As I walk through the Valley of the Kings

The next day, we grab the typical Egyptian breakfast and head towards that ferry that will take us to the other side of the Nile and to the hallmark Egyptian sites in Luxor. On the other side of the Nile hordes of taxi drivers yell at us trying to take us for as much as they can get. They shoot for the moon and we end up taking a local minibus towards the main site.





At the crossroads we visit the Valley of the Queens, followed by a temple and finally Valley of the Kings. The tombs at the Valley of Queen are all open and a ticket permits access to everything. After quickly checking out the tombs we visit a temple on our way to Valley of Kings. This temple is excavated in the middle of a valley that was covered in sand. Tents are setup like a gauntlet towards the entrance. At this point Eric and I acquire headwear through rigorous bargaining. The guy actually chased us down when we didn’t want this price. You know you’re getting a good deal when the salesperson is made at the transaction.



From the temple we venture up a rocky pass to the other side of the valley where the Valley of the King rests. The climb was tough, but the view was much worth it. In the distance you can see the long stretch of green palm trees that line the Nile.



We arrive in the middle of the Valley of the Kings, already past the ticket entrance area. We try sneaking into a tomb, but we are caught and we walk back to the entrance to get our tickets. This is the only place that my KU Student ID didn’t work. Again the guy saw the “issued date” and said the card is finished. Then I tried using my Kansas driver’s license again and he caught on to it. After arguing with him I finally cave and end up buying the full price ticket. Eric and Matt who ended up buying 100 Egyptian Pound fake International Student Card’s had no problem what so ever.



The ticket for the Valley of the Queens grants access to all the tombs, while the ticket for the Valley of the Kings is only four tombs. Each visit the ticket check punches a star shaped hole in your ticket. There are multiple tombs open and you have to choose your tombs wisely. Or if you are lucky like me you catch the ticket checker while he’s taking a snooze and get to visit more than four.



After getting back around sunset, exhausted we head back to our hotel. At the front we see Ruda and another Japanese guy checking in. It is such a small world.

Good Morning Luxor!

Eric and I look an overnight train down to Luxor. All the trains were sold out and we had to wait until 12 in the morning to board a train. The policy here in Egypt is that tourists have a separate type of train. It is usually the slightly faster train and also the one that usually costs twelve times more than local prices. The rule of thumb is that tourists are not allowed on local trains, although I would later find out that there are plenty of ways around that policy.





Egypt is kind of like the rut of the family. There is tons of hand me downs. From the old school 60/70’s style taxis, to the retired Finnish ferry I took from Jordan to Nuweba, and now even the trains are hand-me -downs. The fast trains are old French and German ones. We were able to get on an old Spanish train. The tourist police got us tickets and allowed us to take a non tourist first class train down to Luxor.



We get to Luxor in the morning. Matt from Montreal has joined us he was the third tourist that the Egyptian policed ripped off that night. We find a hostel near the train station and get a good price for a three bedroom. I wanted to save Valley of the Kings/Queens when we have a full day so I convince the guys to check out some of the walkable sights.
One of the temples that we visit Matt recognizes. He perfectly describes what’s around each corner as well as what each hallway leads to. Apparently this temple is fully recreated as a level in one of the tomb raider’s. It was pretty interesting to hear Matt talk about how this is part where you have to jump up grab that ledge, climb and jump over this other structure.



One of the temples that is just near the center of town has a night admission. The temple is lit up in incandescent lamps exaggerating all the carvings and hieroglyphics. It was a different mood at night and felt more authentic for some reason. The entire time I am in Egypt, I get this sense that I am in a theme park. Everything just seems so fake. Most of the ruins aren’t ruins at all. They are actually renovated landmarks, with fresh cement creating perfectly symmetric surfaces of walls, floors, columns and obelisks.

