Been There Done That Too…

Luxor and Valley of the Kings

// November 2nd, 1996 // Egypt, Passage To Africa

Before turning in we were told the busses were leaving at 8am, and we should make sure to ask for wake up calls. Well, I did, for 7:30. I don’t do mornings, and I don’t do breakfast, a half hour was plenty of time for me to roll out of bed and make it to the bus. Imagine my surprise when my phone rang at 6am, 6:30, 7am,7:30!!!! Needless to say I was really PISSED OFF. The tour company had taken it upon themselves to place a wake up calls for everyone when they thought everyone should get up. This did not improve my already lousy opinion of Egyptians – now they’re treating us like 2 year olds! It was insulting. Not a good start to the day.

We boarded the busses, several of us upset by the wake up calls, and headed for The Valley of the Kings. We stopped and had a photo op at a couple of scenic spots on the way. Finally arriving at Valley of the Kings, we are again informed that if we want to take a still camera in we would have to pay roughly $10 US, and if we wanted to take a video camera it was outrageous and we should reconsider. I paid the $10. The tombs are remarkable. The carvings and paintings are fantastic. The layout of the tombs in some cases is very complicated, and it’s not unusual for the archaeologist to think they’ve reached the end and discover another passage or set of chambers. The Egyptians really took their afterlives seriously!

After the resting place of Kings, we traveled to the Valley of the Queens. Unlike the Valley of the Kings which looks like nothing but sand, dirt and hillside and the tombs are cut and dug into the hills and ground, the main attraction in the Valley of the Queens is a temple dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut. The temple can be seen from quite a distance, and seems to be in a very lonely locations, surrounded by high cliff walls on almost three sides (this is also, unfortunately where the bus load of tourist was shot a couple years ago). From the temple there is a commanding view of the Nile River Valley. The temple is in fairly good condition and is filled with beautiful hieroglyphic most of which are painted, and there are several statues/pillars that bear the image of the Queen. The Egyptians never forgot the ceiling as an option for artistic expression, and the ceiling of the temple/tomb is painted to resemble the night sky, in blue with gold stars. There were also tombs in the Valley of the Kings that were painted similarly. As for shopping ops, both Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens has its share of make shift stores, and wandering salesmen. Things are cheap, and bargain hard – nothing here is valuable.

We returned to the rendezvous point in Luxor to meet up with the other 15 busses for our 3+ hour trip back to the ship. After returning to our rendezvous point we sat and waited approximately 3 hours before Egyptian security decided they wanted to leave (in otherwords we left 3 hours LATE). At first they tried to blame 2 passengers that they said were late coming back to another bus, we eventually found out that that was false. What it boiled down to was our escort didn’t feel like leaving yet…(”Egyptian efficiency” is an oxymoron). We were approximately 3 1/2 hours late returning to the ship (one of the busses brokedown on the way back), and the ship (especially Captain Erik) was very happy and relieved to see us. They had expected us hours earlier and had no way to find out where we were because communications within Egypt are horrible…

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