| Submitted by: Patrick Tarnay, United States |
| Submission Date: 04 February 2005 |
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Took some great photos, but our previous visits to the British Museum & the Louvre probably contributed to our abbreviated tour. The jewel of the museum was undoubtedly King Tut's collection. The 'mummy room' was a costly 40LE each. No photos, or talking allowed. Temperature controlled cases leave a creepy feeling of death. Worth the cash!
We leave the museum at 12:00pm for lunch to find a crowd of taxi-hawkers to rival the Tijuana border. We feel slightly guilty in our ability to knock off the Egyptian Museum in less than 3 hours. The British & Louvre Museums have somehow amassed a large chunk of ancient Egyptian artifacts that can rival the Egyptian Museum itself. Sad, but true for sure.
Head back to hotel with sore legs and feet. The pain of the nonstop walking around Cairo and the Giza animals begins to set in. Sleep for a few hours knowing that we will need our legs for Luxor tomorrow.
Sleep for two hours and head out alone to find Linda a blow-dryer that will fit the non-European electrical socket. I'm anxious to hit the downtown Cairo streets solo and ready for the challenge. I join the locals daring to cross the speeding streets. I need cash and end up on a three bank tour. At the second bank I was referred to a clearly busy man behind a counter. Understanding my ATM request he took at least 4 minutes of his time to write down a quick map and write the address of the bank in English & Arabic. He gets a well deserved 'shokran gazillan' (thank you very much). Perfect map!
I bounce around the streets of downtown for another hour to finally find a shop that sells blow-dyers, 40LE. Funny thing, I don't get the long stares I receive when I'm with Linda. Egyptian men like to stare at women, but they seem to be intrigued even more by both of us together on the subways & streets.
I finally have a chance to explain a bit about Arab culture. Prayers are announced over loudspeakers throughout the afternoon, evening, and the inconceivable 4:00am prayer call. We find later that all prayer calls are read live by separate speakers in each mosque. With a mosque on almost on every corner, the loudspeaker prayers can bleed together. Either way the prayers are very loud, but only one 4:00am prayer would wake us. We must admit our feelings of disappointment at these prayers, especially after finding the prayer readers are paid by the mosque, which in turn are funded by the government. No peace for any other religion in Egypt.
Tonight's dinner is another ethnic restaurant, the guide book recommended 'Le Bistro'. Very nice atmosphere. Decent food served by their French & English speaking Egyptian staff, 70LE after tip.
Getting into a taxi in front of the nearby tourist filled 'Felfella' restaurant we are interrupted by a guy trying to get us into the restaurant. We tell him we just ate at 'Le Bistro' and he soon finds out where we are from the U.S. 'America? You must meet my good American friend'. Literally dragging me into the restaurant, he shows me a photo on the wall of Jimmy Carter. We laughed and he actually let us go on our way. I figured we would come back to eat here when we returned after Luxor. However we would never return to the 'felfella' after seeing this 'friend' just 6 days later.
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Good night sleep, wake up at 5:00am to catch a 7:30am flight to Luxor, Egypt. We make arrangements at the front desk for Friday pick-up at Cairo Airport and we're off.
Much to my surprise and Linda's sudden recollection, we have 1st Class tickets to Luxor. Only $20 US extra each for the round trip. Service was wonderful, but I had to wonder about the pilots' opinions of their comrade Gamil al-Bahtouti. The suspected suicidal Egypt Air pilot of Flight #990 (10/31/99). Call it American media & flight paranoia all mixed up into worthless stress, but I'd kill to for 30 minutes of private conversation with our three pilots. 1st Class offers a TV screen showing plane's progressing position on a map of Northern Africa, with elevation updated every 30 seconds. Only 50 minutes (2 days by boat)!
Negotiate half-assed to get a 25LE after tip cab fare to our hotel. Decent contemporary room with bed lamps and refrigerator, only 80LE ($22 US/night). Found out later we could have negotiated the room rate even lower, but we'll nickel&dime elsewhere. We unpack as quickly as possible to hit the unreal Karnak Temple. We arrange an expensive horse carriage driver to take us three miles down the road, wait for two hours, take us to McDonald's, then back to our hotel (55LE). By the way, our hotel manager played the middleman between us and the carriage driver, Mustafa. Upon our return to the hotel, the same manager asks us if we want to take his tour of Luxor's West Bank tomorrow. Needless to say, we decline.
That aside, Karnak was tremendous to say the least. This 4,000 year old temple is not as famous as it should be. Very large, very impressive! Unfortunately there is no way to take a photo that shows just how many monster columns this temple holds. Over 100 columns at least 15 feet in diameter. Hyrogliphs from the ground to the top of these 60ft tall columns. The avenue of the sphinxes leads into the entrance, which used to lead three more miles to the entrance of Luxor Temple. The feeling of getting lost amongst these columns was fantastic!
Crash back at the hotel for a bit then hit the 'Corniche', Luxor's main drag along the Nile's East Bank. With felucca boat, horse carriage, and taxi hawkers every 5 steps, we're intrigued by one guy offering a felucca ride. He is adorned in a Muslim robe speaking fluent English. '10LE each for one hour' he announces. Sounds good, this includes his sailing assistant.
