Cairo and Cruisin' on the Nile: UniWorld Egypt Tour, October/November 2024

The Money Shot: Temple of Hatshepsut

Somehow this trip came together at an "Extreme Bucket List" Trip among Marcia, Joan, and the two of us.  We are not "Cruise People" as we absolutely abhor the idea of getting on one of those massive ocean cruise ships, but Janet and I took a UniWorld River Cruise in the Bordeaux wine region as part of a three-week trip to Paris and the Basque Country, and it was a fantastic trip, and with only 80 passengers or so on the boat, it was most civilized.  Sure, it's pricey, but it was much more fulfilling than standing in line for EVERYTHING with a few thousand of my besties.  So, off we were to the Middle East again, using UniWorld again, just as the region was heating up, again (Marcia and Joan's pre-trip to Jordan's Petra was impacted as United cancelled all flights to Amman so they adjusted to come in with us directly to Cairo).

October 30th 2024:

San Francisco to Frankfurt to Cairo: arrived on the 31st on uneventful flights UA 58 to Lufthansa 580.

There were long lines at Cairo Airport at the bank (there were several "conveniently located" as you walked toward immigration) to buy $25.00 cash only visa sticker that you then wait in a second line for immigration and the officer then puts the sticker in your passport and stamps it. There was a classy (overdressed) older couple right behind us; she had very heavy makeup and spiked epaulettes on her shirt. Janet had arranged a van for us (Joan and Marcia are along on this trip) and we navigated crazy traffic during the hour drive: scooters and motorcycles weaving in and out of the lanes, pedestrians crossing what we consider freeways with traffic at 60 kilometers per hour and, like Jordan, cars just stopped in the slow lane with groups of people waiting in a crowd.

There seems to be no set driving lanes: sometimes it's three lanes, sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four, and horns are freely used instead of turn signals: “beep beep hey I'm here”  “here I come into your lane.” In the US we'd take all this horn action as acts of aggression and rage; in Egypt, it's all about courtesy and gentle warnings and reminders. We almost hit a food delivery driver on a motorcycle as he crossed 3 lanes into the left U-turn lane and there are lots of U-turn lanes--to make left turns you really don't make left turns on their roads, you use this U- turn lane and double back for a bit. We're staying at the Ritz Carlton Nile, and upgraded to room 530 Nile view. Melatonin by the time we settled in at 11:30 and i slept well. 

 

November 1st: great night sleep: about 8 hours, melatonin worked well.

The usual fantastic buffet brekkies then Uber’d to the GEM (Grand Egyptian Museum that had just opened a couple of weeks prior)  which was fantastic despite not being quite finished.  There is a massive main hall dominated by a huge Rameses II statue, with 12 exhibit rooms chronologically arranged, For about a billion dollars and long delays, it was very well done—definitely a World Class Museum. We had lunch at 3 in the museum: tabouli for me. Uber’d back by 5:00 PM dinner of snacks by the pool at the outside bar. Previously unknown Fact: Friday and Saturday are their weekends.  Warning: do not bring a camera to the GEM; they make you check it rather haphazardly in their small check room.  But phone cameras abound, so the rule makes little sense.

 

The massive Rameses II Statue that greets you in the entry hall in the GEM

There seems to be three accepted ways to spell his name: Rameses, Ramesses, and Ramses

The GEM was not too crowded as it had just opened to the public a couple of weeks prior; Marcia scored tickets on-line before she left. It was definitely built to handle huge crowds: the entry Plaza is enormous with sun shelter areas for long waiting lines that are anticipated, we assume.  There were more eating options and several shops in the museum--smart planning.

 

November 2nd: Ritz Carlton the last day. 

No Joan as she fell getting into the Uber yesterday so she's staying in the room she's sharing with Marcia.  Again breakfast buffet: we tried more unusual breakfast food recommended by Mohammed--tahini with black honey to dip and fried halloumi cheese on Egyptian bread...excellent!   Today we tackled the old Egyptian Museum of Cairo (EMC) which was right next to the hotel, so we waited in line and went in. There was a massive crowd even at 9:30 funneling through several pinch points: their initial x-ray scan at the narrow entry gate (two lines but still, everyone going to the museum funneled through there), and then ticket window line to buy a ticket, and as a massive crowd funneling through the front door to get your ticket checked and then another scan. The EMC is a tired old (100+ year old) museum but we see the reason for GEM’s massive plaza as it will handle crowds much much better.  Later we learned that once the GEM is complete, and all the artifacts are moved as planned, the EMC will be rehabilitated and focus on the artifacts from the Greco-Roman period of Pharaonic history (Ptolemy and Cleopatra era).

 

My "illegal" shot of the silver and gold coffin in one of the rooms marked "no photography"

Honestly, I usually honor posted signs, but I got the shot before the docent in the room yelled at someone else for taking a phone picture...ooops, sorry!

We (Marcia, Janet and I) managed to skirt most of the crowds but the displays were tired looking--old antique store cabinets and many things already taken to the GEM, and placards, if they were on a display at all, were as small as index cards with typewritten sized font--fugetabout reading them. Janet and Marcia left at 11:30 due to the place filling up. I stayed until 1:00 for 2:00 PM checkout but Janet extended it to 3:00PM.  I saw everything but the line for King Tut room (featuring his gold death mask among other artifacts) seemed too long and we will come back to the this museum as part of our tour. Tut will have its own building in the new GEM but it has not moved yet. I bailed without seeing Tut's exhibit.

