Sunday, August 5, 2007

Written by: Brian 

Current Location: Kenya

The Nile River, the longest river in the world, flows through eight different countries but none are more dependent on the river then Egypt.  Since the time of the Pharoahs, the Niles flooding has allowed the Egyptians to have some of the most fertile land in Africa, and to this day they still control the water flow.

Part of our tour package included a cruise from Aswan to Luxor, the cruise was like any normal cruise boat except we were on a river and the boat was a little smaller, only about 5 decks.  The top deck had a pool and an area to relax and enjoy the scenery, the middle deck had a lounge and rooms and the bottom deck was the restaurant.

We were a little skeptical about the whole cruise things, I mean who wants to go on river cruise boat for 3 nights, sleep on it and be stuck eating the food.  We were wrong; the cruise was one of the highlights of our trip, not for the touristy experience of being on a cruise but for what we were able to see sailing down the river.

We boarded the cruise around 3:00 pm and relaxed in our somewhat air conditioned room (more on that later) as it was about 110 degrees out.  The cruise left around 4:00 and our first stop was the Temple of Kom Ombo, the original name was Pa-Sebek (land of  Sobek) after the crocodile god of the region.  This was the first temple we saw that was built actually to two different gods, Sobek and Horus.  It is hard to put into words how amazing it is to stand at a temple that was built thousands of years ago.  The fine detail the Egyptians put into their work is outstanding, especially considering the tools of the day.  You can clearly the hieroglyphics that have with stood the test of time.  They pretty much look like they were carved yesterday.

The coolest thing though was the mummified crocodiles that they had on display that were over 4000 years old.

After about an hour we got back on the cruise and went to dinner.  One of the highlights of the cruise was the fabulous dinners and lunches we had.  It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy the food not wondering if you were going to get sick from something you ate.

The next day brought us to the city of Edfu and one of the largest temples in Egypt.  The temple was dedicated to Horus, who if you recall from my first posting, the son of Osris and Isis.  Horus, one of our favorite Egyptian gods, is a god with a head in the shape of a hawk.  The entrance to the temple that was built in 237 bc is flanked by two larger then life size statues of the Horus as a falcon.  One of the hawks has unfortunately not with stood the test of time and is lying on the ground.  Again the detail and work put into the temple is astounding.  The best part of the temple is the sanctuary room where a 2 foot statue of Horus used to rest.  The room is painted in different scenes depicting different battles and ceremonies.  Each year the Egyptians would put the statue on a wood boat structure and parade it outside the temple so the people could worship the idol.

We arrived in Luxor late the 2^nd night and made an early start to go see the West and East Bank.  There are so many things to see in Luxor that you can tire out quickly (which we did) especially in 110 degree heat.  We started the morning off by heading to the Valley of the Kings, this is where all the famous Pharos were buried.  They choose this area due to the dryness of  desert, this allowed the bodies to not decompose.

You are only allowed to see 3 of the +20 tombs at the Valley, you do get to choose the tombs though.  To quote one of our friends though, once you seen one tomb you have seen them all, though they are no less amazing.  The tombs look like they were built yesterday and were probably one of my most favorite things we saw.  Yes, the pyramids we awesome, the temples amazing but when you go into the tombs you actually get a feeling of what the Egyptians were like as a people.  A few things I didn’t know and learned from the tombs: the pyramids were once covered with a sheet of limestone but was more amazing was that they were decorated with color paintings on the outside, the tombs allowed us to see the amazing colors that the Egyptians used in their work.  Each hieroglyphic was painted in the tomb and there was every color you could imagine in the tombs.  They were simply amazing.

They are still finding more tombs in the valley today.  The most recent find was in

After that we headed of to the Temple of Hatsheput, considered one of the greatest female Pharos.  The temple was built into the rock face of a mountain and is stunning to see.  The afternoon consisted of seeing the East Bank which was the Temple of Karnak and the Luxor temple.

