Egypt Impressions

Hey folks, I just got back from Egypt last Tuesday. Hell, this was the most interesting trip I ever made! I traveled the whole country by bus, by cab and even by ship and have seen everything from Hurghada to Luxor to Aswan and Cairo.

After arriving at Hurghada airport, I stayed at the Palm Beach Resort for a night and got transferred through the desert by bus to Luxor the next morning where I checked-in to one of the Nile cruisers, in fact the Nile Crown III. The ship left the next morning so I decided to take a coach ride with some other travelers I met at the ship.

The ship passed the Lock of Esna, where some sellers on their little boats threw clothes and other stuff on our deck for sale. I ‘accidently’ threw it back into the Nile …
Right after lunch we arrived in Edfu, where we visited the Temple of Edfu – It’s one of the biggest and best preserved Temples in Egypt.
The ship left Edfu the same day and headed towards Kom Ombo, while we passengers spent the evening at a Carabea dance night.

We arrived in Kom Ombo at around midnight, right in front of the Temple. So I decided to walk around the well lit temple a bit. You couldn’t leave the secured harbor, but nevertheless I got an impression of the locals. (I got way deeper knowledge of the Egyptians in Aswan and Luxor, but more about that later on…)
The next morning I visited Kom Ombo as part of the sightseeing package I stupidly ordered.

After we got back, the ship left Kom Ombo heading directly towards Aswan, where we already arrived at 3pm of day 4 of my 14-Day trip. The ship anchored in front of a tomb group which we decided to hike on our own later in the evening, after we got back from the sightseeing tour through Aswan. We visited the unfinished obelisk, drove across the Old Dam and visited the new High Dam which dams up the Lake Nasser reservoir.
To get to the tomb group we hired a Feluke which brought us directly to the riverside at the foot of the tomb group. The armed guards in front of a fence wanted a huge amount of backschisch (Arab for tip) to let us hike the mountain, because it was already getting dark and they needed to ‘turn the lights on’. We understood what they meant when we were back at our ship. But it was definitely worth the extra money (about 15€ per person), the guard, which now became our tour guide, unlocked tombs which are actually not open to the public.

On the next day (Day 6), I made a boat trip to a traditional Nubian Village. This trip was so worth the money, I actually wanted to do it again . Although the village became more tourism oriented during the last 5 years (according to a friend which has been to Egypt several times), it was great. We stopped at a camel flock and took a bath in the Nile behind Aswan.
Our ship left Aswan the same night, heading back towards Luxor at full speed and arrived there after an 8h stop at the Lock of Esna at around lunch.

I didn’t want to stay at the ship for the rest of the day, so I and a few other people took a cab to the Bazaar of Luxor. I’ve already been to the Bazaar in Aswan two times, but the Bazaar I visited in Luxor was definitely not tourism oriented. Everyone looked at us It was a great experience. At least until we reached the end of the Bazaar! We didn’t want to walk back through the Bazaar so we decided to walk around it, which really was a bad Idea. I think we walked through a radicals neighborhood or so, because we got surrounded and have been called names. Luckily a taxi driver came along and helped us. I directly went to bed, because we had to get up very early…

… the next day to visit the Valley of the Kings, the Hatshepsut Temple and the Memnon Colissi. We were back at the ship for lunch and spent the rest of the day  on deck, while enjoying the sun.

On the 9th day we again drove through the Egyptian desert, back to our Hotel in Hurghada.

Without even having unpacked our baggage, we already took a public bus for just 70 L.E. (which is less than 10€), to go to Cairo at 8am on day 10. It really was a public bus. We were the only 4 tourists at the bus and we had to listen to the prayers at the radio for almost two hours. Not that it got silent afterwards. No, then they turned on the TV and we had to watch Arab comedy for the other five hours of our seven hour journey to Cairo. We sadly arrived two hours delayed at 5pm, rented a taxi for the whole day and hurried to the Egyptian museum, where we stayed for about 45min. To our bad it wasn’t the Egyptian museum that closes at 6pm, but the Pyramids! So when we arrived there at about 6:30pm, the guards won’t let us in anymore. Backschisch didn’t help either
So we decided to get dinner at the KFC right in front of the Pyramids and watched the Pyramids Light Show from the terrace of a restaurant.
Our bus back to Hurghada left at 11:30pm. I couldn’t even get a minute of sleep, because the Arab people are very night active. We had to watch even more Arab comedy…

… and arrived at our Hotel at 7am. I spent the day asleep at the beach.
Which was pretty much all I did the next three days: Staying at the beach and relaxing.
I went to the Bazaar in Hurghada, but Hurghada is, as soon as you leave the tourism areas, a very ugly and dirty city. Left construction sites everywhere… The Bazaar is also very small.

On day 13 we joined a snorkeling trip to the Giftun island. That was a nice finish.

On day 14 we had to check-out at 12am, but were only transferred to the airport at 4:30pm. So we spent the rest of the day at and in the pool.
When arrived at the airport, some security jerk won’t let me enter the airport building. I stupidly showed him my tickets, whereas everyone else just showed there IDs. My Check-In desk wasn’t open so I should wait outside… I asked a bunch of Englishman, that also had to wait outside and it turned out that they were already waiting for two hours! So I wanted to talk to that security guy again, but his English was really bad so he just shaked his balls and played around with his gun. To my luck his so called ‘Big Boss’ came along and after a long discussion I could enter the airport and go through the first security check to the check-in.

Take some time to watch the pictures with a small explanation or watch the Flickr Set or Slideshow with even more pictures. I’ll share some tips I got to know about saving money and dealing with the locals Egypt below.

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