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| I COULDN'T FIND A BURKHA SO I WORE THIS ! |
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| THE BUS TRIP TO OUR EXECUTION IN THE MIDDLE OF ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE ! |
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| AFTER FIVE SECONDS I WAS ALREADY WELL BEHIND ! |
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| THE ONLY TREE IN EGYPT ! |
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| WE SURVIVED AND ESCAPED ! |
I only went because I had once again allowed myself to be coerced into being my lazy daughter Gemma's nanny for the third time so that she and her whatever number husband could go scuba diving on day long boat trips or lie by one of the pools smoking one of those Hubbly Bubbly glass things and drinking vast amounts of 'local' vodka whilst I went mad trying to control her two feral children !
So after five days of mindless snorkelling watching myriads of multicoloured fish in every shape and size you could imagine in the transparent Red Sea under a clear blue sky, swimming in one of our hotel's ten beautiful pools, drinking and eating more than my skinny little body had room for and groaning as I was unable to avoid seeing the shameless young Russian beauties who cavorted all day around the pools and on the beach or who ate their meals in the dining room still dressed in their micro bikinis, I accepted the chance to escape !
I felt terribly sorry for my son-in-law who being so much younger than me looked tormented as he sensibly decided not to discuss what he'd seen with his wife ! He did however catch my eye a couple of times and I believe I heard barely stifled whimpers and saw steam coming out his ears on several occasions !
Frankly now that I've done it I'd rather have been forced to watch monstrously ugly and hairy female Russian shot-putters sunbathing in micro bikinis in the birthing position; a sight I ran into at every turn amongst the gorgeous, than have had to get on one of those absolutely dreadful motorbikes !
Why do the people who live in abject poverty in a super-heated fly-blown corrugated dust bowl think that soft Westerners want to pay good money for an hour or two of excruciating awfulness ?
There were a few highlights, not including the best thing of all which was when it finished!
The first was after five minutes when driving in agony at the back of our group at speeds up to ten miles an hour I saw a shack appearing through my slitted eyes and the whirlwind of choking dust and prayed that it was the halfway point where we'd stop for a drink !
For once I really wanted to be short changed and be ordered off the bikes as the ride was finished but no it was still just the start!
And we didn't stop for a well-deserved drink ! It WAS just an abandoned shack or more probably someone's home !
It took me some time to realise that I had to accelerate beyond ten miles an hour to smooth out the apalling hammering my backside was getting and stand up when I hit the largest boulders so that my legs could absorb the worst of the collision forces!
The four other bikes were miles ahead of me and how the two with children on their fronts managed I'll never know !
Apparently, Daniel, 3 and tied to his Dad with a Bedouin scarf fell asleep even as his helmet continuously whacked his father in the chest !
And Dylan, riding shotgun to Jaime loved every second !
Our guide who incidentally rode the entire trip standing up on one side of his bike eventually stopped us after an eternity at the ONLY tree in Egypt and getting us to dismount lined us all up in it's shade where we were immediately covered by nasty biting flies !
Of course I'd had to nip off for a wee as soon as we stopped as my kidneys had had such a pounding that they'd vibrated their entire contents into my bruised bladder !
Ahmed, our leader said in his heavily accented English, "Now my friends, I want you to trust me ! Do you trust me my friends ? Will you all shut your eyes for me ?"
( Sound of shuffling feet and mumbled " I'm not shutting my eyes to get machine gunned in this Godforsaken place !" )
"Come my friends, shut your eyes ! I have a special treat for you !"
( Sound of more shuffling feet and more nervous mumblings enhanced by the sounds of the release of intestinal gases not already released by the ride ! )
"I promise that you will be amazed ! And you Daniel (3) my friend, shut your eyes too !"
I hoped they'd shoot Daniel first so he wouldn't have to see our heads blown to smithereens !
I squinted my eyes and pressed play on my video camera and worked out how to fall on it so that the NATO soldiers finding our bodies would be able to see what had happened !
Then we heard, "When I count to three I want you all to shout 'EGYPT !" as loudly as you can ! So ONE TWO THREE.....EGYPT !"
We shouted and opened our eyes and heard a faint echo !
"There ! Do you hear my it friends ?...an ECHO ! Let's do it again ! ONE TWO THREE.....EGYPT !"
I don't want to swear but for ***** sake, do these people think they're dealing with morons ? Don't they know that we have echoes in our own countries ?
We remounted and staggered on towards an abandoned settlement where one emaciated camel with a couple of tatty bits of coloured wool attached to it's saddle was tied to a stake and an equally emaciated slave served us overpriced Coke and a miraculous drink called TEA (again I repeat 'for ***** sake' !) where our guide kept leaping on the poor devil and beating him up whilst the poor lad laughed in terror ! (That's true!)(( Very much like I did at school when I was regularly beaten up by the school bully !))
Here our guide apologised for boring us with his life history after telling us about his attempts to escape from Egypt into Italy via Libya where the Libyan soldiers repeatedly electrocuted him and beat him up for a year before throwing him back across the border !
He showed us the appalling scars on his body where they'd taped the electrodes, though thankfully we were not treated to a view of his testicles and he continued with his history for another hour !
We eventually decided to make a break for it and ran for our bikes and tore back to the base camp where we whipped off our facemasks and helmets and dived for our bus which we threw ourselves onto laughing hysterically about electrocutions in the Libyan desert and desperately wishing we had been THERE and not where we were !
And THEN another man came on our bus and made us buy photos of ourselves as souvenirs !
NEVER AGAIN !
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