Both temple were simply amazing, Karnak is simple HUGE, it was more then one temple, it was actually many temples built by many Pharos.  To give you and idea of the vastness, there was once 80,000 people working in or for the temple.  It had a swimming pool that was the size of 3 Olympic size swimming pools.  The stone structures are still towering in the sky today.

The Luxor Temple was in the heart of town.  By the time we got to the temple we were simply exhausted.  The temple was beautiful we just didn’t have the energy to spend a lot of time there.  We were able to admire the beauty of the temple the next couple days, as we stayed in a hotel that was 2 blocks away.

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Date: July 29, 2007
Written by: Susan

Current location: Dahab, Egypt on the Red Sea

After the craziness and chaos of Cairo, we were excited about getting to some smaller towns and seeing some of the temples. The overnight train ride proved to be much nicer than our other previous overnight trains in Eastern Europe and we were actually able to sleep on the train and didn't have to worry about going through passport control.

Twelve hours later our train arrived into the town of Aswan in Southern Egypt. We were greeted at the train station by our tour agency there which was nice since that meant we didn't have to hassle with a cab and try to find our hotel. Unbeknownst to us we had a full itinerary here in Aswan. We thought we were just going to go see the temple at Abu Simbel. First, there was lunch (although we were a bit sick from some bad food in Cairo - we think it was the boat buffet that was provided as part of our tour - don't ever eat at boat buffets - especially if there are only 3 people in the whole place) we went off to see an unfinished obelisk that is still lying in the quarry. The Egyptians never finished the obelisk because there was a crack in the rock, but had it been finished it would have been the largest obelisk in the world. It was pretty cool and amazing how they even construct an obelisk. Chiseled out of one piece of stone (granite in this case) and then rolled onto logs and slowly rolled to the Nile so they could float it up to Cairo (which is actually downstream even though it is north of Aswan). Simply amazing that they did all this without modern day machinery.

Our next stop was to see some dam that was built. The High Dam is one of two dams in Aswan. I had zero interest in seeing a dam in 110 degree weather and sick from food poisoning but we both persisted. Our guide gave us a little spiel and told us we could have 15 minutes or so to take pictures and admire the dam. We took our time and was ready to leave in 30 seconds. He seemed a bit surprised but was totally cool. The aircon in the car sounded more appealing. The sad part about the dam though is that it has ruined a lot of farming on the Nile river. The Nile used to be incredibly fertile because of all the silt that surrounded the banks of the river. Now with the dam, the Nile really doesn't flood and all the silt has been lost. The upside is that a 13 year old boy gets to play PlayStation 2 all day in Cairo with air conditioning.........

After that.....yes, we are still on the same day...........we went to the Temple of Philae which is dedicated to the ancient Goddess Isis - see Brian's story in the previous blog. It is beautiful and we wish we weren't so sick so we could have actually enjoyed it instead of worrying where the bathroom was and calculating how much time it would take for us to sprint across the temple in case nature called. So I would tell you more but I stopped paying attention to the guide at this point and concentrated on my calculations as we got further away from the bathroom. I do remember the guide telling us though that this is one of the several temples that was damaged by the dam (above) and was underwater until UNESCO along with the Egyptian government had it moved to higher ground on an island across from the original site. It was a major engineering feat and so fascinating how they could have done that. So next time someone tells you that it's impossible, you can tell them that if people can move ancient Egyptian temples, nothing is impossible.

After that our guide was nice enough to take us to this place to get a natural remedy for our stomach ailments. We purchased some black cumin oil which settled our stomachs right away and some mint (because it smells so refreshing!). And then finally, we were able to go back to our hotel and rest. The next morning would be really early as we were headed to Abu Simbel.

ABU SIMBEL

Abu Simbel is located about 3 hours (200 kilometers) south of Aswan and about 50 kilometers from the Sudan border. I guess there were some terrorists attacks here years ago against some cars or something because we had to travel in a police convoy. Basically you are driving through the open desert for 3 hours with not that much going on so you're totally exposed.

