Safaga, Egypt

Luxor and The Valley of the Kings
As we sailed into the port of Safaga at 7AM we got confirmation of the reason the Red Sea was given its name. The sun was shining on the hills behind the town and the reflection made the water look red.
The city of Safaga has nothing much to offer tourists; it just served as our docking station. There was no marching band to greet us, no taxi drivers offering us rides, and no Egyptians trying to sell us souvenirs; just 21 buses waiting to take about half the ship’s passengers to Luxor and The Valley of the Kings. Because the Nile River runs south to north, the southern half of Egypt is called Upper Egypt and the northern half is Lower Egypt. So we would be traveling southwest from the middle of Egypt (Safaga) to Upper Egypt.
I guess the Egyptians know something we don’t know because the only way they would allow us to travel to Luxor was in a convoy of buses with police escorts and an armed guard on each bus. We even had a back-up bus in case one of the other buses broke down. Security was very tight.
We had arranged with a bunch of our buddies to meet and get onto the same bus for the 4 hour ride to Luxor. Since Egypt is 96% desert and the area we were driving through gets an average of 2” of rainfall per year, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the first hour and a half of our ride took us through a moon-like landscape that consisted of dry dirt hills with no vegetation at all. This knowledge made it no less monotonous. The military checkpoints we encountered were truly oases in the desert.
The first town we came to, about 2 hours into our trip, was a city of 100,000 people. It resembled a bombed out war zone. We could see from the laundry hanging out the windows that the buildings were inhabited but they all looked like they were either just being built or in the process of being torn down. It was hard to tell which description applied. The roads were wide and divided by a median that consisted of beautiful date palms trees and evenly spaced pictures of President Mubarak.
Our first stop was The Valley of the Kings, the site of dozens of tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs, including King Tut’s tomb. Our convoy of buses converged on the site and all 590 of us piled out into the suffocating heat and began the herding process of getting us all on trams to take us to the tombs. King Tut’s tomb was not open but our guide told us that it is not very impressive anyway and that we were going to visit two tombs that are the most spectacular, those of Ramses IV and Ramses IX. We went single file into the dark tomb, thinking that it would be a cool respite from the heat, but we were wrong. There was no air flow and it was even hotter in there than outside. But the hieroglyphics were so intriguing that the heat didn’t matter. It was hard to believe that the colors had lasted thousands of years. We weren’t able to decipher what the symbols were saying but it was interesting nevertheless. The Pharaohs were buried with all their material possessions but we didn’t get to see those. They had been removed and put into The Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, which we’ll visit this Thursday.
On the way back to the buses we had to go through a market area and the hawkers were particularly overpowering. They have a strange way of trying to get people to buy. A man approached me with a plaque and said “One dollar, one dollar.” I said, “No, thank you.” So, he said, “OK, twenty-five.” I replied in surprise “Twenty-five dollars??” He said, “OK, fifteen dollars.” I just walked away as he continued to lower the price. I wondered if I was mistaken about that interchange but later heard from other people that this was a common ploy. They must think we’re dumber than we really are!!
Next stop was the Colossi of Memnon. These are two huge statues that you’ve probably seen in history books. I’m not going to regurgitate the history lesson we got about these places because this blog would be too long and I can just see your eyes glazing over. I thought we would find these statues in the midst of other colossal ruins of this period; instead, they are sitting in the middle of farm land on the outskirts of Luxor in a setting that makes no sense at all. But they are amazing to see anyway.
Then we went to the town of Luxor which turned out to be a charming place, with modern hotels and shops and horses and carriages for touring. In the center of town is The Temple of Luxor, which was our next stop. I’ve included a picture of this temple because it is beyond description. We have nothing like this in America, as it’s several thousand years old. I think the only reason it has survived is because there is no changing weather patterns to wear it down.
From there we went to lunch at the St. George Hotel in town. We were so hot that when we passed the hotel pool we all found out the REAL meaning of oasis. But unfortunately we couldn’t dive into the clear cool water; we were just there for lunch. After lunch we were on a mission to buy an Egyptian dress and Fez hat for Ed. For some reason he really wanted one and who was I to try to stop that momentous occasion. We had fun watching him try it on and he actually purchased one!!
Our final entertainment before our trek back to the ship was the Sound and Light Show at the Temple of Karnak in Luxor. This was a huge ancient temple where the entrance was lined with sphinxes and as we stood on the steps between the statues, darkness fell and music started to play. At that point a deep voice began a narration of the history of the temple as lights illuminated different statues and told their stories. As we moved through the temple the narration continued until we ended up in an amphitheater where the show concluded. A few minutes before the end of the program, the call to prayer began in the town all around us and it gave a mystical quality to an already otherworldly experience.
The ship was set to sail at midnight and our buses pulled into the port at 11:59PM. We were exhausted but keyed up and we ended the evening at the Crow’s Nest with Pete and Sharon, evaluating the day over a nightcap.
We have a very welcome day at sea today as we recuperate from yesterday’s sixteen hour trip. Tomorrow we go through the Suez Canal. We heard today about an incident that happened in the canal yesterday, resulting in the killing of one Egyptian and wounding 2 others by someone on a American flagged freighter, so it should make our journey through the canal even more thrilling.