Last days in Egypt

The last few days in Egypt has got me and Chris loving the country more and more. I’ll start back on Tuesday in Aswan, where we caught the felucca. That was an awesome experiance. Felucca’s a small sail boats that fit about 8 people and our two drivers. The day was spent laying on the boat, traveling back and fourth across the Nile as we traveled north on our way Luxor. It was one of the most beautiful and relaxing days on the trip so far. The day was spent sightseeing, reading, and basically drifing in and out of conciousness! It was fantastic! We sailed right into darkness and even spent the night on the boat!

Here are some pictures from the felucca:

On Wednesday morning we finished our trip by boat and mini bus and visited Edfu Temple outside of Luxor on our way to the hotel. It’s really interesting to see all the diffent styles of temples and tombs across the country. Edfu was no exception, and  an amazing sight. We happen to be in Egypt during their Easter so there aren’t many stores open and it’s party time everywhere!  A very interesting time to be here.  A few pictures from Edfu:

Luxor has been amazing. Our hotel looked over The Nile and Luxor temple. It had incredible views both day and night. We visited Luxor temple at night while it was all lit up! Wow. The pillars there, although they look like they are made of many blocks, are actually solid stone. They still don’t know how they were made, and how the giant blocks were placed on top!

Luxor Temple at night.

That evening we also visited Karnak temple. Another amazing sight. The sheer size of these things are striking, let alone the hyroglyphics carved throughout.

The following day we visited the Vally of the Kings and Hatshepsut’s temple. We were able to go inside the temples and see where the famous King tutankamos (King Tut) tomb was discovered.

Hatshepsut’s Temple

It’s really hard to say what our favoriate sight of Egypt has been so far. It has completely changed our first impression of the country and now even think we might return one day, after we retire for a Nile cruise and another look at these enormous temples. The pictures really don’t do them justice, but  hope they can give you some idea of what we have been up to.

We have been out of Internet access for a bit. We drove North of Cairo to Mount Siani where we climed to the summet to watch the sunset. What an incredible view. Although we’ve both been to the top of other mountians before, it was really cool to see mountians without a single tree in sight!

Us at the summit.

Today we have spent the day in Nuwiba, swimming in the Red Sea! Wow! We spent a couple hours snorkeling right infront of the beach hotel we are staying at. Chris and I are staying in little wodden house right on the beach, where our bed is in the loft! It’s awesome here and we really wish we could stay longer.

The cabins at the resort.

Chris dancing with the locals after dinner.

Tomorrow we will be taking a ferry to Jordan. We have really enjoyed our time in Egypt. A bit put off by the pollution, garbage everywhere, and the food at the beginging, but getting out of Cairo fixed all that, and the amazing sights had us loving it in the end! Just to touch on the food, for the most part we have been given buns and hard boiled eggs to eat. I have a feeling it’s more the tour than the actual food in Egypt. I have had some amazing eggplant dishes for dinner, but other than that, it’s been carbs, carbs, carbs! I’m dying for fresh fruit!

Talk to you from Jordan!

Love Ashlyn and Chris

Foreign types with their hookah pipes sing…

Way oh way oh way oooo aaaah ooo…

Walk Like an Egyptian!

We have now been in Egypt for 4 days and there is so much to cover! Our first thoughts on Cairo was “that city needs a makeover”. It’s Dirty! Ok, I have to be fair, we didnt’ see the whole city by any stretch. It has over 18 million people so I’m sure there are many great parts. But what we did see astounded us. We were staying right downtown and it seemed every where we looked was filthy, Loads of half finished empty brick buildings everywhere, and the Nile… don’t get me started.

We spent our first full day walking around, dodging traffic, and then visited the Egyptian Museum. The collection of artifacts they have here is astounding! We visited the museum with our group leader who was able to give us a pretty good overview of ancient egypt and a good idea of what we will be seeing over the next 10 days.

On day two we set out to see the Pyramids of Giza. Incredible. How the Egyptians built these 4500 years ago is unimaginable. The inside is covered in red granite brought in from Luxor! Now anyone who had granite countertops can understand just how heavy this stuff is. Could you imagine moving giant blocks of it! The whole thing was really overwhelming and gave us our first sweet taste of what Egypt has in store!

That night Chris had his first ride on an overnight train to Aswan. It was a nice train and we even had our own private cabin!Aswan is in Southern Egypt and has much more of a African feel to it. It was great to wake up on the train and see the (much cleaner) Nile, surrounded by palm trees!

Later in the day we went to a Nubian Village for a camel ride and dinner. Dinner was good. The camel ride was… less good. I was given a camel that was not happy to be ridden. Before I was even told to get on, my camel was yelling and screaming and carrying on like an angry ewok. I got on regardless and even after the first few minutes of the ride, I knew I was in for quite  an experience. While the other camels walked and ran as instructed to do so, my camel, Whisky, really just did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.  the other camels seemed to go straight and follow each other, Whiskey turned around, decided which direction he would go regardless of the way the handler pulled him. Lucky me seemed to have the only bad camel that even two handlers couldn’t control. Near the end of the ride (which was about an hour) Whiskey decided to stop. No pulling, or kicking, or whipping could get this camel to move. Finally, both boys came behind the camel and proceeded to whip it simultaneously. Well that got him going!  The  rope (reins) pulled out from the boys hands and I was off! Have I mentioned how tall camels are? Well after a few seconds of running, good old Whiskey decided to abruptly turn around. This is the moment I made my dismount over the top of the saddle, reaching for the camels neck, and tucking and diving onto the Sahara desert! Although it was a long way down, I was lucky enough to be dropped in some pretty nice sand which really cushioned the blow! At that point one of the boys cam running over to me. “Mame Sorry! Sorry Mame! Sorry Mame! You ok? sorry Mame!”. I slowly brush the sand off and stood up. “Again” the boy asked? I looked over to the other boy who at this point had caught the camel and was trying to get him to sit. “No thanks, I’ll walk”.

As I rounded the final corner and saw the rest of my group in the distance getting off their camels, Chris started walking towards me. I was laughing and crying by the time he reached me. It was the funniest experience that has happened to me so far in Egypt, and also the most painful. Bruise pictures to follow! I think that’s the last camel ride I will be going on. Sadly we have a donkey ride coming up in 2 days. Thankfully they are lower to the ground.

This morning we woke up at 3AM so we could catch our ride to Abu Simbel.  To get there you have to get into the military convoy that leaves each morning before sunrise.  They claim that this convoy is so that there are other vehicles to support yours if you break down in the desert.  Okay.  That’s probably part of the reason.  However, as we drove through military checkpoint after military checkpoint, we started to get the impression that there could be other reasons.  Not to mention that the morning started with people checking the underside of our vehicle for explosives!  We talked to our tour leader at lunch to ask him about it, and he said that Egypt is very cautious to take every precaution possible to protect their tourists because they are such great importance to the economy.

Abu Simbel is absolutely amazing, and probably more impressive than the pyramids. We were lucky enough to get there before all of the other tour busses so got a great look without the crowds. The two tombs each have may rooms and statures inside, and are covered in hieroglyphics. It was another surreal experience seeing them in person.

Tomorrow we set out on the Nile traveling by felucca (sail boat) where we will spend the day and night on board. I’m hoping that I have better luck with the boat than the camel, as the Nile is definitely not a place I want to fall into!

Love you and miss you,

Ashlyn and Chris