Hurghada (April 27-30)

We arrived in Hurghada after a 6 hour bus ride from Luxor.....with a few interesting events along the way - once to boost another bus and another to check on the driver of a truck overturned on the side of the road. We were the only foreigners on the bus so we were promptly offered drives to hotels upon arrival - we took one guy up on his offer and landed a clean, bright room with a balcony facing the ocean for a good price, so we figured it was a no-brainer .... oh yeah, John thinks the bed is very comfie too! :)

Hurghada seems to be in a state of flux. There are older hotels needing TLC, and many new resorts with numerous brick shells waiting to be finished. While there are tourists here, it does not seem to warrnant the number of hotels and restaurants that exist and are in process. Maybe its the global economy bringing some things to a halt and others to a slower pace? It is hard to get a feel for this town because it seems to have grown so quickly due to tourism and with not much organization - we kinda feel in a state of limbo of sorts. That's not to diss the beautiful ocean views.

The orginal plan (as there almost always is a modification eventually) was to stay two nights and catch the fast catamaran ferry to Sinai. Well, the wind doth bloweth here just about all the time (kinda like Newfoundland). The Newfie readers will remember how we experimented with the fast cat for the Port aux Basques to North Sydney crossing and it didn't work because of the wind and waves...it seems they haven't figured that out here yet ;) So, after the ferry cancellation, we decided we would extend our visas to allow us a little breathing room before leaving Egypt.

Okay, for proof that it was indeed windy - Lori is wearing a fleece and John a windbreaker! But isn't that water gorgeous!

We had already enjoyed a day of snorkelling - boy oh boy was the wind blowing but we did manage to enjoy 3 different sites without shivering too much. There was a school of about 6 dolfins swimming by the boat unfortunately we were not snorkelling there - but oh so very nice to see them.

With visa extensions in hand, we decided we should check out the diving on this side of the Red Sea so we booked a day of boat diving. This proved to be a very good idea. The wind wasn't howling therefore allowing you to appreciate the warmth of the sun. Diving from a boat into blue-turquoise water is amazing! The water visibility was great - about 20 meteres - and the coral was plentiful. There does not seem to be as great a number of fish as in the Gulf of Aqaba but they are there! We watched two 2 meter long moray eels have a little fuss over who was boss - they were huge - impressive! Of course, it was a treat to watch a turtle gently swim its way through the expanse of salt water above us - beautiful! There were other fish of various shapes, sizes and colors - its hard not to feel as though you are in an aquarium with them. To take your time and slowly swim... alongside the reef, looking up toward the surface, taking in the many coral formations and watching the fish: eat, chase after one another, fight for territory, sleep on the coral, hide in the coral...is incredible...like nothing else. If you enjoy swimming in the water, this is the bees knees!

We are looking forward to returning to the Sinai peninsula, but we will have to see if the ferry cancels tomorrow....if so, a 10 hour bus journey may have to be considered - yikes!

Luxor (April 22-26)

We wanted to take the 800km south to Luxor on the day train so we could watch Egypt going by but it turns out that foreigners are 'barred' from using this train for 'security' reasons. So we had to wait an extra day for the overnight sleeper train (which costs 10x as much). This overnight train was of a whole different class and quality from what we had gotten used to in India!



So, by 10am the next morning we arrived in Luxor to usual herd of people clamouring to get us to the best value hotel in town. It takes a real effort to push through them and look indpendently as these guys always get a 20-40% commission for taking you to a hotel which of course is added to the price you pay. After a bit of a long story we ended up at the Horus hotel with a nice view over the Luxor temple towards the Nile. Here's a view from our room (with the smoke courtesy of burning garbage on the side of ther river). We did visit this temple at night and here's a snapshot of what part of it looks like from the inside.







Luxor is famous for being the ancient town of Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt during some periods of the reign of the pharoahs. What remains here are some temples (including the largest one of ancient Egypt) as well as the 'Valley of the Kings" where the pharoahs of the 3rd Kingdom (from 1500 to 1100 BC) carved out their tombs in the rocks of this hidden valley. Here we are going into one of the side channels leading to one of thetombs. This valley is where the famous King Tut's tomb is, the one which was discovered in 1920-something completely intact with all kinds of fabulous things which are now in the Cairo museum. All the other dozens or so of tombs had been robbed, some many times over so the pickings were quite slim by the time 19th and 20th century museum curators got on the scene. In fact, they claim some tombs were robbed within a few generations of their deaths and a lot of the 'art' of tomb building went into how to best conceal their contents. So what you do here is hire a car for the day that takes you around to these tombs and temples on the west bank of the Nile and over the day fork over about 100$ in entrance fees to get inside them. Specifically in the valley of Kings your entrance fee gets you into 3 of the 20 or so major tombs (except Tut's which is a special price of 20$ more). We should also mention that while we arrive in our puny little car, there are about 50 massive tour buses unloading hordes of package tourists so it's a bit of a zoo! Nevertheless, despite our whining, it is an amazing thing to be several stories down into the man-made caves hewn out of the rock and to see the usual Egyptian art we are all used to painted all over the inside and to think this has been here for about 3500 years. The art, and all the paraphenalia placed into the tombs are all about how to guide the deceased in their journey through the netherworld to find resurrection into eternal life. It was here that we first 'got it'... that it's not just about this megalomaniac men spending awesome amounts of wealth on their tombs...they really had a strong belief / spiritual sense that there was an afterlife and this was their best understanding of how it was to be attained. (too bad for all the rest of the poor smucks who didn't have the wealth to be able to follow the 'formula'!). That is also why they got into this mummification thing so that they would be preserved and so that the 'god's of the afterworld would be able to recognize and receive them. Here we have a view of some of the painting going on inside one of the tombs.







