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Published: January 15th 2011
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11th Jan - Day 102 – Luxor
With the breaking of dawn, 6 of us were set to go ballooning, 3 of the 6 had been up all night sick, but couldn’t get a refund so decided to go anyways (neither of us). We took a mini-bus downtown, then a motorboat to the West bank while they explained the safety rules and plan for the morning. Once on the West bank we caught another mini-bus to the airfield, where we could already see quite a few balloons had set off from and quite a few more being blown up. In all, we counted about 15 different balloons across the space of time of our flight, it makes for exciting landings and good photos! We went with Sinbad Ballooning, they have a few balloons, ours was all shades of blue. There were 20 people in total in our basket plus the pilot, much less than last time we went ballooning on the tablelands (almost 40). So we had space to move and take photos, it was fantastic. The smog was still over Luxor and the Nile which meant we couldn’t see much of the East bank but we did get to see
the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens from the air. Just the contrast between the cultivated crop lands and the desert sands was incredible… We had a bit of an adventure landing as when we came down the first time, a donkey was in the field and refused to move out of the way, the farmers there also started yelling at us not to land. Our pilot quickly took us up again and 15 mins later we returned to the same field from a different angle. There weren’t many other options… We touched down, very gracefully, no tipping which was good but the farmers weren’t happy, one even picked up a piece of sugar cane and started waving it around madly, we thought he was going to hit someone. The crew came running in from the road, and dragged us, in the basket, to a safer spot further down the field where there was room to bring down the balloon. We jumped out and were hurried off the field and to the meeting place where Nick and the rest of the tour were waiting for us, we were about 40 mins late, due to a delayed start
and the mishap of a dropped glove!
Once everyone had arrived at the meeting point, we were on the coach to the Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately you are not allowed to even take cameras into this area, so that the tombs are preserved. Our guide Akmed selected three tombs for us to visit (as 3 were included on our pass), Ramses I, Ramses IX and Ramses IV. There are 62 tombs in total discovered in the Valley of the Kings and excavation work continues to find the final 4. The last to be found was the tomb of Tutankhamen, no. 62 in 1922. The tombs all vary in length, depth and the number of chambers in each. Of the three that we visited Ramses IV was definitely the most beautiful. It was one of the more well-preserved tombs, with some of the paintings still in full colour. It is an eerie feeling going down into these places but incredible at the same time, thinking about how old they are. We didn’t go into Tutankhamen’s tomb as all of the treasures are in the Cairo Museum and the paintings are really like most of the others. All that remains in
the tomb is his mummified body and sarcophagus. There were quite a lot of people here already and it was only 10am. Nearly everyone in our group, except maybe 5 of us, were feeling ill, some staying behind at the hotel, others persevering but fading fast. We think it might have been something to do with the falafel sandwiches and a bit of heat stroke as not many were wearing hats or probably drinking enough water, it had become quite hot. Luckily, we were both feeling 100%, fingers crossed it would stay like that… One interesting thing, that amused us anyways, happened inside the tomb of Ramses IV, this Italian guy, probably around our age, was caught taking a photo on his phone (idiot!), we watched as his phone was confiscated and he was escorted from the tomb. On our way out, he was still there, with his guide, arguing with the security person about just deleting the photo, but no luck, he walked away without his phone, getting an earful from a lady we assumed was his mother!! We stayed here until about 11:30am then hopped back on the bus and left the valley.
Our next stop was at
an Alabaster store / factory. As with all guided bus tours in Egypt, the driver stops at a shop (probably owned by a relative) and you are given a presentation about the manufacture of different products. You may remember our stop at the perfume house, well this it the same type of thing but with stones collected in the excavations in the Valley of the Kings and Queens. We were given a quick presentation on how the alabaster stone is transformed into vases and light shades, here they also work with basalt, talc, granite and phosphorus glue (glows in the dark!). We were then hurried into the owner’s house / shop, given a free drink (much appreciated) and allowed to look around and make any purchases we like… We bought a couple of souvenirs here, a set of 3 basalt pyramids; hopefully we can bring them home. Back on the bus and to our next destination the Valley of the Artisans.
We had a choice; we could visit the Artisans tombs, the Valley of the Queens or the Valley of the Nobles. The Valley of the Artisans was recommended as it is quite different from the tombs in the Valley
of the Kings; the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Nobles are very similar to what we had already seen. The Valley of the Artisans, is the village where the workers used to live and are buried. In their spare time, when they weren’t working on the tombs of their kings and queens and nobles, the artists would work on their own tombs. These are, of course, a lot smaller and less extravagant than those of the royalty but not less beautiful. Here we visited the tomb of Inherka and the tomb of Sennedjem. The paintings are less ordered and more freehand. They depict more everyday scenes from the artist’s lives as well as some of the same scenes with the gods that we had seen previously. It was here that Julene, one of our fellow passengers, fainted in the heat, Mischa helped carry her to the shade to recover and Jess ran to the coach to get her water… many of the group stayed on the coach here, not feeling well enough to climb down into these tombs. The plan from here is normally to have lunch at a restaurant on the West bank before a
free afternoon but due to the illness overwhelming the group, Nick decided it would be best to return to the hotel and order in pizzas, which was fine with us!
The ride back via coach took a lot longer than we expected, a lot longer than it had taken us this morning, when we crossed by boat! We eventually arrived and waited for the pizzas. They were alright, supposedly 3 different flavours but all looked pretty similar, there was plenty to go around as only about half the group ate. The rest of the afternoon and night was free time. We walked into town to have a look at the market and stop by a shop for some snacks for the trip tomorrow. We picked up some souvenirs and Mish tried his hand at bargaining again!! Unfortunately that little shop we’d found yesterday was closed so we headed back to our room to rest for a little while. Nick was cooking dinner off the truck tonight and we were on roster to help. It was pretty easy as he’d decided on a stew / soup full of garlic and ginger to assist in ridding all the sickness. We washed and
peeled and chopped and then through it all in the pot, 30 mins later it was good to go and tasted great (not one of Mischa’s favourites as it didn’t have any meat!). We sat around chatting to a few of the others for a little bit, but by 8:30pm we were feeling quite tired so off to bed. Tomorrow’s plans were to see Karnak and Luxor temples and then drive to Hurghada. ..
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