Before reading all: Get a cup of coffee/tea and make yourself comfortable.
EGYPT - WHAT AN AMAZING PLACE!
We arrived for our tour first night and met this guy from Townsville Tim and had a chat with him...ended up being a really good mate by the end of it. We met our group later that night and our awesome tour leader Abdul.
We then got up the next day and were put into a little van and sent to the great pyramids of Giza. It was amazing coming around the bend in one of the streets and there they were on the outskirts of Cairo city. We arrived at the site and our tour guide for the day only gave us an 1 1/2hrs to have a look at all three pyramids. NOT ENOUGH TIME, seeing as though we went down into THE SECOND pyramid of Giza and it took us a while to overcome our fear of small spaces! It is so steep going down into them (about 27 degree angle – and 1m high), the air is really thin and it's boiling hot. We are so glad we did it in winter and not summer. Our silly tour guide (not Abdul - this lady we had) told us to go down into the second pyramid and didn't say anything about the going into the Great Pyramid, so we missed out...very sad! However her priority was getting commission from buying this papyrus paper that the Egyptians make and paint Hieroglyphics on it.
We also went to the Sphinx which we were SO disappointed at. It is TINY compared to the pyramids, the media really make it look huge. However it was amazing to see the three pyramids and the sphinx all together it was great!
We then headed to the museum where this same tour guide was in such a mood and made all of our experiences crappy. However we did get to see some AMAZING stuff in the museum with all the treasures that were pulled out of Tutankhamen's tomb.
The reason Tutankhamen is so famous isn't due to being a great leader, it's just because his tomb was the only one they found with all it's treasures still in it! His tomb was very small and we can only imagine what treasures would have came out of the great pyramids of Giza if people hadn't robbed them!
That night we got on the overnight train which was an experience we really don't need to do again. Lets just was you don't touch anything with bare skin!
The next day we arrived late to Luxor apparently Egyptian time varies from 2-4hrs of the original time specified.
We headed to our hotel and had a rest for a couple of hours before catching a horse and carriage to Karnak Temple. Candice felt really sorry for the horses as they were too skinny and their owners would whip them - IT WAS HORRIBLE! The temple was amazing and HUGE. It was all under sand when they found it and excavated it to find this amazing temple. Just to give you an idea of how large it was, the pillars were about 20m high and there were about 40 of them. Some still had paint remaining on them after all these years which was pretty special. That night we caught a boat over to the other side of the Nile where we had traditional Egyptian food, it was yumo.
The next day we go up super early and caught a bus to this paddock were we...wait for it...caught a hot air balloon of the Nile. It was so AWSOME! There were heaps of other balloons around us so we got some amazing photos as you can see. They flew us just before sunrise so it was amazing seeing the sun hit The Vally of the Kings first thing.
Our pilot landed us in this poor farmers paddock and there was a huge argument between the both. We had to move to the top corner of his paddock and we were there just long enough for the locals to come our and see the commotion! There were begging kids and mothers with babies everywhere. We gave this little kid a packet of chips that we took a liking to as he was so CUTE, he thought it was Christmas.
That afternoon we caught some donkeys and rode them to The Valley of the Kings. Jamie had a race with Tim and ended up winning SOMEHOW as he was coming last. But came up from behind and won the race with "Pepsi-maximus" (the name of Jamie's donkey as it was wearing a saddle with Pepsi sponsorship on it)
We only had a limited time at the Valley of the Kings and only got to see 3 tombs. They all still had coloured markings of Hieroglyphics which was great considering they're around 3000 years old. We had to pay extra if we wanted to see Tutankhamen's grave and didn't go in to see it. Looking back now we wish we did, but our tour guide said it just looked like the rest of the ones we had just seen. Oh well.