From here we were among the .01 % of the visitors who hiked 30 minutes over a hill down towards the next site which is Queen Hatsheput's temple. Of course you cannot make this walk without multiple locals coming alongside with the offer to 'guide' you (because otherwise you could lose your way with all kinds of bad consequences), for a fee of course. It's no use to try and resist it. Anyways, in this case, it seemed that the fellow was a genuinely nice guy needing to make some money. He hails from a small village over the hill who's inhabitants built their homes overtop of an area of tombs of rich nobles. Here the government is in the process of moving them off their homes and into a nearby new village that has been built. Supposedly this is to open the tombs up for archaeological work, however our guide claimed that (a) the new homes were not as good was what they were leaving, (b) there was nothing in these tombs anymore anyways, and (c) that a rumour was circulating that the government was selling the land to developers for 5 star hotels. Sigh...who knows what is the real story told from both sides. Here we are at the crest of this hill looking back down into the 'Valley of Kings'.







Well, by now it was about 11am and it was stinking hot (it hit 39 this day) and hiking back down the other side was no fun. What follows then is visits to the remains of a couple of fairly impressive temples, and then a visit to a few of the better tombs of the nobles. This was a great visit because these although smaller, were still about the size of a large room, and had the usual artwork and no one visiting them, so you had some real quiet time to appreciate them. Of course the staff checking your tickets also gives their limited English 'guided' explanation and expect a tip which usually meets expressions that indicate it's not enough!.



Well that winds up the day and by now you're pretty well cooked. It's a bit late in the season for visiting here because of the extreme temperatures so for you future Egyptologists out there keep that in mind. Evenings are spent walking about the town (about 200 thou people) and being constantly haranged to go on horse carriage rides as there must be thousands of them here.



The next day we were up at 6am to beat the heat visiting Karnak temple, the largest one of ancient Egypt. They are working hard at restoring/reassembling them from the rubble but what you can see today is quite impressive. This temple was added to by many pharoahs over the period 1500 BC to Alexander the Great (300 BC), each building a successive courtyard and temple (5 or so in total). The largest of these has a 'hippostyle' hall with a central corridor of 12 huge pillars (30m high) and then another set of 50 or so pillars 23m high on either side. The whole thing was then 'roofed' with huge stone blocks and covered the area equivalent to the largest cathedrals of Europe. All the pillars and some of the roof blocks are now up and it makes for an impressive experience wandering through there. Here we have a photo looking down the center of the 12 largest pillars.



The whole temple area is also sprinkled with very large pharoah statues and a few obelisks. (some of the other original obelisks that were there are now elsewhere...such as in Paris). These pharoahs were 1000 years ahead of their time in terms of the size of buildings they were constructing here. It's something to wander inside them and wonder what they must have looked like at the time and what went on in there and what was it like to be inside the head of an Egyptian living at that time....



We wound up our time here by 11am thanks to the heat and hung out in the hotel A/C till evening. By then a wind had come up (as it had been but flat calm the last few days) so we headed over the 100m to the river front and hired a felucca sailing boat for a sunset cruise on the Nile. These boats can be hired for several day trips to sail down the river and sleep overnight at anchor. They stop at several places along the way where there are other temple ruins along the riverbank. This could have been nice (especially as an alternative to the several hundred huge 5* , 200 or some room cruisers which are also plying this section of the river. The Nile is moving pretty hard here...perhaps at 3-4 knots and there is a lot of water flowing down which is irrigating the few kms of fields on either side of the river (before the desert resumes) and so feeds the 80 million people of Egypt (which is growing at the rate of 1m new people every 9 months!).



Well, there are many other temple ruins to see within 200kms of here, especially going south to Aswan, but it was just too hot to contemplate that and besides we were having ancient ruins fatigue setting in anyways, so early the next morning we were on a bus for the 6 hour ride eastward back to the Red Sea.

Cairo and Pyramids (Apr 18-21)

Finally after 2 weeks by the sea and exploring the Sinai peninsula we felt enough energy in our bones to step back into the hustle bustle world and with the reports we'd had from people about Cairo (22 million people and horrific adventures for pedestrians) we figured we should make sure we were ready first.


