This is the last part of my Egypt travel and the last Egypt travel tips I have to share. After the dusty and noisy Cairo, with its large boulevards swarming of cars, after the impressive pyramids in Gizeh and after the exhausting bus journeys, we had the chance to rest a little on the ship, during the 4 days of Nile cruise. Now, back on the bus again, heading to Hurghada, a famous resort at the Red Sea. Again, the journey was extremely long and boring, we crossed the desert without barely any stop, making plans of what we are going to do in Hurghada: scuba diving, glass walls submarine rides, snorkeling and other refreshing activities. Of course, we noticed again how long Egyptian hours are: we were told that we are going to travel about 6 hours, and after half a day, we were still in the desert.

This is what we saw just before entering Hurghada, after countless hours of desert travel

Suddenly, the landscape started to change, we were now crossing huge piles of garbage, dwellings in ruins, lots of debris spread around on the land. We were told that we are entering Hurghada. You can imagine that we were shocked that we are going to spend the rest of our vacation chasing lizards and ants among ruins. The next thought was that if those were the 4 and 5 star hotels promised, then the submarine ride would have been a hazardous adventure, given that the submarines were in the same shape as the buildings. After maybe 30 minutes of such a landscape, we got used to the idea of getting lodged in ruins, yet the driver seemed to be unstoppable.

At a point, somebody from the group noticed that we were passing by the same ruins for the second time. We asked the guide, and we got the answer we would nave never wanted to hear: yes, we were lost, the driver did not know the way! What to do now? Killing the driver was not a solution, as we were not able to find the way by ourselves, considering by absurd that we had managed to drive that huge old bus. Killing the guide? Hmm, no, as he was only an employee, suffering the same shame year after year, with all the groups. Suicide? No way! After so much suffering, we were entitled to a last glass of beer and a swim in the Red Sea, at least. So we started to make jokes and laugh, as we were in our best vacation ever. The road got smaller and smaller, full of wholes, then the asphalt ended and we were on a narrow path, when the driver decided that was not the way, and he wanted to turn back the bus. It was really hilarious to see how many manoeuvres were necessary!

Street view: no lines, not so many cars... much better than Cairo

Briefly, after this adventure, he remembered somehow the good way, and 30 minutes later we were in front of our hotel, the Sea Gull, a 4 star, all inclusive resort, which looked all right, not as we expected such a resort to look like, but at least it had all the walls in place, it had a roof and it was clean. Luckily, the rooms were nice, the food was OK, and the local beer was acceptable. The hotel had a nicely arranged garden, the weather was warm, so we could finally relax and enjoy the rest of our vacation.

Hurghada - The Seagull Hotel

We enjoyed until the next morning. At breakfast, one of colleagues in the group told us that she had some stomach disorders, diarrhea and headaches. Too bad for her, we thought. Then, one after the other, some other colleagues had the same problem. By noon, almost half of the group was affected, and I imagine how funny it must have been to see us running on the corridors to get faster to the bathroom.

The worst of all was that we got scared that we might have taken some Egyptian virus and we will die so young and so far away from home. We called a doctor, we took some medicines and after one day, we were all OK, maybe a little bit thinner, but alive. Then guess what: it started to rain! The local people told us that was the first rain in the past 5 years! How on Earth were we exposed to such a coincidence: we are there for two weeks and we catch the once in 5 years rain! Yet, the rain lasted only some 10 minutes, so it did not cause too much inconvenience.

Beautiful garden of Seagull hotel (all green, although it was January)

The trip back home was by plane, and it was a pleasure, because the first plane we took was a Boeing 747, very comfortable, and which, unlike the bus and all the rest, seemed pretty new.

Anyway, I think that I won’t visit any African country so soon, especially that this Egypt travel came after other interesting trips to China and Thailand. But this is another story, maybe I’ll tell it to you some other time.

C. Asswan and how Egyptian time is always longer than European time

In our last evening in Cairo, we were announced that we are going to leave early next morning, heading to Asswan. We were told not to be late, as we are going to travel in a convoy, because crossing the desert may imply dangers for lonely tourists. The information was that the travel is going to take about 4 hours. OK, here we are in the morning, the bus moves on, we join the convoy in about 30 minutes and then we set sail for adventure. Hour after hour are passing by, we feel like we would like to stop for a while but nobody seems to care.

