Apr 17 - Alexandria and Sick Bay

And this is where it things started to unravel.....

I woke up in the early hours with what I thought was just a touch of travelers' tummy, known in Egypt as the Pharoah's revenge. I thought I could shake it off, and despite having no appetite at breakfast (which should have been a huge clue for me), I popped an Imodium and climbed on the bus at 6:30 a.m. with the rest of the group for the 3 hour bus ride to Alexandria.

Alexandria is located north and a bit west of Cairo and is located on the Mediterranean Sea. The road there is a 3-lane highway going each direction where the cars and trucks pretty much stay in their lanes (unlike in Cairo), but pedestrians constantly dash across the lanes. Insanity. You get fined for that kind of crazy behaviour in Canada.

Our first stop was the catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa (meaning "Mound of Shards") - a historical archaeological site considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. No photos allowed.

The necropolis (burial chamber) consists of a series of Alexandrian tombs, statues and archaeological objects of the Pharaonic funeral cult with Hellenistic and early Imperial Roman influences. Due to the time period, many of the features of the catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa merge Roman, Greek and Egyptian cultural points; some statues are Egyptian in style, yet bear Roman clothes and hair style whilst other features share a similar style. A circular staircase, which was often used to transport deceased bodies down the middle of it, leads down into the tombs that were tunneled into the bedrock during the age of the Antonine emperors (2nd century AD). The facility was then used as a burial chamber from the 2nd century to the 4th century, before being rediscovered in 1900 when a donkey accidentally fell into the access shaft. To date, three sarcophagi have been found, along with other human and animal remains which were added later. It is believed that the catacombs were only intended for a single family, but it is unclear why the site was expanded in order to house numerous other individuals.

By this time, I was feeling terrible. I felt like booking a spot for myself in the catacombs. Clearly, this was more than travellers' tummy and more clearly, I should have stayed back at the hotel. I was causing needless worry to all my fellow travellers, and especially to Mostafa.

I stayed on the bus for the rest of the day. I took advantage of every toilet break. Every washroom was miserable and dirty with no running water for hand washing. I'm surprised we didn't all get bubonic plague.

The group stopped to see Pompey's Pillar. Pompey's Pillar is a Roman triumphal column, the largest of its type constructed outside the imperial capitals of Rome and Constantinople, located at the Serapeum of Alexandria. The only known free-standing column in Roman Egypt which was not composed of drums, it is one of the largest ancient monoliths and one of the largest monolithic columns ever erected.

The monolithic column shaft measures 20.46 m in height with a diameter of 2.71 m at its base. The weight of the single piece of red Aswan granite is estimated at 285 tonnes. The column is 26.85 m high including its base and capital. It was built in 297 AD to commemorate the victory of Roman emperor Diocletian over an Alexandrian revolt. The Crusaders wrongly believed that the pillar marked the burial site of Pompey and hence the erroneous name. Today the single column marks the site of what was once a huge and elaborate temple, which was constructed of marble and decorated with precious metals on the interior.

Next stop - Montaza Palace, according to the pictures Doug took. Montaza Palace is a palace, museum and extensive gardens in the Montaza district of Alexandria, Egypt. It was built on a low plateau east of central Alexandria overlooking a beach on the Mediterranean Sea. The larger Al-Haramlik Palace and royal gardens were added to the Montaza Palace grounds, being built by King Fuad I in 1932, as a summer palace. It is in a mixture of Ottoman and Florentine styles, with two towers. One of these towers rises distinctively high above with elaborated Italian Renaissance design details. The palace has long open arcades facing the sea along each floor.

The Al-Montaza Park, the former expansive royal gardens of 150 acres, are open as a public landscape park and forest reserve. My fellow travellers enjoyed seeing them.

The bus stopped by the Mediterranean Sea - always a lovely blue colour. I was able to open one eye and verify that. Doug and I loved seeing the Mediterranean when we were in Nice, France a few years ago. We were at the site of the The Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria - this was a lighthouse built by the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 280 and 247 BC which has been estimated to be 100 metres in overall height. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for many centuries it was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world. It was badly damaged by three earthquakes between AD 956 and 1323. The stubby remnant disappeared in 1480, when the then-Sultan of Egypt, Qaitbay, built a medieval fort on the larger platform of the lighthouse site using some of the fallen stone.

Somewhere along the line, the group stopped for lunch. Lunch was on the tour operator's tab because of a bobble in the tour plans. Doug raved about the good chicken he had in the restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. We were originally supposed to stay overnight in Alexandria, and then go back to Cairo for one more night for us, two more nights for everyone else. But the Egyptian government bumped all the hotel room reservations in Alexandria for a big conference, so we had to endure the 3 hour bus ride back to Cairo. I spent some of the trip splayed out on the 5 seats along the back of the bus. I was just barely hanging on. Actually, being back in Cairo was a far better place for me than being stranded in Alexandria.

We got back to Cairo about 7:30 p.m. I crawled to our room. We had been given a room with two separate beds when we checked in. The hotel had offered to move us to a room with a king sized bed for the last three nights, but we had declined the offer, feeling it was just not worth the effort. A fortuitous decision, because one of those beds turned into a hospital bed.

Doug arranged for the hotel doctor to see me - I had constant diarrhea and now was running a fever. We were way past travellers' tummy. During the return from one of my numerous bathroom trips while we waited for the doctor, I passed out and ended up on the floor, uninjured thanks to Doug. Doug escalated my case to an emergency and called Sharon, a fellow traveler who is also a nurse. She nursed the nurse who was busy nursing his wife. In 18 short hours, I had gone from fine to very, very sick.

My saviour, Dr. Ahmed Matawea, arrived. His calm, professional bedside manner was incredibly comforting. He mantra was, "We will get through this together.". He had a big smile and was not half bad to look at either. And no, I wasn't hallucinating. He diagnosed me with a very serious gastrointestinal virus that unfortunately peaks in Egypt in April and May and has no antidote. Lucky me. My vital signs were terrible. Fast pulse; fast respirations; high temperature; very low blood pressure of 80 over 40. Yikes. That's the one that made me pass out and it was a direct result of dehydration. This puppy runs 5-7 days and comes on strong with diarrhea, adds on high fever and finishes off with vomiting. Dr. Ahmed was delighted to learn that Doug is a nurse - Doug charted my vitals and took medical notes. Dr. Ahmed put in a double port line in my left arm. Into one port, he ran a litre of fluids - he taped the IV bottles to the wall. I wasn't going to rat him out to the Maintenance staff if he happened to damage the paint. Into the other port, he pushed antibiotics and Tylenol for the fever and anti-vomiting juice which blessedly, worked. He gave Doug four meds to give me and promised to return in the morning.Read more