An Egyptian Tale
Created | Updated Oct 23, 2002
Munchkin and Toccata sail down the Nile, keeping an eye out for any Belgian detectives.
Day 1
Setting out on a trip I always look forward to a good travel story. You know, seven hour delays chatting to a Welsh hill farmer with Lymes disease or something. It sets up the rest of your holiday nicely and allows you to thank the deity that nothing is as bad as that journey. Sadly this particular plane journey was uneventful. So, plenty of chances for the rest of the week to go downhill, if you fancy being pessimistic. Still, being a charter flight it did rank as worse than almost any scheduled flight I've ever been on, so there was some good there.
Arriving in Luxor we joined the visa queue, mostly made up of confused tourists demanding to know why no one had told them about this when they booked. Presumably I'm the only one who read a guide book. Anyhoo, buy a visa, through passport control (which pretty much just consists of 'Do you have a visa?') and then out to get our luggage.
This gave us our first glimpse of Egypt's famously friendly service. A little man stood by the conveyor belt and as soon as someone went to get a case he leaped in, manhandled them off of the case, put it on a trolley and then refused to let the owner near it while asking which other cases were theirs. When all the cases are acquired the little man then asks where the tourist is going and whisks him off, hopefully to the right bus although he may try to get him on 'Uncle Abduls' couch instead. At the end of all this the tourist will then be asked for 'baksheesh' or a tip. And woe betide you if you can't pay, as the Egyptian will get most irate that he has done this work for you and you now won't pay up, ignoring entirely the fact that you didn't ask in the first place. Luckily I was paying attention, got my own case and got out to the bus. Snatches of Luxor were seen out of the bus window as we drove along, including Luxor temple, which impressed me greatly. Little did I realise that by the time the week would be over it would be simply one of many.
Anyway we quickly arrived at the boat which looked absolutely huge but was really quite small after a wander around. A bit of dinner and some polite nonsense with other guests before to bed which took a bit of effort as Toccata was almost mad with excitement having not done much of this travelling lark before.
Day 2
Technically we started our cruise at 4am as the boat sailed of north but I was fast asleep so didn't get too excitable. We sailed to Quena 40 miles north and then took a bus as part of a police convoy to Dendera on the other side of the river. The police convoy was required due to the early to mid nineties outbreak of Islamic fundamentalism, not that I even saw anything vaguely reminiscent on this trip.
For our first temple we were taken to the Temple Of Hathor, the cow goddess of happiness, joy and even wine making. It has a number of points to recommend it, from the ability to get on to its roof (the steps were seen in Death on the Nile) to a picture of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony on the back wall. It also has a very complete zodiac and pictures of Nout, goddess of the air, bent over the world. The Egyptians had an amazing knowledge of the workings of the stars and planets and were able to condense it all on to the roof of this particular temple, with the Goddess Nout covering all. And so back to Luxor.
The trip back was very pleasant watching the banks of the Nile slip by while hiding in the shade (I don't like sun that much) but the lack of clothing by some of my fellow travellers bothered me. Egypt is an Islamic country and it is their custom, whither you agree with it or not, to dress modestly. Women tend to keep both legs and arms covered, quite often the head as well, and even men are mostly fully covered; they might wear short sleeves but I never noticed any shorts. Then you see the tourists. Parading round temples in shorts, T-Shirts (I even saw a guy bare-backed at one point), halter tops and hot pants. And then, when they are by the pool, even if on board a ship, they are all out in their trunks and bikinis. To me it seems terribly disrespectful to Arabic culture and you can begin to see why the locals would be annoyed with these tourists. All it requires is a pair of cotton trousers and a light shirt. If you wear a hat too you might even manage to avoid that sick day in the middle of the week when the sun stroke and continuous lager gets the better of you.
That aside there were some nice points to cruising. Possibly the best was afternoon tea at 5 which was simply wonderful. I fear I might be turning into an Englishman. Also on our trip back we were given some option excursions to look at and I decided to book the trip to Abu Simbel on the Saturday morning. Can't come all this far and not see something as famous as that.
Dinner was spiced up by a Danish lady celebrating her fiftieth birthday. This seemed to involve all the Danes on the ship (of which there must have been at least twenty) singing from a sheet for endless verses and then the waiters joining in with some drums and a cake of their own. Toccata was somewhat put out by this it would be her birthday on the Thursday!
