Adventure Post: Egypt Tour Part 1

Jo found this nine-day Nile adventure tour online for under 700 USD (we paid more for a night train, but more on that later). It was mostly-inclusive, and we figured we might as well do the tour to really experience everything Egypt has to offer. We honestly had no idea how much was in Egypt nor anything substantial about Egyptology, so going on a tour seemed like a good idea to us. And we were not wrong. This was an excellent find.

Getting to Egypt was a long day, as detailed in the Tunis post. Once there, however, talk about culture shock! Not from the locals, food, customs, etc. That we were pretty well used to by now. The culture shock came from the tour company. Even though we got in at just after midnight, there was a tour representative waiting for us at the gate. Not after customs, at the gate! Right as we deplaned. He got us through customs, arranged for our bags, showed us where to pull local currency, and got us on our way to the hotel. No thinking required on our part (which was good, because neither of us could probably think straight enough to get us to the hotel after such a long day).

At the hotel, we were met by a tour representative, who gave us the summary of the tour, the next day's timelines, and even arranged for us to check into our room early that day (like, REALLY early, five in the morning early). That meant an included breakfast the next morning, which made Jack happy (seriously, he cannot walk past a pastry aisle...). Our room had two beds, wifi, hot shower, roaming cats and kittens, wait...well, it's true, anyways. It was a great arrangement, and we enjoyed it quite a bit. We even played a hotel room version of tennis with one of Jack's tennis balls (you can see a snipit of this when the vlog comes out!).

Later that night, we met with our group and guide. There were six girls on a birthday trip from Trinidad and Tobago, a mom-and-daughter couple from Canada, and the two of us in our group. Meena would be our tour guide. He had all the details for us, and clearly outlined the next day's itinerary for us. He would have his hands full with the ten of us the next several days!

Thus began the tour!

We kicked it off in Giza at the Pyramids, Sphynx, and Step Pyramid. There weren't a huge number of people there, but when we asked Meena when peak season way, he told us it was now. Tourism had taken a hit because of what was happening in Gaza, and there was an unrelatd immigration row between Egypt and Canada that caused a substantial dropoff in tours. While we felt bad for the local economy, that meant we would have to fight fewer crowds on our tour here, which we liked.

The pyramids themselves are massive from a distance, but seemed smaller up close than we would have thought. That said, getting a picture directly in front of them meant you were standing in front of a stone wall, because the cameras couldn't zoom out enough. The coolest pictures came from the corners of the pyramids, which the local peddlers had figured out, as they had staked their claims at the four corners for tourists' pictures. In the morning, the best pictures were from the back side of the Great Pyramid. There were fewer people there, you could see the the other two (or walk to them, if you so desired), and the sun wasn't casting a huge shadow off the pyramid, so you could get some great colours.

There was also somebody REALLY important walking around while we were there. He was in a suit, and he had a protective security detail wearing their 5.11 tactical tuxedos moving people out of the way. His motorcade was complete with what looked like a communications car and turret-mounted machine guns. We asked Meena who it was, but he brushed it off. Apparently these sorts of visits happen often enough at the pyramids that local tour guides hardly take notice anymore.

We also went to a hill off in the distance where we could see all three pyramids together in one frame. Some of the girls in the group went to ride camels and horses at this site. We had both done this before, so we decided to take in the scene and discuss how the aliens might have used the pyramids as landing pads (we were joking, of course, but there was a couple listening to us that was absolutely horrified that we actually believed this stuff (we don't, but they didn't know that!)). Jo also got a couple of great pictures holding the pyramids and of a camel with a tie.

If we thought the Pyramids were smaller in person, then the Sphynx definitely was. Of course, you are not allowed to get up close to it, so it may seem smaller from the platform. It is apparently good luck for women to take a picture "kissing" the Sphynx, so Jo got one of those. Meena told Jack not to, because it is a woman thing. As if we believed in such gender-normative stereotypes...which we did, so Jack didn't take the picture.

Egypt Joke: What are the two ways the Sphynx gets to see itself?

Answer: When women face away from it to check their makeup in hand mirrors and when people take selfies!

The Step Pyramid complex was huge. Unlike the Pyramids of Giza, the Step Pyramid looks more like the Mayan temples in Mexico, with successively smaller square platforms stacked on top of each other. This pyramid is considered "the earliest large-scale cut stone construction made by man," and was built by Imhotep in the 2600s BC. The pyramid is just one feature on a larger mortuary complex which served a number of roles in both life and death. There were active archaeological excavations going on just outside of the complex walls, so we didn't explore too much outside of them.

