My fiance and I are traveling to Egypt for our honeymoon in a few weeks to Cairo, Luxor and Sharm el Sheikh. We are not going as part of a tour, but on our own. Does anyone recommend registering with the State Department? Any thoughts and/or suggestions would be appreciated.

the reason people register with the u.s. state department is to be contacted in case something bad has happened or the political climate is changing rapidly.
people who go to remote places also register so that there is contact information somewhere in case they go missing in the jungle or on a trek.
if you feel you will be somewhere where you cannot follow the nightly news or cannot read a daily paper, then go ahead and register. it's just a way to speed up paperwork that you might otherwise need to go through should things go terribly wrong.
the new system allows you to register on line.

We did it. It gave us more comfort knowing we could possibly be found if things went bad while we were there. We were in Egypt the week after Arafat's funeral. We did not know what the atmosphere would be like. Better safe than sorry.

I went to the state department's web site and couldn't BEGIN to figure out how and where to register. We are going to Brazil the end of this month and Africa in June so I would like to be able to take the advice of people who say to register, but I can't find how to do it. Any suggestions?

really? right on the main page is a heading "tips for travelers". were you on the u.s. state department web page?

right under that header is the sub header resgistration with foreign embassies, or something like that. and if you go to that page, there are clickable links.

but to save you some time: http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/...tion_1186.html

there you go!