Some Egyptian town we passed by

After 4 hours we finally stop, but not at our destination. We were somewhere in the middle of the desert, at a half-ruined shelter which hosted two toilets and three small boutiques, guarded by about 50 military men. As all the 50 buses in the convoy had stopped there, you can imagine the lines that formed in front of the settlement. We were supposed to stop only for 15 minutes. Almost none of us managed to use the great facilities offered, as we had to go back in the bus, to move on. I imagine that not many of you had the chance to see how a 50 buses convoy starts to move, but I can tell you that our vehicle got in motion after 30 minutes! Great, I was already hungry. I had nothing to eat because I did not bring any food into the bus, imagining that for 4 hours trip it is not necessary. Yes, but Egyptian hours last much longer: the total journey took about 8 or 9 normal hours. We had one more stop at a point, and then our driver managed to get lost from the convoy! They solved the dangerous desert problem by assigning a young man with a big gun to travel in the bus with us. I am sure that was a very effective way to protect a 40 tourist bus from desert thieves.

Nothing but desert, going on for hours

The Big Dam of Asswan, great tourist objective, was of such importance to me, that I was standing on it asking where it is. I’m not a very technical person. I imagine that others might have seen the beauty of an old stone dam, all gray and dirty, with some poles and wires spread around. Then we were taken to the Great Unfinished Obelisque: actually there was no monument; it was only a huge rock with a crack in it. The guide’s explanation was that when they tried to build the obelisque, the stone cracked and it was left unfinished (although I could have sworn that it was left unstarted). We all refused to climb on the precious monument, so we moved on towards the harbour, to take the ship for the Nile cruise.

Interesting dwelling in the desert

D. The Nile Cruise and Valley of Kings

This was the best part of the trip. The ship was comfortable, with large open decks with a small pool and fitness facilities. The cabin was large enough to accommodate two people, it even had a nicely arranged corner with a table and two armchairs. It resembled very much to a hotel room. Keep in mind though that it was a 5 star ship, looking like 3 star to me. Food on the cruise ship was decent, but somehow lacking in flavor.

Our cabin on the cruise ship

But before getting on the ship, it was a really funny moment. At the docks, the ships were parked in parallel, in groups of three or four. Ours was the third in the row, so we had to cross the other two ones in order to get to it.

All passages were very narrow and we had a lot of luggage with us (for two weeks trip). We were all striving to move without falling into the water, between those ships, carrying that huge baggage on top of our heads. In the meantime, all the waiters on the ship were aligned at the door, smiling, saying welcome, but not doing even the slightest movement to help us with the luggage. Strange way of being polite, isn’t it? I’m sorry I have no pictures with those moments, as nobody was available to take some.

Felucca on the Nile in sunset light

Cruise ship on the Nile

The cruise took four days. The ship stopped from time to time and we could get down and visit some ancient temples. At some of them we stopped by night, and it was great, as the temples were illuminated. Pictures were hard to take though, as I’m no photographer but just an amateur.

Huge pillars of an Egyptian temple (just look how small people were by comparison)

The Karnak temple in Luxor is really impressive and it is so well preserved that even color paintings are still visible on some of the walls. We were told about this pharaoh who wanted to save money on building statues with this own representations, so he decided lo leave in place the statues of his predecessor, replacing only the name tables with his ones. How the historians discovered this trick? Very simply: they recognized the pharaoh wife’s statues as being of the wife of the first pharaoh.

Statues at the entrance of a temple

The Temple of Hatshepsut (many thanks to “Eve of Isis” who took time to comment here to let me know I was wrong) is also fabulous. It was carved directly in the rock of a mountain and it is unbelievable perfect.

The Temple of Hatshepsut

But the best of all was the Valley of the Kings, ancient Egypt’s huge cemetery. We took the effort of climbing the hills and this paid off: the landscape was superb, the feeling was great, and we could see all over the valley; we were so high that people looked like colored ants.

Valley of the Kings

Unfortunately, we had to go down running, as our guide was quite crazy: all other tourists were already down there, heading for the bus, preparing to leave the site.

This is the most unpleasant part of trips to such dangerous places: you are never left alone to spend as much time as you like in the places that inspire you. It is always like in the school camps: you have to stay in line, with the group, respect the schedule and meanwhile have fun (if you still can).

Cairo - view from the hotel room

A. Cairo
It was a nice January day when we arrived in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The weather was nice, not too cold but not too warm, either. We imagined that we could have lovely evening walks, enjoying sitting on some terraces, chatting and having fun, all right. Actually, this proved to be all wrong. In the first place, Cairo is not built for people walking, it is built for cars. There were barely any sidewalks, and where we could find some, they were very narrow and extremely steep, making it impossible for two people to walk side by side. Besides, every 3-4 feet, huge trees were interrupting the sidewalks, forcing us to go down on the street, then up on the sidewalk again and so on, therefore we had rather gym sessions than nice, pleasant walks in our three evenings in Cairo.

