When I got up I went over to the house to see what the plan of attack was for the day. We were going into Maadi so Maryanne could try to get some stuff sorted with Mobinil, and the plan was that Pat and I would have time to explore Road 9, and I could try a place that would hopefully fix my cartouche (I've had it for 10 years, and it just doesn't feel right not being able to wear it because it is broken).
While waiting to head out I did some work on a group e-mail to send out to people. I stopped at one stage to save the e-mail (over a page long!) but open office crashed and it didn't save – I had to start it all over again – which isn't good when you are writing things that bring tears to your eyes :(
Gave up on the e-mail after half a page, when I had to shut down the computer, go over to the guesthouse to get Bella out from there (I had to drag her out from underneath one of the chest of draws – she didn't want to leave).
We stopped at Pat's to pick her up and drove on in to Maadi, to Cafe Graeco, where I had a lovely peach smoothie while Pat had a coffee and we read the newspapers. New Zealand had made it into both of the newspapers that were there, and not just because of the All Whites :)
We then wandered next door to the silver shop that Maryanne and I had visited not long after I arrived. They can fix my cartouche :) He was concerned though because it would take a while(2-3 days), but seeing as how I still have a month left here, I don't think that will be too much of a problem. And all it will cost is LE 20, or about $5NZ.
We had a bit of a look around the shop, and one of the gentlemen in there, when he found out I was from New Zealand said "Kia Ora, Tena kotu katoa" (please excuse my spelling – my Maori isn't the best).
We also had a look in a shop with Egyptian souveniers – cheaper than in Khan el Khalili, and you don't need to bargin. There were some awesome coffee mugs and other terracotta items, that I think I will have to go back and possibly buy before I leave Egypt.
Next stop the cobbler, but Pat's shoes weren't fixed, and then on to the optometrists to pick up her new glasses. Then it was a matter of filling in time before Maryanne and Mohamed turned up to pick us up. More souvenier shops, jewellery shops and supermarkets were then visited (the supermarkets mainly for the air conditioning!
Once back in the car, we took a detour to drop off an envelope for someone, before heading to the large Metro store to do some shopping. We dropped off Pat on the way home, and then took a detour to the farms chook food supplier to pick up some chook food in exchange for some horse food. This necessitated driving over some very rough roads, and some back lane driving to get back to the main road to Maryanne's.
On the way we saw an overloaded scooter – Mum, Dad and two kids, complete with all the shopping.The afternoon was a time to relax and catch up on sending out a belated group e-mail (which was a disaster – not only had I had to type it out twice, but I tried sending it from my Ihug e-mail first time, and got 60 odd delivery failure notices from vodafone. Then sent it out from my hotmail account and got about 10 delivery failure notices. Two because my 'n' key on the laptop is rather touchy and people became steves, not stevens, and 3 people who had changed addresses, that I was able to look up on facebook. The other five miss out I'm afraid.
I had almost finished when I got a call from Maryanne to say that we had clients coming around in about ½ an hour, so I quickly finished sending off the e-mails and got changed into my riding clothes, just in time.
The grooms had saddled up Dory, Dooby, Bunduq and Lilly, and because a few of them hadn't been ridden much recently, and the clients weren't used to riding, I was leading Lilly from Dooby, and Maryanne was riding Dory and leading Bunduq. Lilly and Dooby however aren't that great a combination – Dooby loves to walk out, Lilly is a real slow poke by comparison, so I did a fair bit of riding with my arm stretched out behind me, literally dragging Lilly along. It was a nice ride however, out past Abu Sir, and to a hill which gives a view out over all 4 sets of pyramids, Giza, Abu Sir, Saqqara and Dashur. Add to this the colour that the Egyptian sunset gives to the desert and it was a wonderful ride. As we were heading back towards the countryside, we could hear a lot of gunshots – we assume that someone was getting married (No, not a shotgun wedding – but it is quite common here to hear guns fired in celebration). Riding back through the countryside a lot of people were walking their gamoosa's back home. However gamoosa's are often terrified of horses with riders on their backs, so we caused quite a bit of consternation for many gamoosa herders. Then there was the Egyptian traffic jam – the sheep were blocking the trail, while the herders had stopped and started a small fire to have a cup of tea. They cleared a path for us between the sheep and the wall, and we continued on our way.
Once back at the farm the clients headed on out – I feel sorry for them – they have to catch a flight at 4am tomorrow morning – at least they managed to get in a nice desert and countryside ride before they left, though I am sure they will be feeling it very soon. My apology for the lack of photos from today, but while out riding I couldn't get my camera out when I had Lilly's leadrope in one hand and Dooby's reins in the other :(
After some nice Syrian apricots for dessert and then some dinner over at the guesthouse (backwards I know), it has been time to relax and get the diary up to date and online.
Desert/Countryside ride:
Distance - 5.37km
Time - 1:21:32
Average speed - 4.0kmph
Max speed - 9.0kmph
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