Dendara and Abydos

First things first:
It's my Dad's birthday tomorrow, so happy birthday, Dad! Hope it's a good one!

I did a day trip to Dendara and Abydos today, and I think they have been my favorite places in Egypt so far. I think the distinct lack of 100 tourists per square foot may have had a lot to do with that, but they were also just really cool places.

Both were structurally really well preserved, even if the Copts came through and defaced all the artwork in the name of Christianity. The roof was still up in both of them, which gives a very different impression than columns holding up open sky. Very mysterious, with lots of beams of light streaming down from strategically placed windows.

Of the two, Dendara was definitely the coolest. For some reasons the "caretakers" (I put the word in quotes because really you can do anything you want if you pay them enough) had opened up all the locked rooms, so I got to go into all the secret passageways, including up onto the roof and down into the crypt. It cost me a few pounds in baksheesh, but it was well worth it to have full access to the place. I was happily geeking out crawling around on my hands and knees in the footsteps (kneesteps?) of ancient priests.

Tomorrow is my last day in Luxor, and I'll spend the night on the train back to Cairo, where I'll hit the embassy to sort out absentee voting and extra passport pages, then it'll be off to Sinai to climb Mt. Sinai.

The heat...and some really historic stuff...

Hi again,
today was a pretty full day. We got going at about 7:30 and headed to the Valley of the Kings. Even in the morning it was crazy hot out. With admission to the valley you get to go into three tombs. King Tut's tomb was another 15 bucks, and since it's so tiny and mobbed we decided not to bother, but we did get to do three pretty cool ones. Thutmoses III, the conqueror of many different areas in the Middle East, had a pretty cool tomb that was up a flight of kind of scary stairs. It's really old, so all the artwork in the tomb was stick figures - hey! Something I could draw!
The tomb I really wanted to see was closed for renovations, but the other two tombs we visited were also pretty cool, and very well preserved. It was incredibly hot in there, and humid from everybody sweating buckets, so when we emerged into the 100 degree heat, it felt downright cool and breezy!
After the Valley of the Kings we hit Hatshepsut's funerary temple. We learned a bit about the family drama between Hatshepsut, who was appointed regent for her nephew and just never gave up the throne when she was supposed to, and the next pharaoh, who propltly chiseled her name and image off of everything in the temple the minute she died. Ah sweet revenge. The tour guide kind of rushed us through so we didn't get a chance to look at everything, but it was really cool to be there. And a zoo! Even Giza didn't have so many people crawling all over it.
After that we hit the Valley of the Queens, which was practically deserted, and strangely filled with tombs of princes rather than queens. The prince's tombs were cooler than the ones in the Valley of the Kings, though, because even if they were smaller, they were much better preserved and much more intimate. They had a lot of pictures of the pharaoh introducing his son to the various gods, which was very touching compared to all the formalized stuff in the kings' tombs.
I've checked into my new hotel, which is right near the Luxor temple. I can see the avenue of the sphinxes from the roof deck of my hotel, which is pretty cool. This place also has hot water, which is an upgrade from the "3 star" hotel I was in last night. They're hooking me up with a tour of some of the more remote temples on Thursday, so tomorrow it's off the Luxor Museum and the Mummification Museum.

My tour: good, bad, and ugly.

I'm going to get this out of the way: I have blacklisted Amigo Tours. They lie. Almost constantly. What you book and what you get are never the same thing, and so you spend lots of time with the angry face on trying to get what you paid for in the first place. Blah.

But the felucca trip itself was great once we got underway and sorted out all the lies and obfuscations of our tour operator. Our group was 12, in all, 4 over the legal limit for a felucca, but still quite comfortable. We were two Australians, one American (me), a German, 2 Quebecois, 2 Belgians, a Brazilian guy, a Japanese girl, and 2 New Zealanders, mostly in our 20s-30s. The crew was a bunch of young guys as well, so it was all laid back and good fun.

The Nile is definitely the coolest place to be in the heat of the day. The breeze blows cool off the water, which is the perfect temperature for swimming (I know you're not supposed to swim in fresh water in foreign countries, but it was so hot and the water was so tempting...I couldn't help myself). The boat itself has a sun shade, and is flat on the bottom with cushions for everyone to lounge on. We sat around reading, cracking jokes with the crew, writing, taking photos, and just generally relaxing after all the hustle and hassle of the cities. The crew prepared some really delicious meals, with pita, salads, falafel, and the like all laid out on a tablecloth in the center of our little circle.

At night, our crew jammed with Ben, one of my Aussie compadres. Ben played guitar while they played the drums and sang. Then we called it an early night as the waves lapped along the side of the boat.

Yesterday was more of the same. We stopped a couple places to swim and stretch our legs, and had some fun with the local kids. I got my butt kicked in a cartwheel race, then built some sand castles with the younger ones, who all wanted to mug for 1000 pictures. The guys got a football game (that's soccer to y'all in the States) going with the older boys. All the women on the beach, of course, cleared out the minute we arrived, unfortunately. Alas for modesty.

Last night we had dinner in the village where the felucca's owner lives. It was a delicious spread, but our chef (in full veil) never came out to greet us because she was so busy preparing it. I went in later and offered to help with the dishes, but she would have none of it, so I busied myself trying to entertain her toddler, who was really excited to have visitors but had no idea what to make of us.

Today was a zoo because we fit two days worth of things into one day. Kom Ombo and Edfu, which our itinerary had set for yesterday (a full day of sailing), were in the morning, and then today's itinerary was pushed back to late afternoon. Kom Ombo and Edfu are both very well preserved and lovely, but all the temples are starting to blend together. I really wish I could read heiroglyphics...

Luxor and Karnak this afternoon, however, were another matter. Karnak is the largest religious structure in the world. It's huge both in footprint (many many acres of chapels and sanctuaries and columned halls), and in vertical impact. Everything is so tall, it makes the people buzzing around it (and there are millions) look like tiny ants. Alas, we only had 1/2 hour to explore the whole sprawling complex, which really annoyed me - I could have spent all afternoon there, but this is why our tour operator is blacklisted. We arrived at Luxor temple at sunset, and while it's not so impressive after the scope of Karnak, it was all lit up, which gave it a real supernatural vibe. Very cool. It gives you a sense of what people coming in from the villages would have thought of the place.

Tomorrow is a very full day, although our operator is going to try to squeeze it all in before the heat of the day. We have the twin Valleys of the Kings and Queens, plus queen Hatshepsut's Funerary temple. It'll be a lot to see, and I've got my fingers crossed that our operator won't ruin it for us. But even if he does, it's not the end of the world because I'm going to stay a few extra days here in Luxor to see some of the temples that weren't on the itinerary before I go back to Cairo and on to the Sinai.