This morning was quite amazing we first of all visited the temple of Horus in Edfu (http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/edfu.htm) it was amazing to realise how old these temples are, some are like 4000 years old some even older. Our guide was really great and told us all about it's history. It is just amazing to be able to stand in a temple which was been around for so long... the history here is awesome.
It wasn't long before we were back on the bus back to the boat for lunch, then the boat set sail to Esna. We had to cross through a lock at one point of the journey which was massive.. thought the locks in England were big. We spent the rest of the day cruising to Luxor, however at one point the police entered our boat and we had made a suspicious stop... we thought the Indian people on board the boat were dodgy and the police were after them... but we never did find out the truth. Our imaginations were probably more interesting than the truth. We eventually got to Luxor and had a great dinner at night we had a fancy dress party where we all got dressed up in Egyptian costumes, it was so much fun. Di and I had matching costumes. Then we spent the night in Luxor.
From here we headed to some Granite Quarries and then caught a ferry across to a little man made island called Philae, where we visited the Philae Temple of Isis (http://www.philae.nu/akhet/PhilaeAsettemple.html).
After that amazing trip we headed back to the boat for lunch, as soon as we got back the cruise ship set sail!! After an afternoon of lounging on on top of the boat, swimming, and playing table tennis we arrived at Kom Ombo. On arrival at Kom Ombo we docked with about 20 other boats, 4 across the dock and 5 deep... quite a picture.
We had to walk through the lobbies of all the boats to get to the marina. Once we got off the boats and passed the Bazaar markets we visited the Kom Ombo temple shared by the two Gods Sobek and Haroeris (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/komombo.htm), here we saw some mummified crocodiles.
We eventually got back to the boat and sailed to Edfu, where we spent the night. snore.....zzzzzzzz so tired...
Yes another early morning today. Mohammed and Samer picked us up at 0430 to take us to the airport for our flight to Aswan via Luxor. Once again everything was organised for us even our breakfast boxes. You know its just the simple things that people do without making a big deal that you notice so much. Everyone has just made sure we have everything we need and that we are enjoying ourselves- its their service to us that has been the biggest blessing.
Today we start our Nile cruise. We arrived there at 0830. pretty early we were wondering how we going to fill in our time. We were one of the first ones on the boat, but once again they were so nice and quickly showed us to our room.
When we got to our room we had single separated beds- they asked us if we were married and we said yes. They said “wait a minute”. They were going to change our room around, but then we got shown to the suite lol lol lol… and that became our room for the rest of the cruise. Yayayayay. How lucky are we. We of course didn’t tell anyone else coz we were so embarrassed- we certainly didn’t ask for it, but loved it all at the same time. Check ot our room!!
We had a big bathroom, big bed, walk in dressing room. Someone is definitely looking after us. Pete and I got settled, unpacked all of our gear and then went into town and looked once again at the bazaars. Haggling is definitely addictive. We bought our costumes for our final night on the boat- Egyptian dress night with dancing and games. Should be fun. But one thing was for certain our costumes were to die for.
We then caught a lift back to the boat by horse and cart… and then spent the afternoon on a felucca ride around Elephatine Island in Aswan. The weather is beautiful. And the views from our window on the boat are incredible. The nile is definintely not as gross as what people make it out to be. I think the Murray River looks much worse than the Nile.
Another early morning this morning…and once again we were rearing to go. So much information to take in, but so incredible. Its hard to imagine that some of the things that we are seeing are over 5 thousand years old. The architecture is like nothing you could see anywhere else in the world. So much attention to detail. Most of the time we can hardly speak because we are overwhelmed with what we are seeing. Having studied Egyptian history at school I have been waiting to see these things for over 10 years and now that we are here we can hardly believe it.
Today we visited the hanging church where it is believed Moses footprints supposedly were found when he led the Israelite escape from Egypt.
We also visited the church where the basement is believed to house Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus when they fled from Herod to hide, although then it was an old roman fort, when the fort was destroyed it was turned into a church in like 40 ad.
We also visited Mohammmed Ali’s great mosque, a bazaar where we stocked up on some presents….. pete and I really have the knack of bartering down to a T. one thing you definitely need to get good at when you visit Egypt is barterting. They will totally rip you off if you don’t get this skill down to a fine art quickly. But one thing is for sure if you are nice to them they will do anything for you. The Egyptians are such nice people.
Following the bazaar we went to the Egyptian museum, which you could honestly spend days just slowly exploring all of the ancient history. What they have here is amazing. Yes we did also see the mummies- there were 9 in total including the mummy of Ramses 2. They are pretty gross, but even so you still cant help but stare at them. They still have hair and some of them still eyelashes. Ramses 2- you could see his receding hairline and his white hair which was white but is now a shade of yellow, not surprising I guess. We had another traditional Egyptian lunch today which was yummy- on the river nile. Perfect. We were a bit sad coz we had to say goodbye to Rasher, she has been so fantastic and has answered all of our millions of questions. We hit the sack relatively early tonight- 0330 start tomorrow.
Early morning start this morning. But boy are we ready for today. So much adventure. It is amazing how on holidays you seem to have so much more energy. When you need to get up for work- its an effort but when you need to go exploring- you are up rearing to go… well that was the case for us anyway.
We had breakfast and then we were met again by Shamir who introduced us to our personal guide Rashir who is trained in Egyptology who will be taking us to and explaining all of the sites in Cairo. She is amazing. We also had our personal driver Mohamed again, who drove us everywhere.
