Egypt & Jordan, Pt 2
Our first stop was Cairo, where we only had a day. We were awakened at 4:15 by the call to prayer from the mosque next door. While it's never fun to wake up that early in the morning, I had to admit it was the most beautiful call I'd heard. I was marveling about the ability of a tiny neighborhood mosque (we were in an out-of-the-way neighborhood on the outskirts of Cairo) to attract such an amazing singing voice. I later found out from the guide, Ahmed, that most mosques have a person whose job it is to come in and turn on the radio at the proper moment to the call to prayer channel.
I had some doubts about the itinerary here, because we only had one day for both the Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum. But I must say, it was about right - the Pyramids are cool to see, but there's not actually much to see at the site, and tourists are swarmed with offers for camel rides. These camel jockeys, we had been warned, will offer one price until you get on the camel, at which point more money will be required for them to let you back off the camel. They also want you to pay them if you take photos of them - this is where my zoom lens came in handy. :) The Sphinx is also way smaller than I expected.
So, Pyramids were underwhelming. It was really cool to see how close they are to the city, though, and nice to be able to check off the only surviving wonder of the ancient world on my must-see list.
After a lunch consisting of the most amazing falafel I have ever had (for the equivalent of 20 cents), we went to the Egyptian Museum, where the treasures of King Tut did not fail to amaze. I probably could have spent a little bit longer in the museum, but saw all the basics, plus the "mummy room", which had some pretty famous mummies, like Hatshepsut and Ramses II, who we were going to hear about constantly for the rest of Egypt.
After our full day in Cairo, we took a sleeper train to Luxor, where we were going to join up with the MS Melodie, the boat owned by Imaginative Traveler, on which we'd spend the next four days cruising the Nile. Our group was joined by several other Imaginative groups who all had slightly different itineraries for the cruise portion.
The sleeper train was just like ones we'd taken in Eastern Europe, although the porters/service people were dressed in a much more dapper style:
From the train, we were whisked onto horse-drawn carriages, to take us to Karnak Temple.
Brad and me in the carriage:
Karnak Temple was for me the highlight of Egypt. It was a huge temple complex, and I was amazed both at its size and at the amount of paint still visible on various surfaces. We spent a good three hours wandering through there.
One thing I never got used to, despite seeing it all through Egypt, was guards armed with Kalashnikovs, absolutely everywhere. Despite the formidable appearance, their sole function seems to be taking bribes to allow people into (possibly forbidden?) parts of the site and take their picture. For the heck of it, we ended up getting just such a photo in Karnak, paying 10 Egyptian pounds (about $2 US) because we belatedly realized we had no small change.
Luxor is stuffed full of amazing sites. After a siesta, Brad and I went back out on our own and looked through the market, before investigating the Luxor Temple at sunset. This temple was particularly cool because at some point a mosque had been built on the site, causing a really crazy juxtaposition of architectural types.
The next day, we investigated Luxor from two new modes of transportation - hot air balloon and donkey. The Valley of the Kings area is where they started burying Pharaohs after they realized that Pyramids were easily found and looted. They dug underground tombs, the exact locations of which were so secret that subsequent Pharaohs often accidentally ran into them while digging their own tombs in the same valley. These tombs were mostly undiscovered for thousands of years and since they were safely underground, they are incredibly well-preserved - some of them look like they were painted yesterday. (Our guide informed us that to make the paint permanent, they generally applied 15 or so coats of paint.) To keep them looking fresh as long as possible, they have forbidden cameras within the valley altogether. So my only photos of the valley itself were from a hot air balloon ride that some of us took at dawn. I was amazed at how safe and secure the ride felt - it never felt at all dangerous or unstable, and with the heat from the flame, was quite warm despite the chill in the dawn air. The only disappointment from the balloon ride was that some farmers were burning the sugar cane in their fields, and the smoke cloud created an incredible haze that spread over the whole valley. Nevertheless, it was really awesome to be up there and see the scenery change from water to farmland to mountain to desert, all in one horizon.
As soon as we landed, we were shuttled off to rejoin the rest of our group, where we rode donkeys on an hour-long trip into the valley. I must admit, I found this rather uncomfortable. For the first half, I was so scared that I'd fall off - not that I'd have far to fall, since donkeys are pretty short - and almost immediately, my thighs and butt became sore from the back of the animal. Donkeys also don't really take direction well. We couldn't really control the speed of our animals - at one point, I was near the back of the pack, but most of the time, I was near the front, and near the end, I even overtook our guide, which scared me since I had no idea where we were going, though of course the donkey did.
Once we had dismounted from the donkeys, we finally got to see the tombs up close, which were amazing, and then headed back to the boat, which began to cruise up the Nile.