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Published: November 29th 2005
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Sweet Ride!
The chunk of metal that got us from Dakla all the way to Luxor Shane and I are now in Luxor. After watching a spectacular sunrise in the White Desert and a fine Egyptian breakfast, we headed to Farafra Oasis (another 40 km from the White Desert). We said our goodbyes to Mohammed and Ahmed (and tipped them very, very well to be sure!) before negotiating a minibus ride to Dakhla Oasis (a little over 300 km from Farafra, where we met a couple from Belgium). Luckily, our driver drove like a bat out of hell and we got to Dakhla in about three and half hours. There we left the couple from Belgium as well as Sandy and Ron. I had had enough of the sand, the flies, and the run down little towns - I wanted back to civilization (I am a city girl, after all!).
Shane and I negotiated a trip with a taxi driver (Abdola) all the way to Luxor (a seven hour trip for 450 LE in a old, beat-up, very smelly Peuguot). A taxi driver is the only way to directly get to Luxor from Dakhla; there is a train once a week but it had already left that morning. Otherwise, the route is very circuitous, going over
Hotel Nefertiti
Our hotel room (yes it is messy - we messed it up before I could get a picture). 400 km out of the way. Our driver was very eccentric and annoyed the hell out of us. He would honk continuously throughout the trip for no apparent reason and make these strange exclamations in English that we couldn't understand. It sounded like he was also saying "Beep, beep, beep!" and then also honk his horn. I was ready to throttle him about halfway through the trip.
After all the stops at the police checkpoints along the way (there were many!) and enduring the police not being able to make up their minds if the road to Luxor was closed or not (we were always shuffled through after some kind of delay though), we finally made it to Luxor at 11:30 pm. We crashed at the popular backpacker Hotel Nefertiti for 50 LE.
This morning was tough to get up. Shane and I are seriously lacking sleep and we have travelled across the country in a week. Crazy but there is lots to see! We have little time to cram in everything we want and wanted to spend as little amount of time travelling as possible so we went to Thomas Cook today and arranged various flights (return
Luxor Temple
Shane touching one of the sphinxes in the Avenue of Sphinxes at the Luxor Temple. trip from Aswan to Abu Simbel on November 30, Luxor to Sharm El-Sheikh on December 1 and from Sharm El-Sheikh to Cairo on December 4). In addition, Shane and I decided to splurge majorly on a two night stay at the very famous Oberoi Mena House in Cairo for Shane's birthday. It is $280 US a night if booked on its website and $290 CAN a night if booked on Destina's website. In country, however, we for it for $150 US a night with breakfast. Although it is our choice not to spend a lot of money on accomodations most of the time (we are hardly in our room), it will be nice to relax in a beautiful room with a pool with views of the pyramids.
Luxor is very beautiful and we had great views of it from the rooftop of our hotel. It was very picturesque and cleaner than Cairo. I was in love with it! However, my love affair was very brief. It was not long before we were descended upon en masse by the tourist touts. You cannot walk two steps without someone harassing you. According to our guidebook, Luxor is the harassment capital of
Luxor Temple
The Avenue of the Spinxes and Luxor Temple. Egypt and we agree!
We took a leisurely look around the Luxor Temple which is very close to our hotel. The Luxor Temple was largely built by the New Kingdom pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was absolutely stunning and it must have been very grand in its time. Shane simply loves scrambling around these temples and ancient monuments in Egypt. He wants to be referred to and will only respond to "Indy" from now on.
We visited the Luxor Museum in the evening - what a huge improvement over the Cairo Museum, which was in disarray. The Luxor Museum is very modern and all its exibits are carefully laid out and captioned. It was nice to understand what we were looking at! Although no photos were allowed, Shane and I managed to capture a couple of ancient statues on the insistence of one of the guards for baksheesh. Ah, the wonders of baksheesh!
Tomorrow, Shane and I have a busy day with viewing the necropolis on the West Bank. We will be up early to meet our private driver at 7:00 am!
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manish
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the land of mummies
Is already luring you to come,dissolve and experience the gone era>>>