Land Of The Crocodile Worshipers

If your expecting to see pictures of crocodiles or read about crocodiles, congratulations you played yourself. Wait don’t go lemme explain myself. See, The City of Faiyum worshiped a tamed sacred crocodile, named Petsuchos, that was adorned with gold and gem pendants. The greeks thus ended up calling Faiyum crocodilopolis. Interesting right? Class dismissed.

Now let’s fast forward to the fun part. Sand surfing. Rolling down sand dunes? Ever seen a squirrel on steroids? Me neither. Let’s just say I was damn excited when I knew this was on the itinerary. The closest I have ever come to surfing is sliding down muddy hills when I was a kid. I still don’t know why this isn’t a sport but it’s all good.

Now lemme tell you how sand and your camera never go together. Like one grain can damage your camera. So here I am, in a foreign country, no idea where I’d get a legit camera repair shop, It’s week one so what if I damage my camera, what about the remaining 5 weeks? No taking chances so it’s hunting time. 10 pm Going from supermarket to supermarket asking for transparent foil. Yes yes always use protection. Life hack 101. The only down side to this is spending hours wrapping your camera like some endangered food species. Lemme walk you through the steps.

Step 1: Remove all straps from your camera, spend like 30 min covering your camera body with foil ensuring it is tightly sealed.

Step 2: Do the same thing to the lens. I’d advice you to stick to one focal length. Ooooh my apologies let’s all eat from one plate for the sake of non photographers. If you need to know how to go about this gimme a buzz.

Step 3: Cry yourself to sleep and ask why you didn’t invest in the right protective gear.

Step 4: Cut through the lens opening on the camera. This is the point you do this with extreme caution. Like defusing a bomb with only one wire.

Congratulations, mission accomplished it’s morning. Wait what happened to sleeping? Forget about sleeping. SHOTGUN, front row seat, Check. Camera check. Time to hit the road. Fayium here we come.

38+ degrees here I am wondering how sand surfing will be possible with this heat. Is this how I die? It’s so hot, the aircon in the cars don’t make a difference you’d rather have your windows open. I think I now know what a Turkey’s life in the oven is like. Water goes from ice-cold to anyone ordered for water from the sun just after you open your bottle. Thank God I had an Arafat, this was my icebox. Place some huge chunks of ice cubes on my head, Arafat on and voila.

As we wait for the sun to ease down, it’s roam roam, get roasted in the sun. Repeat till you evaporate. Every step leads to draining your energy. Talking about steps, lemme tell you how walking up sand dunes is some typa military training? I mean this is leg day till I kick the bucket. 1st you can’t go up with your shoes. Sand goes in equals to more weight. Take off your shoes and it you versus the baked sand. So which option do you go for? The Blue pill or Red Pill?

It’s play time. Here come the rules.

1. No getting on the board with shoes. (So now you know which pill I took)
2. There are different ways of sand boarding. You can either sit on the board (BORING), You can lay flat on the board (You’ll end up eating sand till you morph into the sandman) lastly you can stand (The ultimate balance test but more fun)
3. You need to wax your board. Too much or too little wax and you’ll not move. You need to wax your board from side to side.
4. Everyman for himself God for us all

So at this point, we done. Comes in the best time of the day. Sunset chase.