It's been over a week since I posted last, so here's a quick recap of how I've spent those days.
Last week after arriving in Cairo I met up with my new tour group. It's composed of 7 Canadians and 2 other Americans....5 males and 5 females. I'm roughly at the median age-wise. Some good folks generally and I now know more about Canadian music/politics/geography/rodeo/etc than I ever expected to learn in a lifetime!
Our guide, Mayer is a 26 year-old Egyptian and thus far has been terrific.
The first day of the tour we hit the requisite big sites in Egypt including the Pyramids at Giza, the Sphinx and the Egyptian Museum (REALLY impressive) which includes the King Tut exhibit. Even got to ride a camel for the first and last time.
That night we took an overnight train south to Aswan. As we have an uneven number of males, I secured my own compartment on the train which was nice.
Upon arriving in Aswan we took a restful felucca (read: sail boat) ride down the Nile during the day and hit a Nubian villagers house for dinner which was....interesting.
The following day we took a three hour ride to see Abu Simbel, an incredible temple near the Sudanese border. The temple, which is build into a small mountain was threatened by floods in the 1960's and a decision was made to take it apart piece-by-piece, raise it 60 meters up and reassemble. Impressive stuff.
The day after that we hopped back on a felucca and headed north on the Nile all day long towards Luxor. We spent the night on the boat which made me very happy that I had held onto my sleeping bag from Kilimanjaro.
In Luxor, we hit the Valley of the Kings (via mule) which contains tomb after tomb buried into the mountains. One morning four of us took a sunrise hot air balloon ride which I'm definitely placing on my top-10 favorite things on the trip so far. I had tried to do one in Namibia, but it didn't work out.....I'm glad now as it was much cheaper here and I suspect more beautiful.
Last night we took an overnight train back to Cairo. I got some Texas Hold'em in with three of the Canadians using cashew shells and nuts as poker chips.
In the morning, we're driving to Mt. Sinai where we'll hike up in the afternoon to see the sunset. I have all my Ten Commandment jokes ready. From there we go to the Red Sea and then into Jordan on Sunday.
All in all, we've seen terrific stuff in Egypt, but there's no way this is a country I could live in. The hustle-and-bustle is too much for this kid from Philadelphia. There's a sense of aggression at every turn it seems like to me.........particularly in the markets of course! They'd eat me up here.
Having nothing to do with anything, but just for the record, I've yet to set foot in any American fast food restaurant in 12 weeks on the road.
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4 comments:
Great entry this week, Bob. I'm sure someone (Jeff?) will have something particularly apropos to say about you on Mt. Sinai. I'm impressed that you haven't caved in to a Big Mac attack yet. What interesting things HAVE you been eating??
Beginning of the trip, my diet consisted mostly of fish and game meat.
The second half of the vacation has seen me become a virtual vegetarian!
In Aqaba now. They have a McDonald's, a Popeye's, a Quiznos, a 7-11 and two Starbucks. It's rather nauseating really.
Nauseating, maybe. But edible!
Vegetables??? What has the world done to you???
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