Mango farms and Seafood in Ismailia – Friday 24 Nov 2006

Yasser and Ayman picked up Chris and I at about 1:30pm today and we went out to Yasser’s farm. He grows Mango’s on a small plot of land about an hour out of Cairo. So we drove out there and looked around, had a cup of tea and then drove into Ismailia for dinner.

On the drive into Ismailia, Ayman asked Yasser if Ismailia was a big place. Yasser said ‘no, its just a small town. Only about 1 million people live there’. We were cracking up that a ‘small town’ means only a million people!

We got to Ismailia and went to a seafood restaurant right on the edge of the Suez Canal. It was right on the street, called The Conch - it had conch shells hung all over it. Yasser and Ayman ordered the food – again enough to feed a small Norwegian army.

First of all we had Conch. It didn’t really taste of anything, but it was like chewing rubber. I chewed and chewed and it just wouldn’t mush up. In the end I decided if I can eat oysters I can swallow this. I gagged on it, just coz it was so big, but got it down. It was kind of like really tough calamari with a bit of scallop roe on it. Not particularly tasty.

Then we had a seafood soup with calamari, clams crab etc in it. I struggled a bit to get the crab meat out of the crab legs, my fingers weren’t tough enough! On top of this, we had fried calamari (beautiful) and tiny shrimps with rice, plus flat bread and tahini – and that was all for entrée.

For main we had fried Sole (but they were fairly small), plus another whole fish each. I forget what this one was called but it was baked with butter and garlic and delicious.

Then we drove around Ismailia some more – looking at random things relating to the Suez Canal.

As we headed back to Cairo after dinner, Yasser said his suspension was playing up and would we mind if he just called into a mechanic to get it checked. Of course we said that was fine.

So at 830pm on a Friday night, we called into ‘Mechanic town’. Chris and I couldn’t believe it… there’d have easily been 1000 shops there. Each one specialises in different makes and models and in different mechanical areas. So we pulled into the Jeep suspension place and a guy who looked just like mechanics do everywhere (pants falling down… beer gut… bondsy type tank top – the works) spent 15 minutes fixing the suspension and we were good to go.

I’m sure that nowhere else in the world could you get your suspension fixed at 830pm on a Friday night!