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The Red Sea & a Trek to Luxor, the Site of Ancient Thebes3
(by Patti Day-Miller - June 08, 2010)
The orientation meeting was held in a large banquet room and was for passengers of Gate 1s two buses. We were seated at a table with Silver and Jackson who live in NYC; Alex and John who live in northern California, and Jessie and Ryan who live in New Jersey.
Ibrihim and Mohammed, the guides of our two buses, conducted the meeting explaining all of the optional tours and informing us that we needed to sign up for those that night, if we were paying for them with a credit card. (Some signed up for the optionals when they booked the tour, but we did not—too many things can change between November, when we booked the tour, and late April when we were to take the tour.)
After making our optionals selections, we had a good dinner outside at the Italian Restaurant with Jessie and Ryan. Tired from our lack of sleep on the long, overnight flight, we retired early that night. After all, following breakfast the next morning, we would head to the airport again to board our flight to Hurghada for two overnights at a Red Sea Resort.
That next morning was the first of our large breakfast buffets, which featured most of what wed find stateside (plus olives), except no bacon was offered, since Muslims do not eat pork. (The variety of breads was wonderful.) Then it was back to the airport for our domestic, one-hour flight to Hurghada and then to the 5-star Iberotel Aquamarine Resort with its seven ethnic restaurants, multiple pools (many designed for children), and its own beach right on the Red Sea. The resort is especially popular with eastern Europeans, who bring their families there to escape the cold and enjoy the year-round warm temperatures.
After settling into our room, we walked down to a thatch-roofed, poolside restaurant, where we had a late lunch with Mickey and Duane, tour-mates from North Carolina. My beef burger and fries tasted great, but we were surprised when a small rain shower blessed us with a drop or two falling through the roof. There is literally no measurable rainfall there annually, yet we had a brief shower that day!
Jessie had made 7 p.m. dinner reservations for the four of us at the resorts Lebanese Restaurant, where we had a great, multiple-course meal, wine, and enjoyed excellent service with many smiles. We retired early again that night.
The next morning at 9 a.m., Jessie, Ryan, Dave and several other tour-mates bussed to Sharm El Naga for a day of snorkeling. Could barely hold my head up during breakfast—I was clearly under the weather with a respiratory condition (started during my flight to NYC and kept going through different stages); so, I spent my day between bed rest and our outside patio, while reading Jessies National Geographic Guidebook on Egypt. (Id read my DK Eyewitness book during the long flight to Egypt, but I was anxious to learn what hers said.)
The snorkelers returned around 4:30, and wed agreed to meet Jessie and Ryan for a drink before a buffet dinner at the main restaurant. I enjoyed listening to the three snorkelers tell about their day viewing the many colorful fish and corals. They loved it! (I hadnt planned to go snorkeling anyway, even before I became sickly; so, I wasnt envious, but just pleased that theyd had such a great day.) As always, there was a great bounty of food to choose from at the buffet. We didnt stay up late that night either, because the next morn we had a 5 a.m. wake-up call, luggage outside the door by 5:15, and aboard the bus at 6 a.m. for our 4-1/2 hour drive from Hurghada to Luxor, where wed board our floating hotel that would we be home-base for the next four nights.
That was the morning that we had boxed breakfasts to eat en route. Not great, but abundant and edible, and it held us over till we arrived in Luxor for lunch.
It was an interesting drive with security check-points along the way, where armed guards were on duty not only to discourage potential terrorists but also to make tourists feel secure, since tourism is 15% of the Egyptian economy. We also had a very well-dressed (suit) armed guard riding in the front of the bus with us. We drove through the desert and eventually into the Nile Valley—huge change of scene from dry, rocky, barren soil and sand where few resided into the valley where one viewed crops of sugar cane, corn, wheat, and cotton, among others and watched farmers and villagers riding in carts powered by donkeys. Once into the valley, we also noted many goat herders with their charges.
We arrived in Luxor and boarded the Queen of Hansa, settling into our rooms and then enjoying the first of our buffet meals onboard the ship. Dave says the watermelon that day was the best he has ever tasted in his life, and I must agree. Then it was off to the first of our shore excursions.
We stopped initially at the Colossi of Memnon on the West Bank of the Nile for a brief photo shoot. (I also quickly purchased a hat from a vendor there because the Egyptian sun is known for being relentless, and temps were forecast for a high of 92º that afternoon, which turned out to be accurate.) Reaching a height of 60 ft., these two enthroned, faceless, sandstone statues of Amenhotep III originally guarded his mortuary temple (thought to have been the largest ever built in Egypt—recently discovered to have covered a larger area than Karnak), which was plundered for building materials by later pharaohs, then the remainder gradually destroyed by the annual floods. Two of its hundreds of statues (one of Amenhotep III and Tiy) now are featured in the central court of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A stele, (a commemorative stone slab) also at the Egyptian Museum, describes the temple as having … gold throughout, a floor covered with silver, and doors covered with electrum. Smaller sections of the temple remain and are still under excavation.
These were great tourist attractions during the Graeco-Roman period because the Greeks believed these were statues of Memnon, a king of Ethiopia and son of the sun goddess Eos, who was slain by Achilles during the Trojan War. The northern statue was of particular interest because at sunrise, it would emit a haunting sound the Greeks believed was the voice of Memnon greeting his mother. Scientists think this phenomenon was produced due to an earthquake in 27 BC and by the changing heat of the day (particles breaking off and resonating in the cracks). After the statue was repaired in the 3rd century AD, the eerie sound was no longer heard.
Next we were on our way to visit some royal tombs. Almost all of the pharaohs from 1539-1075 BC. are buried here in the famous Valley of the Kings, sacred to a local goddess, Mertsigir, ‘she who loves silence.
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