Just before we got married we wrote a list of some of the things we wanted to accomplish during our lives together. One of those things was to travel the world but we were unsure of how or when we would accomplish that dream...
So here we are, fulfilling that dream together and having a fantastic time. Enjoy travelling with us as you view this site.
After picking up some student cards on Cairo’s black market we headed straight to the most famous of Egypt’s attractions, the pyramids of Giza. They are simply amazing. On the outskirts of Cairo and the Sahara Desert, they are far superior to what you imagine when seeing them on TV. Built by father, son and grandson around 2,500 B.C they stand approximately 140 metres tall with each brick the height of Kristen and some weighing 15 tonnes! How were they built and why? History has been unable to confirm the first question and we were even told that by using current-day Egyptian technology and machinery they would be unable to replicate them. The answer to the second question is that they were apparently used to house the mummified body of a single pharaoh, with the shape of the pyramid symbolising eternal life. The Sphinx lays in front of the middle pyramid and was carved during the reign of that pharaoh, it’s considered to portray his features. It was smaller than we’d imagined, and our local guide blamed the French for using it as target practice when he explained why it had no nose. We were unsure about this, because we’ve noticed that the French seem to get blamed for a lot of things. 
We visited the city of Memphis (capital of Egypt for most of the Pharaonic Period) in the evening and then headed to the train station for the 14 hour trip down the Nile to the city of Aswan. Tap water is unsafe to drink in Egypt, but a local legend has it that if you have one drop of the water from the Nile you will fall in love with Egypt and want to come back again and again. We may have had one drop too many, as al it did for us was allow us to frequently experience the disgustingly unhygienic toilets on Egyptian trains.
After arriving in Aswan we visited the Aswan dam constructed by the British in the 19th century, the dam helped to regulate the flow if the Nile. To their astonishment it also helped to swamp the nearby temple of Philae complex which was majestically built around 300 BC. The UN therefore disassembled the massive complex stone by stone underwater and reconstructed it 20 metres higher on a nearby island in the 1970’s.
The following morning we boarded a felucca (Egyptian sail boats) with a Swiss, Columbian, and two Brits and sailed around the nearby islands. The most entertaining part of this was watching young boys furiously hand paddling their tiny handmade wooden boats to try and catch up to us and score some money. The children are very clever and can speak multiple languages which helps them communicate with tourists and sell their products. We told them we were Dutch which we found out by trial and error was one language they didn’t know.
In the afternoon we boarded a cruise that would take us from the beginning of the Nile in Aswan approximately 200 kilometres north to Luxor over the space of two nights. The scenery is absolutely amazing and the contrast unbelievable. The longest river in the world winding through mountainous rocky desert. The Nile is the centre and source of life in Egypt, without if the country would struggle to exist. It doesn’t rain in Aswan and rarely does in Cairo, so the only fertile strip of land is on either side of the Nile and the majority of the population live along it. With mud-brick housing, the locals life along-side their crops, cows and donkeys and small fishing boats among palm trees, with the desert as their backdrop. Our words cannot do the scenery justice.
We stopped at the temple of Kom Ombo which stands graciously on the banks of the Nile, where in ancient times sacred crocodiles basked in the sun on the river bank. The temple dates back a few hundred years B.C and has a dual nature, as two separate gods were worshipped there. It has a twin entrance, twin courts, twin “holy of holies” and probably a twin priesthood. The left side of the temple was dedicated to Haroeris, the right half to Sobek, the local crocodile-headed god. There are even some mummified crocodiles dug up from a nearby sacred-animal cemetery.
On our arrival in Luxor we spent the evening playing backgammon and discussing the Islamic religion with some locals, particularly interesting were their views on the Iraq War and the USA’s presence in the Middle East. It gave us the opportunity to see another side of the story as opposed to how it’s portrayed in the media in Western countries. After that evening it became apparent we hadn’t come across one American tourist anywhere in Egypt, a 90% Muslim country.
Luxor is described as the world’s largest open-air museum with a huge amount of riches. Our first day was spent on the West Bank where we visited the spectacular tombs of Egypt’s ancient pharaohs dug deep into the desert mountains in the Valley of the Kings awaiting immortality. The Egyptians began construction of each tomb on the first day of that particular pharaoh’s rule over Egypt and kept building until the pharaonic reign ended, so the longer their rule, the more spectacular their tomb. Next stop was the temple of Hatshepsut, an amazing structure carved out of the desert hills for one of the few women to rule ancient Egypt. This was the site of the massacre of 58 tourists by terrorists in 1997, and with the subsequent bombing of the Egyptian museum and the recent bombing at Sharm El-Sheikh, tourist buses now travel police convoy. We also visited the Valley of the Queens (home to the tombs of the female rulers) and the mummification museum.
The locals here love to shake your hand, and I think my lack of diligence in always washing my hands prior to eating assisted me in experiencing yet another bout of stomach problems. The necessity to be close to a toilet slightly disrupted our final day in Luxor, but we still managed to visit two famous Egyptian temples.
The Karnak Temple is more than just a temple. Set on 60 acres, everything is on a gigantic scale. It was built, added to, dismantled, restored, enlarged and decorated over a period of 2000 years (B.C) with almost every pharaoh leaving his (or her) mark.
The Luxor Temple is on a much smaller scale to Karnak. It includes three different faiths in the one temple (each section built during that particular faith’s reign); Egyptian gods, a Muslim mosque and a Coptic Christian area.
Back in Cairo after a 9 hour train ride, our final day in Egypt consisted of going inside Muhamed Ali’s mosque (not the boxer) and visiting the oldest Coptic church in Egypt. We were also shown inside a Jewish synagogue, and taken to a site behind it where we were told was the place Moses was found by a Pharaoh’s daughter on the banks of the Nile….
Finally, we visited the famed Egyptian Museum where we were able to view the mummies of the ancient pharaohs and also the findings from Tutankhamun’s famous tomb. To put the size of the museum in perspective, if you spent one minute at each exhibit it would take nine months to see everything.
Egypt has become our favourite country visited so far. It is so different and interesting. A couple of weeks ago we raved about the history in the UK, but it’s another world to see 5000 year old pyramids, temples, mummies and hieroglyphics, with the locals still living like you’d imagine thousands of years ago. Thankfully, remembering people’s names was not a problem, as everyone seemed to be called Mohammed (the same name as Islam’s final and great prophet). I also had the opportunity to pick up 10 camels and even one man’s business, it was however in exchange for Kris…
