May 2015 – Page 3 – David and Yanmei

May 26, 2015May 26, 2015

Luxor

From Aswan to Luxor we decided to take the train. This way we could see the countryside along the Nile. Some people recommended against this. One guide recommended we hire a car and drive to Luxor. In fact Egypt Rail will not sell tickets to foreigners for most trains. We arranged for the hotel to buy tickets for us, 1st class. We had two options 7am or 3pm. I voted for 7am because I thought Luxor has more interesting stuff. Yanmei agreed to go on the 7am train, only later did I find out she really wanted to stay in Aswan longer. 🙁 Anyway, 1st class from Aswan to Luxor is only 40 Egyptian pounds (~$5.30 US).

The train was old and dirty, but the first class seats were roomy and the car had air conditioning, which is important. Yanmei took some great pictures. The train is nice because you can see the scenery and normal life along the banks of the Nile, outside the tourist spots. The donkey is still a popular means of transport outside the cities. Yanmei was having fun counting the donkeys.

It was about 3.5 hours ride to Luxor and the train was on time. As soon as we got off the train we were approached by what Yanmei calls a “tourist hunter”, similar to what happened in Cairo airport. She hates these guys thinking they are just trying to get our money. I see them as hustling to make a living in a severely depressed economy. We did end up using his taxi to drive us to the Luxor Hilton.

After checking in we went to one of the hotel restaurants for lunch. After ordering one of the staff came over and suggested we move to a lounge upstairs because they were doing maintenance on the dining room we were in. So we went upstairs. This wasn't to Yanmei's liking, she felt it was dirty, and to make her point she wiped her white napkin on the arm of her chair and it left a big dark streak on the napkin. I also had two dead bugs on my napkin. So we went back downstairs. By the way we were the only ones in either location even though it was right around noon. Hardly anyone staying at the Hilton. Finally they brought the food and the portions were too small. Suffice to say Yanmei was not impressed with the Hilton. She was already in a bad mood from the tourist hunter and this didn't help at all.

After lunch I wanted to take a tour. This is why I wanted the early train, so we'd have 1.5 days in Luxor instead of one. There are tons of sites to see. Yanmei wasn't interested so I went by myself on a tour of Karnak and Luxor temples.

The Karnak temple complex was build over the course of more than a thousand years. They kept adding more until they got conquered and stopped. This is why the left wall is lower than the right, it is not finished. Inside is still the remnants of the mud brick ram they used to build the wall.

Remnant of mud brick ramp, and on the left an unfinished column

The temple complex is massive and impressive.

Section of remaining roof, painted blue with stars

The Obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut is interesting. When her husband the pharaoh died, her six year old son was supposed to become king. Because he was so young she usurped him and ruled Egypt for 18 years, during which time she raised this obelisk. When she died and her son finally became king, he wanted revenge on her so he destroyed many of her works. However the obelisk is a monument to the gods so he couldn't destroy it without offending them, so he ordered a huge wall built around it so no one could see it. Ironically this is why it is the best preserved obelisk today.

After Karnak we went to Luxor Temple. My guide told me they used to have a monthly parade from Karnak to Luxor carrying an idol of the god Amun on a wooden boat down a road lined with rams head sphinxes. They are currently working on recreating this road between the two temples. It is about 2.7km and they had to demolish several buildings.

Entrance to Luxor temple, the missing obelisk is in Paris

Over the centuries Luxor temple was covered with sand. Although they must have known something was there, because the tops of the obelisks were not buried, they built a mosque on top of the temple in about 1200 AD.

Door to the mosque showing the depth to which the temple was buried

Temple wall added by Alexander the Great when he conquered Egypt

Another long day in Egypt!

I went back to hotel and we had dinner at the asian restaurant. Yanmei was not impressed by the wok fried vegetables. I think the hotel staff was becoming afraid of her because they brought out a second serving for free.

-David

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May 25, 2015May 25, 2015

Temple of Abu Simbel

The whole purpose of coming to Aswan was not to see the dam, but to visit the Temple of Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is 280km further south of Aswan, near the Sudan border. To get there you need to take a car. There are two tourist convoys across the desert per day from Aswan to Abu Simbel, and they have police escort for safety. The first convoy leaves at 4am to beat the heat of the day. The second convoy leaves at 11am. I wanted to take the first convoy so we'd be back by 1pm or so, but Yanmei didn't want to wake up that early, so we scheduled for the second convoy.

The second convoy is less popular, and was low season, so they didn't want to send a police car. Instead they asked us if the police officer could ride in our car. I'd read about this possibility online so I agreed, although I'm not sure what would have happened if I said no. I felt like they were asking as a courtesy. The policeman rode in the front seat with Yanmei and I in the back. He had a compact sub machine gun, after googling it later I think it was a Heckler & Koch UMP with folding stock. Most of the police seem to have AK-47s, but this was much easier to travel with in a car.

