The whirlwind tour of Egypt's ancient ruins. In 31 hours of straight traveling (2 bus rides and 1 overnight train), we left the far west and landed in the far south, now next to the Sudan border. Here we viewed what we considered to be the best and most spectacular monuments left from the Pharaonic period, the Great Temple of Ramses II and temple of Hathor. The only downer was that to get to this location we had to join a tour which landed us in the midst of over 50 other tour buses headed to the same spot as one convoy. Let me explain. Due to some terroist activity in southern Egypt in the '90s, the goverment introduced the idea of police escorted tourist convoys for increased safety (no need for paronia - being here is just as safe as being in the USA). Literally, it is just one massive parade of small and big tourist buses headed from the initial starting point (Aswan) 3 hours south to visit the temples (which we were given 2 hours to see) and then we all piled back into our respective buses and started the 3 hour parade back to Aswan. It speaks volumes that we found this to be the best site despite the crowds.

Anxious to get to the Sinai penisula to go snorkeling and diving, we shed our usual dislike of tours and signed up to see the "highlights" in Luxor. This included; the Valley of the kings (location of numerous underground tombs for Pharaohs - tombs made insteresting by the paintings and stone wall carvings of heiroglyphs, daily life, and scenes of worship to the gods.), temple of Hatshepsut (unique in the fact that it is made for a female ruler - this monument is visually spectacular as it is parially built into the surrounding cliffs and approaced via a series of terraces seperated by columnnades, sadly the hordes of people here really distract) , statues of memon, and Medinat Habu temple (a huge temple, thankfully many people don't visit and so it was fun to walk around and look in peace at the carvings in the walls and on the columns).

October 27th - 31st
Cairo

November 1st - 4th
Siwa Oasis

November 5th - 7th
Aswan, Abu Simbel and Luxor

November 8th - 15th
Sinai Peninsula (city of Dahab)

Egypt country summary