Pyramids, Temples and Boats

The first week in Egypt was insane. We were fully booked doing pyramids, temples and all sorts off "cultural stuff". The day after Alexandria, was the day most of us had been waiting for - the day we got to see the pyramids up close.

We started off at the Cairo museum which was absolutely chock full of old stuff (to quote Milly). Most of the collection wasn't even on display, and the stuff that was, was randomly placed everywhere. It looked almost like a warehouse, but the good part was is that you could get really close and touch the exhibits. They're in the process of building a new museum which should be finished in 2012 which will be more modern. There were so many people there, it's hard to believe that this is a 'slow' period. There's so much to see that you could spend days in there quite happily.

The hightlight of the museum trip was the mummy exhibit, even though it gave Milly nightmares ;-) It cost extra to see them, but it was well worth it. It's amazing how well preserved some of them were. The Tutenkhamen exhibit was also incredible. We saw the famous mask, but there was so much more to it than that. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures inside the museum.

After the museum we headed to the Giza plateu to see the pyramids. First stop was a lookout so we could take pictures:

Next we got up close and personal, and actually went inside one of the pyramids! We couldn't go in the great pyramid since those tickets sell out really quickly, so we went in the 3rd biggest one. Those Egyptians sure were short!! Milly smashed her head on the ceiling, I was a bit luckier. The tunnel into the pyramid was really steep and long. Gave the quad muscles a good workout! There wasn't a lot of decorations on the walls, it was all fairly plain, but it was still an amazing experience. YOu wouldn't want to be claustrophobic though.

After everyone had been inside, we drove down to explore the great pyramid. There were signs everywhere indicating where you could and couldn't go, but no one paid any attention and we got to climb up the Great Pyramid anyway. There were some "fake" police roaming the pyaramids in white uniforms with velcro badges. They were fairly intimidating at first when they were ordering us off they pyramid, but then they asked to take our photo (for money of course) which is when we began to suspect they weren't legit. As our guide kept saying, "Nothing is free in Egypt".

After the pyramid, we headed on over to the sphinx which I thought was pretty cool, but others thought it was smaller than they expected. We got the obligatory kissing the sphinx photos - there was a young egyptian boy there who was 'helping' us get the best shot, whether we wanted him to or not. Of course, he didn't want any money until we finished then the haggling began.

One thing I forgot to mention, was that we had an armed escort with us while we were visiting the pyramids. Imagine black jacket, mirrored aviators, solidly built, and packing some serious heat. Actually, you don't need to imagine, here's a photo:

I had a bit of an embarrassing moment when I accidentally fondled his machine gun, but we don't need to go into detail.

That night we left Cairo for an epic 200 hour bus trip to Aswan (or at least it felt that long). For those who aren't aware, we managed to upgrade our trip so that instead of overnighting on a felucca, we stayed in a luxury 5 star cruise ship "Princess Sarah" for 3 nights. Getting on board our ship after our bus ride was like walking into heaven.

One of the highlights of our stay on Princess Sarah was our mate Mohamed....he surprised us daily with towel creations.....

Most of the tour group stayed on board to relax by the pool, but Milly and I being the troopers we are headed over to Philae temple. I'm so glad we did because it was one of my favourites. I think the island setting, the fact that we had the place virtually to ourselves, and our excellent tour guide Nubi made it pretty awesome.

We were enjoying Philae so much that we ran late & only joined our Felucca cruise about an hour into it. The felucca ride was very relaxing & it was nice not to be continuously hassled to buy things.....although we did have a little pirate try to hijack the felucca at one point by holding onto the side & cruising along with us for some time, serenading us with "row, row, row your boat". We cruised along the Nile for about another hour before we stopped for our camel ride - what an experience! We thoroughly enjoyed it, although some others felt it was a bit too much of an "extreme sport" for their liking! The camels took us to the Nubian village where we went to school and had a lesson in Egyptian Arabic, learnt to count, sing the alphabet & how to write our names in arabic. Milly managed to adopt a small Nubian girl who didn't seem to want to let go of her arm until Rafik told her that she had some crazy skin disease - she let go quicksmart after that! It was back to the cruise ship for dinner & free time after that.

Next day was Abu Simbel, the massive temples to Ramses II and Nefertari that most people will be familiar with. We left the ship at 3am to join a police convoy to go to the site. Each bus in the convoy had an armed guard on board - not that it really mattered, since he dropped his machine on boarding, then fell asleep for the entire journey.

