Walk like an Egyptian

Our recent trip to Egypt was essentially two separate holidays; 1) sightseeing and exploring Cairo and Luxor, and 2) a stop-off between the two at the Red Sea to learn to scuba dive.

The sights of Cairo lived up to their reputations; The Pyramids and Sphinx on the Giza Plateau were awe inspiring;

We went inside one of the pyramids by practically crawling through a long, deep, hot passage, which was very claustrophobic (though I start panicking when I have to go under my desk to fiddle around with some wires!).

The Egyptian Museum was stuffed full of enough ancient Egyptian artifacts to keep you interested for days if you had the time, and the city itself had lots to explore; Downtown, the Islamic area, the Coptic area, the Citadel to mention a few.

They all had plenty to keep all your senses entertained.

We also found some great restaurants in the evenings serving excellent Egyptian food.

However, some of the people we met (or, to be more precise, people who went out of their way to meet us) did their best to test our patience. Standing out as Western tourists meant we were targets for all sorts of attention; hustlers trying to guide you to specific shops where they earn commission, men openly expressing their admiration for Eloise, taxi drivers curb-crawling you while they insist that you should get in (and gawping at El at the same time), shop owners/market traders/street hawkers jumping out in front of you and thrusting their merchandise into your face. The fact that we chose to walk around a lot of the city as we usually do on holiday (rather than getting dumped at each site of interest by a tour bus, which all the other tourists seemed to do) meant we left ourselves open to a lot of this sort of behaviour.

Taxi drivers are also intent of getting more out of you than their fare. They all have a brother/uncle/friend who owns a shop/factory/camel that you must visit on the way to your destination, and it takes several rather aggressive no thank yous before they give up. One even insisted that El spoke to his doctor friend on the phone, who then proceeded to tell her that he had a remedy that could cure her. It took a while for us to twig that the taxi driver thought her freckles were a skin disease!


Luxor basically followed the same pattern. The historical sites across the Nile on the west bank were incredible. We explored several of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens (claustrophobic again, but worth squeezing into), as well as the numerous temples and other historic sites in the area.

One of the highlights were the Tombs of the Nobles, which required a local guide to help find them all who was very talkative and provided a good insight into the life the locals lead.

The temples and museums in Luxor itself were also spectacular;

But we also experienced the same hassle as in Cairo everywhere we went, but unlike Cairo the town of Luxor had little else to offer though, as it seems to only exist as a result of the tourists.

We did manage to do some relaxing while in Cairo and Luxor but only in the comfort of the hotels, both of which were situated right on the Nile;

The Red Sea resort we stayed at was the complete opposite of Cairo and Luxor; tranquil and hassle free. Pictures here. Boring would also describe it fairly well and we definitely wouldn't have chosen it as a holiday destination if it wasn't for the scuba diving, which took up nearly all our time there. The four day course consisted of two days of theory; reading, watching, listening, answering and practicing skills in the swimming pool, followed by two days of diving proper on the reefs in the Red Sea. We did take a disposable underwater camera with us but the picture quality was pretty poor, especially those of the fish and reef. A couple of us are worth posting though;

I really must get my hair cut.

The undescribable feeling of diving in the sea amongst amazing fish and coral made all the hard work of the first two days worthwhile. We were lucky enough to see a moray eel, a blue spotted ray and a lion fish, as well as some dolphins from the boat on one of the return journeys (which was unfortunate for the crew member who happened to by praying on the front deck when we spotted them and had to postpone until the boat stopped circling round to chase the dolphins, since he completely lost track of where Mecca was!).

Although we had an amazing time, it certainly wasn't a relaxing holiday, what with most days spent either exploring as much as possible or being back at school learning to dive, and having to get up early nearly every day to beat the Sun when visiting the desert sites and to catch the boat out to the Red Sea reefs. Plus the in-yer-face-ness of Cairo and Luxor is very draining, as was getting your head round seeing all this really old stuff and trying to understand what life must've been like back then. So we were actually quite glad to get back to what we call normality here in Doha.