Egypt was great, despite the dreaded sickness that attacked 33 of our 42 travelers. And yes, I was one of them. We will get to that in a moment. Egypt was completely safe. I never felt in danger, not for a moment. In fact, many times as we drove through towns we could see people cheering and applauding our bus because they were glad tourists were there. Tourism is such a huge part of their country’s economy, they were glad to be getting business. It was fun getting to have most of the sites completely to our group, unlike when I was in Egypt during the summer of 2009. I know what a crowded tourist season in Egypt looks like. Let’s look at our trip chronologically. I’ll break it down day by day to make it easier to follow and read.
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| Me outside the Pyramids with the Sphinx. |
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Day 1: We arrived in Cairo and stayed in this ridiculously nice hotel. It was huge. It was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. No site-seeing today.
Day 2: We went to the Giza Pyramids, went in the Great Pyramid, stood in front of the Sphinx, went to Memphis and then took a night train to southern (Upper) Egypt. It’s called Upper Egypt because the Nile flows from south to north. I don’t think I had an actual mattress on my bed in my train car. I woke up the next day so sore in my shoulders and ribs. I stayed that way for the next four days, remember that.
Day 3: We got to our cruise boat after seeing the Temple of Philae. We were excited because our group was the only one on the cruise ship. We had it all to ourselves, not a single other person. Later that day we took about a 30-minute camel ride through the middle of the desert to a Nubian Village.
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| Giant Statue of Ramses II in Memphis. |
Day 4: We cruised more and saw the Temple of Kom Ombo and Edfu. We got to Edfu via horse draw carriages, pretty fun.
Day 5: This was when the cruise started to attack. We had an early wake up call and went to the Valley of the Kings at 6 am so we could beat the heat. We went in 3 tombs there and they still had paint on many of the walls. Brilliant colors of red, yellow and blue served as a stark contrast to the brown hues that dominate Egypt and most of the other tombs. About 11 people had to stay behind on the boat because they were getting really sick. (I’m assuming the cruise did it, although I’m not 100% sure, just my theory.) In fact, that afternoon, I started to feel kind of sick as well. I was just ridiculously tired and could hardly move. I had a fever and was just hot the whole time in my room, and I couldn’t even sweat. I was miserable, like many, many others.
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| Camel Ride through the desert to the Nubian Village. |
Day 6: I’m still not feeling great, but I wasn’t that bad. I never had to sit out on a site. There were plenty of people who were way worse off than me. We went through and toured the gigantic temple complex of Karnak and then Luxor. The Karnak temple complex is the size of a city; it is humongous. That day we ate McDonalds for lunch, a very welcome taste of home.
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| Statue of Egyptian god Horus at Temple of Edf | u | | | |
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I should also tell you that by today, I’m just now not sore from our over night train ride from Day 2 (yes, it took that long to get over the soreness). However, tonight, we were supposed to take our overnight train back up north to Lower Egypt, but then something happened. We were told that there were strikes at the train station, nothing political or having to do with the revolution; just usual strikes and we would not be able to take the train. Everyone on the bus cheered! So then we departed from Luxor about 3-4ish in the afternoon and got to our hotel that night in Cairo at 3:30 am. We also stopped a few times for bathrooms and dinner at a hotel. Most people were still glad we did the bus. I was glad because now the train wouldn’t make me sore for the rest of the trip the day I got over it’s previous attack on my body.
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| Mohammed Ali Mosque in Cairo. |
Day 7: We visited the Mohammed Ali Mosque in Cairo and the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. In the museum we saw King Tut’s famous burial mask. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures because they were not allowed. I also paid a little extra, like most students, to go in the mummy rooms. We saw about 30 mummies of very famous pharaohs, like Akhenaten, Ramses II, some of the Tutmoses and so on. In fact, they had unwrapped many of the mummies so we could actually see their faces, skin, teeth, fingernails and even hair. I was able to look the mighty Ramses II in the face, possibly the same Pharaoh that Moses confronted, and I was looking him in the face! Unbelievable! There are big debates on when the Exodus happened. There are basically two big dates and I saw the Pharaoh that represented each date. No doubt I looked upon the face Moses did. Incredible! That day we even saw some of the buildings that were scorched from the revolution that took place this past January.
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| Temple of Edfu. |
Day 8: We visited old Coptic Cairo and the oldest Mosque in Africa (that is still in work today, in fact, we were there during their noon day prayer time) and then we began to drive towards the Land of Goshen. We stayed at a hotel right next to the Suez Canal. By tonight at dinner I was just now feeling back to 100% health. Which was good because I would need it 2 days from now, when we could climb Mt. Sinai.
Day 9: We basically just drove to get to the base of Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula. We went in a tunnel under the Suez Canal and came out in Asia. Yes, part of Sinai is in Asia. That night I ate dinner and went to bed about 9 because we were going to have a ridiculously early wake-up call, 1 am.
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| Sunrise on Mt. Sinai. |
Day 10: I wake up and begin hiking up Mt. Sinai at 2 am. We are in the complete middle of the desert. There are no cities near by to give off light; it is total darkness. The stars are like sprinkles dotting a birthday cake. I can now understand how it would be impossible to count them. It is so dark that a cloudy arm of the Milky Way stretches across the sky for everyone to see. We began the slow ascent up the man-made trail. It is not very steep, just a continual zigzagging on a constant incline.
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| Me on the top of Mt. Sinai for Sunrise. |
About 4 am it is getting brighter, light began to glow on the horizon where the sun would soon rise. The last 20 minutes are stairs to the peak. That was where it got rough. Your legs would quake like Jell-O and make you stop every once and a while just to rest.
I got to the top and had to put on both my jackets, it is freezing and windy. I lay down on the massive rock on the top of the mountain and just took it all in. We rested there for about an hour and saw the disc of the sun quickly rise above the other mountains into view. Just 3 hours earlier I saw some of the darkest night I have ever seen and now it was so bright. I could see the entirety of the desert around me. Absolute desolation. Beautiful. And to think, Moses climbed this same mountain to meet with God. Incredible!
We had a brief devotional where we sang a few songs and prayed. The descent took less time than the climb and we were back at the hotel for an 8 am breakfast. Then we went back to the base of the mountain to visit St. Catherine’s monastery where we had a private tour by an American monk. After the tour, we drove all the way back to Cairo for our last night in Egypt.
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| Genuine Hieroglyphics in a temple. |
Day 11: Slept in and left the hotel at 11 to head to the airport. Came home to Greece and it was great! Everything in Egypt is brown. From the sand to the buildings, it’s all brown. And everything is flat! As we flew over Greece it was great to see the shockingly blue Aegean followed by rolling green hills dotted with short silvery-green olive trees and tall, pencil thin, dark-green Cyprus trees. I was relieved to know my eyes could still process color. To top it off, as a group we ate at Dimitri’s (my favorite Taverna) for dinner that night. A gyro never tasted so good.
We saw many more Temples, Mosques, Churches and Sites, I just tried to shorten it to the highlights, but I guess all of Egypt is a highlight. Even though so many people were sick for much of the trip, it was still a great time and I know that no one regrets it, no matter how sick they got. It is truly a blessing to visit such an ancient and historically significant place. I know it impacted all of us in many ways.
We did go in a Pyramid after all. Scratch that off your bucket list.
I’m sorry this one ran for so long, but it was about as short as I could make it to effectively cover the Egypt trip. I’ll try to keep the other posts shorter. We’ll see how well that goal works.
