I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile, and the longer I wait, the shorter the email is going to be because I just don’t have the energy to go into big explanations of everything we saw. But as I sit up here late at night waiting to see if the tsunami is going to hit us after that earthquake near Indonesia (our house is right across the street from the ocean), I figure I would pass the time by writing about our trip to Egypt. So here goes…
July 31:
We arrive at the Cairo Airport around 2am and we are dead tired. We booked our entire trip through one company, so there are guides for the whole week, and our first guide is waiting for us when we disembark. We get taken to our hotel, the Zosar, which has a view of the Pyramids of Giza. We crash (sleep) for several hours and after a late breakfast we get to go to the pyramids. Very big and very awe inspiring. There are 3 pyramids in Giza, and these are the most famous ones that everyone is familiar with. We get to enter the middle pyramid and go down into the tomb. Pretty cool (actually it was very hot) and very stinky. We ride camels around too then go and see the Sphinx, which is next to the pyramids. Chelisa’s youngest sister Cheryl joins us in Egypt, so we meet up with her while we are there in Giza. After lunch we head over to the Egyptian Museum, which had a lot of cool things. The kids are getting cranky by now (very hot in Egypt and the jet lag). The highlight of the museum is to see all the exhibits from King Tut, including his very famous death mask made of gold. Following the museum, we are taken to a perfume factory (boring) and a papyrus factory (interesting) and then to the Giza train station where we board a sleeper train to head south to Aswan. The train cabins were small, but it was fun to be on the sleeper train.
August 01:
After riding in the train all night (not too bad of a sleep), we arrive in Aswan. Aswan is located pretty far south of Cairo, along the Nile River. It is also the site where they built the Aswan High Dam. So after getting met at the train station by a new guide, we first headed off to the Dam (and I took a few Dam pictures…hahaha, Chevy Chase anyone?). Saw the Dam and then got on a boat and went out to Philae Island to the Temple of Isis. This was a really beautiful temple. It had actually been moved piece by piece from a nearby location because after the Egyptians built the dam, it flooded a number of areas. Unlike the States, we could actually touch things and climb all over the stuff. While still trying to be respectful of the temple, it was pretty darn cool to touch hieroglyphics that were carved several thousand years ago. After the temple we went and saw the Unfinished Obelisk, which was a huge 120 meter granite obelisk that was being carved 2,000+ years ago. Unfortunately, as they were carving it, it developed a huge crack in it and they left it there in the granite quarry, where it still lies today. We then got to go and check in to our cruise ship, the Beau Soleil. We were very pleasantly surprised, as we weren’t expecting much, but the ship turned out to be very nice. We had two huge rooms that overlooked the river, so we were very happy. After lunch we had a ride on a felucca, a traditional Egyptian sailing boat. We toured around Kitchner’s Island, which is a big botanical island, as well as Elephantine Island. We also went to the Tomb of the Nobles, where they buried some nobles in cliffside tombs. Very cool to see. We finally got to go back to the ship and use the pool and rest.
August 02:
Very early morning for us as we woke up at 3:30am and departed at 4am for the 3 hour drive down to Abu Simbel. This place is located just 40km from the Sudan border and you have to travel in a police convey for security reasons. We had friends who lived in Egypt and they heavily recommended visiting Abu Simbel, so after researching it, it became a “must see” place for me as well. When we got there, it was literally jaw-dropping when we saw the temple. Ramses II (some people believe he was the pharaoh during the time of Moses) built a huge temple down there as a tribute to himself. The temples were literally carved right into the side of the mountain. This was also a temple that had to be moved due to the creation of the Dam and subsequent flooding of the area. You couldn’t even tell that it had been moved. The four statues outside the temple were enormous and beautiful to look at. He also built a smaller temple next to his for his favorite wife Queen Nefertiti. Both of these temples were great. We then drove all the way back to Aswan to our ship and ate lunch before taking a nap. The ship started sailing while we were sleeping, and then in the afternoon we got to swim in the pool and relax. In the evening we arrived at the Temple of Kom Ombo, which was a temple dedicated to the Crocodile God Sobek. The ship moored and we got a tour of the temple and then the girls bought a lot of traditional Egyptian clothing while I hung out with the boys on board.
