The Backpacker Express Tour - Where Michelle is worth 40 camels!!

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Hi Everyone,

For the past nine days we've been on a tour with Go Bus Egypt.

The tour began with an early start and a visit to the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. They were amazing, what can I say, they were huge. It's a very busy place, loads of buses, loads of tourist and loads of people trying to sell everything to you. It was here Stephen first got an "offer" for his wife of 40 camels, a good deal we thought, after all my mum love camels. Surely she'd like real ones at home instead instead of a daughter. From there we went to the Sphinx, amazing though not as big as we thought, but it was so exciting catching a glimpse of it. Again with the tourist and now the heat. The weather forecast was for 39 degrees, the hottest so far.

From there we headed back to the Egyptian Museum, where with the help of our guide Abdul, it made just a little more sense out of some of the displays. The museum was great, even the second time round. That night we boarded an overnight train to Aswan. After arriving around lunch time in Aswan, we proceeded to sleep the day away instead of laying by the pool in the 45 degree heat like the rest of the group.

Day 4 of the tour, starting at 2.45AM, we had to catch the police convoy to Abu Simbel. The convey was really just a race and on the road we saw hardly any police cars, just at the check points where the stood behind bullet proof stands. We arrived nice and early around 7.30am, along with heaps of other buses. Abu Simbel Temple was a temple built by and dedicated to the Great Pharaoh Ramses II, who was obsessed with building temples for himself - they are all over Egypt. The Abu Simbel temple along with the Temple Hathor, dedicated to his most loved wife Queen Nefertari, was moved in the 1970's because the Egyptian govenment built a new dam. They cut the whole temple and statues into pieces painstakingly putting it back together, out of harms way, completing it in 1980's. It's an amazing job, as they built a mountain around it and put it back as though it had never been moved. These two temples were lucky, as there were many lost when the flooded the area for the High Dam.

That afternoon we boarded our felucca, where we would cruise down the Nile, as fast as the wind would take us for the next two days. These days were filled with swimming, drinking, eating and playing cards. The crew was fantastic and the food was great. The only hiccup in the relaxing cruise down the Nile, which it had been until our last night aboard, was a sandstorm. A sandstorm that they rarely get, maybe once a year and we got one. We'd moored for the evening and after dinner the storm hit without warning. Our felucca captain wasn't worried and we still had a bonfire anyway. There was nothing we could do, I covered my face with my buff. The crew sang and played traditional Nubian songs, as well as a great rendition of "She'll be coming round the mountain" and "Lion Sleeps tonight". It was strange, we were moored with three other boats but no-one else joined us. Until you saw a torch coming from the distance, and out of the darkness of a sand storm walked five locals, who joined in the singing and drum playing. We played games and then tried to settle for the night, until the moorings came undone. We were about to float away but three of the boys (including Stephen) and all their muscles, saved the felucca. The girls were then ordered into the crew's cabin for the night. No-one knows what time it all settled but the captain was awake and with his 1st mate they had out giant paddles and were rowing us to our last stop at Kom-Ombo. Everyone had sand everywhere, my white caftan was brown and so was Stephen's green shirt.

This brings us to day six. when we looked at the Temple of Horus at Edfu, no one was very interested, we were tired and dirty. After which we had our way with another police convoy to Luxor. It was a beautiful city with a great hotel - with a pool!! That evening we took a horse carriage to the Luxor Temple at sunset, it was so beautiful, the sun, the statues. The photos turned out really well.

The tour has been filled with early morning starts and day seven was no different. We rose early to cross the Nile to the West Bank, and our noble donkey steeds waited to take us into the Valley of Kings. It was an interesting ride in. Stephen's donkey was the lead one; NO ONE was allowed to pass. Any time anyone else got close, his donkey was off. Mine on the other hand was the end donkey and it didn't matter what I did it wouldn't move any faster. We spent the morning explore the "Hotchickensoup" Temple, as well as three tombs in the Valley. The tombs were Ramses 3rd, Ramses 4th, and Ramses 9th. After that we headed to the Karnak Temple, featured in Indiana Jones, Death on the Nile, and James Bond's, The Spy Who Loved Me. Again it was a fantastic location, it's hard to describe, you'll just have to visit yourselves one day. That night it was back to Cairo on the overnight train and the end of the tour.

The tour was a great way to see Egypt, and we're both really glad we decided to take a tour instead of doing it ourselves. None of the train stations have English signs, and getting about was a little hard sometimes because of the distance.

We are off the Jordan next and to Petra. We will write again soon.

Love
Michelle and Stephen.

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Photos

The Temple at Abu Simbel
This is the outside of Ramses II's temple to himself.

Stephen on the Felucca
Relaxing and listening to Bob Marley (when the tape doesn't get chewed).

Michelle half on the Felucca
This was Michelle's first dip in the world's third longest river.

The Luxor Temple
The columns were lit up as the sunset on another great day in Egypt.

Walking like an Egyptian.
It had to happen eventually!