Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Last night I started showing signs of dysentery. A fun topic at best. Not. Last night’s dinner was not the culprit though as I was feeling a bit ill before we visited the Nubian Village. But it blossomed into full blown dysentery before I went to bed. It carried through the night and I couldn’t stay out of the bathroom for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Back home it is nicknamed, “Montezuma’s Revenge”. Mo tells me it is called, “The Curse of The Pharaohs”. So be it.

So this morning I opted not to join the early morning tour to Abu Simbel, considering it had a 3.5 hour bus ride each way. So I stayed in bed and nursed myself along. When Elee got back from Abu Simbel in the afternoon, she tells me it was nice but not worth the long drive. I busy myself with what free time I can have out of my Stateroom and watch the Nile. It is very busy with riverboats and Felucca boats.

The River Nile is a very calm and smooth river. I am literally in denial for I can’t believe I am really here, even with the Pharaohs Curse. But yes, we are in De Nile, LOL.

Our riverboat set off down the Nile around 3 PM and headed for Kom Ombo. We arrived several hours later and the group visited Kom Ombo Temple, all lit up in the dark. I opted to stay on the boat and visit the bathroom regularly. The boat then sailed off to Edfu and served us an Oriental Dinner on board that looked marvelous, but I opted to go for the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast). Applesauce is the one ingredient that can’t be found on the ship.

There is a planned “Galabia Party” at 9 PM (Galabia are the long colorful Egyptian dresses) and I will try to go check it out to see what it is. But 9 PM comes and finds me in bed.

So, I’m back in my Stateroom, hoping to shake this ailment. The good news for today is our luggage has been found and delivered to our last hotel in Cairo and is being held for us. We will be back there on Sunday for one more night and we will get it then!

Good Night All!

Monday, October 17, 2022, Aswan

Today we awake, or should I say get up, for there wasn’t much sleeping on the train. The tracks in Egypt are such that at times we felt like we were back on the camels! But anyway, the car steward brings breakfast to our room around 7:30 AM. A slight bit more palatable than last night’s dinner, but mostly bread and weird spreadable cheeses.

We arrive in Aswan Station around 8 AM and we disembark to a Tour Bus that takes us to a river taxi and we arrive at Philae Temple around 10:30. Mo gives us the history of the Temple and turns us loose for a half hour. Our cameras are once again happy and we photograph the Temple and its Hieroglyphics. At one point it is sad to see that somewhere in history, some religious sects have desecrated some of the symbols as apparently offensive to them by scratching out the faces. This is not a unique thing to this temple but is prevalent in a lot of Egyptian ruins!

Feral cats vie for snack droppings and they seem very friendly. But I remember my words about them being feral and all I do is take their photo! Then the boat takes us back to the bus and we visit a Perfume Factory where most of the ladies and half the men go inside. I opt to stay on the bus as perfumes bother me. Vendor ladies outside the bus argue with each other to see who can try to sell their wares to us! The bus then takes us to our Riverboat that will be our home for the next 3 days. Our Stateroom is very spacious and Mo goes into town to pick up some items, one of which is a Power Converter for us since we still do not have our luggage.

We have a couple hours to rest before boarding another small boat (think African Queen) and head up the Nile for a stop at a Nubian Village for dinner where a family takes us in and cooks a tasty meal! On the way, we get to photograph Sunset on the Nile. Lots of Felucca Boats sail up and down the Nile and we are allowed and encouraged to sit on the roof of the boat!

In the Village we see camels and all kinds of vehicle transportation. The streets are lined with aggressive Vendors and if you even look at them they will follow you and hound you to buy something! But we manage to avoid them.

On the way back, there is another river taxi boat full of other tourists from our group and the two boats tie up to each other and the Africans on board start playing the drums and all the passengers dance! How many can say they partied on the Nile?

Back in our Stateroom it turns out the Converter Mo got for us works and we are on our way to charging computers so we can write this Blog! But it is time to turn in as we have a 4AM wake up call for a new adventure! Good night!

Sunday, October 15, 2022, Giza

After a fruitless attempt at contacting the airlines about our luggage, we finally retire and get a few restless hours of sleep before our alarm tells us that it’s 5 AM. This is the first real day of our Egyptian Tour and we pack up our bags and check out of our room by 6 AM. We get breakfast in the hotel restaurant and it is a buffet of tasty Egyptian food!

