Part I
Part II
Part III

Response to Matt's Chapter Four:

I really don't have anything to add about the felluca. It's just so enjoyable and relaxing and fun. Sure, I could tell stories about some of the crazy things that different people in the group did on our trip down the Nile, but I choose to protect the guilty.

It was on the felluca, however, that we decided we were having way too much fun to skip out on the Red Sea part of the trip, so we arranged to do the full 14-day trip, which turned out to be a great decision, as you may have noticed from our posts about diving.

Chapter Five

As Matt said, the felluca pulled up next to Kom Ombo Temple pretty early in the morning. We managed to get all of our stuff off the boats, up the stairs, and onto the bus. Then we all walked like zombies around Kom Ombo Temple. I can't tell you much about it, because we did this part without a guide, so here's a picture. The same goes for Edfu, which we arrived at about 2 hours later.

We finally arrived in Luxor just in time for lunch, then a quick break before we walked from the hotel to Luxor Temple. This time we did have a guide and he hurried us through as the sun was going down. It's a very impressive temple, but it just gets overshadowed by other places you see in Luxor over the course of your stay. The one thing that is pretty funny is that there is a great view of McDonald's through one of the chambers. "I'm Lovin' It!" (Yes, we ate there. It was delicious. And I bought a McDonald's in Egypt beach towel that is very cool. So there.)

Six new people joined our trip in Luxor, so we were all very awkward for a while as the newbies adjusted. By this point, the original group had no problems discussing every toilet-related issue with one another, but it just got weird around the new people. They turned out to be perfectly cool, though.

At dawn he next morning, we awoke, crossed the Nile by boat and boarded our donkeys for the Valley of the Kings. We visited three tombs, plus King Tut's, with his mummy still inside. It was a lot of information to absorb from the guide so early in the morning, but it was really cool to see all of it. You have to pay extra to see King Tut's tomb, which is fine. What I don't get are the people who travel halfway across the world to see Egypt, and then wonder whether it's worth another $12 to go into King Tut's final resting place, the only tomb with a mummy still inside it! It's freaking King Tut, people! Did you come to Egypt to stand outside the tomb and look at dirt?

Moving on, we visited the Valley of the Workers. These have some of the best preserved art in all of Egypt, just because grave robbers were never interested in them. Wish I had some pictures to show you, but picture-taking is verboten.

That historically packed morning on the west bank of the Nile was the exact moment that Killer Fatigue hit me. Everyone, with the exception of Matt and myself, loved the donkey trek and said it was one of the best parts of the entire two weeks. I thought it was okay on the first leg, and for various reasons, decided to take a cab to the other stops with the older lady, the scared lady, and the pregnant lady. I ws the deliriously tired lady. Matt continued on with his donkey, which might have been ill-advised since his stinky donkey stepped on his foot and they both fell. Matt joined the ladies in the taxi after that.

Given the choice of the Valley of the Queens (more tombs) or Ramses III's Funerary Temple, the group wisely selected the Funerary Temple. The best story was about how the Pharaoh would have his soldiers count their kills. First, they were supposed to cut off the left hand, but this was unreliable. Then, they used a foot. Again, it didn't work out. Then, they used tongues, but that just wouldn't do. Finally, they settled on penises (penii?). So, in Ramses III's Funerary Temple, there is a wall carved with a giant pile of penises.

That night, we all got dressed up for a big buffet dinner at the Nile Valley restaurant. That would have been our last night, had we not decided to go on to Dahab. Sadly, it was the last night for six people with whom we had done some serious bonding. The worst part about this was the obligatory dancing. These entertainers can be so annoying!

We got to sleep in a little the next morning, as our horse-drawn carriages didn't leave for Karnak Temple until 9:00. Karnak is the largest temple anywhere in the world. It is just very, very big.

I feel like I haven't explained anything in Luxor very well, but I think it's because everything is kind of beyond description. It really just has to be seen with your own eyes.

For our final hours in Luxor, we did a little shopping. Not too much, though. Matt got some more 18-cent falafel sandwiches. That night we boarded the bus to the Red Sea.

But that's another chapter. I thought I had it in me to finish all of Egypt in this post, but I'm pooped now, so we'll have to revisit it later on.

Be sure to read Parts One and Two first.

Chapter Three

The train arrived sometime in mid morning on January 31st (My birthday), we piled into our bus, and checked into our hotel in Aswan. I was still feeling a bit wrong, so I caught a nap before lunch, and everybody else in the hotel tried to use the hotel's small hot water supply as quickly as they could.

I was feeling alright by the time lunch rolled around and I managed to eat a bit. I almost managed to excuse myself early to go have a shower since all of the other potential bathers were at this point, either clean, or still eating lunch. But Heather gave me an evil eye and told me I should go sit back down, so I sat. I figured she thought I was being rude by leaving early, but I caught on a few minutes after the birthday cake came out and everybody started singing at me. There was only one candle to blow out, so I think that means I haven't actually turned 29.

I did manage to get a shower before we went off to the Philae Temple (which has a fascinating story to it, I highly recommend actually reading what's at the other end of that link back there) for a wander around our first proper temple. The temples are actually a bit more impressive than the pyramids. There's more to wander around, and some of the construction is just as mind boggling. They don't have quite the absolute presence that the pyramids and Sphinx have, but they're much more interesting. I was especially excited to see the actual spot where Cleopatra's Needle once stood.

We had some free time until dinner, so I took another nap, I have no idea what Heather did.

Dinner was kind of interesting, we took a boat across the Nile and into one of the cataracts for dinner at a Nubian family's house. We learned a bit of culture, had some really fantastic food, and then we got Henna'd. Quite an interesting birthday all things considered, and I was even feeling better by the time it was over.

The next morning we were on a bus by 3am to Abu Simbel. By this point, you should be picking up on the sleep deprivation that was the norm on this tour. For those of you playing along at home, drink every time we don't get a full night's sleep. I managed to sleep for a bit on the bus, but managed to wake up in time to see a lovely sunrise in the desert with a really bright Venus visible before the sun came up. We got into Abu Simbel at around 7am, and it was already ridiculously packed. There must have been 60 busloads of tourists when we got there, but I think we were the absolute last bus to arrive. Apparently it just gets worse in the afternoons. This was in the middle of winter too, I can't imagine coming here in the middle of the day in the peak season. Anyhow, very impressive, but we were too tired to pay very good attention to the Egyptologist, and the interiors were really crowded, so after our obligatory visit to the interiors, we headed back outside and admired the temples from there. Until our four hour bus ride back to Aswan.

We had the afternoon free after that, so some of us, okay me and a bunch of the girls, went and had tea at The Old Cataract Hotel and we watched the boats float by until sunset. At least that's the official story... What we really did was break into the Agatha Christie Suite with the help of housekeeping. We had time for a mad dash through the room, and after we paid our baksheesh, we returned to our beverages.

That night we had a really nice cookout on the roof of our hotel and there was some compulsory dancing for those who didn't know how to look properly occupied when the press-gang came by. The evening ended when all of the hotel's beer was gone.

The next morning, after a full night of sleep, we boarded our Fellucas.

Chapter Four

A Felluca is a wee sailboat. Our felluca had a cooler of beer on it. Those are pretty much the important details.

Ten minutes after getting on the boat, I was in my pareu and half asleep. I spent two days in that exact condition. Heather was a bit more lively and managed to do a bit of reading. At some point on the first day, a few people went swimming, and I (sort of) had my first rescue since September 1996. The felluca guys could really make some fantastic food with their single propane burner, dinner on the second night was the best fried chicken any of us had ever eaten. At nights we tied up and had a camp fire and the felluca guys beat on bongos and sang the same song over and over again. Oh, and there was beer.

Our two days on those wee boats were really pretty fantastic. The pictures tell a bit of the story so be sure to have a look at them. I'm actually a little bummed there isn't more of a story to tell about this bit of the trip. Maybe Heather can have another crack at it. It was probably my favorite part of the entire tour, but its really hard to put it into a narrative, because it was simply so incredibly relaxing to just do nothing for two days, the whole experience blurs together a bit. There were some sleepy bits, some tasty bits, some funny bits and some mildly annoying bits, but the end result was that when I went to bed on the second night, I felt like I'd been on vacation for a week. OK, technically, I've been on vacation for like 10 months, but a lot of it has been quite strenuous, I swear.

So now, they've got us all relaxed, and practically paralyzed from not using any muscles for two days, so on the third day, we get woken up at 5am, sailed a bit more to our destination, and then told to climb up these ridiculous steps in our delerium, and then we're expected to enjoy our visit to Kom Ombo Temple. But that will have to wait for another update.

PS: Thinking back on this, I realize I was pretty much the only one that was still half asleep when all this was going on. Everybody else had woken up, had breakfast and was reasonably alert. So maybe I was the only one that was actually delerious, but everybody hated the stairs.

We're now advanced scuba divers, rather flash eh? We finished our advanced open water course this afternoon with dives to The Canyon, and The Bells of the Blue Hole. Both took us to 31/30 meters where we got to experience some very mild nitrogen narcosis, but we managed to do the math problem our dive instructor gave us. Well, I managed to do it, Heather and our Instructor Tim, didn't seem to know about order of operations, so they actually got the math wrong, but I guess that's ok if you're just as dumb on land as you are buzzing on nitrogen. After the math problem, Tim handed us the slate, which asked us to "Write your name backwards." Heather went first, and then Tim handed the slate to me, I had fully expected Heather to have written "enam ruoy" - but she didn't, so it was left to me. I think Tim was a bit worried as to why I was taking so long, and then it took him a minute to get the joke, but once he figured it out he nearly spit his regulator out. Things are just funnier at 31 meters. Both were pretty spectacular dives, I even had a cleaner wrasse swim into my ear, which is an odd sensation, but does the job much better than a Q-tip. Anyhow, that's all the diving for us in Dahab, we're taking tomorrow off and taking a ferry to Jordan on Monday or Tuesday.