 

We checked out of the Ritz, Uber’d the one kilometer to The Four Seasons to start Uniworld tour which kicks off at 7:50 AM tomorrow morning. Dinner in the hotel again as it is a bit chaotic to venture out of our luxury surroundings, so we ate dinner at the bar. I had the local beer (Sakara) and a Croque Monsieur for me, salmon for Janet.  Joan did a face plant coming off the raised bar area; eight men in suits came to her aid, more than likely hotel lawyers.

November 3rd: the first UniWorld day

Today was a 7:50 AM start but it turned out to be an orientation meeting and pay for your extra excursions meeting. We previously added the Abu Simbel option, and then found out there was a private night tour of the Luxor temple complex which we scored.  We took a pass on the hot-air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings, and the "sand surfing" in Aswan.

We found out we were assigned Bus 2 with Essam as our Egyptologist. As a group we bussed back the ONE kilometer to the old museum (which took a good half hour!) but now we were with our Egyptologist and our group about 50 people but it was so much more crowded with large groups disgorged from more busses, including ours, all going through the single narrow entrance gate. And, once in the museum, those led-groups were gathered around and blocking all of the best displays (so we were glad we had our own time in there the day before). No guides were allowed in the Tut room, but we waited only about 5 minutes in a long line to see the artifacts as the docents in the room kept the crowds moving and policing the "no photos" rule effectively. As we found throughout the trip, guides were not allowed in "special exhibits" which definitely helps with the traffic flow in and out of them.

 

Once out of the EMC we went to our bus and took a long trafficky ride to the Cairo Citadel and the Alabaster Mosque, which was a copy of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque.  After a quick spin around the "cleansing temple" outside the mosque and the beautiful mosque itself, we piled in the bus for another long (time wise) and traffic-clogged ride to the New Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC).  One does not get anywhere fast in Cairo, neither on highway nor surface street, nor at any time of day it seems.  Essam said their rush hour has reduced from 18 hours a day to 17!  And it looks like the government thinks that building elevated highways would solve the problem—elevated highways crisscross and circle Cairo, but traffic is still pretty much at a standstill everywhere we went.

 

The NMEC is a very well done museum--they took twenty two of the most important mummies out of the EMC and put them in a underground chamber-like gallery to specifically highlight these mummies: there are a couple of Thutmoses, 5 or 6 Rameses, Hatshepsut and others. The walls are dark marble and you wind your way from mummy to mummy much like you would do in the Valley of the Kings crypts.  We found out later that Tutanhkamon's mummy remains at the Valley of the Kings in his original crypt.  NMEC's mummies were brought from the old museum in nitrogen filled boxes in specially decorated trucks in a crazy, hyper-staged parade to open the museum in April 2021.  I wish they kept and displayed on of the trucks at the museum.  Search "NMEC parade" on YouTube or see if this link works: Watch this YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IegmrsDbxk4

 

Again, a crawling bus ride back to the Four Seasons, and we liked the bar dinner so much that we made a clean sweep of the salmon on offer and ended the day early as tomorrow was the transfer flight to Luxor to board our boat, the Sphinx—a 5:45am start to the day tomorrow.  Needless to say, Joan got a great deal of attention from the men in suits as we left the bar and descended the stairs.

November 4th: airport at Cairo—essentially a charter for UniWorld and Viking boats flying to Luxor.  The flight was scheduled for 7:30 but we didn't get out until 7:45 or off the ground until 8:30-ish. I think it was a CairoAir or AirCairo flight from the domestic terminal and it loaded just outside of the door into a bus and then you drove out to the tarmac and then up stairs into the plane. It was a short one hour flight to Luxor then we were bussed to the Karnak temple complex--very, very impressive but quite crowded by the time we arrived. Essam is a former cop so he barks orders in Arabic to the other guides to get them out of our way. How dare there be other people there! 

It is a massive complex with 127 columns throughout the complex. “Influencers” were posing: mostly pasty white Asian women with their uglier friends or boyfriends taking the shot, then they go over and check the photo and go through another round of posing with their flowing veils and dresses. A short bus ride (distance) that took a while got us to the boat and we were assigned cabin 108, larger than the Bordeaux cabin but not by much.

 

We had the usual excellent buffet lunch and set sail north for the short trip to Dendera. Janet got some great shots of the sunset over the red cliffs to the west as we sailed north. We had a lazy afternoon reading on the top deck, with a nice wind to keep it cool.  The temps stayed pretty consistent throughout the trip: low to mid-80s, but the air quality was dreadful validating our decision to skip the hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings the next day.  All the car and diesel exhaust from transportation, the smoking diesel pumps for the farmers pulling water out of the Nile, and the farmers burning their agricultural waste let to very hazy days and AQI numbers from 100 (not so good for sensitive people) to a high of 158 (downright unhealthy).

 

Breakfasts and lunches on the boat are from a buffet but the dinner you get a menu and order off the menu, They have generally “regular” food but they also have a “local menu.”  I had rare steak with wine from the local menu and the local Egyptian red wine that first night.  We always ordered from the “local menu” on this trip.

