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Published: January 5th 2008
Pretty cool huh!
We really enjoyed this. The camels were far easier to ride than we'd been told and you can't get more Egyptian than riding around the pyramids on camel back.This blog should more accurately be called ‘a trial in sleep deprivation’ More on that soon…
Well you may or may not know that Egypt was kind of thrust upon us - or at least chosen without our usual thorough planning. At about the same time as we reached the conclusion that we wanted to go somewhere hot for Christmas - the Arctic Circle in Norway and the freezing wet & windy Edinburgh for Hogmanay did seem to drag out the cold, dark winter last year - we were invited to join some friends in Egypt for the Christmas break. Jonsey (Gareth Jones), who completed his CA with Brendon, was on one of the London Walking tours with, Brendon, Adam (who did the CA with them) & their respective better halves. Julie, Jonesy’s partner, raised the fact that they’d booked a trip with Graham (who had also passed his accounting with Brendon) and a bunch of other kiwis. We were keen, but Jonesy mentioned that they’d booked their flights and were booking the tour that weekend, so we’d need to make a decision in a day and a half. We said yes & now, back in London, are thrilled with
The first ever pyramid - the Step Pyramid
Traditionally Egyptian tombs were sealed with a slab of concrete on top. A very clever achitect , Imhotep, created this one for King Zoser (Djoser - 2667-2648 BC) in the traditional way. However you can never complete a person's tomb while they are alive as it would mean it would be their time to die. Imhotep realsied he was going to finish the slab while Zoser was still young and strong, so he built a second slap on top of the firts, then a third and so on. This was the first pyramid, built over 4650 years ago! our choice.
Why Egypt in a group? Well for people who have pretty much sworn off molly-coddled, herd mentality tour groups and lack of freedom they offer to curious travellers, Egypt was a good place to make an exception. In a country of about 80 million with 80% of the population being Islamic, where the water is undrinkable, the desert covers over 90% of the country, Western women are seen as loose and easy targets and where terrorists have a habit of blowing up white tourists, travelling in a group is not a bad idea. Also as time was short, both in preparation and while on holiday, it makes sense to put the planning onto someone else’s shoulders.
For those of you who have not spent a Christmas in the UK, imagine the busiest you have ever been back home, then triple it. It is hard to explain if you haven’t been here, but imagine work being full on - until 7, 8, 9 or 10 at night, up to 3 events a night seven days a week from mid November, fighting the Christmas crowds (try shopping on Oxford St when there are 1 MILLION other Christmas shoppers
fighting you to even make it down the road http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23425356-details/%A3100million+shopping+bonanza+as+Oxford+St+bans+cars+for+one+day/article.do
posting all the gifts in time to reach loved ones at home & trying to keep the house clean and tidy too. Not a good environment to plan for a trip to Egypt - and research into all the jabs (polio, tetanus, hepatitis, diphtheria etc) and health precautions necessary for such a place. Never the less, with 4 & ½ hours sleep on the Thursday night (courtesy of a team Christmas get together at a play and the after party, involving Christian Slater & Helen Baxendale), A hectic day’s work on the Friday before catching the train out to Kent to celebrate a family Christmas at Chris and Ali’s home - where Ali’s Mum, Dad & sister had just arrived for Xmas - catching the last train back to our flat getting home at 1.30pm we still managed to finish our packing on Saturday morning, hand our keys and plant-watering instructions to our neighbours & walk off with our packs to the station on time & under control. Heathrow was just stupidly busy. The check in area was so full they had to stop people entering the departures area at
The Great Pyramid
Pretty impressive Huh!
Cheops pyramid is amzaing - particularly when you think that no-one today knows how was made (there are a lot of theories, all with flaws) and with all our modern technology or knowledge, know one knows how to make another one of this size.
all. After waiting in a hot, grumpy, 90 minute queue we were through and on our way to customs. A delayed flight to Rome and another one from Rome, led to us touching down in Cairo after 3am. We were picked up by a rep of our tour company Travel Talk, brought back to our hotel, registered for the tour & got to our rooms at 4.30am.
Good thing we were planning a relaxing trip to chill out after Christmas. Right? Wrong! Due to Brendon’s work insisting he worked on the 31st Dec (I know, I know) we had to opt for the 9 day tour, not the 15 day one our friends were on. This meant we all did the 9 hectic days of seeing pretty much every sight in Egypt, more temples than you could ever believe, travelling in trains, planes and automobiles (not to mention a felucca) then jet back home to work before we could catch our breath. Meanwhile our friends went on to Dahab to chill out by a beach for the next 6 days.
