Pyramids, Tombs, and Sailing the Nile

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We've made it to Egypt! And it's hot. Insanely hot. I've only seen a thermometer one time and it read 43 degrees C. That's almost 110 degrees Farenheit and I swear, that wasn't even the hottest day.

When we were leaving the Cairo airport earlier this week, we started chatting with a random guy standing next to us while waiting in line. Turn's out that he's a 29 year old Argentinian named Gustavo and is also looking for a cheap place to stay in the city. We decide to travel to the city together and save some money on a room for the night. While chatting with him we find out that our entire plan for Egypt is pretty much the exact same. He was a nice guy and after a while, we pretty much just ended up travelling as a group of three and have been doing everything together since we arrived. It's fun to have more company and it ends up making everything cheaper for all of us.

The first day that we got into Cairo, we checked into a cheap hotel room on the 15th floor of a rundown building in downtown Cairo. You could see for miles and it looked dumpy and dirty for miles. Everything is bown. I'm not sure if it's because of the dust from the desert or lack of paint or what, but it's all brown. The first thing that we wanted to do was, of course, see the pyramids. We booked a taxi and drove through the most chaotic traffic you can imagine to where the pyramids are on the outskirts of town. We almost got into at least a dozen accidents along the way, but we somehow managed to make it there. (Just a side note: Simply crossing the street in Cairo often seems like the most dangerous thing we've done so far. There is a ton of taffic, the cars drive recklessly and don't stop. You pretty much just have to put your head down and run. It feels like real life Frogger.) Anyways, we got to the pyramids that evening to watch the light show that they have there at night. It was kind of cheesy with the green and blue lights lighting up the sphynx and the pyramids, but it was cool for us to see them either way.

That night, we wandered around town for a while looking for something to do. We felt like having a few drinks, but alcohol is illegal in Egypt (except for tourists and mainly only in nice hotels) so that was out of the question. We wandered around alongside the Nile for a while and ended up taking a short little party boat cruise thing along the river. It was pretty strange since it had a mix of conservative Muslim women covered in the all black robes, including the black veil, and some young metrosexual Egyptian boys dancing on the boat. It was an entertaining show.

The following day we woke up early and made our way back to the pyramids. Here, we had our first, but definitely not last, experience with haggling with the Egyptians. We ended up arranging to ride camels out into the desert for an hour or so so that we could get a good perspective of the pyramids and fit them all into one camera frame. Camels are disgusting animals, but it was fun to ride them through the desert. Plus, it was well over 100 degrees and way to hot to walk through the sand. We took loads of photos and then made our way back. Once back, we explored into the tomb inside of the pyramid. It was less impressive then one might imagine. It was just like a tiny passageway that you had to get real low to walk through and then a small bare room at the end. After the pyramids, we checked out the sphynx, which is nearby, and then went to see the goodies in the Cairo museum. It was neat seeing King Tut's death mask, which is incredibly famous, but then we quickly got bored and left.

That night we planned on taking the overnight sleeping train to the south to the city of Aswan. It was a huge mess trying to book tickets since there are different trains for Egyptians and foreigners and they don't have computers so they don't know if there are spaces on the train or not. We ended up having to just sit in the train station for 2 hours to ask the train conductor when it came if there were spots. He didn't really know either but said that we could pay full price and then just sleep in the bar for the entirety of th 14 hour overnight train ride. We had no other choice so we agreed. It was going to be uncomfortable, but we had to do what we had to do. After about an hour, the conductor found out that he actually did have rooms available and we ended up getting nice comfy beds.

We arrived in Aswan in the morning with intentions of booking a felucca to sail us down the Nile for a few days from Aswan to Luxor. We found one for the following day and had the day to kill in Aswan. We wandered onto some island that just had some dirty village and a 5 star hotel. We were hungry for lunch but couldn't find a way into the hotel so we ended up sneaking around the beach side and into the back of the hotel. We hung out sipping sodas from the 13th floor bar overlooking the Nile for a bit until we felt refreshed. Afterwards, we sailed across the river and checked out the Tomb of the Nobles on the far side of the river. The tombs were cool to explore and we headed back after we were wet with sweat from climbing the sandy river banks up to the top of the tombs. At this point, we are all drinking 5 or 6 liters of water per day and not ever really even peeing. Just sweating it all out.

The following day, we found a duty free shop, stocked up on some cold beers and rum, and began our sailing journey. Here, everything seems to happen in slow motion and so we didn't begin sailing until hours ater our planned time. Once we did, however, it was amazing. It was so hot that we would periodically jump off the boat and then just hold onto a rope and drag through the river behind the boat. That afternoon we drank some of those cold beers and shared a cuban cigar while watching the sunset over the Sahara desert from a felucca sailing down the Nile. It was a surreal experience. We made a bonfire on the river bank that night and then slept on the boat. It was less than comfortable, since it was essentially just 5 guys sharing one lumpy bed, but the rum helped us sleep. The next morning had almost no wind so we ended up just drifting down river for a few hours. We pulled up to the river bank for a lunch break which turned into a 3 hour nap break to escape the heat. We spent the time napping, reading and swimming. During this time however, it got really windy and we were told we wouldn't be able to sail any more that day. In order to kill time, we walked with one of the guides into a small Nubian village to get some snacks. The village was archaic and the locals looked at us and laughed as if they have never seen foreigners before. The guide ran into one of his friends who took us back to his house to hang out for a bit. Neither of them spoke any English so we just kind of sat there and stared at eachother. He was very nice and gave us some tea and fresh mango juice. It was a pretty funny situation, but a memorable and cool one.

We slept on the boat again that night and then the following day, today, we got on a taxi to finish the ride to Luxor. Along the way, we saw a few more huge, 3000 year old temples and tombs, until we eventually got to Luxor. In Luxor we checked out the Valley of the Kings where they found King Tut's tomb. Here we adventured into some of the tombs. The tombs have no ventilation and that combined with the incredible heat made it pretty unpleasant to be inside some of the tombs. Within 10 minutes, my shirt was wet with sweat. It was pretty cool, but it's amazing how quickly you grow accustomed to 3000 and even 5000 year old tombs and temples.

It's been an interesting past few days and tomorrow we're off to the Red Sea for some change of scenery.

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Comments

[Peter Han]

WOW!!!!!
Hey Brian, I've been reading all of your blogs and am so amazed at all your experiences. It's truly amazing what you're doing and hope your having a terrific time. I'm so proud of you and hope that through your adventures, you stay safe. Your family here loves you and I'm sure eveyone else is as anxious as me to read about your travels. Till your next blog posting. Your Uncle Peter