Jan 2009

Well we are finally out of Europe and into Egypt, we had a week in Alexandria to chill out with Rach’s mum (Mary) and rest-up from the previous few months of travel. Our first planned trip was a present (cheers Mary and Ken), a Nile cruise. We flew from Cairo to Luxor, which was cool in itself. The flight path was over the Nile the whole way and looking out the window you could see this green line snaking it was through the landscape off into the horizon with endless desert either side.

First view from our window

Straight after checking into our lush (well above our normal traveling standards, thanks again to Mary) room on the boat we headed off with the tour group to our first temple, Karnak temple. It had huge columned rooms, obelisk (plural) and statues galore.

Our group included us, John (aussie guy who was at our table for dinners), three Canadian couples, some other randoms and three young Aussie families with three kids each, that’s nine kids total!

Luxor temple

Two big statues outside the valley of the kings, Ramsess really did love himself

After the valley of the kings we went to another temple nearby (pronounced hot chicken soup). At one point Rach had to head off too the loo, when I found her again she was with the guy above. Apparently after a short conversation, with Rach, ‘Mohammed’ wanted to make her his forth wife. Jamie was almost swayed by his offer of; 2 million chickens, 1 million goats and 2 dogs. Pretty sure he was joking, but who knows.

This is the life.

Galabaya men swarming the boat

One of the highlights of the cruise had to be the innovative sales techniques employed by the Galabaya hawkers. Their process involves the following;
- without even waiting for the boat to slow down they row their dinghy’s besides the boats and grab onto whatever they can.
- They tether their dingy to our boat.
- While being dragged along they heave plastic bags full of there wears onto the top deck of the boat.
- If you want to buy you have to barter like hell with the men below.
- If you don’t want to but you toss they plastic bag back.

We were in the tossing back category, Rachel making a game of trying to land the bags perfectly back in the dinghy’s. Bags were flying everywhere, many fell in the water but were quickly fished out, wrung out and thrown back up to the next tourist that dared to poke there head up or make eye contact worth someone below.
One over zealous and under cautious hawker got his dinghy trapped between a concrete wall and our cruise ship. As the crack of timber rang out the hawkers jumped ship onto our boat, but fortunately there vessel popped out the back no worse for wear. Rach was horrified but watching crew members told her not to worry it happens almost every week.

Typical temple crowd, Asian tourist and suited teenage Egyptian guard with AK-47

This dude totally ripped us off when buying some scarf’s.

Edfu temple, I think??? They were all starting to look the same

Egyptian girl totally letting loose on the belly dancing floor

us at Egyptian party

Total vertical jump

Feluka ride

Dip your finger in the nile and you are destined to return

Abu Simbol

Our cruise actually finished in Aswan (where the big Nile dam is). But (thanks again Mary) we had an extra place to go. So a quick flight down over Lake Nasser and we were at Abu Simbol. We are so glad that we got to go here, there is only the two temples but what temples they are.

Ohhh Ramses is it a wee bit nippy outside

Total commitment to the photo…..after ‘landing’ Rach did an impromptu roll with added knee/elbow graze.