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Published: March 6th 2009
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Once again, we can hear the morning prayer calls load and clear but we all manage to doze off again. When we wake up, we find we are drifting, but not sailing, down the Nile with the sides of our tent structure still up. It is an odd experience - something like being carried from the car to your bed as a kid and not being quite sure how you got there.
Mahmod cooks a breakfast of French toast made with pita bread. It is good but after 2 days, I think we are all a little tiring of brown Pita bread. The water looks like liquid glass as we drift though the morning mist. There don't seem to be any boats now, just the sound of baying donkeys in the distance.
Mahmod and Ramadon raise the sails, and we sail a short distance to the far shore where we drift again until we reach a small stone jetty. Here a taxi and a tuk-tuk like vehicle are waiting. After hauling our bags ashore and up to the taxi we set off about 8 am.
We drive though a series of small towns. Donkeys pull carts and a
group of young goats (kids) roots through a pile of garbage at the side of the road. Our driver seems to be paying very little attention to the road as he reads through some papers and makes calls on his cell phone.
We stop at a police checkpoint and two policemen crowd into the front seat. At this point I am not sure if they will be accompanying us all the way to Luxor or if we are just giving them a lift. Our driver pops in a tape of Egyptian pop music and, disconcertingly, starts to clap along with the music with both hands. The music is full blast and a the rhythm picks up, so does his speed. With the narrow strips of concrete separating this highway from the towns we pass though, you have to worry about the children that occasionally dart across the road.
We end up letting off our two police men at the next checkpoint. At yet another checkpoint, we pick up another police man. This pattern continues though the morning.
About 10:30 we stop at a small roadside restaurant where 1 pound Egyptian give you the opportunity to use a
rather disgusting toilet. We opt to skip the coffee.
As we continue on, we pass loads of sugar cane being loaded onto open cars on a small gage railway. In other places it is being carried by donkey driven carts to waiting tractor trailers.
Our approach to Luxor is marked by better looking roads and bushes with pink flowers blocking the view of the irrigation canal. The streets here are being swept with brooms and we begin to see very fancy looking horse drawn wagons. It looks very touristy as we pass a MacDonald s, but on the other hand no one seems to pay any attention to a horseback rider lined up to turn left in the noon hour traffic.
As we begin to unload our stuff out of the taxi, a women emerges from the Venus hotel where we are to stay and greets us. She asked me if I got her email. This doesn't sound good. After bringing our stuff into the lobby she says that she has two choices for us, two rooms here in the hotel or an apartment very close by for around the same price. This smacks of the old “bait
and switch” tactic, but we agree to take a look at the other apartment, though we leave our bags at the hotel.
The apartment turns out to be no where near the hotel, and is up a dusty side road on the other side of the train tracks, far from any amenities like restaurants. Though it is a nice place inside, this is not where we wanted to be. Upon returning to the Venus hotel, it quickly becomes apparent that they don't have rooms for us there, despite our deposit and confirmed reservation. We are not impressed. She tell us that she will give us rooms just across the street.
The Nobles Hotel stinks of cigarette smoke and is totally shabby. However, having been on a felucca for two days we don't relish the idea of trying to find something else at this point. On top of this, it is still the Egyptian winter holiday so most things are likely booked (precisely why we made reservations 4 days in advance in the first place!). We end up agreeing to stay the one night.
We go over to the Venus Hotel for lunch and our host apologizes again for the mix up before showing us a power point sales pitch on Luxor excursions masquerading as an “orientation session”.After lunch we do school work and return to the hotel for supper before settling in to the “Nobles Hotel” for the night.
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