Egypt is not currently at the top of most American's (or anyone's) travel lists, but it was a completely safe and thoroughly enjoyable vacation for me! Part of the joy may have been the company (Cormac, my AmeriCorps teammate and 3 of his friends from Peace Corps Uganda), but Egypt had a lot to offer of their tourism industry and they're begging you to do ANYTHING because everyone is scared of Egypt right now.
Due to the world being quite small Cormac had a friend in Cairo who was able to walk us around the town for a bit. We didn't have much time but we made our way to the River Nile and then over to Tahrir Square--scene of the revolution. But, it didn't seem all that spectacular or dangerous or even like a good place to gather. It was actually a round about full of regular traffic. Our 'guide' did point out Mubarak's old headquarters which protestors successfully destroyed. Other than that there was no sign of revolution, at least not on a Monday morning.
Our first night in town we took some giant dinner boat up and down the river Nile and watched a belly dancer perform. It was a very bizarre and tourist oriented experience, but we had some good laughs over our mostly American meal.
The next morning we took a cab out to Giza to see the pyramids. Had there not been traffic it would have been about a 15-20 minute cab ride from downtown Cairo to this magnificent ancient wonder of the world! I know I was all up on a high horse about animal rights after the elephant park, so go ahead and judge me for taking the tourist camel ride to the pyramids. I am a bit ashamed, but it was the Egypt experience that the whole group wanted. Who am I to say no?
The pyramids were even more incredible than pictures depict (as long as you are not a bitter cynic). I learned many facts that I can't keep straight about the pyramids we saw: one was originally covered in marble, one has a hole in it, one is oblong because they realized it wouldn't hold the weight once they got higher in construction. We saw the oldest pyramid which is over 7,000 years old, and we saw the first perfect pyramid. We saw the sphinx who is missing its nose because Napolean Bonaparte came to steal it (not because it had syphilis). And finally we descended into one of the pyramids. It was an absolute claustrophobic experience climbing down these steps into an abyss that is thousands of years old, in the middle of the earth, and once held a bunch of dead people--trust me, it smelled like it. Ooh, we also went to a museum where one of the original mummies was on display. A five thousand year old corpse perfectly preserved! Well, not perfectly. It was solid black and had lost a toe, but otherwise you could discern all the different human features on the tiny little king, even his toenails.
After the pyramids we hopped on a bus and made our way south to Aswan. We site-saw the high dam which is currently the third largest dam in the world and provides power to Egypt, Sudan, and another country. Russia was quicker to help Egypt than the US, so the friendship monument at the dam is dedicated to Russia, but as a US citizen, I appreciate friendship with Egypt. Also in (around) Aswan we went to the temple of Isis and later traveled into the desert to Abu Simbil to check out the temples Ramses built for himself and his favorite wives. All of this ancient stonework was pretty incredible. These temples were enormous and covered (from head to toe except that temples don't have heads or toes) in hieroglyphics and pictures of Pharos and gods, and there were giant stone statues as well. And these were all created thousands of years ago!
The temples and pyramids were (for lack of variety in my vocabulary) absolutely amazing to see and amazing to just be in the presence of something so simple but so brilliant. Despite their amazingness my favorite night in Egypt was the simple felucca ride we took. After much touring and traveling we got back to Aswan tired and confused (we never were clear on what we were going to be doing, our concierge guy just ushered us from one thing to the next...), but we gathered our bags and boarded the little sailboat. Our captain then sailed us slowly down the Nile while preparing for us a delicious lunch, tea, and dinner. It wasn't until after dinner that we realized we would actually be spending the night on the little boat. But it was the perfect night, even if we didn't ever know what was going on. We simply laid about on the boat, drank some delicious warm beer, and went to bed with the sun. In the morning we returned to shore and, well rested, made our way to Luxor. I spent the afternoon with my friends, but because of my flight to Ireland I wasn't able to stay in Luxor and visit the valley of the Kings or any other tourist attractions there. Even though I missed this final tourist bit, my trip to Egypt was truly fabulous!
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