November 5: US Election Day, which is the day we chose this trip to be out of the country

A 6am bus got us to the Temple of Hathor before ANYONE ELSE!  Great planning, UniWorld!  Essam barked at the guard at the Temple entrance for smoking within the temple.  Excellent.  Come to think of it, there was no smoking anywhere on our trip: the hotels were non-smoking except for a hookah lounge on the fifth floor of the Cairo Four Seasons and the boat had a similar hookah lounge in the back corner of the dining room, but it seemed to be unused on the trip.  The ass-end of the upper deck also had a smoking area, but I don't think anyone on our ship smoked.

Hathor was the goddess of music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care, and this temple is one of the best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt.  We were there early in the day before it heated up, and we climbed a narrow circuitous stairway up to the roof which was still intact.

The Temple of Hathor, Dendera That's Essam in the Tilley fedora and blue jacket

 

Just before we left, we watched a documentary about the recent discoveries from the diggings around the Saqqara stepped pyramid, and the center of the show was The Celebrity Egyptologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, who happens to look just like Essam, right down to the fedora.  Hani, the guide for Bus 1, told us an amusing story where this man approached him and asked if Essam was Dr. Hawass.  Hani said "Yes" and Essam played along, taking several pictures with the man and "the esteemed celebrity Egyptologist!"  It made both their days...

Speaking of Essam, whenever we went to a place with a bathroom, he always asked "does anyone have to go to the Temple of Relief?"  And Egypt, being a "pay to pee" country, in general, Essam would always pay the attendant 5 - 10 Egyptian Pounds (10 - 20 cents) per person, that being the typical tariff to use the facilities, which I must say, were always clean.

We were back at the boat by 10:30, then reversed our way from yesterday by heading back to Luxor, where some people opted for the day tour of Luxor, but we waited until 9:30pm for our "exclusive" night tour of the Luxor Temple.  There is a three kilometer Avenue of the Sphinx connecting the Temple Complex of Karnak (which we toured yesterday) and the Temple at Luxor.  The story goes the king lived in Karnak, the queen in Luxor; they visited each other by taking this avenue in a full sized boat hefted aloft by the ubiquitous slaves.  It was still nice and warm as we toured the site, stunningly lit up...totally worth it!

The night tour of the Temple of Luxor, 3,400 years old

The night tour was led by Hani, who, admittedly, has much clearer English diction and is more understandable than Essam, but Essam certainly points out much more information as he wields his green laser pointer all over the walls and ceilings of sites.  In the large central plaza, they started excavating to deal with some water infiltration recently and found some 30 statues buried long ago; it is speculated they were hidden during conflicts.

More likely than not, there are old Egyptian men hanging around the sites, who will lead you to a place where you can get a good angle on a picture.  I followed one such "guide" here and luckily, I had a buck to give him when he held up a up-turned cupped hand after I got my shots.

What's really incredible, once you see some of the plaques showing early photographs at the sites, is that in the days before European Egyptologists started crawling around the place, many of these temples were largely buried in sand, some with just the tops of heads poking up out of the sand after thousands of years of sand storms and neglect.

We stayed docked in Luxor; tomorrow is the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut on the other side of the Nile.

November 6: We got the dreadful and unbelievable news...we have Trump 2.0...ugh.

The buses crossed the Nile to west bank and our first stop was the Colossi of Memnon, two large statues that are the only remains of the Temple of Amenhotep III.  The pullout for photographing the Colossi was ringed by little junk shops, all with very aggressive vendors who descend on the cars and busses to sell their wares.  Essam always asserted to "support these local vendors that support the economy," but would say "it's mostly junk" in the same breath.  I found it best to avoid eye contact and not engage them at all, even with a firm "No" as it only served to get them more excited.

We then drove up a twisty road up in to the hills above the Nile, parked and scanned our tickets, then got on large golf carts to go further up to the tombs.  Our tickets allowed us to descend in to three tombs plus King Tut's, so we followed Essam to the three typically visited tombs.  The Valley of the Kings was seen as an innovation in funerary architecture as the early tombs were so clearly marked by massive pyramids (hey, lots of gold and jewels are buried here!) that it became necessary to bury the tombs deep underground in some bleak and foreboding hills away from the Nile.  But these tombs were also looted; so much for innovation.  Janet took pictures of each tomb placard into which we descended, and each involved going a couple of stories down a stairway down to long hallways decorated in chants and prayers rendered in hieroglyphics.

The tombs are numbered with a KV (Kings Valley plus a number) and the documentary we watched before we left stressed not to miss KV9, the tomb of Rameses V and VI.

One of the deeper tombs, with many side chambers, and you get a feel how elaborately decorated these tombs are.

Which brings us to KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamen, whose claim to fame is only that his tomb had the dumb luck to have never been looted, so all the good stuff remained sealed from 1300 BCE until stumbled upon by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922.  The burial chamber isn't anywhere as deep as some of the others, and the chamber with the mummy had a viewing platform attended by a nice Egyptian man who kept a phone camera spotlight shining on Tut's face while all the tourists (yes, us included) got our snaps in of the desiccated body of the Boy King.

The honest to goodness mummy of King Tut, kept in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.  All other artifacts, including the gold Death Mask and Coffin, and the canopic jar chest, are in the EMC, soon to move to the GEM

Alas, when we finished using up our tickets with the three Essam-approved tombs, KV9 was yet to be seen.  Joan had only used one of her tomb punches, so I (tried to) use it to go to KV9, but the ticket puncher said it was "special entry" like Tut's and required another ticket.  As I hoped only to dash in and see what was so cool about KV9, I didn't have time to go back to the ticket office and buy the additional ticket for EP180=$3.66.  Hell, I should've bribed the guy with a five!

