Amazing Egypt

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Wow, Egypt wasw totally amazing - just loved it! I think everything about this tour group just really went well (which is a very pleasant but quite unusual thing when travelling). Arrived into Cairo and it was lovely and hot - was met at the airport thank goodness so there was no hassles there although I found out that I could have brought a visa on arrival which was only $15 USD instead of paying $40 AUD but ya get that don't ya (anyone heading to Egypt tho' please check it out).

Ok well Egypt was just so full on, met up with my tour group which consisted of Sam (Hassam) our tour leader, James and Aaron who are brothers, Leiana who is Aaron's girlfriend who are from Melbourne, Shawn and Ange who are a couple from Dubbo, Shazia and Andy who are a couple from Sydney, Nick (Perth), Kate and Tegan (QLD) and Marg who is from Perth and me. It was an awesome group and we had such a great time together for our trip. I did a Gecko's tour (they are by far the most awesome tour company I have tried so far) and we basically did Cairo, caught an overnight train to Luxor then a 3 night riverboat cruise down to Aswan then caught the overnight train back to Cairo so was a fairly basic trip (10 days total) but managed to fit lots in.

Cairo: first day we just flew in and met everyone and all that stuff then second day we went and did the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and some temple that belongs to the second pyramid (as does the sphinx), we had a camel ride, then to a papyrus factory where it was so hard to choose because everything was so amazing and i wanted pretty much one of everything which is just so unusual for me ... not! hehe after that we went to the Egyptian Museum which was just amazing. You are not allowed to take cameras or anything inside the museum (i think because of security reasons) which was a bummer but it was just so interesting. The tour guide taking us around for the day was fantastic - he is the manager for gecko's in egypt and is an archaeologist as well and he spent something like 6 years learning about all the artificats in the museum so he was just totally fascinating. In there you saw a lot of the old jewellery and sarcophagus (sp?) and things from the tombs as well as a couple of mummies - there is a mummy room where you can see a whole bunch but you have to pay extra and they all look pretty much the same - lots of sphinxs and carvings and stuff which is just incredible when you consider some of the stuff they had in there was like 5000 years old or something - so cool. oh and the absolutely unreal stuff from the tomb of tutankamen (sp?) All of his stuff including his coffin things were made of solid gold and the value of stuff in that room alone was $82 billion usd. totally unreal hey. Our tour guide was saying that egypt was extremely safe place to be as apparently the population is 3:1 females so they have really harsh laws in place in order to protect people so like the death penalty is in force for things like murder, rape, stealing, etc etc. a pickpocket gets 25 years in jail regardless of age (so like a 6 yr old child could be sent to jail) and if you hit a pedestrian and kill them (in your car) you get either 5 years in jail or have to pay 250000 egyptian pounds to the person's family so as you can imagine they have a really low crime rate because it is not worth getting caught for anything. Made me feel a lot better about wandering around hearing about that anyways. There is also a lot of security guards, police etc everywhere especially like the tourist sites and things and there was armed guards at the hotel as well as metal detectors all over the place. Also because of the weather (between 40 - 45 degrees whole time we were there) people come out after the sun sets so they have a really big night life and activities and stuff because it is the most comfortable time to be out and about. I thought it was really amazing. Anyways Cairo was really interesting with all that stuff although the polution is just disgusting, our trip to the pyramids you couldn't even see them on the way there (early morning) although on the way back we could see them from about 15 miles away once the smog had burnt off. It was kinda disgusting but I suppose since people have been living there for over 5000 years you have to expect bad pollution.

