Cruising the Nile
Gustave Flaubert did it. Lady Lucie Duff Gordon did it. Even Agatha Christie did it. Cruising up the Nile from Cairo to Luxor has been the stuff of romance (and mystery) for nearly two centuries. Now, Yasmine El-Rashidi does it, not in search of a cure, a courtisan or an exotic setting for a murder mystery, but to find out what it takes to run a cruise
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The Karnak Temples in Luxor are among the main items on a Nile cruise itinerary; while Abu Simbel Temples south of Aswan are sold as an optional tour; Amarco I on its first trip from Cairo to the south
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There is something quixotic about cruising up the Nile from Cairo to Luxor. Perhaps it is the appeal associated with texts of past travellers -- the image of single young women in their Dahabiehs (feluccas with cabins) at sunset, writing what would later become works of literary prowess.
My cruise was scheduled to be significantly shorter than the trips that spanned months and allowed time for chapter upon chapter of books to be finished.
"You leave Saturday and come back Saturday," one of the ship's owners, Mounir Wissa, informed me over the phone. "See you then," he said, and promptly hung-up.
It took me a couple of days to fully figure out the dynamics of the cruise. My critical analysis of guests from my solitary place at a 12-person breakfast, lunch, and dinner table, left me with theories and perspectives as to the relationships, and the reasons why only these 35 guests -- instead of the full capacity of 100 that I had anticipated -- were aboard and being treated with noted VIPness.
Somewhere towards the end of day two, as I strolled past the health club and passed the pool table, my name was called.
I felt much relief as I looked over to find Mounir Wissa and a small gathering of men -- the first time since the first night launch party I had seen people out of the dining room.
"This is our press contingency," Wissa said, introducing me to his entourage.
The looks of blankness on the gentlemen's faces transformed into much more relaxed facial manifestations.
"Ahhh!" said one of them. "We've been wondering who you are."
He was Mohamed Hassanein, another one of the owners.
"And these are my sons," he said, pointing to two foreign- looking young men playing pool. "That's my quota of the guests," he laughed.
The other guests, I soon discover, are also family members of the ship's business team.
"Amarco I is a partnership," Wissa explained as he offered me a seat at their business table de jour (actually a bridge table). "It marks the first time that three travel agencies come together in a project like this."
The project is a LE30 million boat -- built by Amarco (Mohamed Osman and his wife Amar El-Borno -- the biggest shareholders with 75 per cent), bought into by Escapade travel agency (Mounir Wissa and Nahla Mufid), and Galaxia travel agency (Nasser Milad and Mohamed Hassanein), and managed by Optima (a management company created by Galaxia and Escapade).
"This is like a test cruise," Wissa says. "Like a soft-opening of a hotel."
Milad approaches the table eyeing his partners with scepticism. Wissa is divulging facts and figures.
"Petrol for the cruise costs LE20,000," Wissa volunteers. "We use 450 litres per hour when the ship is cruising, and 110 litres per hour when the ship is docked."
Milad relaxes when he learns of my identity. After a chat about education and his children, he opts to talk about food -- a valid choice given what I later learn is the programme of the week.
"On the first day the chef makes an assessment of the clients. What they like, what's the most consumed item from the buffet, do they eat a lot?" Milad explains of cruise consumption. "A buffet looks more difficult and costly, but actually it's not. You can't compromise with a la carte -- you need to have all the ingredients for all the dishes -- in quantity -- and you have to give them a certain portion. A 250 gramme portion of steak has to be a 250 gramme portion of steak. You can't serve 200 grammes. With a buffet, you are making a quantity of what you choose, preparing it in advance. It's not as consuming -- cost-wise or time-wise."
It hits me sitting at this table of owners, and dining with them (up to five times a day), that the focus on the outside -- the sites and scenes -- may be alluring and romantic in some 19th century way, but the happenings on the inside are equally intriguing, albeit unknown.
"It's a huge operation," says Wissa. "Think of a hotel and all the elements involved in running it smoothly. A cruise is the same, only you're moving, so you have to know all your needs very well. Once you're cruising, you can't get goods until your next stop. At times that can be a matter of a few days."
In the case of this cruise -- M S Amarco I's maiden voyage from Cairo to its Luxor dock -- there was no such shortage.
"A cruise like this is special," Akram Hamed, chief chef, said of the gathering of owners. "Meal hours are flexible, the meals themselves are flexible. The kitchen has to be operating 24 hours."
On that particular day, guests trickled into the breakfast room across the board from 8am till 1pm, and for lunch from 2pm until 6pm.
"That's one of the things the soft-opening is for," he says. "It's like a trial, for the kitchen, for the staff. In a way it's much more demanding, and it prepares you for the guests.
As the days evolve the programme of the seven day trip becomes clear. Breakfast, lunch, snack, tea, dinner, past- midnight snack. The meals are interspersed with random treks onto the upper deck, where we are told (with sternness but much humour) to take in the beauty of the surroundings. The banks of the Nile are lush with the acres of agricultural land blanketing them, and palm trees and traditional mud huts are speckled along the voyage. Beyond the colours, is the undulating, endless desert. The scenery seems infinite in its serenity and reach, broken only by occasional splashing on the banks; that of children playing in the Nile, mothers doing laundry in the waters, or fisherman oaring through the waves of the ship. The landscape is a mural of tranquillity, the vivacious commotion of guests breaks it momentarily as they banter on-board.