Alexandria Daytrip

This morning we are taking a daytrip to Alexandria. I was able to get into contact with Thu, the Seattleite who I met on the stone bridge in Wadi Rum. Later tonight Eric and I will also catch a train down to Luxor to see the premiere Egyptian ruins, so we leave our bags in Nick and Paulina’s room and head off to the train station. It always seems like when you need a taxi there is never one around, but when don’t they’re everywhere. After haggling we are able to get a good rate to the train station.

In Alexandria, my vodaphone runs out of credit, so I have to wait for Thu to call me. She is only able to meet up with us after work, she teaches at a slum school, so we have the day to ourselves. Our first destination is to head to the library which is probably Alexandria main attraction.



At the library there are a lot of school groups there on a field trip and the floods of hello’s, how are you’s, and what is your name’s are thrown at us. There are even requests for pictures to be taken with us. There is a fee to get into the library and I have a policy of not paying for stupid stuff like going into a library so Nick, Paulina and I leave Eric at the library and explore the catacombs of Alexandria.



The catacombs were pretty neat. They reminded me a lot of the underground cities I saw in Turkey. Low ceiling, claustrophobic rooms, and poorly lit areas all made them seem like the same experience. A lot of the catacombs have caved in and we were only able to explore a small part of them.



In the evening we rendezvoused with Thu at the local coffee shop. It was a good thing Eric was wearing a bright orange shirt because the original coffee shop we planned to meet up at and was in the lonely planet, was closed. We ended up across the street and spotted his bright shirt.



Thu took us to the famous seafood restaurants. It’s a place where you pick your fish and they cook it for you. After haggling over price we get a good rate. This meal was extravagant and I was pretty impressed. It definitely made up for the less than idea thanksgiving dinner I had before.

Exploring the streets of Cai *cough cough* ro

We had actually run into Paulina and Nick randomly in the lobby our hotel the morning that we left to go see the pyramids. They are here with Prue and Georgia and coincidentally picked our hotel. Today is the first real feel day we’ve had in Cairo and we can get explore more of it than just the Egyptian Museum or the bridge.





Eric and I head over to the Muslim quarter on foot and the rest of the Aussies do the pyramid tour that we had just done. On the way there I got a ton of interesting shots on the streets. They were crowded filled with restless honking and smoggy pollution. In fact after two days in Cairo I’ve been blowing out soot when I blow my noise. Reminds of me of the big cities, but probably worse. I’ve gotten use to crossing the roads during heavy traffic. The main idea is to keep a constant pace and everyone goes around you. I’ve even gotten use to all the hasselers. It is kind of sad, but can easily and effortlessly ignore all the “hello’s”, “how are yous”, “just have a looks”, the “good mornings”, “afternoons” and “evenings” that shower towards me every day. It took Nick three or four shouts and finally a chase down before he was able to get attention on the streets.





Quite a few people get sick when visiting Egypt. It is one of those inevitable things like getting sick in Morocco; myself included in both those cases. The sanitation and cleanliness of food is clearly a mark below what we are use to. Here is a picture that illustrates this better than anything I can put into words. Here a girl is selling bread that is lying on the curb of the street.





Eric and I stumble onto what we think are the slums of Egypt, but later on we find that it was actually the city of the dead. Basically this use-to-be graveyard has now been taken over by squatters and made into a residency for many people. A little Egyptian girls walks along with us smiling and speaking in incomprehensible Arabic. I end up giving her some of my sunflower seeds and she skips along with Eric and me the rest of the way. Some other locals see this and walk up to me with their hands out. By the end of our exploration I was out of sunflower seeds.





That night Eric and I scored a taxi ride to the football (soccer) stadium to watch a couple of Egyptian teams play off. We were able to get the good seats. It was a fun game to watch and reminded how competitive sports is universal. After the game we meet up with the Aussies and I introduce them to the cornel’s original recipe of artery clogging grease with a side of increased risk of heart attack.





We are just a block or two north of Sadet, which is one of the main metro stops in Egypt. I haven’t take the metro nor do I intend to. The main reason for visiting this area is the comfort food. Or better yet, the comfort foods for any American. There is a Burger King, KFC, McDonalds, another KFC, Hardee’s and a street of coffee stops. After trying Egyptian food, I have to say it is pretty bland and nothing to write home about. We are also all sick from Egyptian food and have decided to take refuge in the oasis of fast food.