Our felucca captain's name is 'Tyeb'. He is very calm & collected and interested in our future tourism in Luxor. He tells us his brother can give us a driven tour of Luxor's West Bank, home of most of Luxor's attractions. His ridiculously low price of 60LE cannot be a scam, so we decide to meet Tyeb & his brother at a tea house 2 hours later at 6:00pm. 30LE after tip for 1 ¼ hour felucca tour. The Nile sail was very relaxing, recommended, and obligatory.
We meet up with Tyeb at 6:00pm, drink tea, and smoke a honey flavored tobacco shish pipe (bong). 30 minutes later his brother 'Mohammed' arrives with a large smile and pure fluent English. He is also clad in a fashionable Muslim robe. He is very charismatic, and down to earth. We spend almost another 1 ½ hours discussing social differences between our two cultures. Both brothers are well spoken in English, French, and German, all of these languages are taught in their secondary schools.
Mohammed mentions a possible stop at a papyrus shop, so we quickly tell him that we're not interested. 'Okay, no problem', he assures us. They then convince us to join them for dinner at the West Bank, 'Tut-Ankh-Amon' (King Tut).
We order 'safe' chicken dishes with fresh bread & Bobaganoush. The brothers leave for 30 minutes while we eat. Mohammed & Tyeb admit they enjoy a beer every now and then, 'bad Muslims' they proclaim (dinner = 50LE after tip). Arrange meeting time with Tyeb the next morning to take us across the Nile to the famous West Bank's temples and tombs.
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We meet Tyeb at exactly 9:00am, hop an a motorboat where Mohammed and his Peugeot wait for us on the West Bank. A quick stop at the ticket 'shack' in order to purchase all of the day's tickets. Don't understand how one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world can sell its tickets out of a shack with no service personnel to help you.
Back in the car we head to our first stop the Temple of Ramses III. Once a huge temple is now only about 50% intact, but still impressive with only a couple of German tourists. 20 minutes is plenty of time.
Second stop is the Valley of the Queens. Much of our memories of these two tombs are blended together. Not one tomb stood out as breathtaking, but they were beautiful and a good warm-up for the tombs of Valley of the Kings.
Third stop - Surprise, an Alabaster shop. As mentioned earlier, we declined Mohammed's suggestion of a stop a papyrus shop. Thus we find ourselves at an alabaster shop. Alabaster is an ancient Egyptian man-made rock mixture used in the construction of many of their remaining structures. We're shown a quick demonstration by the shop's workers of how alabaster is compiled. Then the game begins. A salesman shadows us while we browse the store. The employee's American references of 'Mambo #5' & 'Clinton' remind of us of the pressure situation we're in. I decide to make everyone happy by choosing a small Onyx vase. The employee starts his bidding at $110 US. I laugh and begin with a generous bid of $20 US. After 30 minutes of Arabic bickering between Mohammed and the employee, we decline and walk out. The sale is finally made at $30 US when Mohammed puts the car in reverse. Even though I haggled the salesman down almost 300%, I was later quoted the same price at the Nile Hilton (set price, no haggling). The salesman passes us three cheap necklaces through our car window as we drive away. A gigantic smile upon his face! We wonder what percent Mohammed receives. 45 minutes for a $30 US sale.
5th Stop - Hatshepsut Temple. Extremely crowded with tourists and crap peddlers. Huge, beautiful temple, but tough to snap a good photo with hundreds of tourists surrounding you throughout. The temple was built into the mountains with three separate levels, 3,600 years ago. Not even the pictures we took could give justice to the size and beauty of this masterpiece. This is also the spot of a massacre of 70 tourists in 1997. Egypt, especially Luxor tourism has yet to recover from this catastrophe. Asked about the massacre, Mohammed said the murderers were killed (didn't specify method). Then he spoke of his sadness for the victims and Luxor's economy in this 'political' mess.
6TH Stop- Valley of the Kings, home of the 'Pharaohs' Treasures'. With your ticket purchase you are allowed entrance into just 3 of the 7-8 open tombs.
All 3 of the tombs' walls are lit up from below to illuminate the vibrant drawings because flash photography is not allowed. This causes photo taking dilemmas because the lights are too bright. The lower halves of the walls don't develop clearly. Only the ceilings are fully developed. The amount of tourists posing for their own photos doesn't help either.
First tomb is Ramses III - great start to our 3 tomb tour. Hyrogliphs and huge drawings with amazing intact colors, blanket 100% of the walls. My only photo ticket was taken away at the entrance (should have bought two more).
Second tomb is Seti II - absolutely nobody within the tomb (good & bad ). Knowing I was out of photo tickets I tried to tip the guard 2LE, but he told me the price of a photo ticket is 5LE. I couldn't argue with the set price. So after giving him 6LE, we have a new friend. The only guard leaves his post to follow us throughout the tomb. He constantly points out photo angles and says 'flash okay', but I keep my flash off. He takes a photo of us together with Seti II's sarcophagus. More 'baksheesh' was asked for, but nothing more would come his way.
Third stop is the tomb of Ramses IV - The most amazing of all the tombs we have visited on the West Bank. |
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