Reunited with all, it was back to the golf carts, and back to the good ol' Bus 2.  From the Valley of the Kings we went the next valley over to the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.  I probably shouldn't mention this, and it certainly wasn't spoken of on the visit, but this was the site of a November 1997 terror attack that killed 62 (mostly) Swiss tourists that devastated the Egyptian tourist industry.  Read up on the event; it wasn't pretty.  Essam and Hani, several days later, held a little session that they talked about modern day Egypt, and tourism is back at the top industry of their economy.

Once off the bus after the short ride, it was back on golf carts on up to the Temple.  It was Hatshepsut's temple originally, but Thutmose III came in after her death and attempted to obliterate all references to her on the temple; I guess he wasn't too happy to have a female pharaoh.  As you can see the sandstone cliffs above the temple, which over the years collapsed and buried much of the temple.  Many of the statues at the have been restored and remounted in the temple, and it is a stunning monument when all the other tombs were (supposedly) carefully hidden buried deep in the mountain.  It was hot by then, and there was the young Asian couple who deployed their umbrellas to keep their pallor intact.  Deploying umbrellas in tight quarters with lots of people around is so not cool.

From the Temple, back to the bus and we got a tour of an alabaster shop.  The shop had a fun demonstration outside where four workers and a narrator showed the ancient ways of working with alabaster, and they'd do funny little chants and songs as prompted by the narrator as they worked chipping away at the stone.  Janet ended up buying a couple of canopic jars and a vase; BTW, all fragile purchases made it home, intact!

Then it was back to the boat to eat (of course) and set sail for Kom Ombo and the Temple of Sobek.

A Diversion--Road and Driving Impressions:

• Speed bumps, like in Jordan, are used everywhere, and I noticed they are at intersections in all directions.  It effectively slows everyone down entering an intersection, no doubt preventing a lot of T-Bones.  And it seemed like every road, in town or rural, had regularly spaced speed bumps, much more so than in Jordan.  Jordan had them in regular intervals in towns and villages, but none on the "open road"; Egypt had them seemingly everywhere on all roads.  Our bus would get going up to speed, then slow to go over a bump...wash, rinse, repeat.
• Lanes: again, merely a suggestion, particularly in Cairo, but also on rural roads where bus traffic competes with mule carts, pedestrians, motorbikes and motorcycles, minibuses and trucks.
• Honking: our driver also used it freely, when passing, changing lanes, or making one of his famous swing wide right to make a U-turn.
• Bus "Service": Hani said there is no bus service as we know it; there seems to be some semblance of bus service with blue busses in Cairo, but more typically groups of people gather, either on roads or climb up on elevated highways, and flag down these white small jitney busses (more like minivans) with specific hand signals as to where they wish to go.  It seems like they operate more like our casual car-pools, and from the number of these white vans one the roads or waiting alongside, it's a big business.
• Trash: there isn''t the massive amount of trash surrounding trash cans and dumpsters like in Jordan--Jordanians seem to make an honest attempt to dispose of things properly but it must never get picked up.  There is much less trash around in Egypt, but there is a lot of rubble on top of buildings and in lots.  Then we heard that the government is on a crash road and subway building program which may account for some of the rubble.

After Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut, and alabaster, we were back to the boat by lunch time (buffet time!) and set sail south for Kom Ombo.  We've done one other UniWorld cruise (Bordeaux river) so we were invited to a reception in the bar at 6:30...there we sat with Pat and her son Tom.  Tom was the youngest person on the cruise, and was constantly head down looking at his phone, wherever we were.  And, I was getting a little annoyed at him since he wasn't helping his mom on or off the bus (big steps for her somewhat restricted mobility).  It turns out Pat is a wealthy widow from Sacramento, and Tom is (we assumed) a trust-fund baby doing his "business" on the trip.  He lives in Columbia and Costa Rica, and his business was a nebulous "WhatsApp-based business assisting people getting multiple passports."  And he tossed out some "Wellness Initiative" and "AI" talk while researching is Hungarian heritage which led us to our trust funding assumption.  Must be nice...  Now we know why he is constantly looking at his phone; it's his "business."

November 7: We docked that previous night right at the Temple of Sobek, so no bus was involved in touring the Temple and the associated Museum of Crocodile Mummies.  But there was a particularly persistent gauntlet of crap vendors to negotiate on the 50 yards to and from the temple and museum.  The temple was built in the Greco-Roman era and as the temple was unearthed recently, all the mummies found were moved to a small museum next door to the temple.  The Nile north of the Aswan dams (yes, there are two) is crocodile (and hippo) free, but they were revered by the ancients as the God Sobek.  Essam joked that "Nile crocs ate fish and fishermen."  Evidently some crocs were captured and kept in pools near the temple, and when the crocs passed, they were mummified--the ancients liked to mummify animals: there was a small gallery in the EMC that had mummified baboons, snakes, and birds.

Unearthed crocodile mummies in the Temple of Sobek museum 

Technically, this is the Temple of Kom Ombo is a "dual" temple, with the southern part of the temple dedicated to Sobek, while the north to Hathor and Horus and was thought to be a place of healing.  There were "medical" carvings on the wall, and Essam called upon the one doctor in the group to identify the surgical instruments in the carvings.  Also, supposedly many of the "commoners" came to the temple to be cured, and there is a lot of ancient graffiti carved in the stones surrounding the temple as they and their families waited to be seen by the "healing" priests.

