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!

October 12, 2022

Well, they’re back. What, You say? Those pre trip jitters. Do I have everything packed? Did we make all the appropriate adjustments and get all the correct Visas? Do we have all the correct amounts of cash in all the different Country Currencies? Are all of our excursions booked correctly?

Well, at least this time we are traveling to places that accept Credit Cards, not like that trip to Cuba where Credit Cards didn’t work. But thinking back, I’d do that one again, it was so much fun! But I digress.

This time it’s 5 Countries worth of Visas and Passports. And we will make a complete circumnavigation of the world for the second time in our lives. Last time was on a ship. This time there will be a lot of Airplanes involved. 3rd World Countries galore. 1st World experiences! I packed my water purifier because I think I may need it!

Hope I can sleep tonight! At least we don’t have to head off to the airport until a reasonable hour. That’s a bargain at twice the price! Bringing 4 cameras this trip, LOL. I’ll be equipped no matter the shot! The promise of the view out of our first hotel room is simply amazing, but I’ll wait to see if it comes true!

So, my readers, I’ll leave you with some suspense here (A few of you may even know where we are going!). But I’ll tell you this. There will be several climates but we will stay North of the Equator this time. And I promise the photos should amaze, at least I know they’ll amaze me! I expect to have poor internet a lot of the time so I’ll be writing this Blog on a word processor a lot and uploading when I can. Also, I don’t know how much Photo Editing Time I’ll have or how much end of the day energy I’ll have, but I will try to get a few posts up while the trip goes on.

So, off to sleep for me and the airport calls in the morning!

Tybee Island Dolphin Boat Tour

Today we get up and check out of the hotel for the last time as we will travel home today. we find a breakfast restaurant and have a buffet breakfast consisting of eggs, hash browns and sausages and hot coffee.

We then head for the boat docks and check in to Captain Mike’s Dolphin Tours and are soon cruising out into the Atlantic where Bottlenose Dolphins swim around us and entertain us with their babies. Our cameras happily click away as we watch them frolic in the warm ocean water. In total we see literally dozens if not a hundred dolphins in a matter of an hour and it is a good day.

On the way back, Captain Mike takes us by an old lighthouse that is under restoration and our cameras are happy once more. We get back to the docks and depart with still plenty of time before we have to head for the airport so we head into the historic district of Savannah and look up the Pirates Restaurant that we saw on our tour the other day and go inside for drinks as the day has turned into a typical hot and humid one. While there the skies open up and deluge rain upon the city.

When it’s time to leave, the skies are still not cooperating and we have parked an unpleasant block and a half away. So I brave the elements and jog through the deluge to the car, getting no less than soaked to the skin to bring the car around to Elee to save her the same fate and we head off to the airport. Luckily for me, the mixture of heat and air conditioning in the car dry me off mostly by the time we reach the terminal.

We return the rental car and get into the airport, getting our bags checked in and get through security without any hassles and have time to stop in a bar in the terminal to await our flight. All in all, it has been a good if not tiring vacation. After 2 flights and a 1 AM arrival in Los Angeles, we finally get home around 2:30AM with a shuttle ride. Tired and exhausted, we retire for the night to awake and unpack in the morning!