços Grátis” signs, and hugged away. A local magazine seller advertised us as a side benefit to buying his merchandise. At our most, we had five people, which was fun for the energy, but the time I was doing it just with the organizer was fun for the challenge.

And Friday night, I went partying in Lapa, an region known for its Bohemian nightlife. An area about three city blocks on a side was absolutely swimming with partiers, sizzling meat, drink stands, tequila pushers, hippie artisans, and dancing to loud music that never left-off before the next began. We bobbed to Samba under a bridge, shifted under strobe lights to electronic, and danced Salsa right below—everywhere was packed, but never so much that you couldn’t move. Purebreed turns out to be a fantastic learn-by-doing teacher of Salsa, and I learned a bunch.

My Belém friends left this morning, and I just want to see Copacabana’s gay pride parade today before heading down to Curitiba!