Once we navigated the gauntlet of sellers on the way back to the boat, we set off for Aswan, and spent and long day on the top deck checking out the sites of the Nile.  It is fascinating that there is the single green strip of land on either side of the Nile, then nothing but bleak desert just a short distance from the shore.  There was a lot of monoculture in the miles of day: large plots of bananas, sugar cane, cabbage, all irrigated by smoking diesel-powered pumps dipped in the Nile.  And large fires burning the agricultural waste contributing to the poor air quality.

We arrived in Aswan early in the afternoon, marveling at the number of river cruise ships anchored from the northern 'burbs all the way to the main Aswan port.  We were docked outboard of seven other boats, and when I left to go on the "bird watching tour" I had to walk through those seven other boats' cabins...they were all nicely appointed, some more so than others, with one particularly opulent.  The tour was led by a short and grizzled local guide who enthusiastically gave us what amounted to an Aswan harbor tour circling Elephantine Island while pointing out birds, landmarks like Aga Khan's home and mausoleum, and the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert in the hills above Aswan.  But, contributing to the poor air quality were the two-stroke outboard motors powering the small craft in the harbor.  Two stroke engines mix oil with gas, so they smoke and smell horrible; the US has banned them in favor of four stroke that do not burn oil.

Once back from the bird watching (Janet and Joan did not go), which required no bus, the Sphinx and Savoy had repositioned themselves on their own dock, and we had an "afternoon tea date" at the Cataract Hotel, made famous as Agatha Christie's base as she wrote "Death on the Nile."  The hotel as taken over by Sofitel and is now uber expensive ($700 to $1,200 a night) but tea on the terrace was part of the tour.  We bussed the mile from the dock to the 5-star hotel and we did indeed have a proper British tea while watching the sun set to the west.

On top of afternoon tea, we had dinner back on the boat then called it a night, but it only turned out to be a 5-pound-gained trip, not a 10-15 pounder as I worried.

November 8th: after the usual wonderful breakfast buffet, we were bussed to a dock with dozens of the small shuttle boats that took us, and a bunch of other tourists, on a short, stinky ride to Philae Island to check out the Temple of Isis complex.  The island is just north of the Aswan Lower Dam located on the old First Cataract of the Nile, but it ain't much of a cataract any more because of the damming of the Nile.  Like Abu Simbel, this temple complex was subject to inundation and was moved lock, stock and barrel to higher ground as part of the UNESCO Nubia Campaign.

From our smelly boat return, we bussed in to Aswan proper to walk around the "only granite quarry" of the ancients where all the granite for the obelisks and coffins and other monuments were quarried.  The main attraction at this UNESCO World Heritage site was an in-process massive obelisk that cracked as it was being created, so it was left in the quarry, laying at a slight angle upright in the surrounding stone.  If finished, supposedly ordered by Queen Hatshepsut, it would have been the tallest obelisk in ancient Egypt at 137 feet (in contrast, the Place du Concorde obelisk is only 75 feet tall).

Back to the bus, and we got a good look at the Lower Aswan Dam, built by the British, but that early one still did not completely control the annual flooding of the Nile, so President Nassar, playing Cold War games, got the Soviets to build the Aswan High Dam, where wouldn't you know, the power plant built by the Russkies didn't work so well, so Westinghouse and GE came in and saved the day.  We drove about midway on the High Dam and Essam took us through an excellent discussion of all the feeder rivers to the Nile and the various dam projects planned or in process on many of those tributaries.  He was sure to mention that, "Donald Trump 1.0 gave permission to Egypt to destroy a controversial dam in that would disrupt the flow into Lake Nassar."  How nice of him...we'll see if Trump 2.0 remembers what he promised. But once you dam the Nile, you don't get the flooding that recharges the soil along the banks (but does disrupt modern life along the Nile) and the silt builds up behind the dam which starts gumming up the turbines, a common problem in all dams.

Shortly after being bussed back to the boat, we got a falucca ride around the harbor, They are the ubiquitous wooden sailboat the you see all along the Nile, so we sailed a bit down the Nile in the harbor, then had to be towed back against the current to our boat by one of the 2 stoke beasts.  One curiosity in the harbor has young boys on surfboards with cardboard paddles cruising among all the boats hitting you up for money; Essam was adamant to ignore their pleas as "they should be in school."  Then it was early to bed after dinner as we had to rise early again to the bussed to the Aswan airport for the hour-long flight to Abu Simbel, which for me, the highlight of the trip.

November 9: Abu Simbel Day

I have to admit up front that it's kind of a pain in the ass to visit Abu Simbel, and it was fairly crowded once we got there.  But it is definitely a Modern Wonder of the World, and yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, most appropriately so.  It was carved directly in the sandstone mountainside, much like Petra's Treasury, in the 13th Century BCE.  But I digress...

Here's the pain: We were herded into our 6am busses to catch a 7am flight to Abu Simbel, some 140 miles south of Aswan. From there you have all the airport nonsense: go through one scan (men to the right, women to the left, since there is a gender-appropriate pat down once you go through the first scan.)  Then another scan before getting to the gate, then a gathering at the gate, then a boarding pass and passport check at the gate, then get on a bus for a 50 meter ride to the stairway in to the plane (seriously, I can walk from the door to the stairway on the tarmac, but, no sir, you cannot)...you get the point.  It would be less steps if we just bussed the 140 miles, and I would be willing to leave at oh-dark-thirty to be among the first to get there, but the guides said it's a three hour bus ride back and forth, but as it turned out, it's a three hour navigation through two small airports, and security, and a couple of busses, just to get to Abu Simbel.  Oh well...