The temples were huge, and amazing. Once again, no pictures allowed inside. We got there at about 8am and it was already about 40 degrees. It was hard to believe that the temples had actually been moved due to the original site flooding when they built the dam. It looked like they'd been there for thousands of years. The most incredible thing about the construction of the Ramses temple, was they arranged it so that the sunlight would enter the temple all the way to the shrine in the back only twice a year - on the date of Ramses birth in Feb, and the date of his coronation in October. The shrine in the temple had 4 gods (Ramses included), but only 3 of them would be illuminated by the light. One was always in darkness. The amount of planning and maths involved to make that happen is mind boggling. When they moved the temple, they actually got the angle wrong, so the light enters the shrine on Feb 22nd rather than Feb 21st. Hard to believe the ancient egyptians got it right, and us with all our modern equipment messed it up.

The rest of that day was free time, and some of us went into Aswan in search of an internet cafe. That was a pretty scary walk. We were the only westerners, and some of the locals thought we were American and they weren't too fond of Americans. We basically stuck together and got through it as quickly as possible. That night we had our own mini-disco, and drank pretty much all the alcohol we had found even though it was Ramadan. Sure, our group were the only ones on the dancefloor, or even in the bar, but we rocked that boat

The next morning, most people were feeling a little under the weather from our festivities the night before, but being the trooper I am, I dragged my sorry ass out of bed to go to Kom Ombo temple. I enjoy the temples most when there are not a lot of people there, and that morning our tiny tour group had the place to ourselves. There are always some local people hanging out in the temples, looking for opportunities to make money from the tourists. As we were going around the temple, we were amazed by the number of heiroglyphs that still had colour. A local man saw this and started taking us to all the "colour" places.

That afternoon we joined up with the rest of our group to go to Edfu temple, which we were told was the most well preserved temple in Egypt. It was massive. It was hot. It was great.

That night they put on a show for us with the "spinning person" and a belly dancer. It was our last night on the ship.

The next day was our last in Luxor and it was massive. We started off in the Valley of the Kings, with our tour guide Isam. He was a tiny little man, who had the speed of the road runner. We really had to hustle to keep up, even though he looked like he barely cracked a sweat. He was actually laughing at us for complaining about the heat (it was 47 that day).

We only got to see 3 tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but they were incredible. The walls were completely covered in heiroglyphics that were pretty much all the same - they all described the afterlife. Our guide told us that each pharoah had to build a temple and a tomb while they were alive to ensure their afterlife. The temple described the accomplishments of the pharoah, the tomb was all about the afterlife.

There is one Queen buried in the Valley of the Kings: Hatshepsut. She was a pretty interesting character and we went to her temple next.

(I didn't really want the scarf around my head, but you don't argue with the dude with a gun!)

Her brother was pharoah, and when he died his son was supposed to be pharoah after him. However Hatshepsut basically kidnapped him and took over power herself. Since women couldn't rule, she said that the Sun God came to her mother and was actually her father and she was actually a man. Somehow that worked and she became pharoah. When she died, her nephew took back power and vandalised all the temples and monuments she had built, removing her name and images.

After that we went to Karnak temple which is a huge temple complex that was added to by various pharoahs over 3000 years. There was a couple of huge obelisks there, one was by Hatshepsut, the other was her father. Obelisks have to be made from a single stone, and it's bad luck to modify them. When Hatshepsut's nephew came to power, he couldn't remove her name from the obelisk, so he built a stone wall around it so that her name couldn't be seen.

There was a statue of a scarab at the temple, and it was supposed to bring you good luck/grant your wish if you walked around it 7 times anti-clockwise. Of course we all did, and there was a group of Japanese tourists who thought this was hilarious and started taking our photo.

Final temple for the day was Luxor, which was conveniently located within walking distance from our ship. Unfortunately, most of our group had dropped off due to the heat by this stage, so there were only a few of us left. After a healthy lunch at McDonalds, we arrived at the temple for our tour.

At the front of the temple is 2 huge statues of Ramses II. Actually, there are huge statues of Ramses II everywhere - the dude got around.

There is a mosque built almost on top of the temple. The temple was covered when the mosque was built and they didn't realise it was there. You can see the mosque in the photo below - the bottom of it is where the land used to come up to before they excavated the temple.

After a huge day of temple visits, we returned to the ship to pack for our bus journey back to Cairo. Or at least we tried to. When the ships dock, they line up next to each other across the nile, so that you have to pass through other ships to get to your own. When we left that day, our ship was the eigth one from the shore - so we had to pass through 7 other ships to get to ours. When we got back, we assumed our ship was still the eigth one. We were mistaken. As we walked through the ships, we were chased by an Egyptian man trying to tell us that our ship had moved. By then we weren't really listening or making sense of anything. It was only when we passed through the seventh ship and realised there was no eigth ship, that we realised what the man had said, and returned to our ship that we had walked straight through without noticing, with our heads down, trying to ignore the laughter of everyone who had seen us being stupid.

That night we left by bus to Cairo - we were supposed to go to Hurghada, but due to protests various roads were going to be closed so we continued on to Cairo where we had some free time before we left for Dahab the next day.

But we'll leave that for another post.

Mem & Milly

xxx