| We started on July 3,
1998 bound for Cairo via Zurich. Made an efficient drop of our European luggage (for the latter
half of the trip) at the Merck office at Glattbrugg, about 3 minutes from the Zurich
Flughafen (airport). Arriving in Cairo late afternoon on Independence day, our local tour operator for the dive boat did not show up (since we were arriving 1 day before sailing, we were told). Then Murphy's law kicked in and Lisa was detained at Immigration without reason. Just take your passport, and make you wait off to the side. This was very scary, and began to paint Lisa a bleak picture of Egypt. |
| Ultimately we got through and made it downtown. While we were there (24 hours), we did the requisite tourist activities (Museum of Antiquities with King Tut exhibit, Ghiza with pyramids and sphinx and camel ride for the "oh-so-happy" Lisa). Then on to Hurghada to the South along the Red Sea for diving aboard Peter Hughes new liveaboard dive vessel the MOON DANCER. |
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Karnak temple, Luxor |
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This next week got better as we began our favorite pastime, diving. We met some great
folks from South Africa and did some pretty good diving and ate some pretty good food.
Unfortunately the boat couldn't make it to some of the better Southern sites thanks to the
Egyptian government. We had a few setbacks like not being able to use our nitrox computers as planned, but all in all a very enjoyable, relaxing trip! The last evening we all partied in downtown Hurghada, quaffing the local brew ("Stella") and smoking the local water pipe or shisha. |
Our New South African friends |
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Frogfish on sunken ferry |
Spotted ray |
| We departed the boat on Saturday, July 12 to go 4 hours inland by private car to
Luxor, land of many ancient sites. Due to shootings involving European tourists a few
years back, all these trips are made in a police convoy with armed cars in front and back
of about 25 taxis, tour buses, etc. This was a real adventure through the Sahara and its
absolutely stark nothingness. We arrived in Luxor and found there was nothing to do until 4:30 PM. It gets between 110 and 130 degrees each day, depending on your exact location, and nobody goes outside from noon till 5!! Amazing! |
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Beers and "the shisha" after dinner |
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Over the next day, we did 2 tours of the East and West Banks of the Nile. The East, where the sun rises or "lives", was where the ancient Egyptians built monuments or Temples to the living pharaohs. Luxor was the capital of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom which ranged from about 2000 BC to 200 BC (I think). We saw the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the latter dating to about 1800 BC (about 3800 years old) with intact granite obelisks with hieroglyphs that looked like they were etched yesterday and paintings using oxide pigments whose colors were still vibrant. In the Luxor temple, we saw 4 distinct phases of building: the ancient one, the reign of Alexander the great around 200 BC, the Coptic or Christian one shortly thereafter (with painting of the Last supper covering the Egyptian inscriptions) and the Muslim one, with an 18th century AD mosque built right into the temple. |
Great Obelisk at Karnak Temple, Luxor |
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| The next day we did the West Bank, West being where the sun "dies" and the
Egyptians built monuments (tombs) to the dead (as in Ghiza, the only part of Cairo on the
West of the Nile). This tour included the Valley of the Kings, with 4 tombs of pharaohs from the Middle Kingdom, including Tut as well and the Valley of the Queens and the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned over Egypt when she outlasted her husband, the Pharoah Ramses and could not produce a son to succeed him. Theses tombs, unlike the early dynasties (who built pyramids) were underground, multi-room chambers with paintings and etchings maintained very well as they were sealed from air for 3500 years until unearthed by British archaeologists early in the 20th century. |
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Mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut |
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