"The families are on the trip to relax and be with their friends," Hamed shares. "The owners are the ones that are working."
"We're fine-tuning," Nahla Mufid shares later, over tea and cookies. "Not just the kitchen. Although," she laughs, "we are making a point to try every single thing that the chef can make."
She pauses.
"You were sitting with him when I called," she smiles. Mufid is referring to her request for eclairs earlier in the afternoon. Hers was not the only call. In the course of my two hour chat with Hamed, Wissa's wife called inquiring about the dinner buffet, an Escapade employee asked for sandwiches, and a group of the ladies aboard asked for the chef to meet them on deck once he was done.
"The tourists have sites to see and schedules to meet," Hamed says. "When you have owners on board, there is no such thing. It's like being at home with a big group of family and friends," he smiles -- seemingly knowingly.
"About the kitchen," he says, getting up and leading me in. "Each section specialises in the preparation of a certain food group," he explains, pointing out the fruit and vegetable area, the meat, poultry and fish section, the pastries and breads.
"You have to keep things separate to avoid contamination," he explains. "That also includes storage and refrigeration."
The pans, fridges, sinks, ovens, and even cooking utensils, are vast -- the norm for hotels and restaurants.
"At your average open buffet," he says, "You're talking about 10 kilogrammes of rice," he says. "That much rice only takes 250 kilogrammes of butter," he assures. "We try to cook as lightly as possible -- normal guests can't take the heavy food."
Average consumption on a seven day cruise comes to: 1000 kilogrammes of vegetables, 150 kilogrammes of fish, 175 kilogrammes of meat, and 210 kilogrammes of chicken, 250 grammes of flour -- 100 of which is used solely for bread.
The tallying of the kitchen works in much the same way the rest of the cruise.
"Toiletries are consumed in much the same way," one of the housekeepers said. "Something like toilet paper," he laughed, hesitantly. "People use it to an extreme. I'm not sure what they do with it, but at times we are having to replace a roll each day."
Aside from the grandiose decor, top-notch equipment, and the luxuries of a health club, facilities for the disabled, and an on board Internet cafe, it is the little details of the cruise that make it what it is.
"The difference between a five-star cruise and others," the chef says, "is partly the difference in cabin size and facilities, but it's also very much about service."
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Al-Muharraq Monastery in Assiut, one of Amarco I's stops during its trip from Cairo to Luxor; Wissa checks with rayyes Abdel-Sattar that everything goes well
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The week-long test-cruise for M S Amarco I is a spectacle of that service unfolding, transforming, and consolidating its five stars before the first set of tourists. There are a few excursions to Coptic monasteries along the way, and random 30 minute spurts off deciding to get everyone on deck and take in the view.
After a night of glitzy partying and extravagant dining, as the ship set sail from its Maadi dock in the early hours of Sunday morning, guests retreated to their quarters. That is when the work began.
By Sunday at 9am, fine-tuning was in full swing. On the uppermost deck workmen welded together the bases of metal banisters, light fixtures were secured into place, light bulbs changed, wooden carvings hammered into the bar, and an air of hustle and bustle buzzed amidst the serene surrounding of the peaceful Nile banks.
In the cabins, bathroom fixtures were being drilled into the wall, replacing the bits of sticky tack that had held them up overnight. On the three flights of steps leading down to the dining room, foot grips were screwed securely put into place.
"We didn't have time to finish before the party," Mohamed, one of the workmen shared. "Boats are never fully finished when they first sail."
And into the dining room, the discussion about the fine- tuning continued.
"The cupboards," I hear Mufid say. "They haven't been done with enough thought. There are only two small drawers. Where are people supposed to put their underwear."
On another table an Escapade relative talks of one of the doors that won't shut properly, and on yet another, a wife talks of a bathtub.
"I feel there's an unnatural curve in the bathtub," she says, "so the water seems to filter out from some point."
The opinion is debated, and ultimately discarded. Nobody else has had that problem.
The welding, hammering, carpentry and fixing goes on for the better part of the following day, ending, it seems, at the ship's arrival in Beni Sueif and the departure of the workmen. Osman -- also chairman of the Egyptian Association for Travel Agencies -- departs for tea with the governor of the province, returning several hours later with the Beni Sueif folklore group (currently on tour internationally).
"These dignitary things," Wissa and Hassanein laugh. "He says they're tiring and he just wants to get it over with quickly," Wissa continues. "But he loves it!"
Indeed, Osman glows -- upon departure and more so upon return. He laughs and jokes with the dignitaries, and humours the gathering of guests, and even staff. And takes a little time for his family's two Yorkshire terriers -- an integral part of the Osman entourage.
The same sequence of events occurs at all the ship's stops -- Assiut, being Osman's home province -- marking a prolongued visit and extended guest list.
"Everyone loves him," Wissa shares. "He treats everyone with the same good spirit -- from the governors to the kitchen staff."
Osman is not the only one. Over the course of the coming days, the dynamics of the M S Amarco I team becomes clear.
At our Minya stop, the entire guest contingency takes the ferry across the Nile, and then an Escapade bus to the Al- Muharraq Monastery -- one of the monasteries where the Holy family took refuge during their plight. Amidst our mass is a familiar face. One of the dining staff, with whom Wissa chats.
"He wants to be a monk," Wissa shares. "He has tried four times, but he's not ready yet. He had a work shift today, but it's important he comes down to these sites with us. It's his life."
And the cruise is the life of the owners.
"This was my first dream," Wissa says of Amarco. "My second is a hotel by an oasis."
For the others, the boat may not have been a past dream, but now, it has become one.
"This is the first time a merging like this happens," Mufid says. "We have a natural harmony with each other, and we all benefit from one another. We have a strong hold over the Belge and French share of the market, Galaxia over Spain, Amarco over Japan. Our clients are different, they come at different times of the year -- by partnering in this way, we cover the market and all the seasons."
The risk, nevertheless, is astoundingly high.
"When you're talking of a construction cost of LE30 million, the risk is huge," Mufid says. "But any business venture is a risk. In tourism, it's all about up and down. There is no such thing as no tourism. There are downs, but they have to be followed by peaks. Egypt will always be an attraction -- for the rest of time," she smiles. "We know the up is coming."
Milad and Osman walk into the lounge area after a long rendez-vous with the Sohag authorities.
"We have a great story for you," they say, seemingly unanimously. "Come on, write this down!"
Both gentlemen sport smiles.
"Your story," Osman begins, "will be called 'how to open a bridge'. Number one," he says, "Train accident. Number two: It's Friday. Number three: Money."
He pauses, smiles mischievously, and peers at my notes.
"Opening a bridge," he laughs, "costs LE3,000!"
Osman is referring to the drawbridge of the province of Sohag -- which opens twice a day, at midday then later in the evening. When M S Amarco I docked by the bridge, it was 11am -- ahead of schedule.
"We have an hour to pass through," the receptionist had announced. "There will be sandwiches served in the lounge," he said of the pastime to fill the wait.
The hour, however, dragged on. By the time Osman and Milad approached the press with their story, it was 8pm. The ship had not yet moved.
"There was a train accident, and Sohag is upside-down," Osman said. "To open the bridge during the day, the official fee is LE1040. To cross it at night costs LE1500. Well," he laughs. "To officially open it cost us LE1040, but then Sohag delayed us, so we had to pay the extra LE500 for night crossing. Then we had to pay out LE700 in tips, and then there was the LE500 'open by force' tip."
He pauses.
"They're very lucky there was a train accident!"
"Now," he continues, "have you seen our piano," he shifts topic. "Show her Nasser."
Nasser Milad gets up.
"We like good music," he says. "We like a good life," he smiles. "It's hard to get a good pianist on-board, so we have this," he says striking a key. The piano begins to play Beethoven -- the keys strumming themselves.
"Karaoke," Milad says. "That's one of the special things about the boat. Who has a good pianist in Upper Egypt? Who can have tea while listening to Mozart?"
The attention to details is constant, as is the humour. Breakfast turns into a time for personal mockery -- the owners making loving fun of more humble pasts. And dinner, for the most part, becomes a time to talk about the turning of normal appetites into glutton.
"We're greedy, greedy, greedy," one of the wives sighs as she helps herself to a lavish buffet. "Even in front of the Monk," she laughs, recalling the entire gathering's friendly squabble for bigger pieces of Holy bread."
"Wait till you see our dinner tomorrow," Wissa retorts back of the grand meal finale, "10 courses!"
The next day food is quickly forgotten.
"Everyone get on deck," Hassanein tells the breakfast gathering. "We're coming into Luxor."
The stream of people moving to the uppermost deck is fast and constant; the guests, the waiters, the kitchen staff, and housekeeping. The maritime team appear, as do unidentified figures.
M S Amarco I begins to honk her horns. The screech takes on a rhythm of its own -- a celebration of its arrival, and an alert to the other boats on the Nile. The greeting is reciprocated -- all the boats docked in Luxor begin to honk back. As people gather on the banks and wave, smaller motor boats form a procession around the ship. A team of drummers and their dervish is called on board from one of them.
As the dervish begins to whirl, so too does Amarco -- the captain spinning her round like a plastic top.
Hassanein begins to dance with the gathering, Wissa sheds tears, and emotions escalate.
"Give me the microphone," Milad says to the singer. "Repeat after me," he calls out as he puts his arm around him. "Thank you," he says, to be echoed. "To Mohamed Osman, and to Amar. To Mounir Wissa and to Vicky. To Mohamed Hassanein and his family. And thank you to the staff, and to the captain, and to our parents," he recites. "To our mothers. To our fathers. To those who made us who we are. Thank you. And thank you again. And thank you one thousand times."
His words are repeated, by the drummer, by the vocalist, by the folklore team as a whole.
"And thank you," he continues. "To the press, and the press, and the press," he repeats. "And of course," he concludes. "A million thank you's to the chef."
