Egypte / Egypt 2002

July 10, 2002 – Luxor

Today there is only one goal : the visit of Karnak temple and that’s all.

I have a rendezvous next to the entrance with Jorge at around 8:30. So I take my time to go there and instead of taking a taxi. I will walk through the suburbs of Luxor to reach the temple located at 3 km from the center. Wandering in the streets is the best solution to visit other parts of a city, the less touristy ones. From the center I take El Karnak Street and then in a big curve I take a little street on the right that will lead me to a police station. The policemen are very surprised to see me there but they happily show me the direction to the temple. It is traight in front of me and when I see the minibuses and buses I know that I am in the correct direction.

It is not 9am but Karnak is crowded with many groups, they want to avoid the high temperature. There are many Dutchs, Russians, Italians and Spaniards. A few minutes after me, Jorge is coming with Carrie. We will spend only 2 hours there in this enormous temple: 1.5 km long and 800 m large. The wall of the façade is twice the one of Luxor temple with nearly 50m.

Temple of Karnak

What strikes me the most is the huge square full of columns. There are 134 of them in that placeand as you can see on the picture, they are very big.

Temple of Karnak : The square with 134 columns

After this great visit of the temple, we are going back to downtown with a taxi after bargaining a lot to reach an agreement with driver. He will drop us at the bus station near the temple of Karnak because Carrie would like to buy the bus ticket to Hurghada for the following day. We take advantage of our return into the normal civilization to buy water and soft drinks at a regular price!! We are all tired and it is maybe the consequence of yesterday high temperature in the valley of kings.

At the hotel, I prepare my bag for the check out at noon. With Salim, we are going to the train station to buy his ticket for Cairo. At the station, I start a conversation with a policeman while Salim is wandering from one desk to another. Finally we end this quest by jumping onto the platform where Salim asks to a guy when the trains to Cairo depart. The next ones are at 3:30pm and 4:30pm.

On our way back, we stopped at the fresh juice booth where we tasted the cocktails yesterday. Whereas we came yesterday, the seller wants to charge us more than the price we paid the day before. So we start a huge and unpleasant dispute with all the guys working there. We will have a lot of fun about that later…

At the hotel, Salim asks Abdu if he can buy him a 3^rd class ticket because he is Egyptian and it will be less difficult. But Abdu tells him that he doesn’t need to buy a ticket in advance, just get in the train and you will pay on board (6.5 EGP for 980 km !!!)

At 3pm, we say goodbye after nearly one week spending together and a lot of nice souvenirs to remember of.

I just seat on the rooftop waiting for 4pm when Jorge is supposed to come at the hotel before going to the bus station.

The motto at Grand Hotel in Luxor (M. Nobi favorite joke !!!)

But at 4:30, nobody is coming, so I have to leave the hotel and say goodbye to all this fantastic crew, leaving my last year ISIC Card as a souvenir. I directly go to the bus station where I am waiting for Jorge as he has all the tickets for the bus. Finally 5 minutes before the departure time, Jorge is running to the station. He left his clothes for a washing at noon but the lady was unreachable when he was supposed to leave the hotel. Ouf !!! We can take the bus to Dahab.

At 5pm, we are on our way for a more than 12 hours travel going first to Hurghada, Suez, Sharm El Sheikh and finally to Dahab. We nearly come back to Cairo before going down the Sinaï.

In Hurghada, I take advantage of a little stop to go outside the bus and buy some sandwiches. Just on time because as soon as I have my sandwiches the bus was moving!!!

A few minutes later we will stop to eat, but we were too hungry to wait until this moment…

In Hurghada it is no more Egypt as I see it from nearly 2 weeks. There are a lot of luxurious hotels, resorts. We are far from Cairo or Luxor, this is the real Egypt for tourists.

Right at the beginning of the journey, we have two movies. The first one was Arabic and it was like a Commando movie and the second one was an Americam movie (Soldier), what a show!!!