After the fast food we hit up a hooka place and relax. There we meet three Egyptians who have just graduated as Tourism guides and their English is impeccable. One of them even speaks Spanish. That is one thing has impressed me quite a bit. I’ve even heard Mandarin being spoken here as well as the typical European language tour guides offered everywhere else. I had to do a double-take when I saw that the person speaking the accent-less Mandarin was an Egyptian, much like when I heard James Kaylin speak Chinese for the first time. Before we parted ways they wrote my name in Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

2nd Wonder: Pyramids

The following day Eric and I along with another American from New York book a taxi to take us around to all the Pyramids. Apparently there are hundreds of pyramids in Egypt and only a handful of famous.



The first stop is Dahshur, followed by the Red Pyramid, the Stepp Pyramid, Memphis and finally Giza. I opted for that order so that we could see the most famous one during sunset. I use my KU student ID to get the half price ticket to see Dahshur. In addition everyone had to chip in for a taxi fee to be let onto the grounds.





You can actually go inside Dahshur. The entrance is about a quarter of the way up from the base of the pyramid. The long downward slanting hallway is just at the right height where you can’t really stand upright, instead you must hunch over slightly. In addition to having a low clearance, the hall is also terribly ventilated. A strong smell of stagnant air fills my lungs as I descend slowly hunched over going down into the darkness into what seemed like an endless tunnel. The tunnel leads to a serious of rooms which aren’t really that impressive. Besides the fact that I can now saw I’ve been inside a pyramid in Egypt I really don’t think that the trek was worth it.





The next stop is the Stepp Pyramid. We could actually see the Stepp Pyramid in the distance from Dahshur. Upon arrival we can see clusters of scaffoldings around it. Apparently the Egyptian Tourism board has decided to renovate this site. Memphis is a site of one of the largest statues of one of the Ramseis the something or another, there were a lot. I wasn’t really impressed. It was more of a tourist trap than anything else. We visit another pyramid that’s a little strange looking; I think it was called the bent pyramid. The sides were constructed at two different angles. Half way during construction the builders decided to give the pyramid a more aggressive angle towards the top, thus making it really strange looking.





We hit a traffic jam on our approach to Giza. Luckily our driver did not try to pull the scam where he drops us off in a far away entrance where camel and horse rents charge an arm and a leg to get to the pyramids. This is only place that the ticket person actually looked at my “student” id card. It’s a real University of Kansas ID, it says issued on June of 2003 when I had to replace it. It does not have an expiration date. “This card is finished” he says. I object and say that the date is the “issued on date” but somehow that fails to be communicated. So I try one more thing, I whip out my Kansas Driver’s License. He looks at it, sees the valid expiration date set to 2014 and sells me the student ticket.






There isn’t really much to say about the Pyramids. It was more a “been there, done that” moment. I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would have been. Sure there big, but I just came from Dubai where you can see the tallest building in the world towering some 70 stories up from just about anywhere in Dubai. I guess the Giza and I just didn’t click. It was impressive, but for me just not as impressive as it seemed to be for everyone else. The constant hassle of people trying to sell you camel and horse rides was pretty ridiculous too.



At sunset, we were trekking pretty far from the main pyramid sights to get a good picture of all the pyramids together. A tourist police on a camel comes by and tells us “the pyramids are finished”. Huh? Five minutes later he finally gets the point across that the attraction is closed at 4:30pm and only if you’ve rented a horse or camel or bought tickets for the lights show can you stay any later. Thus we get escorted off the grounds by a guy on a camel. We take our time and Eric and I are both snapping away as these are the best hours for light. He yells at us and finally make it out of the park but dark.