Then we board our Tour Bus promptly at 7:15 AM and set off is search of Pyramids. Our Guide, “Mo”, tells us we will head south for a half hour to the Saqqara Pyramid first in Cairo as we will be able to go inside without paying a fee and it will be a very interesting experience. So we arrive at Saqqara and we all have to get off the bus and walk through a security x-ray before reboarding the bus to drive up to the pyramid. There, Mo proceeds to give us a short history lesson on this pyramid and then we are ushered into a side entrance that is only one meter wide and one meter high. We have to crouch low and walk in for about 50-75 yards. When the room opens up, several people can actually stand up and the walls are totally covered in hieroglyphics that are spectacular.

We proceed through a couple more small passages into other rooms that are similarly adorned. The figures and symbols on the walls are still colored in paint like pigments from thousands of years ago! We are cautioned not to touch any of them as that would degrade their condition. So we are careful not to!

Finally back out into the sunlight, we let our eyes adjust from the dim flashlight illumination inside. We have most of an hour to walk around the site and let our cameras play. The place is magical! We are even directed to a side of the pyramid where we can point our cameras into a small 3 inch hole in the rock and get photos of a queens statue inside!

Soon we get back on the bus and head back to Giza the the Great Pyramid and its sisters. King Kyops was supposedly buried here. Parking lots adorn the area around the statuesque pinnacles where ours is only one of dozens of Tour Buses unloading tourists. But the area is huge and there is plenty of room for everyone! Mo again gathers us around him for a short history lesson before turning us loose on the mercy of our hungry camera lenses.

We walk around the Great Pyramid, which much to our dismay cannot be walked completely around due to ongoing excavation sites. So we get halfway around and have to walk back to see the other side where its sister pyramid stands, the one that still has part of a limestone cap on it that most of you recall when you see photos of the pyramids! Elee even manages to ‘touch’ the top of the Great Pyramid!

Our legs are complaining at all the hiking on uneven rock surfaces and Elee goes back to the bus. My camera snarls at me and indicates there is much more work to be done here! So I plod along finding more gems to keep the lenses happy. Finally satiated for at least a little while, I trek back to the bus in plenty of time but not before making sure my camera has a taste of camels in the foreground of the pyramids.

We now move on along to an optional Tour Point where there are fantastic views of all 3 pyramids at the same time. Then Mo takes the more adventurous of our lot for a short hike around a pile of rocks to find literally dozens of camels are resting all decked out with saddles ready to ride!

Yes, you guessed it, we are about to embark onto the backs of camels for a ride in the desert next to the pyramids! Now for those of you who have never ridden a camel, the trickiest part is hanging on while the camel stands up! We will find out later that staying on while the camel sits at the end of the ride is just as challenging! Lean back Don! Lean back!

The Egyptian guides walk our camels down a side trail next to the pyramids where our cameras are high on their own endorphins and the ride is amazing! I can’t wait until I start editing all the fun photos including close ups of camel faces taken from inches away. These magnificent animals jostle and jog each other, sometimes crunching our legs between them! But it is not painful, just a great experience! I won’t realize until later how many muscles I used in the short 20 minute ride!

Mo then directs the bus down a side road and before we know it, we arrive at the famous Sphinx and we get out and walk around this fantastic ruin! It is pretty spectacular to be here in person and my camera thanks me! Some tourists even pose in front of it by doing handstands!

After all of the days excitement, it is only 3 PM. We now arrive at Sphinx Sun Restaurant for a late lunch of delicious Egyptian food! Mo then takes us back to the hotel and has arranged for 3 rooms that we can use to take quick showers even though we are not checked in anymore. We check for our lost luggage, but alas, it has not arrived yet. But a shower sounds fabulous so I line up at the room designated for the men to use. Feeling quite refreshed, I go to the bar and get a glass of wine while we await to board the bus for our next adventure.

We get back on the bus and are whisked away in Cairo traffic which has to be the worst we have ever experienced anywhere in the world. In the beginning of the trip I likened it to traffic in Peru and Ecuador. But has become increasingly apparent that it is much worse! Not only do lane demarkations mean absolutely nothing because if a vehicle fits between two others, it just drives there. In addition, there are no traffic signals, they do not exist here. Neither do Stop signs or other instructional elements of modern cities. Even to the extent that it is even common to see vehicles driving the wrong way in traffic! Having mere inches between fast moving vehicles is a normal thing here. The horn seems to be the only tool of use for drivers here!

After about an hour in traffic, we arrive at the Cairo Train Station. Our luggage is rounded up and we soon board a Sleeper Train bound for Aswan, Egypt. The train is old and looks worn out. The cabins are tiny with one upper bunk and one lower bunk, a fold down table and a sink to wash your hands. A dingy window looks out on the moving countryside in the dark. This will be a very long night!

So after being served a barely palatable meal in our room, we find our way out to the Club Car where the younger crowd of our Tour is playing games and having a grand time! Even in the absence of alcoholic beverages which are not served on the train!

