Blogs from Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa - page 9

Surprise surprise the French girls are here!!! This hotel has good wifi toooooo… Things are cool again….despite the shitty shitty tour its over now. I got three days to do nothing in Luxor before I start my vacation and I am sooooo looking forward to it J I did wind up going to the Luxor museum as well as the mummification museum. Both pretty interesting. Peeps say the Luxor museum is better than the Cairo one buuuuut idk…there are way way way more things in Cairo but Luxor has better quality items with more time and space devoted to them. So it’s a toss-up. The mummy museum was one room giving all the details on how to mummy. Lol I like museums!!! I also went to an old souk (market) to get harassed by everyone. That ... read more

So we stopped at Kom Ombo….a pretty sweet temple built to honor Haroeris and Sobek…the latter of which represented in hieroglyphs as a dude with a crocodile head and holds crocodiles to be sacred…so there were mummified crocs on display as well. This place had a lot of images of gods and pharos which early Christians hacked out of existence. They literally chipped away the face, arms, legs, anything exposed of these images but not the clothes or any of the hieroglyphics…weird. I guess the peeps didn’t know how to read so they didn’t know the glyphs were words so they didn’t erase them from the temples…also….not all images were erased and I was told that no one knows why they decided to erase some over the others…Ha! Silly Christians….At this place I ran into two ... read more

So I was supposed to be in the lobby at 03:15 but at 02:50 I get a knock on my door that woke me up. The worker said I needed to be there at 03:30 instead. I asked 3 times and he seemed to understand me so I went back to bed and set my alarm for a lil later. Another knock on the door at 03:15 and the same worker says the bus is here now. Mother Fucker….If there is one thing I hate more than almost anything else its being woken up unnecessarily….since childhood…goddamnit. Whatever. The 3 hour ride to Abu Simbel only took 3.5 hours so I think that’s a positive? Anyways, the temple of Ramesses II is a very iconic Egyptian piece of work. The HUGE statues out front are an artist’s ... read more

As our train rolled into Luxor we realized one of the advantages of hiring a local guide is that he or she has that extra shred of knowledge that can make life a lot easier just when you need it. As we neared our destination point, Ragab made arrangements for the train porter to provide an assist, as the train station at Luxor was “undergoing renovations.” On the surface a rather innocuous statement, but it turned out to be a gross understatement as the entire platform had its tiles ripped up, leaving only a sandy surface. Luggage on wheels would only provide good entertainment for the locals, watching the tourists attempt to drag their luggage for about one hundred yards through the sand. Two porters grabbed our bags and made a mad dash for the station ... read more

After such a glorious time in the beautiful, desolate desert, walking into the train station in Giza was a harsh wake up call. We had several hours to spend until our overnight train to Aswan. Mohamed parked us at a table in a café and stayed with us while we read, worked on our blogs until batteries gave out and people watched. After some time he headed home to bring his wife and daughter back for us to meet. We had enjoyed such a nice connection with him that it seemed perfectly natural to meet his family. Had we known what a great guide he is and what a good rapport we would have, we would have utilized him for more of our trip. The train to Aswan pulled into the station at 8:30PM and with ... read more