Incredible Egypt - Under the Sea

From Cairo we flew to Sharm-El-Sheikh, seeing "New Cairo" on the way (a new city that has been built) and the entrance to the Suez Canal; but otherwise mostly it was desert, with some signs of life alongside the coast in patches (mostly resorts, but occasionally some hidden coves populated by the odd luxury ship). We took a taxi to Dahab, a backpacker town an hour or so north. Due to security reasons you have to go through a military checkpoint to get there.

Dahab is an interesting town, with at least 50, maybe almost 100 bars, restaurants, dive operators and shops lining the main bay in the town. It has a decent beach alongside the bay, but mostly exists for scuba-diving. We stayed in a place a half-hour walk outside of town (and well placed for morning jobs along the coast), and during our few days there we did some scuba-diving and snorkeling off the main bay, as well as at the Blue Hole, a famous diving site nearby with a sheer drop off the coast. In fact, as my dad pointed out, you don't even need to dive, and snorkeling is quite enough since the marine life is everywhere, including the corbels and the fish, and right at the surface so you can see everything with just a snorkel and mask. In fact often you can see everything from outside the water too! I had a special case for my phone and took some great videos and photos under the water whilst diving and snorkelling.

Our one negative experience during our whole trip (well maybe the second if you count the disappointing sound and light show at the pyramids) was an evening trip to a bedouin experience that was supposed to be traditional entertainment and food, but was really just a night club manufactured for locals to sing and dance in the desert whilst those who didn't know the music or who didn't want to sing or dance, just sort of watched, shivering, for hours, under the stars. Definitely one to avoid!

Before moving back to Sharm-El-Sheikh we moved to a 5-star hotel even further out of town... the kind of place with 3 or 4 swimming pools, a brushed beach every morning, beach bars, saunas, and golf carts to take you to your rooms. Most of the Sinai peninsular has so much coral, and so close to the beach that often you are not allowed to just walk into the sea from the shore as you would damage the coral (and you'd also end up hurting yourself), so you walk off a small wooden pier to where the water is deeper and then you can swim above the corals.

My last couple of days were then back in Sharm-El-Sheikh at another nice 5-star hotel, though one that was a bit faded compared to the Dahab one. All these hotels were really cheap, even though it was peak season, mostly due to excess supply and a lack of demand since the security issues and revolution. It was very nice relaxing end to the holiday, apart from the failed attempt to Waterski. Sharm-El-Sheikh is strange place, completely man-made and fairly recently, as a tourism center with a few hundred hotels strung out along the coast, with large highways, and endless land meaning it is impractical to walk anywhere. There isn't much to do apart from each at all-inclusive resort hotels, and relax at the beach or go under the water. And it is the perfect place to do all of that. Definitely a place to come back to again!

Incredible Egypt - Luxor

After Cairo, we took an overnight train to Luxor. The Cairo train station was hardly the most modern on the inside, though there is a beautiful ceiling and wonderful facade, but it just about does the job. Apart from the lack of decent power to charge anything the sleeper train was fairly comfortable, though its not easy to sleep on trains generally.

Once in Luxor we stayed a small guesthouse with just a handful of rooms but a nice view over the Nile from the rooftop balcony and a small swimming pool that we didn't use as it was not that warm. We tried to keep our exercise up so took the local ferry which decided to leave whenever the driver felt like it, and walked along the river up to Karnak Temple, which is quite incredible. Especially the room with the 96 pillars or something. The place was packed with tourists but it was still really interesting and somewhat overwhelming. Of course hieroglyphs were all over the place. Very highly recommended. We then stopped by Luxor Museum to see some of the artefacts from the Temple, including various pots, statues of pahraohs, mummies, and wall decorations. The last stop on the "East Bank" was the Luxor Temple, which we decided to enjoy from the outside since you could see almost all of it without need to go in and pay yet another entrance fee. There used to be--and there will soon again be--a path connecting the two temples and along the entire stretch of a few kilometer, every 50m or so are plinths with lions on. The whole thing is being rebuilt and it will be quite spectacular when finished (if not somewhat pointless). 

The next day was the West Bank where we rented bikes and cycled around visiting lots more temples and then a lot of tombs. It is a complicated ticketing system with all different tickets available, some form a central ticket office, some on site.  Some of the best sites are ridiculously expensive. As with the East Bank temples, the West Bank temples are interesting, though for different reasons, since they are not as complete or as stunning, but they are mostly tourist free, so visiting is a more lonely experience. 

And then it was time for the tombs... and there are hundreds of them, most open to visit if you really want to. I think we went inside about 10 in the end, in the Valley of the Queens, Valley of the Kings and some others. Generally there was a long entrance that would go slightly downhill from the entrance that was on a hillside, and as you walked down the tunnels inside the hill there would be some side rooms; and all along the tunnels were stories in hieroglyphics. At the end would be the final resting place of the relevant pharaoh, noble or other person. Usually all the persons' valuables would be buried in the room or a neighboring room near them, and their mummy would be in a sarcophagus that would be inside a casket inside another box etc.

It is a fairly interesting experience visiting the tombs and there are some variations between them, some different artwork, some are better restored than others, but after a while one has seen enough. The house where the explorer who excavated Tutankhamen's tomb can be visited and in the garden they built a replica of the actual tomb which tourists can visit and see the photos and stories of what it was like during the excavation.

Our last day in Luxor included some shopping in the market where we had made a friend selling us perfumes and paintings, and a quad bike trip out to the desert; the highlight of which was the final 15 minutes when we were allowed to have some fun driving up and down some sand dunes. Luxor was a much better place for running than Cairo and we had a couple of good runs up and down the banks of he river seeing some of the farmers and their fields along the way, as well as all the large cruise ships (apparently there are 350 on the whole river) and small sailing boats. Having spent quite a lot of money and got a tan from spending so much time outside, it was back on the sleeper train to Cairo.

Another side to Cairo

One of our favourite places in Cairo turned out to be Al Azhar Park, that had previously been a rubbish dump but is a very nicely designed green space with a mediocre cafe and a fancy restaurant with excellent views over the city. Nearby is the Citadel which is mostly also Mosques and some other buildings now turned into museums where the former rulers were based. The main mosque there has an incredibly tall roof!

Nearby is an area where all the rubbish collectors live and work. Their housing didn't seem to be too bad (at least nowadays) as the area was full of brick buildings, and mostly the ground floors were where various sorts of rubbish were taken for sorting and processing, whilst people lived upstairs. Of course the place was not very attractive but it was quite interesting, and actually not that messy. I suppose most of the rubbish is not left on the floor but actually packaged up and sold!

Behind that area is a remarkable series of churches dug out of the cliff, holding thousands of people. They are not that old, but they are very impressive. I can't imagine what it would be like packed full of people. One is more like a typical amphitheatre rectangular in shape coming out of the cliff; another is similar but really dug out of the cliff; and a third is fully inside the rock and an entire semi-cicle.  It is even more remarkable in a city that is so Islamic and full of thousands of mosques. A lot of western tour groups come to visit the Christian sites.

Some enterprising entrepreneurs had built some zip lines and high-wire activities up on the cliff which kept me entertained for a couple of hours, and since there is not much alcohol or bars in Cairo it was about as much entertainment as we had during our four days there.