Cairo

I arrived to Cairo on the night bus with Eric. They played ridiculously loud football match the entire time until 2 or 3 in the morning. We arrive in Cairo around 7am and it is really freaking cold. Luckily Eric is carrying a lonely planet and we find, ironically, a hotel called Dahab. The two of us are crammed into one of the smallest 2 bedrooms I’ve ever been in. Basically there is enough room for the two single beds and enough floor space to put our bags. We both end up crashing for the morning and don’t get up until noonish.

At the Egyptian museum, which is to our surprise just a 10minute walk from our hotel, we see a large queue of package tourists waiting to get in. We join the line and I quickly realize that I had left my swiss army knife in my day pack. The line queued up to a metal detector as well as an x-ray machine. I thought about it and realized that I had taken a ferry from Tangier to Gib, flown from Gib to London, flown from London to Istanbul with my knife in my daypack. If the security authority of the port of Tangier, Gibraltar Airport, Gatwick Airport, and Luton Airport didn’t find my knife in my daypack what are the chances of the Egyptian finding it? Well they found it. The security guard said “you have a knife in there” I said “oh” and he pointed me towards an item check in booth.


We are still outside the main building of the Egyptian Museum right now. I have now passed the checkpoint into the sounding fence of the building. To the left of the metal detectors and x-ray machine is the items check-in stand. I started to walk towards the stand and just happened to glance back at the checkpoint. The guard had already started to talk to other entering tourist and stopped looking at me. This was my chance; I didn’t want to check in my knife and risk losing it again; especially after going through the idea of losing it in Morocco and then miraculously finding it again in Istanbul. I nonchalantly detour my route towards the stand head into the main entrance of the museum. Well guess what there is another x-ray machine and another metal detector. I beeped the first time I came in and the guard didn’t even check me, but my knife was still in my day pack. I thought to myself: If the security authority of the port of Tangier, Gibraltar Airport, Gatwick Airport, and Luton Airport didn’t find my knife in my daypack what are the chances of the Egyptian finding it, again? Well they found it again and I ended up having to check my bag in and re-queue for the entrance.

Inside the museum I met yet another familiar face. One of the Koreans at the Seventh Heaven Hotel was also browsing through the exhibits. It really is a small world after all. But then again I guess there are only so many routes a travel can take when visiting a desert country where the majority of the population and cities are along the live force that is the Nile. Ruda works for a travel company. Her job is to travel and get the 411 on countries she visits. All she has to do is take notes on what she’s done, where things are, and how much stuff costs. When she flashes her travel journalist card she gets a discount everywhere. For example she stayed free at the seventh heaven hotel. What a tough life.

Advance Open Water

Dahab is such a relaxing atmosphere. Basically everyone just hangs out along the restaurants all day. You can rent snorkeling gear everywhere and at less than 10meters off the shore, there are extravagant reef systems. These corals are much more impressive than the ones in Nuweba there is much more depth to this ecosystem.







The waters are still cold, but during the day when the sun is out it is not too bad. I meet up with Yoko, Nick and Paulina, and we head out to do some snorkeling. There are many areas along the shore with various names and we head out to Eel Garden. Sadly I did not have my underwater casing with me and I was unable to take any photos, but even the pictures would not have done this place justice. There is more marine life in my first glance compared to all the fish combined from my Southern California dives.









On a later day I run into Eric and another Brit. They are both staying at Penguin Hotel and are doing their Open Water course there. On that note I decided to sign up for the Advanced Open Water course at Divers Down Under. I was able to negotiate to 200 USD for everyone including 2 extra dives. This totals to 7 dives that comes out to about 28USD/dive with the Advance Open Water certification. I thought this was quite the deal.







Lucky for me there is a couple from Denmark that brought an underwater camera and was able to share their photos with me. Unfortunately most of the settings were messed up, so the colors are pretty washed out. During the advance course I hit a peak bottom time of 76minutes and also a max depth of 40m, on separate dives of course. It was amazing, during my first dive while we were entering and trying to reach a depth of 20m, I saw a rock transform into an octopus, swim alongside me, then suddenly change colors turn back into a rock. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen.