Day 26

MONDAY 4th JANUARY

Synopsis of day: Venturing into the New Kingdom.

Highlight of the day: The Temples of Karnak and Luxor

Lowlight of the day: The wake up call muckup.

Toilet ratings: Again, toilet paper is quite the non-essential item it seems.

Favourite quote/word: “When will we stop for lunch?” and all derivatives.

Favourite photo:

Hatshepsut's Obelisk at the Temple of Karnak.

Cultural-shock moment: Our car crash. Seriously these drivers are manic.
New food consumed: This chocolate cream pie thing for dessert. I did enjoy that. Also a peanut butter flavoured kitkat. Wheaten, I know, but oh the trauma we had already encountered!
Favourite purchase: A scarf/blanket/tablecloth thing that I got for cheaper than anyone else, cause that's how I roll.

The thing I lost today: My eye pillow. The angst before bedtime! (Found it eventually).

Random act of crazy: Our car crash. Also the number of horses and carts in Luxor.

What Arthur did next: Lost his hotel card and had to search for it before we could leave. His response “Who cares?” (or that might have been after one of the times that he arrived later than everyone else).

Something I want to remember: I liked the column portico thing in the Temple of Luxor. Sadly it was difficult to photograph because of the position of the sun.

Number of times I have been mistaken for being English: I have seriously lost count. Probably almost as many times as I have been mistaken for Kerri's sister.




We had a very early wakeup: just before 4.30am we had a porter come to collect our bags. He was meant to be coming for 5.30am as I understood it, so I tried to communicate. He came back in 5 minutes but we didn't answer the door. We were expecting a wake-up call at 5am but that came at 5.45am so we were left with fifteen minutes to finalise everything and be down at the bus. I just made it, but it was a very hurried pace and not at all what we had been planning for. It pretty much set the mood of the day though. I slept in the bus for a lot of the way to Luxor. You apparently need a tourist police guard with you along this road, but I don't remember us having one. We still went through plenty of checkpoints.


As we were getting closer to the Nile, the agriculture started to become apparent. It looks to be sugar cane season, and I was largely reminded of mid-north Queensland in the colours of the area. The muslim dress, multiple donkeys and mud brick housing detracted from that reminder, and it really did feel as though I was viewing life in much earlier centuries.

Travel by donkey.

Mud brick walls.

Rather than going straight to the cruiser for lunch, we ended up going into the Temple of Karnak. It was a very busy centre but I was excited to be there. There were so many awe inspiringly large monuments, columns and buildings.

Courtesy of Ramesses II

An indication of the size.

Enormous colonnade, courtesy of Ramesses II who was clearly a busy boy.

Ah hieroglyphs, if only I could interpret more of you.

Nifty roof paintings and columns.

Kerri liked these statues with 'starched skirts'

I bet Balthalon and Hall and the others were *so* proud of themselves.

In Israel, these have largely been destroyed or buried, so this was more like Rome for me, and it was impressive. It was very busy, but I could have spent longer there, wandering around, had not men offerering to act as guides or take photos of us etc found us at every corner during our free time. Thankfully there were lots of corridors and places to escape from them. This experience has been so unlike what I am familiar with – we've never been so accosted in our lives. Who knew it was so easy to gain their (unwanted) attention?

We had a brief stop at a papyrus place, and had a demonstration of papyrus making, which I was very snap happy with, and which Kerri filmed. I bought a large hieroglyphic alphabet, and because we ended up buying a number of pieces, the shop assistants, who mistook us for sisters and kept beaming at us, gave us some free things.

The Temple of Luxor was quieter than Karnak, and even though it didn't have funky obelisks and was not as large, it also boasted some Muslim and Christian sources of evidence. A painting of the apostles over some of the temple walls was an interesting exercise in usage over time, and there were some inscriptions by Alexander the Great after he assumed the role of Pharaoh.

It was 4pm before we reached the cruiser and made it to lunch. We were pretty much out of it by then too, given the upset of the morning. We had to walk through two other boats before we came to ours, and the planks we walked on and the entry itself was most unusual. I was very glad I didn't have to carry my suitcase because it was so tight. Our room is so much larger than I was expected and we have a really nice bit window to view the Nile. It is also quite peaceful to be looking out there, and I think we will enjoy our time.