After the step pyramid, it was time to head to Aswan. Most our group took the night bus 14 hours to the hotel. One of the six flew, and the Canadian couple and we took the night train. With the exception of the toilet, it was a more than decent night train. The beds were comfortable, the coach attendent attentive, and the food wasn't bad at all (which was good for us, because we had our Thanksgiving dinner on the train). Unfortunately, whoever was in the cabin next to ours was smoking in the room, which made for an unpleasant night, especially for Jack on the top bunk. You win some, you lose some.

After a brief rest at the hotel, we headed to Philae Temple. This temple is situated on the Nile in an island complex and is only accessible by boat. It is actually not in its original location today. After the building of the Aswan Low Dam in 1920, the complex was repeatedly flooded, so the government preserved, catalogued, deconstructed, moved, and rebuilt the temple brick-for-brick to a nearby island. Unfortunately, this was not before the colours of the frescoes and reliefs were washed away.

Philae Temple was built in the 500s or 600s BC, and was abandoned in the 600s AD. Under Roman rule, the temple eventually ceased its Egyptian religious function was was steadily taken over by Christianity. Inside, you can see holes that were deliberately knocked into the reliefs. These were allegedly done by Christians defacing the portrayals of the pagan gods. Meanwhile, they inscribed their own etchings into the stone.

Outside of the main temple, there are smaller temples to individual gods, such as Hathor, Horus, and Isis. It seemed to us that at least one of the temples (maybe the Temple of Augustus?) was still used as a place of worship, as it was roped off. You could enter, but only if your removed your hat.

We had an easy next 24 hours compared to everyone else. We were on a budget, while everyone else was on a trip of a lifetime. So while they stayed out late for the optional Nubian dinner and got up RIDICULOUSLY early to visit Abu Simbel, we got plenty of sleep and relaxation. While it would have been cool to go to Abu Simbel and do all of the optional add-ons, we just couldn't justify it five months into a trip that would last, at this point, who knows how long. Plus, that's just a reason to come back, right?

That afternoon was chill. Once everyone was up, we took the promised felucca Nile cruise. We had a communal lunch and dinner, swam in the Nile (Jack even had to "rescue" a girl whose body was shocked by the cold when she jumped in), and got some great footage of cows, donkeys, dogs. Jo may or may not have had a few too many to drink at the bonfire that night and jumped over the bonfire...at least three times...and burned herself in the process. That maybe, might possibly have happened. Meanwhile, Meena showed us what a serious domino player looks like. Seriously, he was good, as good as a card shark in Vegas. Between him and Jo, they dominated Jack.

One thing about sleeping on the felucca was how accustomed we had become to communal living in hostels. From random noises to snoring to phones going off, most of it didn't bother us anymore. But for those not used to it, it really interrupted their sleep. Meanwhile, we didn't even notice that the boat had moved to the other side of the river or that the generator had gone off.

The next day we were off to Luxor. We started off visiting Kom Ombo, a unique temple symmetrically dedicated to two different Egyptian gods. Everything about this temple was even and mirrored. On one said, you had a temple to Sobek, the crocodile god of fertility and part of the trinity of world creators (with the other two being Hathor and Khonsu). On the other was a temple to Haroeris, or Horus the Elder, who was, among other things, the god of the sky and the fertile lands of Lower Egypt.

Interestingly, most of the reliefs that we saw throughout our time in Egypt were focused on the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt (the Southern and Northern kingdoms, respectively). Kom Ombo was no exception. Along one wall, we observed a long "list" of faceless individuals with their names etched under the heads. These were the enemies of Egypt, their faces erased to denegrate their place in Egyptian history. Talk about messaging to your enemies.

Something we caught onto at Kom Ombo was that the stones were cleanly cut across the top of the temple and not eroded naturally. There had clearly been human intervention. According to Meena, in the 1800s, there was a need for a sugar mill in the area. The rule of Egypt at the time decided that rather than make new materials, that the architect should use materials that already existed in the area, including the ancient Egyptian temples. There wasn't a focus on preservation at that time, and it seemed like the logical thing to do.

There was also a museum on the site dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god. Why him? Well, because during excavation, archaeologists found mumified crocodiles buried in the area! They were on prominent display at the museum. Talk about cool.

From there, we headed into Karnak and Luxor. For that, you'll have to read Part II!

Timeless Tours website

Google Photo Album