I could write 100 pages on what we did & saw and how much we learnt, but I
Claire - like a child on a giant's chair
Some stats for you, built in 2589-2566 BC with over 2.3 million blocks of stone, with an average weight of 2.5 tons per stone - a total weight of 6 million tons & height of 140m. won’t bore you. Instead, here’s a lightening-quick summary of what we did and a whole lot of photos that can do the storytelling for me.
Oh and one more thing. In spite of all you neigh-sayer’s predictions, neither of us, ‘nor any one on our felucca got any food poisoning or tummy troubles at all. It is quite possible to travel Egypt, enjoying the cuisine as you go and not get sick.
OK, so here goes:
Sunday 23rd Dec.
In bed at 4.30am (4.50am for Claire), out of bed just after 6 to breakfast and check out and leave on the bus by 8am. A day’s sightseeing followed: Zoser’s pyramid, and a tomb at Sakkara, the 3 pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and a camel ride, a quick dinner at the hotel then an overnight sleeper train to Aswan. Breaking News! the sleeper train with beds for the few of us who had upgraded to beds instead of seats was full (or broken, depending upon who you spoke to) which means they had booked us flights instead. Swap 12 hours in a dirty plan with a 1 hour flight. Fabulous!
Monday 24th Dec
Woke up in
Pyramids of Giza - Compulsory tourist shot
From l-r, the pyramids of Cheops (Khufu), the largest and oldest, Kephren (Khafre), Cheop's son, and Mycerinus (Menkaure), Kephren's son. the lovely new Cataracts Hotel beside the famous Old Cataracts hotel (see photos for more). Slept, had breakfast & saw our first glimpse of hot sun by the pool as we waited for our not-so lucky friends to arrive. The other hundred (of the 117 in our tour group) didn’t arrive until 12.30 - they had been on the train for about 14 hours. Nice. Left on tour buses to view the famous High Dam and unfinished obelisk, before hopping into small boats to the lovely Philae temple on an island in the Nile. Back to the hotel for a quick shower and off in boats once again to a Nubian village for dinner. Nubians are Africans who settled in the South of Egypt a while ago.
Tuesday 25th Dec - Christmas Day
Up at 3 am for a 3.5 hour each way drive through the desert to the amazing Abu Simbel temple. Back at 1pm in time to board our feluccas docked beside our hotel and set sail, having a lovely, simple, lunch on board. We spent the afternoon acquainting ourselves with the feluccas and docking every now and then so that we could clamber a flimsy piece
of wood off the boats to nearby sand dunes where we answered calls of nature. Not quite so pleasant when you saw the fluttering toilet paper reminders of everyone else who had also used the dunes as a toilet. As our boat pulled in to for the night we saw Andrea racing back towards her boat, being chased by a pack of dogs. She was fine & so were we, while there were dogs (and villages) at every stop in every other case they were too busy surviving to pay us even a passing interest.
Christmas evening was spent on a felucca and the surrounding sand dunes, before piling in to sleep.
Wed 26th Dec
Up shortly after 6am to do our ablutions & set sail for another day on the river. Out came the sun and our bikinis. Fabulous! Not too much relaxing though as we had been given 10 tasks per boat. We had to prepare for the tasks during the day and present them at a meeting of all boats at 7.30pm that night. Some were fun - such as getting the boys to do a strip show in girls outfits, others, like preparing a song
You mean he's going to stand up?
Brendon's not too sure about his camel. describing our time in Egypt - we did it to the theme of Hotel California - and creating the Egyptian flag (some groups sewed them together) were a bit more work. In between preparations we stopped for lunch and a whole lot of crazy people went for a dip in the Nile. I guess that they hadn’t read the bit in the Lonely Planet that advised strongly against swimming it the Nile due to the Bilharzia parasite that infected it. Nor did they care that it was basically Egypt’s toilet. We saw our boat crew hopping in and defecating directly in front of the boats. No clambering over sand dunes for them.
7.30pm - reckoning time around a bonfire, music provided by the Nubian crew playing traditional drums. Much hilarity, and later dancing around the bonfire ensured.
