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Published: July 26th 2008
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We got the boat from Jordan into Nuweiba (which was late as usual) and arrived in Egypt at around 10pm. We then took a long bus ride which dumped us a few kilometers from our destination, Sharm El Sheikh because they weren't licensed to take us into town. Luckily, the guy that was with us was Jordanian and could speak Arabic and helped us get a taxi in the middle of nowhere. We got the taxi to a hotel we had heard of that turned out to be fully booked. And to add insult to injury we then spent the next hour or so trying to find a cash point that would let us have some money or hotel that either had rooms or would let us stay without cash! It got to about 2am, and we found a great hotel - quiet with a nice pool area to catch a drink and a bite before heading to bed. We awoke the next day in tourist hell - it turned out to be a favourite hotel for the package tour operators and was full of Brits cooking themselves by the pool along to the tunes of the birdy song !
Our initial, and lasting, impression of Sharm El Sheikh was that it's pretty much like Vegas but in Egypt instead pf Arizona. Alot of our time in Egypt was spent traveling around and the next day we got another ferry over to Hurghada which turned out to be alot better than our previous boat journey. We were catching the local bus to Luxor, but they wouldn't let us on. Apparently there was a law/rule that only 4 tourists could travel on a public bus at one time. There were eight of us in total, so we shared a private car with a Dutch couple. Bizarrely, we kept bumping into them in the strangest of places around Egypt ! They were great and gave us loads of info on some of the places we want to go to on our travels.
We finally got to Luxor, pretty wacked out! Seeing the Nile for the first time brough our spirits up a bit as it was simply huge, extremely beautiful and the lands surrounding the Nile were obviously incredibly fertile. We stayed at the Happy Land Hotel, a haven for back-packers, which was great and would recommend it to anyone. The
nicest place we had stayed and the cheapest so far. The area it was situated in was a bit on the grotty side, but the locals were very friendly and there was a fab local take out on the corner. We were just a few streets away from the major tourist areas but it made a huge difference in the attitudes of the locals who were genuinely friendly and simply interested in what you were doing there. We did the usual tourist stuff, Temples of Karnak, Valley of the Kings etc We went on an afternoon felluca trip with 'Captain Hassan'and was great to chill out and and watch the sun set over the Nile. We promised we'd sent a postcard to him from somewhere on our travels and eventually decided on Alaska.
We spent a couple of nights in Luxor before heading to Aswan on the train which was characteristically late. We stayed at the 'highly recommended' Keylany Hotel and couldn't see what all the fuss was about - especially when compared to the Happy Land in Luxor which we found to be better on all counts. Aswan was twice the hassle of Luxor and by this point
we were pretty peeved of it all! Again, you could escape the hassle by moving a few streets away from the major tourist areas but just going for a meal involved countless 'No's to people pretty much every other second.
Next stop was Abu Simbel and we took the bus there from Aswan. Abu Simbel was complete respite for us. The site itself is incredible and we stayed just one night at the Eskaleh Eco Lodge which was fantastic. The place was beautiful and run by an incredibly friendly Nubian couple. The rooms were decorated in traditional Nubian style and there was an organic garden there where they prepared all their own vegetables that were used in the cooking. Our only regret was that we didn;t have the time to stay longer.
After Abu Simbel we headed back to Aswan to catch the sleeper train to Cario. The sleeper train was good though a little too bumpy for us to sleep all that well. We only had about 24 hours in Cairo, which was more than enough. Cairo was alot better than we had expected and we stayed in a fab new hotel called Pharaoh's Palace, which was
in a great location and had only been open a couple of months. We visited the Museum, which was huge and fascinating. You could loose yourself in there hours as there is so much to see. Of course our favorite was Tuten Karmoun's chamber which needs to be seen to be believed! We also went to the Pyramids of Giza and Saqqara, which again were both amazing but both tourist traps from hell, and by this point on our last day we had enough of touts (and the 'tourist police' who were trying to extract cash for you taking pictures of camels !!).
All in all, we enjoyed our time in Egypt but the hassle from touts, street vendors and the like certainly started to grate after a while. On several occasions Rich was told he was a 'lucky man' in the hope we'd buy something but after hearing it a million times we felt less than lucky and by the end were looking forward to moving on to Tanzania.
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