Destination:
Egypt – Luxor
– From Senile (Sinai) to
Denial
Click here for info on Luxor and places we visited....
Now a 17 hour bus
trip to Luxor. Enough to say it was “the
ride from hell”. After a 17 hour awful bus ride, stopping every
5 minutes and on a mission not to let anyone sleep (must be the bus company
policy), we arrive in Luxor. We’ve been
warned about the hassling being the worst in Egypt and we arrive prepared for
battle. Well, Luxor is a great surprise.
The hotel is really nice (and cheap),
lovely room, great views of the Nile, and the hassling thing? Very exotic and you really feel you’re in
North Africa. Not bad really, just say
“no thanks” quite a few times, nothing we haven’t done before. We cut a deal with a taxi driver for tomorrow
(nicer to have your own guy than to pay a tour for 2, and we are totally free!)
and buy a cruise on the Nile for 3 days/2 nights, go back to the hotel and
sleep like little angels.
We wake up at
6.30am and meet Ali, our nice taxi driver, to go around Luxor. The Valley of the Kings, Queen Hatshepsut
Temple, Colossi of Memnon and Karnak Temple (even found a duty free shop there
for some serious Scotch). It’s all nice
and great, the Karnak Temple takes the cake, really amazing. And as today it’s
only 39 degrees, we really go for it and walk around like crazies! About the Nile, it’s big, it’s beautiful,
it’s powerful. It’s so awesome to see so much green after over 3 months kind of
“in the desert”, all lush and beautiful. We are even sweating again, funny
sensation after so long, the magic of a little humidity... We do a lot more walking, temples, markets,
train station, man, we are really enjoying Luxor. After
all the warnings about the hassling and haggling being the worst, we think so
far it’s pretty ok and people are nice and funny (how many camels for your
wife, ha ha?).
