…Egypt (7)
Saturday, may 8th 2010
Well I have to say, falling asleep was almost as romantic as waking up, it is just so horribly early!!!
Again we are experiencing how waking up early induces great jokes and humor and we gather on the biggest boat to have breakfast… The boats start to sail again, well, sail… there is no wind so we are just floating a couple of kilometers downstream. The bus has picked up our luggage at the hotel and picks us up to go to Luxor and visit the temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu on the way…
After saying goodbye to captain Asaf and his crew, we hop on the bus and get moving.
Kom Ombo is close, about 45 km… Arriving there we see a beautiful temple, very big dedicated to two gods, Horus and a local god called Sorbek, a crocodile god. An amazing complex, which even looks more special at this early hour… Here I experience the best negotiator so far: a young boy wants to sell me 4 for 5 LE (egyptian pound) or 10 for 10 (quantum discount I presume)… Well, the grlz have a lot of friends, so… They are scarabees and they do have a special meaning as it is one of three gods representing various stages of the sun during the day, namely sunrise. This stands for hope, starting something new, positivity… I like.
We step into the bus again and head for Edfu, which is a little further, about 70 km.
So great to be in the bus driving through this (or any) country, as you really experience the people and the surroundings. We see some local markets, a sugar reed factory, where all reed is droven in by anything that moves, from donkeys to huge trucks… We see graves chopped into the mountains, people waiting at busstops (special? You betcha!), in short, I love cruisin’…
Apparently, some tourguides say Edfu is hell on earth.
Well, it sure is lively and there are a lot of people walking up, down, left and right the road… Everyone seems busy and in this town you see, actually a lot of them are. I see chopshops, butchers, bakers, paintshops and as always people selling shit. On the street.
So we drive through Edfu to get to the temple. This is my new favourite! It is so big and with an enormous amount of chambers and corners, outside and inside and most importantly: both the hieroglyphics as well as the paintings are still very much intact!
Must be the climate functioning as a preservatory; it is so amazingly hot!
It is here, that I negotiate some more to get ourselves some gifts, a nubian mask (that resembles the ones I bought in Salvador; logical, as this is also a representation of an native-african ghostrepellent) and a rababa, a twostringed violin…
From Edfu to Luxor is a somewhat longer trip, but then we arrive at one of the cultural centers of the world. First thing that I notice is the enormous contrast, because aside from the Luxortemple and Karnak complex, Luxor is one enormous building pit. Only the main roads are asphalt and all small ones connected to it are just sand. We have a hotel looking out at the Luxor temple, but they have discovered that there was a sphynx row of 3,5 km linking Luxor temple to Karnak. So they are excavating this row leading to the obligatory relocation of everything in its way (our hotel for one has to move within 3 years!
And I don’t think the objectionprocedures work quite the way they do as in Holland)… Maybe archeo-logical (although I believe it could very well be blended into the environment much better, linking different eras together, you know Rotterdam-style), but it also generates a crazy, ugly, dirty inner city!
The hotel, like all hotels has a great location and is reasonable. The pool and restaurant/bar at the roof is a big plus; we see us ending up there after one of the excursions enjoying the water and weather with some food and drinks. The warmth is crazy these days: 45 degrees, which is hot even to their standards; fortunately we are handling it gracefully (and where possible by the pool!)…
It is about 3 o’clock as we check in and head for the water. A crazy notion, as we are so close to a temple built about 4000 years ago; at the spot where we are now, workers were sweating their asses off so many years ago!
We are having dinner with the group and head for the touristic part of the souk. Exiting the hotel to the left you can go left for the egyptian part and right for the touristic part. I also plan to go with the grlz to the egyptian part one of these days…
At a great restaurant we have a nice meal, where the highlights of the egyptian cuisine become increasingly clear: pitas with various pastes (sesame, humus and garlic-types) tahjins and kebab-like dishes… In about half of the touristic places they don’t serve alcohol and I absolutely adore the fruitjuices (as I always do)… Simple, yet extremely effective mixes like strawberry, guave and mango (even though it is not mango season yet).
This is the first time by the way, I get offered a stable of camels for my youngest daughter; the restaurantowner has a son and for 1000000 camels I ask him to feed her well 
.
After dinner we walk to the hotel, where a minibus takes us to the sound and light show at Karnak temple. As we will visit the eastbank tomorrow, it is very nice to see it by night beforehand (especially as I love nightphotography!).
And I must say: the show is amazing, even though some of the story gets lost in the oldfashioned language and bad soundenhancement. But it is fantastic to see this huge complex by night…
Satisfied we return to the hotel, where we notice that our airconditioning has been fixed, which is not a superfluous luxury in this heat…
Tags: egypt