One of the vivid memories of my youth was reading over and over the National Geographic issue that described the UNESCO and multinational effort to relocate the two temples, Rameses II and his wife Nefertari's, higher on the mountain to prevent inundation from the Aswan High Dam.  Search YouTube for any documentary describing the relocation in the late 1960's.  The effort was incredible and it's a wonder that nothing was damaged in the move.  And EVERYTHING was moved, outside and inside, and the temples go quite a ways in to the mountain.

Another money shot: the Temple of that Egomaniacal Rameses 2.0

We had the usual gauntlet to run getting off the bus and around the mountain to get to the temples...wow!  The four seated statues of Rameses II are 66 feet tall, and the one statue to the left of the entrance has been left as it was found, with the head and torso left at his feet in the relocation.  As with many of ancient Egypt's temples and monuments, these were nearly buried in sand until the early 1800's when European archeologists were crawling around the country "discovering" things, uncovering (then stealing when they could) Egyptian artifacts.

That's Marcia with Janet

What I don't remember from the NatGeo I read all those years ago was that the relocation construction started with building a "Bandshell" at the top of hill at the new location of steel-reinforced concrete before rebuilding the temples, then they relocated many of the original surrounding stones on top of and around the bandshell to make the new location as natural as possible...truly an incredible engineering feat in the 60's.

It's incredible that all the interior halls, statuary, chambers  and chapels were moved up the mountain like the external temple.

In the deepest chamber of Rameses's temple is Rameses sitting with three gods, with the king second from the right.  On October 22nd (his birthday) and February 22nd (his coronation day), the sun aligns to illuminate three of the four seated figures at the back of the chamber.  The god of the dead, Ptah, on the far left, remains in the dark.

You can see from the picture below that Rameses didn't skimp on his wife's temple either, and it was incredible that the international effort to relocate the main temple also moved her temple up the mountain.  The six statues in front of the temple are 33 feet high, and are of the king and his queen.  During his reign, Rameses conquered Nubia, and this temple was thought to mark the southern boundary of his kingdom.

Nefertari, Rameses the Great's wife, got her own temple, just to the right of his, and it was wholesale moved up the mountain as well.

Rameses, second from the right, is flanked by two gods and all three get lit up on two days a year, but Ptah, on the far left doesn't since he's the God of Darkness

There was a small visitor center as you circled back around to the busses, and more gauntlet running through the bazaar before getting on the bus.  More PITA action back at the Abu Simbel airport, with 2 x-ray lines, 3 passport checks, a wait at the gate then ridiculously short bus ride to the plane, then the flight back to Aswan.  There didn't seem to be that many flights to Abu Simbel airport, so we guess (an uneducated one at that) that most of the crowd arrived by bus, since there were a few tiny "hotels" in the little village, and a whole lot of nuthin' between Aswan and Abu Simbel.  One can only assume that soon someone will build a high-speed rail line from Cairo and Aswan to Abu Simbel, and massive hotels, and there will be more gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over "overtouristing" at Abu Simbel.

Once back, we began our cruise back north towards Luxor, stopping that night at Esna.

As an aside, my mustache has elicited several comments from older Egyptian gents several times on the trip.  They stop me, give me a big smile, and put their finger over their own mustache and either nod their head or say "good."  The seemed sincere in their admiration of my upper lip.  As opposed to some Muslim countries, most me are clean shaven with a few sporting mustaches; no ZZTop beards out there in Egypt!

November 10: Temple of Khnum at Esna

We were docked for the night right at the village, so no bus...yay!  The Temple of Khnum is one of the coolest that we visited: it was dug out from the modern village, about three stories deep, and it was the only one we saw that had active restoration going on when we were there.  First, the village's bazaar highlight was a man who demonstrated foot ironing, where a large hot slab weighing 80 pounds or so is stood on to iron clothes, with no steam bring used.  Evidently it's quite common in Egypt.

On scaffolding at the back wall of the temple, workers are using lasers to find the ancient colors they are using to restore the paintings on the carved walls, columns, and ceilings

I recall Italy having to deal with pollution causing staining and deterioration of their marble monuments; I had a conversation with our Egyptologists about similar concerns with their sandstone monuments but they seemed unconcerned.  This Temple of Khnum is being impacted by water infiltration at the base and they're trying to mitigate the impacts as they restore the interior.  But reading after our return, pollution and rising sea levels and warming temperatures can severely impact these monuments by the end of this century.  See them all now while you can!

The remarkably well preserved interior of the Temple of Khnum

Back on the boat, we went through the lock that drops the boat down 8 meters at a point just north of Esna.  We hung out on the upper deck to catch some snaps while our two ships made their way through the lock.

After our excellent (again) lunch buffet on the boat, Hani and Essam held an "ask us anything" session about modern Egypt.  As the question veered to the religious, both were very adamant Islam is being perverted by a minuscule minority for strictly political purposes, and that Egypt was a very tolerant country with large Coptic Christian and Jewish communities.  As tourism is their number one industry, they have invested a huge amount of human resources in security.

