Leaving Egypt

After our last tour of old Cairo on Tuesday December 5th, we had one more night and then all day Wednesday to lounge around our hotel before our flight left for Toronto at 1:50 am Thursday. It wasn't the greatest flight time but at least it was a direct flight. Our Blue Sky rep had arranged for us to have late checkout from the hotel at 3 pm.
We tried to sleep in and did pretty well, although with jet lag and all our activities for over a week, we've been exhausted every night. We packed, eyed the activity on the street from our room and read our books. At 3 pm we checked out, stored our luggage and went down to the extensive spa area. We killed more time having steam baths and lounging by the side of the big jacuzzi pool. Eventually we went back to the dining room for a pizza. Our meal plan had ended at breakfast so we were back to our usual frugal travel habits.
Just before we left the hotel, a belly dancer started her routine in the lounge. Apparently, this happens every night but we were never up late enough to see it.
At 10 pm, a Blue Sky rep escorted us to our car and the driver took us back to the airport. Check-in, security and immigration clearance went smoothly so we were left with another couple of hours to kill in the airport. Parts of Cairo airport are not that clean or well maintained. A new airport will be built out of the city in a few years.
A few final thoughts about our Egypt trip:
In the past, we've sometimes been a little smug about how we backpack around on our own and don't need a group tour to get us places. Our India trip, because of sickness and travel hassles, was the first time that we really would have preferred a group tour. And we did take a group tour to China because we thought it would be a lot of trouble to do it any other way. In Egypt, we were ostensibly on a group tour and we thought before we left we'd be in a herd of 20 or so people all the time. That never happened. The other 2 couples we spent time with were great and we had lots of fun. The Blue Sky reps, drivers and guides were all fantastic. We saw and learned more in a little over a week than we could ever have seen on our own in a month. Plus we had a lot of fun doing it.
In easier countries, we'll continue to backpack on our own. However, we aren't as rigid as we once were about group travel. In future, we'll do what seems to fit best.
Tourism in Egypt is suffering mightily because of security concerns. Even the Government of Canada web site warns against non-essential travel to Egypt. We would not travel alone in the Sinai or in the desert near Libya. However, everywhere we went in Cairo and along the Nile seemed perfectly safe.
In general, it seems like Egyptians are thoroughly sick of the Muslim Brotherhood style of government with its strong mix of religious rules with politics. The Egyptians we met seemed very tolerant of other religions and customs while still maintaining a more conservative society than our own.
When you order a "Stella" in Egypt, you're not getting a Stella Artois. There's a local beer named Stella with a picture of a musician and a belly dancer on the can. It's actually pretty good beer.
Cairo traffic is very congested but the drivers aren't crazy. A fender bender is a distinct possibility at any time but we didn't have any near-death experiences.
Street vendors in Egypt are the same as those in other countries. As our guide Mohammed said, "They think all tourists are rich and stupid". They can be aggressive and annoying. Most of what they sell is made in China. The best advice is to not engage with them at all. Just ignore them.
Tipping in Egypt is important. It sometimes seems like everyone has their hand out, even washroom attendants in hotels and airports. Some are polite about it and some always want more no matter how much you give. The camel drivers at Giza and the horse-drawn carriage drivers in Edfu were particularly aggressive. Again, it's best to stay calm.
If all a tourist saw of Egypt was Cairo and the pyramids on the Giza plateau, they would likely have a very different perspective from ours. Cairo is big, dirty and congested. Luxor and Aswan are nice, clean cities with little traffic and pollution. Cruising the Nile is a great way to see the "real" Egypt of farms and small towns.
In our opinion, seeing the pyramids, temples and other artefacts of ancient Egypt should be on any traveller's bucket list. Our Egypt tour was one of the best trips we've ever taken.

