Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Egypt
Our first day in Egypt started at 4:30 am. Our hotel overlooked the mosque in the Luxor Temple. The loudspeakers on the minaret were set so everyone in Luxor could hear them. They were deafening in our room at 50 paces. We were half a block from the Nile and spent that day wandering up and down to orient ourselves. We were due to embark on the Nile Admiral the next day. There are 360 boats on the Nile between Luxor and Aswan so it was a challenge to find ours. Often we had to walk through the lobbies of three other boats to reach it.
Luxor Temple
The temples and sights of Egypt are sensational and we were fascinated in spite of our guide whose own agenda was to take us to as many tourist shops as possible in the hope of receiving a commission from our purchases. She "subtly" called them Papyrus Museums or Perfume Factories or Marble Sculptors but the group eventually mutinied after the bus swept by the Colossi of Memnon without even a photo op to be able to visit a papyrus factory half a kilometer on. There was a Swede in our group who was very knowledgable about ancient Egypt and he could usually translate what Shareen, the guide was trying or ommitted to say. It took us a few days to work out that the "shines" on the temples were scenes. We were lucky enough to see a Discovery program on the Eight Wonders of Ancient Egypt at the end of our trip and it filled in most of the information we needed about the Temples at Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, Queen Hatshepshut's Temple, Valley of the Kings with the details of the main gods, whose temples we visited.
Horus at Edfu
After the boat docked in Aswan, 14 of us from the boat got up at 3:30 am to be driven three hours by minibus to Abu Simbel to see the great temple of Rameses II. Security is still very tight after the massacre of a large group of tourists in the 90's so we had to rendezvous with 100 other buses and drive down in convoy. This meant there were at least 3,000 people trying to go through the temple at once. It was a few days after the equinox so the sun's rays were still reaching into the sanctuary, which made it very special. The temple was moved 400 meters up the cliff when Lake Nassar was formed after the building of the Aswan Dam - a truly amazing feat of engineering. It was an experience driving through the real Sahara Desert to get there.
Abu Simbel
Our hotel in Aswan was on Isis Island. We had to take a ferry or a felucca each time we wanted to visit the town. That alone was fun, along with a ride in the horse carriages that appear to be the favorite form of transport along the banks of the river.
Feluccas
We had a 10 hour layover in Cairo so took the opportunity to go to Giza and see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. We were a little taken aback when our driver parked outside a mosque for an hour at Noon while he went to midday prayers. But, as it was on the edge of a market, we had a good time real-people watching instead of being surrounded by tourists and hawkers.
LS
Luxor Temple
The temples and sights of Egypt are sensational and we were fascinated in spite of our guide whose own agenda was to take us to as many tourist shops as possible in the hope of receiving a commission from our purchases. She "subtly" called them Papyrus Museums or Perfume Factories or Marble Sculptors but the group eventually mutinied after the bus swept by the Colossi of Memnon without even a photo op to be able to visit a papyrus factory half a kilometer on. There was a Swede in our group who was very knowledgable about ancient Egypt and he could usually translate what Shareen, the guide was trying or ommitted to say. It took us a few days to work out that the "shines" on the temples were scenes. We were lucky enough to see a Discovery program on the Eight Wonders of Ancient Egypt at the end of our trip and it filled in most of the information we needed about the Temples at Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, Queen Hatshepshut's Temple, Valley of the Kings with the details of the main gods, whose temples we visited.
Horus at Edfu
After the boat docked in Aswan, 14 of us from the boat got up at 3:30 am to be driven three hours by minibus to Abu Simbel to see the great temple of Rameses II. Security is still very tight after the massacre of a large group of tourists in the 90's so we had to rendezvous with 100 other buses and drive down in convoy. This meant there were at least 3,000 people trying to go through the temple at once. It was a few days after the equinox so the sun's rays were still reaching into the sanctuary, which made it very special. The temple was moved 400 meters up the cliff when Lake Nassar was formed after the building of the Aswan Dam - a truly amazing feat of engineering. It was an experience driving through the real Sahara Desert to get there.
Abu Simbel
Our hotel in Aswan was on Isis Island. We had to take a ferry or a felucca each time we wanted to visit the town. That alone was fun, along with a ride in the horse carriages that appear to be the favorite form of transport along the banks of the river.
Feluccas
We had a 10 hour layover in Cairo so took the opportunity to go to Giza and see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. We were a little taken aback when our driver parked outside a mosque for an hour at Noon while he went to midday prayers. But, as it was on the edge of a market, we had a good time real-people watching instead of being surrounded by tourists and hawkers.
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 3:42 AM 