August 03:
Sailed during the morning and then arrived in Edfu, where we took a horse-drawn carriage ride to the Temple of Horus, the falcon god. It was very hot, so I was more than happy to get back to the ship and continue sailing down the Nile, all the while swimming in the pool and relaxing. This turned out to be our most relaxing day of the trip, as we sailed for the rest of the day all the way to Luxor.
August 04:
This was our busiest day, as we spent the full day in Luxor. We had an early morning as we left for the Valley of the Kings, where they buried a lot of the ancient pharaohs, including King Tut. We got to go inside the tombs of 4 different pharaohs, including the tomb of King Tut. What we really enjoyed was that you could still see the color on the walls inside the tombs. We then went to see the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which was outstanding. We then went to the Temple of Deir al-Medina and then to the Temple of Karnak. By then the kids were “templed out” so we rested on the ship for awhile (and the kids went swimming one last time), then we checked out of the ship and went and visited the Luxor Temple before heading to the train station. We saw a McDonalds (yeah), so ate dinner before boarding the sleeper train for our ride back to Cairo.
August 05:
Arrive back in Cairo in the morning and we are met and then driven to Alexandria, the famous ancient city lying on the coast by the Mediterranean Sea. This is where Cleopatra lived when she married Marc Anthony, so there was a lot of Roman influence. We toured around the city and saw some tombs, ruins, etc. We saw a Roman amphitheater and the famous Alexandria Library. Long drive back to Cairo in the evening where we got McDonalds again and checked into our hotel. (You can tell I’m tired of writing about the trip). The cool thing about Alexandria is that they’ve found the Palace of Cleopatra under the water and they’ve been excavating pieces and bringing them up to the surface. You can take scuba diving tours of the underwater palace, but we didn’t have time (and I’m the only one certified). That would have been neat to see though.
August 06:
Last day in Egypt and we are all pretty tired by now. We don’t even get going until noon in order to give us time to sleep in and the kids can relax a bit and go swimming in the hotel pool. We check out and get in the van and go to the outskirts of Cairo to Memphis (ancient capital of Egypt) and Sakkara, where they have other pyramids besides the well-known ones in Giza (see July 31 above for those). We first go to Zozar’s Step Pyramid, which is the first pyramid ever build in Egypt and the oldest stone monument in the world. According to the guide, Egyptians used to bury their dead and stack rocks on top of the body to form a small tomb, or mastaba (as it was called). Zozar took it a step forward and built a large mastaba by stacking levels on top of each other (hence the Step Pyramid). Subsequent pharaohs improved upon that and built the more traditional pyramids as we now know them. After the Step Pyramid, we went inside a nearby tomb and then took pictures of the Bent Pyramid (builders realized that the angle was too steep, so they had to change it halfway up). We then went to the Red Pyramid and got to go inside this one as well. We visited a museum in Memphis (everyone was “museumed” out, so I was the only one to go in). In the evening we went to the large marketplace (souks) and bought some souvenirs before going to the airport and taking a red eye flight back to Tanzania via Kenya.
We then headed over to Ngorongoro Crater. Here we were able to get our first glimpses of male lions and the elusive black rhino. We could never get close enough to a rhino for a great picture, but at least we could tell that they were rhinos. So here in the Crater we spent 2 days and 1 night enjoying the animals. The animals were in larger group concentrations that what we had seen in the Serengeti.
We then headed over to Ngorongoro Crater. Here we were able to get our first glimpses of male lions and the elusive black rhino. We could never get close enough to a rhino for a great picture, but at least we could tell that they were rhinos. So here in the Crater we spent 2 days and 1 night enjoying the animals. The animals were in larger group concentrations that what we had seen in the Serengeti.
