Egypt 2009 - Day 5

Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 – Fly to Luxor, Visit Karnak, Board boat for Nile Cruise, Visit Luxor Temple

Ugh! Today we start with a 4:00 AM wake up call. We can eat breakfast if we want, but I don’t want at this time of day so I settle for a cup of coffee and put some pastries into a zip lock bag for later. We head to the airport. The procedures are different here than in the US. Atef collected the etickets and real tickets and went and picked up the boarding passes for everyone. We had to verify that our checked luggage was in the pile, and then we headed into the airport. Here you have to go through security just to enter the airport. I have had to show my passport in some foreign countries (Peru) to get into the airport, but I have never had to go through security just to get in. I found that this was common practice in Egypt. Every airport that I entered in Egypt had this requirement. We were not done with security as we had to go through security again at the gate before we boarded. I never checked in personally and I don’t think that I ever show an ID. In my opinion, the airport is poorly designed with security at the gate level. They did not even start letting people into the gate area until almost boarding. Due to the time that is required to get everyone flying on a wide bodied Airbus 330 to get through one security check-in, the flight is delayed an hour. The flight to Luxor was an hour once we took off. Luxor is much cleaner and attractive than Cairo.

We went directly from the airport to the Temple at Karnak. This place totally blew me away. For the first time on this trip, I have experienced a major Wow! It is huge and what is in it is huge.  It seems to go on forever. This was the first place that we really saw a lot of hieroglyphics carved in stone. The carving in some places was absolutely perfect and showed no signs at all of erosion. This really amazed me because the Native American pictographs that I have seen in the southwest USA do show signs of wear and erosion.  Some of the ceilings and pillars were painted and the vivid colors were still visible. The massiveness of the columns and obelisks boggles the mind. My appreciation of the engineering skills of these people increased immensely when I saw this site.

As we left Karnak, Atef announced that since our flight was late, there would not be enough time to go to the jewelry store before we went to the boat. (Oh, darn!) So we went to the boat.  Our boat is the MS Radamis. My first observation about it was the rickety gangplank that one had to cross to board it. The “handrails” for one part of it consisted of a nylon rope strung out on one side. People were hauling luggage across this thing. My concerns were confirmed later in the day when one part slipped out and collapsed into the Nile. Fortunately no one was on it at the time as far as I know.

Egypt 2009 - Day 5

First we had lunch. We were hungry since breakfast at 4:00 AM was a long time ago. I had a very nice fish for lunch. We also could to help ourselves from the buffet if we wished. After lunch, we were given our room keys and went to our room. Our luggage was already in the room and the room is quite nice and roomy. The bathroom even has a tub in it. We had about 3 hours of down time. I tried to work on my computer, but the sandman visited me and soon I opted for a nap.

At 5:00 PM, we left the boat to go Luxor Temple. It was getting dark and we would be touring the temple ruins by evening light. This ended up being a good thing. The temple lit up at night was beautiful and many of the carvings actually showed up better with the lights shining on them. The down side was that photography took a hit. Several of us tried taking flash pictures, but unless it was a close-up, there was a lot of back scatter in the picture from all the dust particles in the air. It wasn’t particularly windy, but there was still a lot of sand and dust in the air. It was very impressive, but would have been more so if we had not already been to Karnak.

After we left Luxor Temple, Atef announced that now we did have time to go to the jewelry store. Knowing that we not very far from the boat, I asked if the bus could take those who didn’t want to go shopping back to the boat. He said yes and about 6 to 8 of us returned to the boat. Several others told me later that they wished that had done so.

A dinner buffet was offered at 8:00 PM. We ate and went to bed. It had been a long but a good day. Tomorrow we’ll actually go somewhere on the boat.

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