Up and at em rather early today – to some extent – mainly in the house at least. The plan for the morning was to head out riding with Sabine in the desert. Went over to see Maryanne, and got all the dogs sorted with their medication, and after Sabine had headed over to Tatouch's to get Elvis ready, and the grooms had saddled up Shaboura (for me), Americano (for Hassan), and Diva (for Mohamed), we went to join her. As we got closer to the desert, Hassan said that Americano couldn't go into the desert, so they were going to head out to continue on a countryside ride, but Shaboura didn't want to leave them – she didn't like Elvis at all. It took some coaxing, and a few rears to get her headed in the right direction, with Diva and Americano leading her along (like a lamb to the slaughter – lol). When there was just a narrow path between the wall and the next stable, Sabine trotted on ahead, which succeeded in getting Shaboura moving, and allowed the grooms to continue on their way.
It was much easier to keep Shaboura at the speed I wanted, compared to Wadi, but she kept pulling ugly faces at Elvis (which is a shame because she is such a pretty mare). We were heading over towards the Bone Yard to have a bit more of a look around, but we started off by heading around at the base of the pyramids at Abu Sir, and followed the wall around. This was a mistake as there was no air movement down here, and we were greatful to head further out into the desert where there was more of a breeze (it was still very hot though). As we headed out further into the desert, we followed a wadi up at a nice canter, and this wadi started drifting back towards the pyramids at Abu Sir – we decided to let this be our guide, and that it would be a better idea to head out to the boneyard another day, preferably in the cool of the evening. We had another nice canter past the pyramids, at least until there was a line of white stones which stood out against the tan sand – Shaboura, being a rather manoeuverable young lady did a rather large shy away from these stones – I'm not sure how, but I managed to stay on – I didn't want that being my first proper fall over here in Egypt.
From this point on, I kept her at a slower pace (she wanted to run home), and she objected to this – even trying a stag leap – little miss. As we were walking back through the village, there were workmen concreting the outside of a building on rickety scaffolding - good photo op. We made it back home safely, and managed to leave Sabine at the gate to Saber's garden – only one delay on the way home and that was at a puddle in path – it stretched across the entire path, and she didn't want to get her feet wet – I keep telling her, if she keeps on like that, then Wadi will end up being my favourite of Maryanne's horses – she seemed totally unconcerned about that.As I was walking through the village to home, I caught up with Saber's son, Achmed, and he followed us back home. There he started to teach me some words in Arabic, and chatted with the grooms – he even climbed up on Hassan's bike and pretended to drive it – his only just reached the pedals – certainly not the ground!
We went over and took him to say Hi to Maryanne, and I decided that he might like one of the little Kiwi's I bought over from NZ – he certainly did – had a great time making it make its kiwi noises. And he got down Maryanne's big Kiwi and had the two talking at the same time.
After a nice lunch of leftovers from yesterday, I went out and played marbles with Achmed – he won, but he did cheat I must say – especially seeing as how I had no idea about the rules – lol. He then had fun swinging on Maryanne's hammock, and we were joined by little Mohamed. They played with my phone, and with the marbles, and then we went for a ride on Daisy the donkey. It started off with me and Achmed on Daisy, with little Mohamed riding George, but then all three of us were on Daisy – poor girl. She rode under a tree, and while trying to keep the branches out of my face, my hand actually got tangled in the branches and I got pulled off the back of Daisy. Humphf – my first fall in Egypt is actually off the back of a donkey (and on the same day I commented that I hadn't fallen over here - jinx anyone?)
that's just not cricket!! Actually,does a fall off a donkey even count? Lol. I went into the house, closely followed by Achmed, and Sabine fixed up my hand and then we all sat down and ate lovely fresh cherries – we think that is the first time that Achmed has tried them – and he really enjoyed them – he even left the evidence on his face – the original Egyptian Vampire :)
He took lots of photos with my camera, even getting one of Magda at work in the kitchen, before Maryanne sent him home. While Sabine was out working with Nayzak and Stella, I came over to the guest house and began getting my photos, diary and blog up to date. This didn't last long as Achmed came visiting again. I managed to get some photos done, but he kept looking at photos on the computer and so I turned on a game for him. Eventually I headed over to the house to see if Maryanne needed anything, and she was nice enough to send him home for me, meaning that
after getting her settled, I could head back to the guest house and finish off everything I needed to do. It was nice in the cool of the evening watching the donkeys play together, and then little Mohamed was like the pied piper, leading all the donkeys, goats and the gamoosa to their food.After a busy day, it was nice to eventually collapse into bed once I had worked on getting the blog slightly more up to date, and the diary completed.
Desert ride 6:
Distance - 7.74km
Time - 1:25:48
Average speed - 5.4kmph
Max speed - 20.4kmph
No comments:
Post a Comment