We tied up that afternoon back in Luxor; another early morning tomorrow as we have a 7am bus to the Luxor airport back to Cairo for the final two days of our tour.

November 11: Back to Cairo and the GEM

We had the usual airport argy bargy with multiple scans, men's and women's pat downs, and an hour or so flight back up to Cairo.  Things went rather smoothly until our luggage, for all of us, didn't come up for a while, but we eventually got rolling out of the airport, some on one bus who just wanted to go directly to the Four Seasons, the other two busses going on to the GEM.  On a second visit, with Essam, it really is one of the top museums in the world, and I've been to a lot of them like the Louvre and British Museum, and the Met. and they really did an outstanding job going from a blank slate and designing a museum to dramatically show the best of the Pharaonic culture.  The Grand Staircase rises across length of the entry lobby, with the left side rising up through about a dozen seated statues up to a chronological display of the timeline of their Kingdoms, and the right side of the massive staircase has many more statues and columns that rise up three times higher than the left side.  So you can wander up the staircase checking out all the artifacts, or if you have an Egyptologist like we did in a bit of a hurry, there is a full length escalator that goes to the top of the staircase.

Very dramatic lighting is used throughout the GEM--it's all very well done, so much better than the tired old EMC, and is a great complement to the NMEC.  Time will tell, but I think they got their money's worth for $1B!

At the end of each of the top galleries, they designed it so you have a view of the Giza pyramids in the near distance.  It will be nirvana for those damn "influencers" and their flowing gowns, scarves and capes to prance around for their TikToks for their tens of followers.  The only saving grace is that cameras are not allowed in the GEM so it will only be plagued by phones and selfie sticks in the future.

Essam gave a pretty quick overview of the key artifacts throughout the Grand Staircase and in each of the chronologically arranged 12 galleries.  I would have been annoyed if that was the only exposure to that museum, but since we spent four hours there before the tour started, we spent our 90 minutes of "free time" to sample the gelato at their parlor and allowed time for Marcia and Janet to shop at the Museum Shop.

We highly recommend that if you choose to come on a tour to Egypt, come or stay an extra day or two to acclimate to the time difference and spend an entire day at the GEM.  Seeing it as part of a tour does not do it justice.  Just like any other great museum, I could spend the entire day there.

Back to the bus, and the 10 km from the GEM to the Four Seasons took over an hour in the insane traffic of Cairo. We had a final dinner at the hotel buffet with UniWorld.  

November 12: Giza and Saqqara Pyramids Day

Another early (7am) bus for the last day of the UniWorld Tour. The air pollution was getting to everyone on the tour, and I checked the Air Quality Index app for Cairo that day: it was 150, Unhealthy!  No wonder we were all coughing and our eyes were red.  I checked it periodically for the next two days and it never got under 150, and was as high as 158.

We stopped at the "main" pyramid plateau first, featuring the biggest of them all, the pyramid of Khufu/Cheops.  There were lots of mule carriage and camel rides going between the sites on the plateau, but much to my chagrin, and appealing to the security of the group, we were bussed between each of the sites: the main pyramids, the "panorama" sitting slightly above the pyramids (under construction) but will be a cluster of shops, restaurants and Temples of Relief.  We did get some good shots of the pyramids with resting camels in the foreground at the "panorama."

I noticed this very "James Bond" looking dude following us around, with a large sidearm under his suit jacket.  I turns out her was our "security" for the day and hung with us all day.

We worked our way from the main pyramids to a smaller pyramid, that of Menkaure, that had a very small tunnel access to the deep-in burial chamber.  I checked it out but it was a tight fit, so a non-starter for me; Janet and Marcia gleefully hunched down and went to the bottom, their smaller stature being a decided advantage.  These burial chambers are not decorated with carvings and paintings like the later kingdom ones at the Valley of the Kings.

From Menkaure's pyramid we bussed around and down to the vantage point for the Sphinx, which is smaller IRL compared to the pyramids, but the pictures and perspective makes it look huge.  It's still an impressive sight, and Essam got all the women on the tour to line up and get pictures of them "kissing" the Sphinx.

Essam clarified that Napoleon's troops did not shoot the nose off the Sphinx; it's only legend.  And Sphinx used to have a beard.

The Step Pyramid at Saqqara

At the Sphinx overlook, there was the ever-present "influencer" in a blue formal gown, sexily posing for snaps, checking the results, then heading back to the edge for more poses.  Oy...

From the Sphinx we headed over to Saqqara, but on the way we stopped at a carpet manufacturing school.  We saw six people working on two carpets: they only work 20 minute shifts over 2 hours, no more.  But looking at their flying hands making each knot with the correct color while sitting at the loom, it made sense that their hands, arms, and backs needed frequent breaks.  They also had a silk cocoon tub working, as the soaking cocoons were unwrapped to a spinning loom...never seen that before.  They looked like boiling beans as the 20 cocoons were unwrapping bobbing in the tub.

The Four Seasons prepared box lunches for us, but rather than taking over the nice garden at the school, we sat on the bus, eating away.  From there we headed up to Saqqara, and there were active digs like we saw on the Dr. Hawass documentary; obviously, there is still much to be found at this relatively recent site.

The Saqqara step pyramid is considered the first known human-built stone structure monument: the 4,700 year old tomb of pharaoh Djoser.  The pyramid only reopened in 2020 after a 14 year restoration project brought on from a 5.8 earthquake in 1992.  We almost had the place to ourselves and we descended in to the burial chamber, this one being bigger with a reinforced ceiling which overcame my claustraphobia as I got to peer down in to the 100 foot deep burial chamber,  Again, no adornments on these walls going in to the pyramid, after all it is nearly 5,000 years old.