Luxor: we caught the overnight train to luxor from cairo however it wasn't a sleeper train just chairs so some of the guys had trouble with that however I slept just fine in case you were wondering. Got to Luxor and we wandered around, saw the markets which were kind of interesting - lots of the guys sit outside their stalls and try to get you to come in and have a look. They were really good at guessing where everyone was from too and i totally cracked up when one guy yelled to Tegan "G'day Sheila hows it hanging?" i totally lost it! Points for effort on that one i thort *grin* Went and had a look around the shops and things and then did a silver and gold shop so everyone could spend lots of money and then that afternoon we went to the Karnak Temple. The Karnak temple is like the biggest in egypt and had a lot of different periods were stuff had been added and demolished etc. The interesting thing here was our tour guide telling us how the egyptian civilisation fell which is basically the Kings or Pharoahs ran the country but the Priests were the guys who knew everything so they did like the mummies, pyramid building, temples, medicine, science, astronomy and the gods etc but at some stage a king basically decided the priests had too much power so started killing them and putting new priests in so then the priests got mad and destroyed all the written stuff (like on walls, statues etc etc) and everything they knew was then kept orally so they passed it down so then they were really important but then later on another king didn't believe in any of (the gods etc etc) so had all of the priests killed and with them all their knowledge and egypt basically fell and even know there are heaps of mysteries in egypt that modern science can't figure out. For eg in the temple of abu simbel in the holy of holies bit there is two days per year that the sun reaches this spot and the sun shines on the statue of ramses ii and the god ra. The days it goes on there was like the kings birthday or something (can't remember exactly) but it was pretty freaky especially since it was all done on ancient astronomy and still works today. Cool eh. hmmm sorry getting pretty long but anyways - that night we went to dinner and i tried the saseesh (sp?) which is the water pipe and they have different flavoured tobacco stuff on it so you don't actually inhale this stuff it is all about just the taste - it was way fun. the next day I woke up before the sun ... i know who would have thort hey but we did the hot air ballooning in luxor which is apparently a must do activity. so got up while it was still dark and went over to the west bank to go hot air ballooning for like 50 mins - it was pretty amazing i don't think i have seen a sunrise since i was a teenager hehe. after that (what a full day already) we did a donkey ride into the valley of the kings which is where the tombs of kings where (the ones who didn't get a pyramid that is) the tombs were pretty amazing although they obviously weren't ventilated so not the most comfortable place in the world. they have a lot of hieroglyphics and stuff on the walls and ceilings and were quite interesting. All of the tombs were graverobbed thousands of years ago (except for tutankamen which is now in museum) so not a lot to see inside but still really interesting.

Aswan: ok from luxor we got onto our riverboat cruise and basically floated down the nile for a while, it was good fun, onboard we ate (a lot) drank (not too much cos nothing was ever cold) and chilled out heaps, the pool was kind of small and it was really hot on the top deck although there was about 40 poland tourists who broiled themselves up there every day. One night we did a dress up like egyptian theme which was just hilarious and then played games and basically had an awesome night which ended with some people being thrown in the pool (i was wearing white and threatened very convincingly of imminent death if i went swimming) although it was heaps of fun just hanging out and stuff. Shazia and Leiana kidnapped me before hand and then straightened my hair and applied make up (i think they were a bit shocked that i didn't own any make up at all - i said i was pretty sure i had a lip gloss somewhere but they were not impressed *grin*) it was great. Aswan we did a day trip to Abu Simbel which is the famous temples that were carved out the hillside and then moved when the high dam was built (50's, 60's or 70's - can't remember) the effort was something like 86 million usd for all the temples and things they moved when they damed the nile which is absolutely huge. anyways once again had to wake up early *sob* and then it was a 3hr bus ride (as part of a convoy with a police escort) from aswan but totally worth it.

Anyways this is really prety long by now but as you can tell I thort egypt was just fabulous. Totally worth visiting if you were ever thinking of it doing it because it is unreal. I organised everything before hand with gecko's (extra night acomm and transfers to airport) which was great because cairo in particular is pretty chaotic and the driving is absolutely unbelievable - and please remember that i had just been to rome, athens, vietnam and turkey and i still thort the driving was ridiculous. mm hmm so would sooner die than ever drive in the country (probably would anyways) but getting around was cheap enough and it was fantastic.

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Photos

Pyramid
Pyramids of Giza, just outside of Cairo

The three pyramids
The 3 famous pyramids at giza. Our tour guide said there is actually 97 pyramids total in Egypt ... who knew?

Sphinx & 2nd pyramid
The sphinx belongs to the second pyramid - each pyramid had a sphinx tho' so the ones for the other pyramids may still be buried around there somewhere.

Us at dinner
This is us at our dinner thing having a sheesha pipe - was great fun. Back L-R Kate, Marg, James, Nick, Sean, Andy; Middle: Ange, Shazia; Front Leiana, Aaron, Sam our tour leader, me & Teagan.

Hot Air Ballooning
Went up in a hot air balloon in Luxor. Apparently it was on that show things to do before you die so had to be done really. It was absolutely amazing.

Sunrise
Yes that is correct - I got up before the sun one day to go hot air ballooning and here is proof!

Group
Here is my tour group - just an awesome bunch of people we had a great time. Here was our dress-up night on the rivercruise boat - was soo much fun.

Abu Simbel small temple
This was the temple belonging to Ramses II wife called Nefertiti who was Nubian queen. Very impressive these temples.

Abu Simbel
This is the main temple belonging to Ramses II. Both temples were moved to higher ground when they built the high dam. Total effort cost about $42 million USD. Just amazing.

Comments

[Daphne]

AWESOME
I am really really jealous, looks excellent. I hope you bought lots of souveniers(?). love you Daphne