We are starting to get to know several people on the Tour, including several of the youngsters (mostly over 30) and one of them (Sarah) happens to have packed a Swiss Army Knife and she lends it to me and I use it to open a bottle of Egyptian red wine which I just happen to have in my bag and I pour myself a cup full and sit in the Club Car listening to the young crowd having fun while typing up our Blogs! Let it be known that Egypt is not the place for good wine!

But it is time to find out if sleeping is possible on this train and I bid you all adieu!

Saturday, October 14, 2022, Cairo

I order an Egyptian Beer in the airport and I don’t realize what a treat it will be for the next week or more. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I remember back to last night and the view from our hotel room.

We wake up and it wasn’t a dream. The Pyramids are still there! Somewhat hazy and dirty air surrounds them though. There is a 3^rd pyramid back in the distance that we can see in the daylight also. This a very dirty 3^rd world city and incomplete buildings are everywhere. We notice that the roads around our hotel are not paved. We hadn’t noticed that last night.

Breakfast is brought to our room at 10AM as promised and it is quite tasty, consisting of homemade bread, omelette, olives and goat cheese and marmalade. Coffee is also hot. We dine overlooking the view although the air is quite dirty and at one point the pyramids get clouded over for an hour.

We check out and the hotel driver takes us down the street to our next hotel, the Oasis Hotel, in the neighboring city of Giza. Much nicer hotel minus the view. This is where our Tour will begin.

But with no word yet on our lost luggage, our tour guide takes us to a large local mall and leaves us for 2 hours. We shop frantically to get the necessary clothing and sundries to carry us for a few days along with a pair of small rolling suitcases. I am more successful than Elee as finding things for women in Egypt is a bit more difficult than finding things for men.

Back to the hotel for a 6 PM Tour Briefing, we then board a bus that takes us to a Dinner Cruise on the Nile and includes live Egyptian drummers, a Belly Dancer and even a Whirling Dervish! We chat amicably with fellow Tour Mates and thouroghly enjoy the shows!

Then it’s back to the hotel where we get the sad news that our luggage still hasn’t arrived. So it’s overseas phone calls to try to rectify the problem as we pack up our meager belongings and head to bed as we have a 6 AM wake up call to go tour the Pyramids!

Good night all!

Oct 13-14, 2022

We have our friend Tony to thank for getting us to the airport on time! However, this first flight gets delayed 1.5 hours. Sad news because we only have a 2 hour layover in NYC that is scheduled. Sure enough, we arrive in NYC in time to rush out of the plane and scurry to our connection, luckily it’s only 2 Gates away. But the plane is boarded and they print us new Boarding Passes as they have already cancelled our existing ones.

We get on the next plane bound for Amman, Jordan and it backs away from the Gate on time. But then worry sets back in because we seem to sit on the Tarmac near the Terminal for a very long time. It is raining hard. Or so it seems. Finally we find ourselves on the runway with that familiar Whoosh of the engines and we are away into the skies! This flight is scheduled for 9.5 hours in the air. I settle in and watch a 2 hour movie. By now, Royal Jordanian Airlines is serving us a hot meal. Yes, A HOT MEAL!!! When have we last seen that on an airplane? Not for over a decade!

Okay, now there is still a good 7 hours plus to fly and my doctor, bless his heart, wrote me a prescription for sleeping pills and I take one and settle back. Being in the aisle seat, I offered my seatmates the opportunity to get up and use the facilities which they took me up on. I then got a good undisturbed 6 hours sleep and woke refreshed just in time for Royal Jordanian to serve a Hot Breakfast! Yay!

We land on time in Amman and the flight to Cairo is uneventful. Hanging around the Baggage Claim, it eventually becomes apparent that our luggage isn’t arriving. We find the Lost Baggage Window and try to report the missing luggage. The inform us that we need to wait a while as it might show up. But it never does. So finally they allow us to file a claim and now we can only hope it shows up in a day or so. We suspect the problem is our connection in NYC where we ran to our plane. The baggage handlers were likely not as quick in the pouring rain.

Also lucky for us, our hotel ride waited for us at the airport and took us to our hotel, a good one hour plus ride in totally crazy traffic! Reminded us of Peru where lane demarcations meant nothing and horns were the most important notification system for drivers! The buildings and neighborhoods we passed reminded us of Cuba, a lot of partially demolished and unfinished facades. This is totally a Third World Country!

But we eventually get to our hotel, accessing it in a run down alley, similar to our description of our Havana BnB. There is an elevator that takes us up to the 10th Floor and the Maitre De accompanies us. Then we walk up stairs to the 11th Floor and into our room. It is clean yet tiny, but as the promised description had, the view is spectacular overlooking the Pyramids!