Cairo - Bridge over the Nile river

Crossing the streets was a real adventure, as the crossings are there only for you to remind of civilization. No driver pays attention to those crossings, they don’t stop to let you cross, even though he has a red light. I imagine lights there are only to prevent drivers’ boredom, because in three days I was not able to decipher other meaning of them. What do you do when you don’t know how to do something? One way is to look at people who did it and find out how they did. We looked at the Egyptians crossing the street and we learned a scary but effective ritual that allowed us to cross those huge boulevards of Cairo: take one step, raise your hand and then look straight into the eyes of the first car’s driver. If you see determination or if you see he is not looking at you at all, then don’t cross, let him pass and repeat the ritual with the next car. If you see him looking at you and you feel like he might stop, make the second step, without taking tour eyes from him. Then, with your hand raised, make a third step, looking already for the eyes of the driver from the next lane. Repeat the procedure for all six lanes of a normal Cairo boulevard and here you are, on the other side of it, happier and thinner, with the adrenaline rushing in your body. What a fitness session! Besides, the city is very dusty and extremely noisy, as there is a habit that cars horn whenever they change the lane.
Here are a few more photos. I’m not sure whether all of them are from Cairo, because I’m adding them to the original post four years after I wrote it.

Cairo buildings

Smaller buildings nearby Cairo

Cairo surroundings - small dwelling

Tourism Police in Egypt

At least, I think it was a safe city, because about half the people in the streets were from military police, but at first sight their huge guns were truly scary, so if I were to describe my Cairo feelings, I can say that I was safe and frightened in the same time. It was like I wished to have not only two eyes but one hundred of them, spread all over my body, giving me the chance to see all around, to be ready to notice and to react to any danger. Sad but true, it was better in the hotel room than outside.

Christian Church in the Copt Quarter in Cairo

Nice to see and not very famous: The Copt Christians Quartier
I did not know that some Egyptians are Christians and I was amazed to see how well they managed to preserve this religion in a Muslim world.

Fruit vendors in Egypt

On our way from Cairo to Gizeh

B. Gizeh and the pyramids

The very first morning, a four star bus was waiting to take us to the pyramids. I have a piece of advice for those who think about going to Egypt: take the most expensive trip or don’t go at all, because their ratings have nothing to do with ours. That 4 star bus was all dusty, torn, worn, it had a stinky toilet with a broken door and the air conditioning was like crazy: half of us were heated like hell and the others were freezing. This applies also to hotels: if you choose 4-5 stars, then you can be sure that you will be treated like in a normal 3 star hotel. I imagine only if we have chosen 3 stars!!! Lucky us, we paid a lot but at least the accommodation was OK. I was not so impressed by their cuisine, except from some fried rice which was excellent and some delicious coffee cookies. The rest of the meals were mostly tasteless, or tasted rather strange.
The pyramids are really impressive on the outside. Well, you can visit them inside also. We waited in line for about one hour to enter one of the pyramids and we had to leave our photo and video cameras outside, as we were not allowed to take any picture inside. I was so curious what treasures are there inside the pyramids, that we cannot take photos. Ok, after going down on a narrow corridor for about 15 minutes, we arrived at the bottom: there was absolutely nothing inside! Not even paintings on the walls! There was just one old Egyptian beggar asking us for some change.

Egypt souvenirs anybody?

Speaking of beggars, there were plenty of them surrounding the pyramids and the Sphinx, from small dirty children to very old men, and all of them wanted tourists’ money, either by selling some souvenirs, or just by asking. They were really swarming around us as we walked.

The Sphinx was huge. I expected that. You can see it and recognize it from a distance, but when you’re close, you can’t figure out much. Besides, there are thousands and thousands tourists eager to take a pic of themselves with the Sphinx, so the most overwhelming feeling is to leave everybody and the almighty Sphinx behind you and run. He, he! Running alone is not easy at all in Egypt (you’ll see why in the next articles).

The Sphinx

Tourists assaulting the big pyramid

Police force on their camels

Tourists on camels in Gizeh

I was about to forget the camels: very nice creatures, but extremely stinky. They were for rent: their masters would invite us to climb on them to walk us for free. It sounds nice, isn’t it? But they would ask you for 5 dollars to let you get down from the camel. That’s commerce in the Egyptian style.

Local people trying to persuade us to ride their camels

Would you take me for a ride, honey?

I will have two or three more posts on this Egypt trip: I still want to cover the road to Asswan, the Valley of the Kings, the cruise on the Nile and Hurghada Red Sea resort. If you are interested, come back in a couple of days to see more of a forgettable vacation.