Ruth

First, thanks to all Fodorites who have written about Egypt – I didn’t ask many questions, but read a lot of useful information! We had an amazing time, and I’m already planning our next trip.

We three (OH, 9-year-old son (S), and I) travelled with an organised tour run by a UK-based company. Our decision to join this tour was not only because of the view of the eclipse, but also the chance to travel through the Western Desert and visit some of the oases. The desert trip was indeed a highlight! We had a fantastic time.

Day 1. We flew LHR to Cairo with EgyptAir. I’d seen recent reports of sandstorms and was worried that we’d be diverted to a different airport, but like most of my worries, this was unfounded and we landed safely at Cairo. We were met by the tour organisers who arranged all the visas and we were soon on our way to the hotel. Now we started to meet the other members of the tour group. We hadn’t travelled with a group before, but we were lucky with this one! Very interesting and pleasant travelling companions. We stayed at the Pyramid Park Hotel, Giza. It’s not very close to the pyramids, but we liked the hotel.

Day 2: Cairo. We visited Pyramids and Sphinx – there’ve been plenty of reports about these and I can’t add to them. But certainly Cairo has crept closer to the Pyramids than when I last visited about 20 years ago. Back then the vendors’ cries were “not ekkispensive!” – now they are “buy-one-get-one-free!” – I suppose that is globalisation for you. Our guide told us to deal with intrusive vendors by simply ignoring them, and it was fine. The Solar Boat was well worth seeing – it is beautifully displayed in a museum at the foot of the Great Pyramid.

We had a walk in Old Cairo, visiting the Coptic church of St Sergius and an ancient synagogue, then lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Nile. The afternoon was spent in the Cairo Museum. I would have definitely like to have spent more time in Cairo, but the tour must go on…

That evening, the heavens opened and it poured with rain. Not what we’d been expecting! Nor had the hotel, it seems, as the dining-room ceiling quickly developed a series of leaks. We were told the rain was the worst for 30 years.

Day 3: Alexandria. The day started with a very slow drive out of Cairo. Our tour bus crawled axle-deep through the floods, but once we were on the main road north our speed increased, though we saw plenty of standing water. Alexandria was fascinating – another place to spend more time! We visited catacombs dating from Ptolemaic times, decorated with an interesting synthesis of Egyptian and Roman symbolism. Lunch was delicious grilled fish in a restaurant overlooking the harbour. We then had a quick visit to the site of the Pharos and then back to the bus for the long journey west, past El Alamein, to Marsa Matrouh, where we were to stay the next two nights. Marsa Matrouh is a small resort town on the Mediterranean coast.

Ruth

Day 4: ECLIPSE DAY! We were woken at 3 am for our journey to El Saloum, on the Libyan border. Would it be clear, or would the day bring yet more rain? When we started, the stars were spectacular, but then gradually began to disappear, and when we reached the eclipse site around 6.30 am, it was shrouded in thick mist (and very cold!). Security was tight, as this is a military zone, but the organization was efficient. We were given “eclipse permits” on stylish mauve ribbons (we were in “mauve zone”) and found ourselves in huge decorated marquees in the desert, close to a military base. The tents were carpeted, and supplied with red plush banqueting chairs, tables, tea and coffee for sale, and very clean loos in adjoining trailers. The rain of the previous few days had left most of the chairs soaking wet, and the desert outside had turned into a quagmire, and a couple of tour buses and a water tanker got stuck, but otherwise everything ran very smoothly.

We ate the breakfast we had brought with us, and waited for the mist to clear. Our group heard a lecture on the eclipse by an astronomer, and then we took our chairs out into the desert (it was quite a sight!). The security was not intrusive; we were free to wander in the desert around the marquees, and find our ideal “viewing spot”. The nearby road was lined with soldiers, and we saw helicopters bringing President Mubarak and other dignitaries to the military base. The mist started to clear about 10 am, and by 11.20 am when the moon first started to creep across the face of the sun, the sky was clear, we finally felt warm, and we were about to experience the total eclipse! We looked in awe at the cameras and projecting equipment set up by members of our group and others. There were groups from the UK, France, Australia, Italy and many others nearby. The eclipse was truly spectacular, and the whole atmosphere was surreal – a great feeling of a shared experience.

After the eclipse we had to wait for the President to leave, and then the tour bus was able to come back to pick us up for the trip back to Marsa Matrouh. We left the next morning for Siwa.

Ruth

Days 5 and 6: Siwa Oasis. Siwa is the furthest oasis from the Nile, only 30 miles from the Libyan border and about 200 miles SW of Marsa Matrouh. Our hotel (the Siwa Paradise) was indeed a paradise, set in a forest of date palms, and with a small swimming pool fed by its own (cold!) underground spring. After a late lunch, we climbed the ruined Shali in Siwa town, a medieval fortified town made of mud-bricks, inhabited until recent times. From the top, we had a fine view over the oasis, with its huge numbers of date palms and two vast salt lakes, and beyond, the dunes and mountains of the Sahara. Siwa is the main town in the oasis, which has about 20,000 inhabitants. It has a quite different culture from the rest of Egypt, and even its own language, related to Berber. This unique culture is of course changing, partly because of tourism, but also because of television and the government’s policy of encouraging settlement from other parts of Egypt. I feel privileged to have been able to visit. It was a wonderfully relaxing place to spend a couple of days. It also has many enticing small shops! We bought boxes of delicious dried dates for the equivalent of 60p per kilo, and I couldn’t resist a beautiful embroidered Bedouin dress for £15.

The following morning we toured the sights of the oasis: the temple of the oracle of Amun-Ra where Alexander the Great was conveniently proclaimed a god and ruler of Egypt; the Mountain of the Dead with its decorated tombs; and Cleopatra’s pool, one of many ancient pools fed by the hundreds of springs in the oasis. Although we were travelling on our tour bus, we saw lots of tourists on bicycles – altogether a better way to explore the oasis, we felt, as the sites were all within a mile of the town. Siwa was, predictably, full of tourists following the same route as we were after viewing the eclipse, so we didn’t experience the usual peace and quiet of this small town, but we did experience its charm and beauty.

The afternoon brought another highlight – a drive through the Great Sand Sea in old Toyota 4x4s (no glass in the side windows, and sideways-facing bench seats). What was I doing as a responsible mother taking my only child in one of these vehicles? Too late to worry, we were off… and it was brilliant fun, with very skilful local drivers. The Great Sand Sea is a huge area of soft sand formed into dunes by the wind (“proper” desert, you might say). There are no roads or cairns, but our drivers clearly knew every inch. They drove through the spectacular dunes and took us to several landmarks. First we paused at a tiny pool surrounded by reeds and teeming with fish. Then, a much longer drive to a larger green area with a hot spring. The water is piped into a small circular pool, and S and I had a swim in the hot, fizzy water, along with a large group of German tourists. The desert was really crowded that day! We saw many groups of 4x4s following similar routes. “Just for fun” our drivers took us over the ridge of a dune and ploughed down the steep slope – from inside the car it looked vertical! “Again, again!” said S. We next stopped at an outcrop of limestone, which on closer inspection was full of marine fossils – scallop and oyster shells, corals and and sea-urchins. In the low sunlight the dunes were stunningly beautiful. Our final stop was to watch the sunset over the dunes, where our drivers lit a small fire and brewed tea. S ran up and down sand dunes and wore himself out (he wasn’t the only member of the group to enjoy plunging down the soft slopes!). We drove back into Siwa full of our impressions of the day.