We left Aswan through a checkpoint and headed towards Abu Simbel. Our driver Usama told us we were the lead car in a three car convoy. The road goes away from Lake Nasser so we were surrounded by desert. I've read that Aswan is the third driest town in the world with less than 1 millimeter of rain per year, but at least they have the Nile. Out in the desert there is nothing. It isn't like the Arizona desert where there are scattered cactuses and hardy plants. In the Egyptian Sahara there is nothing but sand and stone, not one single weed or anything.

Finally we arrived at Abu Simbel. We let the policeman out at a checkpoint. At this point Yanmei finally noticed he had a gun and became nervous. We continued to the Temple. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the convoy because we were the only car to arrive there.

The driver told us to be back by 3:45pm. After three hours in the car we wanted to use the bathroom. Yanmei rushed off ahead to use it. After using it, of course there was a guy who wanted to be tipped. Unfortunately I had no small change. After arguing for a while I asked if he had change, he only had chinese money so I assumed Yanmei had tipped him, I said I'd come back later. I started looking around for Yanmei. Suddenly she came running downtown the path shouting “David! David!”. I could see she was frightened. She'd gone back up to the car, and it was gone, so she started thinking I was kidnapped and she was abandoned. So she was pretty glad to see me. 😉

Once again we had the place to ourselves. There were not even many vendors to bother us. The Temple itself is pretty spectacular. It was build by the pharaoh Ramses II as a temple to himself in about 1264 BC. There is also a smaller one built for his wife Nefertari.

Temple to Nefertari with 4 statues of Ramses and 2 of Nefertari

No pictures allowed inside, but you can see a bit of the interior

Inside are various inscriptions depicting Ramses II winning battles and being treated as an equal by the gods. The ceilings are high and it is very spacious. There were no photos inside and they were pretty strict because they wanted to sell us pictures of the inside.

The temples were completely buried in sand and lost until rediscovered in 1817. Unfortunately some explorers or travelers carved graffiti into the stone, you can see some dates in the 1800s.

The other interesting thing is both temples were actually moved in the 1960s. Originally they were on the bank of the Nile and they would have been flooded by Lake Nasser when the Aswan dam was built, so they moved them back and up 200m from the original location. That must have been a massive project. The broken statue occurred from an earthquake in 27BC, not the relocation effort.

Finally we returned to our car for the trip back to Aswan. No policeman ride with us this time, instead we seemed to be giving a ride to some random guy. Anyway the trip was uneventful. We did get to see sunset in the desert, but it was remarkably dull with no real colors.

-David

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May 24, 2015May 24, 2015

To Aswan

Friday we had a flight to Aswan for the next leg of our journey. Egypt is going to be busy for us, lots of stuff to see and not much time to rest. We got to the domestic terminal at the airport, but we couldn't figure out where to get our boarding passes. Finally we asked someone and they told us we had to go through security first, then we could get our boarding passes. Strange, but turned out to be correct. Anyway it was only a one hour twenty minute flight to Aswan airport.

We needed to take a taxi to our hotel. We were booked at Sofitel Legend Old Cataract hotel. We went outside (much hotter in Aswan by the way) to look for a taxi, but there were no taxis, only guys with cars. Of course we were approached right away. I told the first guy Sofitel and he said “Sofitel Old Cataract?” so I knew he knew it. Then Yanmei asked “How much?” and he said “How much do you want to pay?”. We didn't like that so we moved on.

Eventually we settled on a guy who actually had the word “taxi” stenciled on the side of his car. The car was an old Peugeot with no meter, no AC, and the speedometer was broken too. He basically spoke no English but I told him Sofitel several times and he nodded. After driving for a while Yanmei started to get nervous. I was too, but tried not to show it. We were in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of some random guy who didn't speak English. Yanmei said I should have had someone from the hotel meet us at the airport. Good idea, too bad I didn't think of that ahead of time.

I took out my phone and searched for the hotel on Google maps. I found we were on the major road heading towards the hotel, so it looked good. Then we got to the intersection where he was supposed to turn left, and he turned right! We tried telling him he was going the wrong way, even showed him the map on my phone, but he didn't understand. He said “Sofitel downtown”. We passed the train station and I wanted to get out there and call the hotel to send someone, but he kept going. We ended up going down this little alleyway, weaving around donkey carts before stopping in front of a dilapidated building and he said “Sofitel”. I looked at the sign and it said “Safa Hotel”. Oh, sounds like Sofitel. Yanmei was freaking out a bit, saying “no, no, no, we are in a five star hotel!” Finally I told him “Sofitel Legend Old Cataract”, and he understood, he said “Oh, Old Cataract.” So he took us back out and to the correct place. Phew!

After that mini adventure we checked into the hotel and had a late lunch at the hotel cafe before relaxing in our room. The hotel is quite nice, and we had a suite overlooking the Nile. The bathroom was bigger than one of the rooms we stayed at in Taiwan.

We both ended up falling asleep. I woke up around 7:30pm, which is shortly after sunset, but it was still sweltering outside. We decided just to stay in the room and relax for the evening.

-David

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