Exodus from Cairo

Aside from the Pyramids, Cairo was a little underwhelming. The traffic, smog, general chaos, all kind of chipped away at your nerves. I think we were happy when the morning came for us to catch our flight to Luxor and begin our tour of Upper Egypt (since the Nile flows South to North, Upper Egypt refers to the south, Lower Egypt refers to the north.... are you confused yet?).

We had a very early morning departure, which was probably a good thing since there was no traffic at that hour. I had a mini-meltdown at the airport because I had lost my electronic ticket receipt and our transfer agent yelled at me for not having it (I explained that an electronic ticket is paperless, but he said not in Egypt). Then the handle on my roller board broke and only came up about six inches so I had to walk like a hunched over old man to pull it (Stu would later joke that I should be on the lookout for dwarfs who would want to steal my bag).

Our flight to Luxor took about an hour. I fell in love with Egyptian mango juice, which is real thick. Marty commented that it was the only juice she has ever had to chew.

We also added two new people to our little group. The company with whom I booked the tour, ATB Holidays, arranged everything. A nice young couple were now part of our group, as they had booked with them as well. Oli and Yvetta. He was Albanian, she was Slovakian, and they lived in London. They were closer to my age, so Marty, Stu and our tour guide Ahmed, would start referring to us as the kids.

We had a short drive to the Nile where we boarded our boat, the Miss Egypt. All the riverboats going down the Nile looked the same, more or less. We had cabins that opened up to the outside, which was nice. The room was small, but comfortable. We all had rooms right next to each other, so if I needed anything from Stu and Marty I just yelled, or stuck my head out the balcony.

The very top of the boat served as a sun deck with a covered area, as well as a swimming pool.

When Marty visited Egypt 27 years ago, there were five boats sailing the Nile. Now there are over 350. As a result, there are lots of tourists, lots of congestion. In Luxor, our boat was about 4 deep from shore, so we had to walk thru the lobbies of other boats to get to land for our excursions. We had a river view for about the first 30 minutes, and then another boat docked next to us and our view consisted of the back office of the reception desk.