Ruth

Day 7: drive to Bahariya oasis. Our tour bus could take us no further as the metalled road ends at Siwa. For the next section of our journey we travelled in 4x4s (newer ones with forward facing seats) to the oasis of Bahariya, a distance of about 250 miles. Our tour driver had to take the bus the long way round, back to Marsa Matrouh, retracing the route to Cairo, and then met us in Bahariya which is linked to the Nile Valley by a tarred road, a total of about 800 miles. The track we took across the desert is well marked, but is very rough on the vehicles (and their passengers!). The desert here is gravel and rock rather than sand, and our group of 6 vehicles suffered several punctures on the way. We stopped for lunch next to a massive rock formation also composed of fossils – nummulites – coin shaped fossils from the Eocene age. It took 10 or 11 hours to reach Bahariya oasis. Our bus driver, Maghdi, had already arrived, and after a stop for tea, we continued to Farafra oasis in the tour bus. We stayed at the Badawiya Hotel, really too tired to appreciate its beautiful domed rooms furnished in a traditional style.

Day 8: Drive to Kharga. Another early start in the 4x4s to watch the sunrise in the White Desert. It was worth it! This is an area of spectacular chalk and limestone formations, sculpted by the wind into wonderful shapes. We identified a penguin, a camel, a sphinx and lots of mushrooms. Then back to the hotel for breakfast and into the tour bus for the drive to Kharga oasis. We stopped to visit the early Christian necropolis of Bagawat, where the tombs were like small domed houses made of mud bricks. Some still had their original painted ceilings. The arches and decorations had survived 15 centuries without being washed away. We stopped for lunch at Qasr Dakhla, a medieval fortified town, also made of mud bricks. Children rushed up to us asking for pens and pencils. Our guide said it was a good way of helping the schoolchildren, so we gave them what pens we had.

We reached Kharga in the late afternoon, and stayed at the Pioneer Hotel. The oases in this part of the Western Desert are far more like the rest of Egypt, being within easy reach of Cairo and the rest of the Nile Valley. Nowhere did we feel the remoteness that we’d experienced in Siwa.

Day 9: Drive to Luxor. The road left the chain of oases, and we headed east across the desert towards the Nile Valley. Seeing the desert from the windows of an air-conditioned tour bus gave a sense of unreality, without the feeling of being “in” the desert that we had had in the 4x4s. This part of the Sahara varied from cliffs and rock formations to fairly flat rocky surfaces, but no spectacular sand dunes. It was a definite change from the roads between the oases, which were punctuated by patches of green in the desert and small villages surrounded by farmland, where underground aquifers reach the surface. The road from Kharga to Luxor was quite different – the land was really parched, and there was virtually no vegetation. Eventually we saw a dark grey line in the distance, the Nile Valley! We descended from the yellow rocky heights, and with a very sudden transition, found ourselves in farmland, with other vehicles on the road, and lots of people and animals around.

We stayed at the Isis Hotel, Luxor, with a great view of the Nile. Rather more upmarket than the sort of place I would normally stay, so we enjoyed the experience! We visited the Avenue of the Sphinxes and the Temple of Luxor that afternoon. We swam in the pool, and took the opportunity to sort out all our clothes, so that we had just one case for the last few days of the trip. We also appreciated the chance to order a bottle of wine with our dinner – the hotels in the oases had all been “dry” (very good for me, I guess!). Our guide had offered members of the tour group the chance to take wine or beer with us for the days in the desert, but we had decided not to do so. Of the Egyptian wines we tried, we certainly preferred the red. Several of the white wines were (almost ;-) ) undrinkable, to our taste.

Ruth

Day 10: Luxor. “Saw the sights” – the Valley of the Kings, the temple of Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of Memnon. Back in Luxor, we moved to our new home, the cruise ship Radamis II. An afternoon resting on the deck (and playing table football, table tennis, and eating ice-cream) was followed by the sound and light show in the Karnak temple complex. We were told that the next night was “galabia night” so we stopped to buy galabias for S and OH in a shop on the quayside before we got back on the boat. I was quite surprised that S was happy to wear a bright blue embroidered “dress” but he looked great in it! I already had my Bedouin dress from Siwa.