Thursday 27th Dec
I was awake at 5.30am when the crew rose and quietly rowed our boat (no sails as our bedroom ‘walls’ and ‘roof’ were still up across the river. Disembarking at 6.30 / 7am we boarded awaiting tour buses and headed of to first Kom Ombo and the Edfu temples for sightseeing in the hot sun. In the afternoon we
pulled into the Isis hotel in Luxor where we raced to wash the dirt (including about half a sand tune) of 3 days, 2 nights, with no running water off ourselves and our filthy clothes. I was whistled and catcalled by the Egyptian men on the street as I tried to hang my hand washing out on the 4th floor balcony of our room. You’d be amazed at the way these men looked and treated us women when we were right in front of them. I grew sick of them looking at me like a piece of meat and asking Brendon how much they could buy me for. While I was pretty firm and confident, and thus better able to deflect them than some of the girls on our trip, it is not pleasant realising that your in a country of millions of men who think very little of you. Good thing I was born in NZ.
Out to an Irish pub (I am not joking!) for dinner, drinks and dancing before bed.
Friday 28th Dec
Up at 4am to hop on a boat , then a van to watch our hot air balloon being inflated in the pre-dawn
Grantite coated Pyramids
Can you see the smooth layer at the very top of the pyramid? This is all that remains of the outer layer of pink granite hat was built around all 3 of the Giza pyramids. desert. This was amazing and a real highlight. Watching the sun rise as you look down upon the necropolis of Thebes and the Nile River was both beautiful and surreal. Brendon and those who chose not to hop on the balloons joined us at 7am by the Colossi of Menmon before we headed off as a group to the Valley of Kings. Three tombs and a number of hours later we headed off to Deir el-Medina - the worker’s village - exploring more tombs before we took off again, this time to central Luxor and the Karnak temple, followed by the Luxor Temple. Time to race back, farewell everyone on the 15 day tour who were heading off on a 22 hour bus ride, grab a bite to eat before picking up our bags (we had checked out before we left in the morning) and just the three of us, Kristy, Brendon & me hop on our sleeper overnight train to Giza. The rest of our group followed on an overnight seated train. Well it was dirty & smelly and I was kissed by one train worker (I thought he was asking for my ticket) and asked to sleep with
A sphincter says what?
The sphinx, 21 m high & 73.5 m long, built in the likenes of King Kephren - that's his pyramid in the background. the man looking after our car - before he realised that I was there with Brendon - at which point he was very apologetic. It was not fun, and Kristy, who was 5 cars away from ours made sure she locked her door before going to bed.
Saturday 29th Dec.
Up at 5.30am as we were due to arrive shortly afterwards and didn’t want to miss our stop. Our train was delayed however and after a quick breakfast onboard we reached Giza at 7am and dragged our bags to a waiting van to our hotel. We had time to check in and wash before the rest of our team turned up, dropped their bags and we headed off for our last day of sightseeing - the Hanging Church, a mosque, one of my highlights the Egyptian Museum and King Tut’s mind blowing mask, sarcophagi and all the paraphernalia he was buried with, and finishing off with bartering in the bazaar. Back to the hotel for dinner and a farewell drink with Sam & the rest of the team before he headed off to his wife and we took our repsictive flights home.
Sunday 30th Dec
Kristy, Brendon &
I were among the last to leave, most having flown out through the night. We were looking forward to a relaxing morning packing and getting ready to leave. Unfortunately Brendon woke with a fever and aching all over - he’d caught the flu a number of people had brought over with them from England. I had to carry my bags, his bags & then drag Brendon about 500m from our room through the complex to the reception. Not fun, but worse for Brendon. In our van to the airport were Kristy, a girl from Christchurch called Kristina and two couples travelling together - two of whom had been and were continuing to throw up on the flight back.
Back via Rome, we arrived at Heathrow at about 10 / 10.30pm and after dragging Brendon, both our back packs and day bags through customs, on three different tubes and one bus we staggered home some time before 1am. Brendon was up early, still feverish and headed off to work in his suit and tie on New Year’s Eve.
No rest for the wicked they say and we must have been very wicked.
We did have a ball though.
our tour group - Sam's bus
Back row, L-R: Pete (kiwi), Andrea (oz), Nikki (kiwi), Damen (kiwi - ex Westlake boys), Ben (kiwi) Dave (kiwi - ex Westlake boys), Brendon (kiwi - of course), Dan (Aussie) with his hands on Tracy's (kiwi) shoulders.
Front row: Fiona (oz), Stephanie (the first French person I've met with a strong Aussie accent), Louise (Kiwi & ex St Cuths), Georgia (kiwi), me & Stacey (kiwi).
Missing: Claire & John-Henry (both kiwis), Sam (kiwi - ex Westlake boys), Andrea (Swiss), John (OZ), Kristy (kiwi) and Sam-eh our Egyptian tour guide.
We learned so much and met a load of fun people - I highly recommend you see Egypt before you die - and you may even consider going in a tour group. Plus it was a great break from the dark, grey winter.
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