We broke a few of our rules - and paid the price. We were getting a little impatient and finding it hard to agree on what to do next and so decided to take a sunset Felucca ride around Elephantine Island. The nearest offering was from a tout who had been bugging us a bit, (rule: don't reward touts who bug us too much), but in our rush we decided to accept his "rock bottom" offer for a ride. We did ask to see the boat first (rule), but of course we had no idea what we were looking for as we hadn't seen any others. The boat had "Lady Diana" scrawled on the side and was squeezed in between a bunch of other boats. A bit of a communication breakdown between us had us agreeing to go on it - me thinking that Julian though the boat seaworthy due to his time sailing, Julian thinking that I was making the decision and Tim saying he would go along even though he thought it a bad idea because the sun would be dissappearing soon if we didn't make a decision. (rule: trust your gut and walk away if things don't feel right).
As it played out I suppose the trip was a quite comic and so not too bad but it certainly wasn't the peaceful shimmering sunset ride we had envisaged. The boat was actually very crappy and uncomfortable. It was much smaller than all the other Feluccas and apparently unable to catch any wind at all as our captain busily trying to row with a couple of think wooden planks that looked like fence posts. "I give you good ride you give me good tip" seemed to be the limit of his English.
The boys tried to help sail a bit because he really didn't seem to know what he was doing. According to the boys the centreboard wasn't in properly, the rudder was wobbling madly, the sails weren't set up correctly and as a result we were getting nowhere fast. Large groups in real Feluccas sailed past in the wind. They were full of groups of foreigners smiling and laughing. One group seemed to be paying particular attention to us and laughing quite merrily - at us we thought. The boys felt embarrased and we were annoyed at ourselves for agreeing to this anbd decided give up - asking the captain to return to shore about 20 mins into the agreed hour. We paid for the full hour the price we had agreed but the captain kept looking at us incredulously say "no tip ? no tip?" and saying he had only a little change for the 50 pound note I offered him (just enough for him to keep a healthy tip). It was a small amount - but we refused to give him any extra thinking perhaps we should have refused to pay at all.
Having said all that the sunset was beautiful and serene and we decided that real Felucca would be a great way to spend some time. We had a very nice dnner in the Aswan Moon restaurant on the river and laughed at ourselves as we told the story to a couple of French Canadians who sat at the next table.
Timmy slept early so Julian and I took a walk around the market and backstreets. We stopped into a coffee shop that was showing a Egypt v Mali "friendly" soccer game. Julian ordered a Turkish coffee, a Nescafe for me. We realised too late that we hadn't asked the price and found ourself with tiny small egyptian coffees in front of us. The waiter charged us what we new to be about double the normal price for these justifying it with the "but this is best quality" argument we had heard too often for just about every type of good we had bought.