Day 11. We toured the Karnak temple, which was amazing. On the way back, we decided to leave the group for a bit of shopping, as we had an hour before the ship sailed at 1pm. We wanted tee-shirts embroidered with names spelt in hieroglyphs for S and for one of his friends. The shop said, 30 minutes, no problem… and then, after 30 minutes, there were no tee-shirts. Stress levels started to rise. Anyway, after waiting another 15 minutes, we left our name and that of our boat, and rushed back to the quay. The Radamis II was in mid-stream and it was only 12.50! Anyway, it turned out it was just manoeuvring (?sp), and we were soon back on board, somewhat more stressed. But 1pm came and went, and the boat hadn’t sailed, so we settled down for some serious relaxation. The tee-shirts arrived by the time we had had lunch – and my stress levels rapidly returned to normal. The boat finally sailed at about 5pm, and we had a beautiful trip to Esna lock, seeing the sunset on the way. Galabbia night was fun. My bedouin dress was much admired! About half our group “dressed up”, and as by then we had got to know everyone in the group we had a great evening. We went up on deck to see the boat go through the lock in the dark.

Day 12. Cruising down the Nile! This was a wonderful day. We saw lots of birds e.g. black and white kingfishers, loads of egrets, various birds of prey, purple gallinules (like large moorhens), pin-tailed plovers, and more. We were glad of our image-stabilised binoculars. There were a number of knowledgable birders on our tour. In fact, that was one of the real joys of the tour. Whatever the subject, whether the rocks in the desert, fossils, astronomy, wildlife, photography, history, or much else, there were sure to be several people who had some specialist knowledge of it, or at least a willingness to speculate! We learnt a lot (as much from the other participants on the tour as from the official guides, though they were excellent in their areas). We visited the temples of Edfu, and Kom Ombo, and finally tied up in Aswan soon after dark.

Day 13. Aswan. Our last day… We only had time to see the major sights, and indeed were disappointed not to have time to see the granite quarries, even though they were on the itinerary. We saw the High Dam, and then went to the temple of Isis on the island of Philae – really lovely. Then we visited a papyrus shop where we could have our names painted on papyrus. In the afternoon we sailed in a fellucca past Elephantine Island, Lord Kitchener's Botanical Garden and the Aga Khan Mausoleum. Our guide was from Aswan, and his enthusiasm for the area was obvious. Another place to spend far more than one day! But all too soon we had to leave the ship for the railway station, where we caught the overnight train to Cairo. We found it interesting, indeed fun, to sleep on the train, although others in the group found it difficult to sleep. We were met at the train station and driven to the airport for the flight home. Somehow our group was allocated tickets that split up family members or couples all over the plane, but luckily the plane was not over-full, and I think most people managed to be reunited for the flight itself.

Altogether a memorable trip! Would I go on an organised tour again? Yes, for the convenience of having all the bookings made and transport arranged. Also, they handled all the tipping in hotels and restaurants. And, as I said, we were very lucky to be with such likeable companions. But I’d like to go back to Egypt as an independent traveller now that I have some idea what I want to see, and how to do it, so that we could decide for ourselves how long to spend at different sites.

thit_cho

Thanks, great report. I have encountered "eclipse chasers" on my travels, and it seems that people get hooked on seeing eclipses. I'm waiting for one to pass over Manhattan.

Thanks for the great, detailed post.

Michael

Ruth

Thanks, Michael. I don't think we'll turn into elipse chasers! It seems an expensive and sometimes frustrating hobby, so for me it was probably once in a lifetime (unless, as you say, there's one visible from my home town). But it was great seeing the sun's corona, and also seeing Mercury and Venus in the sky during totality. Apparently it wasn't one of the most "interesting" eclipses, according to the experts, as the sun-spot activity was low, and so we didn't see any prominences around the sun (see, I'm turning into an eclipse nerd... stop me someone!). But it was quite interesting enough for me!