So a 9 hr bus ride later we were there and it was interesting to note our reactions. What a 'clean' modern city!....at least compared to our most freshest memories of cities (ie. India!). We're in a hotel downtown which is some 1940's eight story building that is running down and neglected, yet beautiful in its own way with hardwood floors, 12 ft ceilings, balcony, wall paper peeling off the walls, leaking plumbing etc. But hey, compared to a lot of the places in India...it was luxury.



'Downtown' here is big wide clean streets without trash, cows, and their you know what, skyscrapers...lots of shops and shopping etc...it practically feels like a we're in the 'western world' again. Here's a couple of photos, one from our hotel room balcony, another of us chomping down some delicicious shwarmas on the steet.

And about the traffic...heck it's veritably sane compared to India. It's true that here the traffic lights are irrelevant ( on flash cycle all the time), but there are police on every corner who seem to substitute for the lights and pedestrians simply cross whenever and wherever they want whenever the slightest gap in cars presents itself. Here at least it is only cars and they're all moving about the same speed which is in fact not too fast whereas in India it was every kind of vehicle imaginable, gas, human, animal powered all moving at different speeds and packed in with inches between them all and no police on any corners!.



One problem here though is that its a crappy place for being an independent (non-package tour) tourist. Lots' of people approaching you, almost always in the guise of being friendly and always with a hitch. We are becoming harder and more jaded all the time, kind of cranky everytime someone approaches you because you feel like such a target and no matter what you do you are fighting all the time from being exploited, right down to buying a bottle of water in the corner store. There is a real price, and then the special tourist price for everything. Its probably a sign that our travelling through these parts of the world should come to an end soon. For almost everything you buy or go to, you have to discuss, listen to their lies and arguments why you have to buy this now and at their price, and then finally walk away before the price comes even close to the real 'Egyptian price' and it is just getting to be too much work. The alternative is just to pay double for everything...something that you would do if you were here for 2 weeks but when you are travelling for 6 months you just can't afford to do that.

Also the system is rigged here in Egypt to extract the maximum amount of money from tourists and admission fees to most things are astronomical. To visit the 3 main pyramid sites around town cost us 160$ for transportation and admission fees and the English speaking guide we paid for had a lot of trouble with English and knew a lot less than what was written in the Lonely Planet book.

OK....sorry for dumping all that on you...what about the sights? Cairo is like so many old cities in this part of the world. Really 2 cities, an old one and a new one side by side. The new one is laid out in the last 100 yrs or so with wide streets in a grid wide sidewalks and Cairo in particular semi-European like architecture. It's kind of nice actually as described above. Then there is the old medieval city with tiny streets, bazaars, shops, mosques, old buildings etc. We've spent some time walking about each of them. In the old town we stopped in a mosque from the 900's and watched a group of men up front who were being instructed in how to recite the Koran. Here's just a snapshot of how many mosques there are in this city.





We were also chatted up by a young guy and invited to take some free literature on Islam. He was youngish, an engineer, loved this mosque and really genuine, mentioned how important it was for people to know about eachother as it is lack of knowledge that engenders fear and trouble. There was something quite moving about him. Since then we've been reading some of the booklets about the Islamic view of Jesus and women and why it is so much better and more correct than the Christian view. Not enough space here to go into it, but lots of misrepresentation and taking things out of context going on in those booklets....so much for promoting understanding!.

Day 3 was spent with the tour of the pyramids ranging from 10 to 35 kms south of town. At the furthest site in the AM we were the only ones there and had the opportunity to go inside the pyramid alone down (way down, the equivalent of perhaps 6 flights of stairs) into the burial chamber with 140m of stones on top of you. Of course all empty in there now but an eerie feeling thinking about some pharoah having been in there with all his 'stuff' for 4500 yrs. These pyramids are the oldest man made stone structures standing on earth and are older than the next oldest ones by a very long time and they are very large! One picture below is looking back up the shaft from the bottom of the burial chamber and the other is looking up into the A-frame of the 12 m ceiling inside the burial chamber.





The last stop of the day was the Giza pyramids the largest pair at 140m (what's that some 45 stories high?). They are definitely really crumbling on the outside, since their smooth hard limestone casings were pillaged in medieval times to make mosques and palaces so the exposed sandstone blocks are starting to wear. Some of the lesser pyramids are mounds of sand/gravel now. So we took the requisite camel ride, got the photo, endured the hassles of people trying to sell us a million things and then just sat and marvelled at what possessed these people to build these things 4500 yrs ago.




Today we booked out train ticket for overnight of Apr 22 in a sleeping cabin to Luxor 800kms south on the Nile which has an equally impressive set of temples and tombs...perhaps more so because down there they are all made of granite and so aren't susceptible to erosion as the limestone and sandstone is here.

So during the day tomorrow we intend to go visit the Coptic area of town, the Copts being those who converted to Christianity in the first few centuries AD and who now represent perhaps less than 10 percent of Egyptians.