Citadel of Salah Al-Din and old Cairo

After the museum, we went back out to the street while Sahar called our driver. Travel is supposed to be broadening and sometimes at odd moments we realize that we really have become more accustomed to being among people who dress differently and have different customs than we see on the street at home in Combermere or Barry's Bay. Men wearing a gelabaya tunic or women wearing a niquab, hijab or burkha doesn't really make them different from people at home wearing ball caps or toques or T-shirts with slogans. It all becomes commonplace and insignificant after a while.
Soon we were on our way up a big hill to the mosque at the Citadel of Salah Al-Din. Salah Al-Din is a revered figure to the Egyptian people because he drove out the Crusaders. The mosque is huge and quite beautiful. As usual, we were inundated with requests for selfies with people of all ages but especially school children. Even though we're used to this, sometimes it still feels like they must be putting us on. Why do they want pictures with us? However, go with the flow.
During prayers, the main floor of the mosque is reserved for men while the women pray in the huge balcony areas. At home, people might criticize Islam because men and women worship separately. However, our guide Sahar explained that Muslim women like her prefer to worship in a different space in the mosque because when they're kneeling and bending right to the floor, they feel more comfortable doing so without a man behind them. Many agnostic Canadian women might appreciate that. Anyway, it's their custom and it certainly doesn't harm us.
From the mosque, we drove back down to the Nile for lunch on a barge restaurant. The picture just shows the appetizers. The main course was much larger. We've been eating lots of good food on this trip.
After lunch we went to the Jewish quarter in old Cairo. Jews have lived in Egypt for centuries. Although most left for Israel when it was first established, there are still about 40 Jewish families comprising about 1,000 people still living in Cairo. In the area, we visited a synagogue and a Christian church. We also saw the cellar where, according to legend, Jesus, Mary and Joseph hid for 3 months during their 3 year journey through Egypt. The street outside has a big plaque commemorating their travel along it.
Our last stop was at a government shop where Sahar said we could get a fair price for real Egyptian cotton sheets. Along with our small picture on papyrus, that will be our Egyptian souvenir. As we drove back to our hotel, we could see the pyramids in the distance.

Museum of Egyptian Antiquities

On Tuesday, December 5th, our original Cairo guide, Sahar, met us in the lobby of our hotel at 8 am. Our first stop was the Egyptian Museum. We wanted to be there when it opened at 9 am because it can get quite crowded.
Once inside, Sahar took us immediately up to the Tutankhamun exhibit on the 2nd floor. First we saw a picture taken by Howard Carter in 1922 when he first opened Tutankhamun's tomb. Essentials that King Tut would need in the afterlife were piled up in a room near his sarcophagus. Many of those same artefacts are now displayed in the museum. The workmanship is incredible. Seeing a folding chair with copper hinges as well as flip-flops made of gold was a bit of a surprise, There were beautiful artefacts too numerous to mention. As Sahar guided us through the rest of the museum, we learned of the later influence of the Greeks and then the Romans on Egyptian society.
Most people are aware that ancient Egypt was an advanced society but we did not realize just how advanced they were until we went to Egypt. It's really quite astonishing.
Sahar had planned our visit well. As the museum got more crowded, we had already seen most of the important artefacts and were ready to leave.

Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan Dam, Philae Temple

Our first visit on our last day in Aswan, Monday, December 4th, was to an ancient granite quarry right in town that still contained an unfinished obelisk that had cracked and was therefore abandoned. The ancient Egyptians knew how to smelter gold and copper but not iron, so they used harder stones like the black durite to carve into granite. They would carve a series of holes along a line and fill them with sycamore wood wedges. They soaked the wedges with water causing them to expand and crack the stone along the line. The abandoned obelisk we saw was 137 feet long and estimated to weigh 1200 tons. Current thinking is that stones were moved with log rollers. The stones were rolled into boats on land which would then float during the annual flood and could be taken down the Nile to the desired location. Ramps were used to move stones up onto the top of walls. The amount of work this would take is unimaginable. However, we did see temples that reportedly took 450 years to build, so they apparently had lots of patience.
Our next stop was the Aswan High Dam. There is a smaller dam built earlier by the British but the big dam is now almost 50 years old. Again, it is massive. It has made a huge difference for Egypt in providing reliable irrigation and hydro-electric power.
Our next visit was to the Philae Temple, which was re-located to a higher island before it was submerged in Lake Nasser. We took a short boat trip out to Philae Island. Naturally, a vendor selling cheap bracelets was on the small boat with us. Anita and Olga bought a few bracelets.
Philae Temple was built with stone blocks which were all numbered, dismantled and re-constructed above the new high water level. UNESCO funded this project. It's hard to tell that the temple isn't on its original site.
Like many other ancient temples in Egypt, other religions took over the Philae Temple when it was their turn. There are Christian crosses carved into the walls along with signatures of early travellers to the region.
After we boated back to shore, Chris, Olga and Mohammed went sailing on a traditional Egyptian felucca while we were driven to the airport for our flight to Cairo. As usual, another Blue Sky Travel Group rep accompanied us and made sure we were properly checked in. Idiot proof travelling.
Our hour and a half flight to Cairo was uneventful and we were met by another rep when we arrived, who took us out to a waiting car. When traffic is light, it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get from the Cairo airport to Le Meridien Pyramids Hotel. In late afternoon, it took 2 hours and 20 minutes. The drivers are not nearly as crazy as those in India but the city is very congested. It took so long that at one point our driver had to pull over and jump over the guardrail to relieve himself. We weren't comfortable with all the traffic going by our parked car but we had nowhere to go. He was very apologetic.
Finally, we got to our hotel, had dinner and went to bed. Another eventful day.