Friday 30/5 Top Deck Day 5 - Valley of the Kings + Karnak

We arrived early in Luxor. We had run out of our time on the boat and now had to move on to the next bits of the tour. We packed up our stuff and were ready to disembark at around 7am. A lot of ships must have been doing the same thing because there were rows of ships docked against each other, with everyone from all the ships getting off too. We (being the cheapest tour there, pretty much) were on the end and we had to walk through about four other boats lobbies to get to the dock and up to the bus. Each one of the ships we walked through were absolutely amazing; I mean, 5 stars more than whatever our ship was rated.

We drove past a couple statues of Ramses II. Not particularly interesting =P

It was a busy day planned. Our first stop was to drive to the Valley of the Kings. Our guide for the day was called Bob. We arrived and went through to an information centre, watched a couple videos including original excavation footage, and saw a cool mock-up of the layout of said valley.

It was very hot already, We walked our way up into the valley, while car-train things taking people up and down passed us by. Damn our cheap trip!

Inside it was quite interested. Not exactly what I had expected but then again I hadnt seen photos of the Valley of the Kings before. To stop congestion in the tombs the guides werent allowed to give talks inside, so we sat on shaded benches and got a talk. He recommended that we see three tombs during our time there: Ramses I, II and IV. The Tutankamon tomb was optional but very expensive considering it was just the room and his mummy. Not quite worth 80 Egyptian pounds.

Unfortunately, we werent allowed to take photos inside the tombs.

Ramses I tomb was fantastic. The colours of the drawings on the walls were so bright and vibrant. It was amazing to see how they had lasted and survived for something like 5000 years like that. Ramses III and IV tombs were quite cool as well but the walk through had all the walls behind glass windows. It really distanced you from the magic of the tombs and made it very touristy too. Because of that, I think the Ramses I tomb was much, much better.

Because of the heat and probably because of the Egyptian water (even though weve been careful) I wasnt feeling so well, so I was quite happy when the group headed back for the exit. Luckily, Bob as a guide was friendly with staff there so he got us a free ride back down to the exit on one of those train things. Good fun.

We left and drove to the tomb of queen Hatchipsup. I wasnt feeling 100% still so sat it out with a few other people but Emma went inside to see it. Afterwards we drove to the shore of the Nile back in Luxor and got onto boats to head up the river a bit and to cross the banks, to see Karnak temple.

Karnak temple is absolutely massive, probably because it had been built or contributed to by every ruler of Egypt over the whole history. There were great photo ops and cool things to see but overall it was just way too damn hot so the whole group was dying and wanted to head off back to the air-conditioned comfort of the bus =)

We drove to a hotel where some people would be leaving our group to go off to other places. It gave us an opportunity to have showers and freshen up, and there was even free wifi in the lobby, so we had a chance to check our emails. Most people were far too tired and hot to go to Luxor temple, but because we had both driven and sailed past it we had a pretty good look at it from the outside. Instead we all went up for lunch.

We were supposed to be catching a train back to Cairo that night but alas, the train was said to be running at least four to five hours late! Since people had things to get to on Saturday, there was no way we could leave that late, so Rafik managed to organise buses for all the Top Deck groups. The good thing about this was that it gave some of us an opportunity to stop in at Hurgahda, when we werent originally going to in our plans.

We boarded and got into the convoy, and four hours later wed reached Hugahda, a very westernised tourist city. You could see that the people there were more open to western culture, and were definitely more open to people than their counterparts in the other cities. There were also lots of western shops and restaurants. We arrived at 10pm and had until 2am to do whatever.

Rafik gave us a bit of a walk-around through the main strip in the city, showing us places to eat and whatnot. Some of us went with him to get some Egyptian Pizza from a small store off the main strip. Cheap food but very tasty, and at 12 at night far too big and filling for any of us to finish them. By this time Rafik had done 48 hours without sleep because he was busy sorting out things and especially getting the buses organised last minute like that. Wow, that man works hard for his job. So, we all donated the last bits of our pizzas to him =)

After food we met with some of the other group people and went to a coffee shop to have shisha. Coffee shops here pretty much mean a cafe where you can also have shisha. We had a couple pipes for the table, with apple flavour. People ordered drinks and we spent about an hour there just relaxing.

Nearish to 2am we headed back to the bus and got on for our last leg back to Cairo.