From Saqqara, we went to an "Egyptian cotton" store, where there was much negotiation for a final purchase of a tablecloth and napkins.  I really wanted the black Tut Death Mask sheet set, but Janet vetoed that wish!

At an early point on the trip, Essam when on a little unprompted rant in the bus about how transgender was just "not natural" so I think someone got to him to complain about that little aside (we thought, yeah yeah, this is a conservative country so just let it go).  On our crawling return to the hotel, Essam went on to tell us (after saying he had no tours until mid-January earlier) that he was leading a Thanksgiving Gay Boat Tour, where a group of (obviously very well off) gay men booked the classic cruise boat "Karim" (look it up, it's an original Nile cruise paddlewheel) and he's led this group for a dozen years.  They bring the turkey and the fixin's and they have a grand old time.  Maybe he made this up to compensate for being called out for his previous comment...hmmm.

We all said our goodbyes to Hani and Essam once back to the hotel, and for UniWorld, the tour was over.  The local "coordinator" however was not done; he scheduled airport transportation for all of us heading home or elsewhere.  Some folks had very late or red eye flights that night, but we were heading out the next day late for an after-midnight flight to Frankfurt.

For dinner on our own, we stayed in the hotel and had a Levantine selection for dinner, and we'd have a day to burn tomorrow before our flight.  Janet asked for late checkout the next day but were told they were full but they'd give us until 1pm to checkout.

November 13: Kill Time before out Flight

To kill time until checkout, Janet, Marcia and I braved the Mean Streets of Cairo to walk the one mile up to the Ritz to do more shopping.  The city is definitely not "pedestrian or bike friendly" as the sidewalks are all busted up and narrow, cars are parked everywhere, and, following the local's' lead, one just walks in the street and hopes drivers are skilled enough to miss you.  We passed the American and British Embassy Compounts with dozens of Egyptian police and military stationed all around on the streets.  We had to cross busy streets at Tahir Square (site of the Arab Spring protests) and you just learn to follow a local when they choose to walk across the boulevard.  Lights and crosswalks and walk signs...nah...

Crossing to Tahir Square, the site of Arab Spring protests.

The traffic on the main boulevard along the Nile

AQI was still dreadful, but we got a little exercise with our 2.15 mile loop.  In attempting to cross a main boulevard coming off a bridge crossing the Nile, we attached ourselves to a young man to mirror his crossing of a busy six lane road.  We made it, and he chatted us up as we walked along the Nile.  I was hoping he was just a local worker heading back after lunch, but he actually had a little gift shop and he dragged Marcia and Janet in to "give" them a papyrus with their names in Arabic on them, and Janet, feeling guilty, bought a cool Anubis papyrus so we could be on our way.

I didn't note it, but one of the days we stopped at a papyrus shop and got a demo on how papyrus is made...quite fascinating as, once soaked, the natural sugars in the stalk act like a glue to hold the woven fibers together.  Seems like it wouldn't last, but scrolls have lasted for THOUSANDS of years!

Once checked out with our luggage stored at the bellman, we had a late lunch around the pool.  But as we sat there working through lunch, essentially every other table had a hookah or two brought over to puff away.  A couple next to us did not have lunch but only puffed away for about two hours on their hookahs.  The wind was favorable, so we stayed breathable.

We killed more time around the hotel, finally having some evening snacks at the bar before heading out with our UniWorld local coordinator in our 9:45pm van to the airport.  He stayed with us through the chaos of security right up until we checked in for our flight.  We said our goodbyes then set off for the lounge.  The only one there was a Turkish Airlines lounge, and our Star Alliance status got us in...but I'd have to say it was a One Star experience, and nowhere near the German Lufthansa Lounges we scored in Frankfurt and Munich.  We were originally routed to Frankfurt and then home to SFO, but United changed our itinerary to go Cairo-Frankfurt-Munich-SFO.  We kept our Premium Economy seats, and the three flights were fine and we got to SFO mid-afternoon of November 14th.

Final General Observations:

• When you are in a large group (ours was about 30 - 35), you have to keep it moving with the rest of the group.  We were known as the "Shake a Leg" group and when ever Essam finished describing something he'd say Mashi-Mashi, which in Arabic means OK.  So we all started parroting him as he said Mashi-Mashi, in unison we'd repeat Mashi-Mashi.  Essam was a firehose of information armed with his laser pointer, but we all had "Whispers" so he wasn't shouting above any noise at a site.
• Because of all the logistics involved with all the transfers and flights, it's best to let a quality tour company take you along the Nile.  We're very competent independent travelers, but like Jordan, let a tour company with good guides take you up and down the Nile.
• We usually spend 90 to 120 minutes at a site, with Essam giving us some free time at the end to do a little wandering.  But be back by the time he says!
• Hani mentioned that the Alexandria side trip at the start of the tour (an extra excursion) is "not so good" as you spend 3 hours on a bus to see a couple of sites for a couple of hours, then bus 3 hours back to Cairo in a single day.  We didn't opt for that, but Joan and Marcia did buy the Jordan extension but as the Gaza-Iran-Israel conflict heated up, United cancelled all flights to Amman--they still haven't seen a refund for that cancelled trip yet.