The convoy is interesting and really I think offers people a false sense of security. We all have to meet up in town at 3:30 in the morning and there are just lines of tour buses, mini buses and cars. About 50 altogether. They check all the vehicles and then you head off with police escorts (which I actually never saw). Now you would think that a convoy would stick together as that was what I thought a definition of a convoy was. Here though it just seems that all the cars drive as fast as possible, racing through the desert, passing other buses, etc. Like some sort of desert rally car race. To be quite honest that actually seemed more dangerous to me. At one point we were the only people that I could see on the road. I couldn't figure out where the rest of the buses were. So what was the point of the convoy? My thought is that if a terrorist is going to pick you off in the dessert, he's got a pretty good chance because he knows that the convoy leaves everyday at 4am and 4:30 and there are usually tons of buses on a single two lane highway with nothing to hide behind. So the idea of security is a bunch of bs just to make the tourists feel "safe".

We arrived at 7am and there were already 30 tour buses ahead of us and it was already 90 degrees outside. Abu Simbel, which is a temple that Ramses II built for himself, is spectacular. Definitely one of our favorite temples in Egypt and worth the trek. It too was also affected by the new dam and was flooded and had to be moved to higher ground. I could go on and one about the beauty of the temple but we pretty much thought all the temples were amazing and would run out of adjectives to describe them all and run the risk of sounding dorky using adjectives like rad, awesome, da bomb....................We spent a couple hours at Abu Simbel and of course the police convoy leaves promptly at 9am to head back to Aswan.

I forgot to mention the amazing sunrise on our way to Abu Simbel. Simply stunning. A big orange globe that you could look at directly rising over the dunes of the dessert because the sun was still shrouded by the desert dust. There are fantastic sunrises and sunsets here in Egypt that make the temples evening more stunning.

We spent a couple of days in Aswan but there is really not that much to do there. We went to a botanical garden via a felucca (which is an Egyptian sailboat). The problem was that it was barely windy that day but people are so desparate to make money in the off season that they wanted to take us even with just a puff of wind. This was all included in our tour so we went...........and got stuck in the middle of the Nile because there was no wind. There was enough wind for us to get to the middle of the Nile (which is about 100 yards wide) but not enough to blow us anywhere else. So we sat, and sat, and sat, and the captain and his son started to sings songs which was pretty cool since we were just sitting in the middle of the Nile with nothing else to do. And sat some more, and then our boat creaked a little which meant we were moving.........a little. And then we sat, and slowly drifted downstream. FINALLY after an hour we finally made it to shore while theses motorboats with tourists were buzzing all around us getting from one bank to the other in less than 5minutes. But in sha'allah (God willing) as they say here, we made it.

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Thursday, July 26

Written by: Brian

Location: Luxor, Egypt - headed to the Sinai Peninsula tonight

Salaam,

Organized chaos, that is what best describes the driving in Cairo. The highways have 3 lanes heading North and 3 heading South but somehow Egyptians turn the highway into 5 lanes heading North and 5 heading South. The middle dotted line here has somehow become a lane. We have seen no accidents and once you drive in it a few times it seems perfectly normal, as normal as normal can be.

Cairo is a city of 23 million people and the weather is HOT HOT HOT (note to self and others, July is a bad month to visit, unless you like heat, lots of heat).  Throughout the day there is not much activity on the street but come evening everyone is out shopping and wandering the streets. Our first night in Cairo we met up with an Egyptian friend of ours, Mowafy (a friend of a friend) for dinner.  Dinner is usually eaten late around 10:00pm.  We went and had Fetir, which is like a pizza, which was delicious.  It was a huge help to have a local show us around for the evening.

One of the things we did was sign up with our hotel to do a tour for 18 days through Egypt.  What this gave us was a private guide and driver for all our tour days. The guides have 4 year degrees in Egyptology, our own little history experts.  The tour included all our transportation, overnight train to Aswan, Nile river cruise, all hotels, flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, bus to Cairo and most of our lunches included.

