Wish you were here...

We're back from a whirlwind 5 day tour of the Nile valley and relaxing (if that's possible) in Cairo for a few days before we head off to London.

The tour was great. To avoid all the headaches of dealing with the pressure of hagglers every step of our trip, we decided to go with the untypical Eatburn route of "the package tour". It turned out to be good thing. We were looked after every step of the way and though it was very rushed, we had a good time.

It started off not so well, with Simon having his bag stolen from the luggage rack in the Cairo train station Luckily, there were mostly some very old worn out clothes in it, two game boys (which Kim and I won't miss), and a few souvenirs that can be replaced. After the theft, we were more watchful and slept on the train with our bags under our legs, and we had no more problems for the rest of the trip.

The Nile valley is the most populated part of the country for obvious reasons, and we passed through city after city, separated by date palm forests and farmland with sugar cane and corn fields. The lush growth lasted only a kilometer at the most, and beyond that was desert. It was very hot out, but we spent the night shivering on the train because the air conditioning was cranked up way too high.

We arrived in Aswan in southern Egypt the next morning and were whisked off to our hotel, where we had an hour or so for lunch before heading off on the first bit of our tour, which included the Nasser dam, and th Philae temple. The dam, as you can imaging, was a huge hit with the kids, who couldn't imagine why anyone in their right mind would spend time visiting a dam. The huge Nasser lake created by the dam ended up flooding out many of the inhabitants, both in Egypt and Sudan, and they all had to be relocated. All the crocodiles on the Nile were supposedly relocated as well, to Nasser lake, so our time spent swimming later on in the Nile was uneventful.

The visit to the temple was more interesting. Our tour guide was full of interesting facts and the temple, located on an island, was very beautiful. The carvings were incredibly intricate. The whole temple, along with a few others we visited later, had had to be moved as its original site was flooded by the dam.

The next morning, we were woken at 3 a.m. and rode for three hours to Abu Sembil temple (the one with the huge statues of Ramses the second) which is close to the Sudan border on the edge of Lake Nasser. It was a long trip but worth it. Luckily, we had the afternoon and next day to recuperate, as we spent the time relaxing on a felucca, an Egyptian sailboat, as we slowly made our way down the Nile. The sails were kept down most of the time as I think we had very little distance to cover and the captain of the boat, Ramadan, also known as "Captain Happy", also known as "Captain Dopey", a big fan of Bob Marley, wasn't in much of a rush to get anywhere. He was a very sweet guy, and despite his desire to follow in his hero's footsteps, we felt very safe and relaxed on his boat. We spent the days watching the banks of the Nile slip by, snoozing, eating and swimming. At one point, Maya and Lukas did some "body surfing" by holding on to a rope and being pulled by the boat. We also stopped at a few beaches, one of which had a huge mango orchard which the kids raided. We ate mostly on the boat, but had a nice supper with Ramadan's family in his village, chatting with his uncle as he smoked his "sheesha", the fruit flavoured tobacco smoked with a water pipe. His young niece really wanted to henna my hands. Here, they dip your fingertips in henna and put a bit on your palms, which looks quite nice. She was quite inexperienced and refused help from her mom, so my entire hands were covered in the stuff and turned out looking pretty messy, but it's wearing off quickly and I didn't mind because it made her happy.

The next morning, we visited a few more temples at Kom Ombo and Edfu, of which I remember very little except for some crocodile mummies and a very strange young man who was traveling with us. He was on some sort of spiritual journey and was dressed in black robes. At one of the temples, he started chanting in some strange language at the top of his lungs. It was quite amusing.

We arrived in Luxor later that afternoon, and decided to turn down the offer of more temple visiting and instead relaxed in our hotel. The kids vegged out in front of satellite tv and a few dips in the pool while Kim and I explored the city a bit. It's quite beautiful, with a huge temple in the middle of the town and a nice boardwalk along the Nile with fancy four star hotels and lots of cruise ships.

Yesterday, we ended our tour with a visit to the valley of the Kings and the Valley of the queens, where we went into several tombs which were built into the side of a mountain. The rooms inside were incredibly beautiful. We also visited an alabaster factory, where for th e first time in my life I was asked to tip a man because he had sold me something. I was also asked to tip someone for telling me where a good restaurant was. The kids and Kim had had enough after the morning tour, but I went on one last tour of the temple of Karnac, Egypt's largest temple, built and added to by several different Kings, each trying to outperform the last one. It was very impressive. My tourmates included a young Japanese woman who liked making flamboyant poses, her arms outstretched, in front of the different parts of the temple.

We took another freezing night train home and have spent most of today recuperating from our trip. We'll do a bit more sightseeing over the next few days, then we're off to London on Monday.

That's all for now,

Take care,

Barb