I'm a Howard Carter wanna-be...

Greetings from luxurious Luxor!  I missed my every-2-days blog post that I’ve been trying to keep up due to being on an internet-less train last night, but let me fill you in on what we’ve been up to.  On Saturday, I had my first encounter with those mammoth stone polyhedrons called the Pyramids of Giza.  This is actually Jim’s second time in Egypt, so he had see the pyramids before, but we had a really great time discovering/re-visiting the ancient tomb markers.  I remember studying the Egyptian civilization when my mother was home-schooling my sisters and me and feeling such fascination for the rich culture and way of life of ancient Egypt, and that feeling came back upon going the pyramids and the Sphinx.  It’s just so cool to see it all in person!  Given my enthusiasm for the place and my desire to ride a camel in such an apropos place, I convinced Jim to give in to the tourist-trap and we rode up to the pyramids in full dromedary style.  

It was lots of fun, albeit somewhat stinky, to ride the camels up to the pyramids, and close up, you can see why camels are desert animals, with their lazy gait, big flat feet, and their long eyelashes.  Speaking of the desert, it is amazing in its vast emptiness, sand, and heat.  Of course, that is pretty much the definition of what a desert is, but to experience that sort of arid desolation makes one much more grateful for an ample supply of water and some air-conditioned shelter to retreat to.  We have been downing water at an incredible rate, too, which you have to do to keep at all hydrated in such a dry, dusty heat.  Jim's shirt has salt stains from the sweat!  However, hydrated or not, we decided that Jim would not have made a good slave if he couldn’t even pick up a several ton rock to haul it up the pyramid.  I guess he’ll have to try another career.

We visited the Sphinx, too...  he was very nice, but not too talkative.  Here’s the three of us:

Since the desert is so formidable, you can see why the Egyptians built their civilization around the one large dependable source of water - the Nile.  There’s a very marked difference between dry areas and watered areas, and if you’re in the right spot, Egypt can look positively lush!

After the pyramids at Giza, our driver took us to a museum built around one enormous statue of a pharaoh (Ramses, I think) and also to Sakkara at Memphis, where there are some even more ancient step pyramids (one of which we went inside), as well as some crumbling buildings and most of an impressive colonnade.  

While driving back to our hostel, Jim was seized with the urge to purchase an enormous 20-lb. watermelon from a street vendor, which he did.  We brought it back to our hostel, where we fortunately found some fellow travelers from Taiwan to share it with.  Delicious!

The next day, we walked to the train station to buy tickets for the overnight sleeper train from Cairo to Luxor.  It’s always a bit of an adventure to work within the local transportation system, but we were successful and left with tickets.  After that, we went to the Egypt Museum.  Oh. My. Goodness.  Talk about artifacts!  That museum is so chock-full of amazing pieces of history that after a while, the vast display overwhelms your brain.  However, some of the things that stuck out from the myriad statues, mummies, sarcophagi, chariots, furniture, beads, tools, and papyri were the 18-foot-long mummified Nile crocodile and the layers of King Tut’s coffins, including his death mask, which were unbelievably costly and intricate!  Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take the camera into the museum, so I don’t really have many pictures for you, but suffice it to say that the Egypt Museum in Cairo boggles the mind.

We stayed at the museum most of the day, then went back to the hostel, Paris Hotel, to collect our bags and took the metro from Tahrir Square to the Giza train station.  The overnight train was very nice.  We had our own cabin with the pull-down beds and dinner and breakfast were included.  We arrived here in Luxor fairly early, and spent the day touring the west bank attractions, including the Colossus of Memnon, the Valley of the Queens, the Temple of Hapshetsut (Deir el Bahari), and the Valley of the Kings.  Cameras weren’t allowed at either of the valleys (I assume for the preservation of the paint inside the tombs), so again, I don’t have much in the way of pictures, but they were incredible!  (If you want to get an idea, just search Google images for the names of these places.)  It is amazing the amount of detail that the Egyptians put into memorializing their deceased kings.  We also got to see King Tut in the (blackened and desiccated) flesh!  The body is on display in his tomb, unwrapped from his mummy bandages, but inside a temperature- and moisture-controlled environment and mostly covered in a cloth - still, though, we saw the face of one of ancient Egypt’s most famous kings!

The rather desolate scenery just outside the Valley of the Kings.

Okay, I know this post is getting long, but I just have to share one of the funniest moments of the trip thus far.  So, obviously, given the political state of Egypt at the moment, tourism is sharply down.  In fact, the presidential elections were happening Saturday and Sunday while we were in Cairo!  Hearing about the different views on the candidates has been fascinating given what Egypt has been through in the past year or so.  One of the candidates, Mohammed Morsi, is from the Muslim Brotherhood and the other, Ahmed Shafik, is the previous chief of the Egyptian Air Force who was in Mubarak’s administration.  Surprisingly, most of the people we talked to supported Shafik, despite his role in Mubarak’s government, but I got the sense that that was because they consider the Muslim Brotherhood too much of a risk.  However, it appears that Morsi may have enough support to come out ahead and win the presidency.  We shall see...

A billboard with posters for the two competing candidates.

But I digress!  Back to the funny moment...  so, since tourism is down, any and every gringo has now become a prime target for the hawkers of fine Egyptian junk.  Some will hound you relentlessly with their postcards and figurines as you try to enjoy the sites or others will try to strike up a conversation to become your “guide” and thereby get a tip for their services, and it really does get irritating.  We tried being firm with them, but you almost have to yell at them to get them to leave you alone, which just makes everybody grumpy, so we began experimenting with different, nicer strategies to get rid of them.  We tried speaking to them in Russian (since both Jim and I minored in it) and convinced a few people that we weren’t too skilled in English, but it didn’t fully help, so we went further.  We started conversing with random words that were utterly meaningless to the situation so they couldn’t follow our pointless speech.  Then *we* tried to sell things that we had, such as a used water bottle or the like, to *them* instead of the other way around, which they found quite confusing.  Then Jim started singing at people as they tried to talk to us, either imitating classical music or singing silly falsetto songs that he made up on the spot, which utterly baffled them and threw them off of their planned marketing strategy.  It was hilarious!  Possibly the most creative one was when we were in the Valley of the Queens and a wanna-be guide was stalking us through a tomb.  (And I was wondering why I kept thinking of tomb-robbers!)  Jim used his best Gollum voice (from Lord of the Rings) and every few seconds would hiss “tricksy hobbitses” in that creepy voice.  The guy did not know what to make of this and did not bother us!  As we left, we heard him say to his friend “He is...” and then whistle to indicate that Jim is a crazy man...  we laughed so hard!  I bet no one’s ever dissuaded him like that before!  Watching their reactions was a very fun way to turn an irritation into a game.  :)