What can I say? When we started out in Cairo, we pretty much looked like your stereotypical tourist - street clothing with the cameras hung around our necks. By the time we got to Aswan and Cairo, we had started to morph into trekkers. Dressing to look "nice" was quickly tossed out the window in favor of comfort and practicality - hiking pants and fleece jackets soon became de rigeur.
Case in point about dressing for practicality. Lei at Nuweiba. She has on her black gym pants, rolled up to the knee. But because she needed pockets and her gym pants didn't have any, she unzipped the legs of her hiking pants and wore them as shorts over her gym pants. She has one sock on because she cut the bottom of her foot on the coral reef and wore the sock to protect the wound. Because she didn't want her sock to get dirty, she put her flip flops on. Not sure whose definition of beachwear this is but what a vision it made!
First and foremost though, we dressed in layers to accomodate for travelling in both hot and cold climes - often on the same day. We quickly mastered the art form to keep warm and stay cool but I think we set fashion back a few years with our dressing style :-)
When I had my cast on, there were many days where my layered travel "outfit" consisted of a t-shirt with a long sleeve shirt on top which I could only slip my right arm into - Lei would button the top button so the left side of the shirt would not slip off my shoulder; my fleece jacket which I would take off when it got hot and ask Lei to tie it around my waist and my cotton sweater which was tied around my neck when I wasn't wearing it. Add the blue sling, a black/brown scarf tied around my neck and cast to bolster the sling, neck strap for the camera and shoulder straps for the daypack and I pretty much looked like and felt like a pack mule! Add to the vision, hiking pants that are a tad too short and bright blue socks - you could spot my ankles from miles away. Overall, not a pretty picture!
....but by the end of the trip though, we really didn't care what we looked like. We were having an absolute blast touring Egypt and Jordan and that's all that mattered....or so I thought :-)
I put up this posting after I got back home. When Lei read it, she sent me the following email:
"I opened the picture of you and me in Petra from your blog and noticed that woman in the background wearing a nice sleeveless shirt while the two of us looked like wrapped chinese dumplings. I couldn't stop laughing. Damn, we really looked pathetic."
Sigh. I've never been likened to a Chinese dumpling. Sad, but I have to admit, a funny comparison :-)