Today we went to Saqqara, just outside of Cairo and the old City of Memphis where the step pyramid is and the Saqqara Temple.
Visited the Great Pyramids, the sphinx, the museum with the HUGE statue of Ramses 2. and the statue of his wife Queen Hatshupsut- “Hot chicken soup” lol. We rode a camel around one of the pyramids and was able to walk down into the second one, which was a bit of a task- not for the claustrophobic, we had to almost crawl in. It was also good it was a bit cool because it was so warm down inside. We were a bit surpised that it was quite cool… we were still wearing jumpers- and asking when was the sun God Rah that they talked about going to come out?
We saw Cairo in the raw today…. Good thing we didn’t drive- people are crazy drivers, you just have to laugh. You can’t help it. They have no road rules and they have no traffic lights and if they do they don’t work. And if they happen to work by chance- red means go anyway. It is funny. The cars are so old. We laughed coz there was a new car today broken down on the side of the road whilst all of the old cars are zipping around the streets, Ironic.
It is unbelievable how they don’t bash into each other. They have taxi vans that they fill so full of people that people are even hanging out. We saw this guy hanging out of one of these taxi vans get clipped by another car but he acted like it happens all the time. Outside of Cairo a lot of Egyptians live like the ancient Egyptians, they work the fields by hand, live in mud huts, their wealth is not in the possessions that we imagine or treasure it is simply in the land, crops and animals that they own i.e: how many mules, horses, oxen, camel etc that they own.
So we saw a lot of people riding on mules, I want one they are so cute, but the poor things they don’t really look like they were made to run- so when people are kicking them to run they look so uncoordinated it made you half giggle and go “ohhhhhhhhhhh that’s so mean- poor thing” all at once. Today was such an eye opener. One thing that Rasher did say is that in the eyes of these people they don’t believe themselves to be poor. Their wealth is in the things that they have. Most of them prefer to be like their forefathers and work the land by hand instead of using modern accessories like tractors etc. and most of the houses are left unfinished, not because they cant afford to finish them its because that if they do finish them they have to pay tax on them. Whilst they are unfinished they don’t have to pay tax. They are smart people lol. But the explanations given by Rasher made us look with different eyes. Check out our day here...
THE BIG DAY HAS ARRIVED!!!!!!! Yay finally today is the day we leave for Egypt. We are freezing and in serious need of some sun. Before we left though we had a few domestic things to do. Pete had to help change Alisons punctured tyre before we set off on our journey to the airport.
Our arrival into Cairo was amusing with our pick up person waiting with a sign “Mr and Mrs Hopes” with Harvey World Travel spelt Harvy, lol lol…
We were met by Shamir, he is so fantastic and could not have done more for us. We felt like a king and queen. We didn’t have to carry our bags, they even collected them for us…. We had our own private van to take us to our hotel and our own driver, Mohammed.
Shamir checked in for us and arranged our early morning wake up call. Our first night in Cairo was fantastic. We didn’t arrive til 2300 at night… so that left us little time for us to sight see, except from our Nile view balcony in our hotel room. Check out the video
Pete and I were up at the crack of dawn- well actually since the sun isn’t really coming up til about 7:30am we were up well before the crack of dawn. We left home at 5am for our drive to London. Very frosty morning- we are both looking forward to peeling off some layers and romping around Egypt with the sun on our backs. There is nothing like a road trip and we are both excited to spend some quality time together rather than meeting each other in the driveway which is what we have been doing.
We arrived in London about 10:30am, parked the car and caught the train into the city. We bought open roofed red bus tickets and roamed London all day…it was fantastic. It was cool but blue skies.
We visited all of the tourist spots, Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace etc…walked along the Thames.
We jumped off to visit Harrods, but we were a bit sad coz Santa Claus wasn’t starting until the next day. We strolled around Hyde Park which is so beautiful. Princess Diana’s memorial was a bit disappointing though…. We suspect maybe the queen has withdrawn the funds, lol. We stayed with our friend Alison Cowling, had a scrumptious dinner and had lots of laughs. Alison is great!
Well we’re preparing ourselves for our much anticipated trip to Egypt. We leave for London tomorrow. Yay. But first things first. It is Halloween here in England and one thing that is big here is fireworks. So of course, are we going to let everyone have all the fun?? No way. We are not merely specatators…no…we were going to hold our own fireworks display. Have a look.... Robyn, Cherly, Pete and I, donned our warmest clothes, sludged through a vacant icy field and set off our own fireworks display. It was mad. No more than mad. It was the best fire works display EVER…and not just because it was ours…okay maybe.
I cant believe how many fireworks you can buy and how big they are as well. We had rockets and everything. This is definitely something we miss out on in Australia. We had so much fun. Robyn and I were the official photographers and Pete and Cheryl were the fire lighters…but don’t worry Hood and I did get our own taste of lighting some of them…. And all I can say is…IT WAS SO MUCH FUN…. Bring on Christmas when we can do it again…
Well, just one day till Di and I head off to Egypt for a two week holiday... make sure you keep watching this blog to keep updated on our movements. I will try and update our blog as much as we can while we're away, however it will depend on getting internet access... If there are no developments on the site then know we cannot get internet access...
But for now check out this really well made documentary - it contains some coarse language, however it's a really great video which shows you a sub-culture of the world we live in today. A world that's hurting and where people just want to be noticed and loved. A very good reminder that us Christians have a lot of loving to do.