So the next day we headed of for our first tour, THE PYRAMIDS.  So what are they like.... Well in 110 degree weather they are hot, really hot....  No, really they are awesome, everything that you can imagine they are.  We first went and saw the world's oldest pyramid, Saqqara.  It was built as a step pyramid and not in the true pyramid shape we think of today, nonetheless it was the first. You cannot go inside so pretty much you spend about a half hour walking around it, in the 110 degree heat.

After that we headed over to the Pyramids of Giza.  The last surviving structures of the 7 wonders of the world.  They are huge and over 4000 years old. We were just amazed to see them. There is a lot going on around the Pyramids, everyone is trying to sell you something, from a ticket to a camel ride.  It was nice having a guide there to push through that and get us into the area of the Pyramids.  As it was the middle of the day we only spent an hour or so here. We wish we would have had more time but with the heat it just wasn't possible. 

We actually went in the middle pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, but there was nothing to really see as it was just a tunnel to the middle of the structure.  None the less we did get to go to the middle of a pyramid. There are still many mysteries about the pyramids but they have found some things out, like that they were NOT built by slaves. They claim that when the Nile flooded, farmers would then come and work on the pyramids as they could not work the land.  It was a very civilized culture.

The Sphinx sits about 200 yards in front of the the Khafre pyramid.  It is smaller then you would expect but no less spectacular. You can picture the life of the Egyptians and the building of the pyramids as you gaze across the scorching desert at these marvelous wonders.

That evening we headed out with our friends again, Mowafy and Ali, for a local delicacy, pigeon, yes the bird. It was was actually very good, stuffed with rice and tasted like chicken.  It was great to talk to two locals about the history and current events.  Interesting enough the Egyptians, like the Turks, distinguish themselves from the Arabs.  They like Americans and understand that a government does not always represent the people.

The next day we headed off to the famous Egyptian museum.  We saw so many things that our heads were spinning at the end of the day.  We are actually going to head back there once we return and will give you an update on it then. The King Tut exhibit was the highlight and was really cool.

I leave you now with a famous Egyptian mythological story, about the one of the most famous Gods and was the first mummy.

The Myth of Isis and Osiris

As with much of the ancient Egyptian mythology, there are various versions of the story of Isis and Osiris, but basically it runs as follows.......

Isis was the sister and wife of Osiris, Osiris was an earthly ruler, who was popular with his subjects. His brother, Set, was jealous of this popularity and plotted against Osiris.

Set's plans to be rid of his brother started when he secretly obtained his brothers measurements and had a magnificent casket made to fit. This casket was in the form of a human shaped box.

Set then organised a large feast to which Osiris and a number of others (usually given as 72) were invited. At the height of the festivities Set produced the casket and announced that it would be given to whoever it fitted. All the guests tried the casket for size, but none fitted until finally Osiris stepped into the casket.

Set immediately slammed the lid closed and sealed the casket shut (with molten lead). The sealed coffin was then thrown into the Nile. Isis was devastated at the loss of her husband and searched for the casket throughout Egypt and then overseas. She eventually eventually found it where it had come to rest in the roots of a massive tree.

Isis then returned the coffin to Egypt for a proper burial. For safe keeping she concealed it in the marshes beside the Nile.

Unfortunately for Isis Set found the casket while out hunting and was so enraged he chopped the body of Osiris into pieces, and scattered the parts throughout the land of Egypt.

Poor Isis had to then set out again looking for the parts of her husband. Eventually she found all the parts except one and reassembled Osiris and wrapped him in bandages(mummification). In some accounts Isis breathed life back into Osiris' body and it was then that Horus was conceived. This was a more magical event that it seems, considering the one part of Osiris Isis couldn't find.

The young Horus then went out to battle his uncle Set and to avenge his fathers death. After a series of fights detailed in 'The contendings of Horus and Set' neither god was able to secure an overall victory. Ultimately Osiris was declared king of the underworld,Horus king of the living, and Set ruler of the deserts as the god of chaos and evil.

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