3 ~ Hello from Luxor, Egypt

Hi Everyone,

Well, the 11 hour train ride to Luxor turned out to be a fun and rewarding experience for us. Most tourists would have taken a “cruise” up the Nile or a flight from Cairo to Luxor, but we wanted to rub elbows with the locals, not other tourists, so the train ride worked better for us. Arriving in Luxor just after dark made finding our hotel a little more difficult. We knew where we had to go, but wading through the gauntlet of touts was more than we were expecting. There was a German couple on the train that was going our way, so we hooked up with them and pushed our way through the crowd toward the twenty-five cent foot ferry at the Nile. Our hotel was on the other (west) side of the river. The ferry was delightful with striking views of the Luxor Temples all lit up for the night. The manager of our hotel was sitting on a wall, about a block away from the ferry terminal, waiting for us. He recognized us as two “standout” westerners, as we walked in his direction and then led us to his hotel. It turned out that we were the only guests for that evening. Our room had a large brick dome in the ceiling right above the bed. I’m not sure what its significance was, but it had 5 tiny round glass windows in it that looked like bright stars as the sun rose in the morning.

Strangely, everywhere we went on this Egypt trip, we saw very few travelers or tourists. There were no lines getting onto anything, but everyone kept telling us that tourism had returned and was better than before the revolution. At first we thought that they were just being optimistic until someone finally explained to us that November through mid-March is the high season and everything was fully booked. Starting in mid-March the weather normally gets very hot and the tourist season is pretty much over until the next November. That’s when we arrived. However, lucky for us, there was an odd weather event now that brought in cool breezy air and kept the temperature highs in the low 70’s. We brought lots of hot weather cloths, but didn’t use them until the last two days of our two weeks here. The travel weather gods must have been smiling on us this trip. I think we would have had a somewhat different experience if it would have been the normal mid-90’s.

This far up the Nile (about 500 miles), there doesn’t seem to be much of an “eating out” culture. Most tourists eat dinner on their cruise ships and there aren’t many independent travelers like us that are looking for a restaurant for supper. However, Carol’s research turned up a delightful Egyptian restaurant that we returned to a couple of times for our evening meals. They served food with a Mediterranean flair that suited us very well. When we travel in the third world we tend to eat vegetarian to help avoid stomach problems and they had some delicious options. Of course, there is always a 5 star hotel or two in every tourist location and we took advantage of them as well. When traveling in the third world we often take refuge in these hotels to relax after a long day of walking and fighting off the touts. They have good restaurants, pleasant gardens and nice clean restrooms, with real towels for freshening up. And, we never look out of place!

One thing that we noticed in Luxor is that only men are working. The women stay home and tend to the home and children. Men run the hotels, tours, laundries, restaurants, transportation etc. This is not the case in Cairo, where you can even request a female Uber driver, if you are a female traveler. Many places we have traveled, women dominate the tourist jobs and men stick to things like construction and manual labor.

The attractions in Luxor are, of course, the 3500 year old Tombs and Temples. The main one is right in the center of town and is dominated by King Ramses The Great. He was called “The Great” because he lived a long life (into his 90’s) and fathered 280 sons (and an unknown number of daughters) with 36 wives. The temple complex is very well preserved, having been buried in sand for most of its existence. At the other end of town, about 1.5 miles up the Nile, is the Karnak Temple with its 136 columns. It is much larger than Luxor, but its condition is not in as good. A very interesting thing here is that between these two temples is the “Avenue of the Sphinxes.” The 1.5 mile road was originally lined with 1350 sphinxes, about 650 of which have been unearthed. Many of them were repurposed during the Roman times or destroyed by invaders over the millennia. However, Egypt has a restoration project going right now, to rebuild “The Ave.”

By far, the most interesting of the archeological treasures, a short drive from the Luxor area is “The Valley of the Kings” where King “Tut” (Tutankhamen), the beloved boy King was buried. He unexpectedly died at the age of 18 and his tomb was only partially built. So, they buried him in his unfinished tomb with many exotic treasures and some of his personal belongings, which were only discovered in the early twentieth century. There are more than 30 kings buried here with many of them still not completely unearthed. We could only visit 4 of the tombs, while we were there, but some of them were a long walk down (and back up, of course) from the surface. Inside many of the tombs were extensive hieroglyphic carvings and paintings. Some of the guides could read them for us. Baboons played a large part in some of the paintings and carvings. We were told that they used baboons for telling time. According to the guides, baboons urinate every hour and they could tell the time by keeping track of this. It sounds a bit unbelievable, but how else would they tell time 3500 years ago…. a sundial, maybe? They chose this location, out in the middle of the desert, for the tombs, because it was at the base of a tall mountain that resembled a pyramid.

Have a look at Carol’s Travel Blog for Luxor:

https://carolapucci-tips.blogspot.com/2019/04/luxor-when-life-gives-you-lemonsoffer.html

Later…….. your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol