From the Pyramids of Giza to the mosques and alleys of mediaeval Cairo, from the temples and tombs of Luxor to the picturesque scenery of the Nile, Danny Spitler writes his memoirs on his first trip to Egypt If one begins to list the most well- known travel destinations in the world, Pam and I have done a good job of crossing them off the check list. We have planted our feet and clicked our camera in Athens, Rome, Paris, London, St Petersburg, Prague, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and Sydney. We have navigated the Panama Canal, strode on the Great Wall of China, safaried into Africa and swum with the sharks in Tahiti. However, one destination which has been conspicuously absent from our list was that of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. In order to correct this glaring omission we booked a two-week tour of Egypt as our first adventure of 2004. We also added a post-trip extension to Jordan so that I could fulfil a long-held desire to walk among the ancient ruins of the lost city of Petra. Of course we had to calm numerous well-meaning friends who were shocked that we would choose to travel to the Middle East. But why not? To me, skipping a trip to Egypt because of a suicide bomber in Israel is like cancelling a trip to Miami because there is a bus strike in Baltimore. So we were very excited when the holidays ended and it was time for our flight from Phoenix to New York. We spent the night there and caught an EgyptAir 777 the following day direct to Cairo. At Cairo International Airport 32 passengers converged on the man holding up the sign that read "Overseas Adventure Travel". We were divided into two groups, collected our luggage, and were led outside into the arms of Ihab Farag. He greeted us warmly, and in perfect English he welcomed us to his country, herded us into the small bus, and began a commentary that would last for the next two weeks. It had been four years since I had travelled to the Middle East, but as we began to make our way through the traffic-clogged streets of Cairo it all came back to me. The style of the buildings, the Arabic script on the signs, the way the citizens dressed, and the suicidal traffic. It brought back memories of eight years of travel in and out of this part of the world. THE GREAT PYRAMIDS: After a 45-minute drive we crossed the Nile River, and Ihab pointed through the window to our first view of the Pyramids. Ten minutes later we arrived at the historic Mena House Hotel, where we were thrilled to learn that it was less than a quarter of a mile to the Sphinx, and the Pyramids almost filled up the view from the patio of our room. The original part of the hotel dates back to the early 1900s and has hosted many famous visitors, including a World War II conference with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. At a cocktail party we began the process of putting faces and names together and getting acquainted with travel companions with whom we would be sharing experiences for at least the next two weeks. Our group included five other couples, most of whom were retired or semi-retired, and almost all of them were very well-travelled. In addition there were two female cousins who get together for adventure trips despite living 1,500 miles apart -- one lives in California and the other in Michigan -- and two young male students from Alaska, who would provide the group with comic relief. On Monday morning our tour started in earnest. After a buffet breakfast we boarded the bus and plunged into the Cairo traffic for a drive to the Saqqara tombs and the Step Pyramid, which was our first introduction to pyramid building. On our way we were followed by a police escort. We were sharing the road with other vehicles along with plenty of donkey carts laden with various types of produce. If our progress was slowed by any of the other traffic our police escort would turn on their siren for a few moments. But the siren was generally ignored, especially by the donkeys. Arrival at the Saqqara burial site is a strong indicator of why 95 per cent of Egypt's population lives on five per cent of the country's land. The strips of land on both sides of the Nile River are rich and fertile and teeming with farms and activity. The moment you cross out of that valley you immediately find yourself in a stark, brown, barren desert. The contrast is amazing, and it occurs within a matter of a few metres. After lunch we drove back towards the Mena House for our visit to Cairo's main attraction, the Great Pyramids of Giza and the nearby Sphinx. The largest Pyramid, which was built for Pharaoh Cheops, is one of those wonders like the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China. No matter how many times you have seen it on TV or in photographs there is nothing like standing next to it. It stands 449 feet tall and is said to contain 2.3 million stones ranging from two to five tonnes each! It would be an amazing accomplishment even with today's technology, and there is still no consensus over how the Ancient Egyptians actually managed to pull it off. The third and smallest of the Pyramids was open and several of our group paid the extra fee to do a hunched-over duck walk down the four-foot high shaft into the bowels of the huge structure and the rooms of the burial chambers. We emerged from the tomb gasping for fresh air and feeling the beginning of sore back and thigh muscles from walking bent over through the long entry shaft. But it was a great part of the Pyramid experience. We finished an eventful first day with a visit to the enigmatic, ancient Sphinx, and like millions of visitors before us we wished that the famous face perched on the huge lion's body would open its mouth and share with us all that it has seen during its 5,000 years of silent observations. MOSQUES, MUSEUMS AND TRAINS: Our second full day in Cairo started with a bus ride to the citadel. This huge fortress on the eastern side of the city sits atop a rocky ledge, and provides great views of the city. The fortress was begun in the 12th century and served as the seat of power for almost 700 years, with each ruler adding and expanding the complex. The largest and most impressive structure is the Mohamed Ali Mosque, also known as the Alabaster Mosque. The moment I saw it I knew it looked familiar, and then I realised that it was closely modelled after the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Visiting the Blue Mosque in early 2000 is one of our best memories of Istanbul. After removing our shoes and moving inside the huge mosque Ihab invited us to sit and relax on the carpeted floor where he provided us with a short course on Islam and spoke in particular about the calls to prayer and the manner in which the mosque is used by the Muslims. He also told us about Mohamed Ali's lack of appreciation for the antiquities of Egypt. To him they were just relics, and during his reign, in the early part of the 19th century, many valuable pieces of Egyptian history found their way to the museums and palaces of Western Europe. Ihab pointed out a large clock tower in the courtyard of the mosque, which is called the Gingerbread Clock because of its appearance. It was a gift from the king of France in exchange for the huge, priceless obelisk taken from the Temple of Luxor, one which is now a prominent feature in the middle of Paris. The clock has never even worked. Upon leaving the citadel we drove through the Islamic quarter of the city past two more of the largest and most impressive of the city's mosques, and then we drove to the sprawling Khan Al-Khalili bazaar. Before heading to one of the restaurants for our lunch Ihab led us through some of the back streets of the bazaar to areas which tourists rarely see. We were able to get a glimpse at some of the "wholesale" areas and to see some of the products actually being produced in tiny workshops. After a filling lunch Ihab gave us instructions on the fine art of bargaining and then turned us loose on the Egyptian salesmen. Despite his instructions I felt that we were still sheep being delivered to the lion's den. On Wednesday morning we were able to sleep in, as we were not scheduled to check out of the Mena House until noon. With all of our bags in tow, we boarded our bus and were taken to a restaurant in town for lunch before beginning our afternoon tour of the Cairo Museum. The museum holds a collection of over 120,000 items, so a three-hour tour has to simply hit the highlights, and Ihab knew exactly where the highlights were. Of course the crown jewel of the museum is the vast collection of treasures recovered from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the boy Pharaoh who died at the age of 18. I was very familiar with the story of the discovery, because in 1976 I was fortunate enough to see the travelling exhibit when it came to San Francisco. It had taken me 28 years to see the exhibit again and it was even more thrilling the second time. After seeing the highlights of the museum we walked to the nearby Hilton Hotel for tea and to relax before heading for the train station. That night we were scheduled to take an overnight train to the city of Aswan. We arrived at the station and were aboard the train at 8.30pm. After arriving at the Aswan train station and watching a gang of porters hoist our luggage onto the top of the small bus we travelled south to the location of the High Dam. This is a major project, built in the 1960s, which finally allowed Egypt to take control of the Nile River and its annual flooding. After visiting the High Dam we took a motor launch to the island of Philae to visit the Temple of Isis. It is a magnificent temple complex, which is all the more amazing when you know that it was taken apart and moved stone by stone to higher ground and re-assembled to prevent it from being engulfed by the rising waters of Lake Nasser. We had lunch at a Nubian House restaurant located high above the city with fabulous views of the river and the desert on the Western Bank. We then took the bus to our hotel, located on an island in the middle of the Nile. We turned in early since we had gotten very little sleep on the train and we needed to brace ourselves for a 3.30am wake-up call so that we could catch an early flight to one of the most magnificent sites in all of Egypt. TEMPLES, CAMELS AND BELLY DANCING: We woke up at 3.30am in order to have breakfast and board our bus to the airport for our flight from Aswan to Abu Simbel. By 5.30am we had ferried across the Nile, taken our bus and were working our way through the security cheques at the Aswan airport. Our 6.30am flight left on time, and in less than an hour we were landing at Abu Simbel. After another short bus ride we were entering the site of two of the most amazing temples in the world, the Abu Simbel temples. The temple honouring Ramses II is carved into the rock cliffs with four huge statues of the king guarding the entrance. The temple next to Ramses's is only slightly smaller but it is equally impressive. It was built in honour of Ramses's favourite wife, Queen Nefertari. Like the Temple of Isis, the original location of these two temples would have been submerged under the waters of Lake Nasser had the international community not stepped forward in the 1970s to save these magnificent structures. It was difficult to leave such an awesome site, but by 10.30am we were back at the airport. Our two additional days in Aswan were filled with active things to do including a camel ride into the desert where we explored the ruins of the Monastery of St Simeon. We finished our ride in the Nubian village where we had tea and visited some of the local people from the village. Ihab also led us on a tour of the Nubian Museum, the local bazaar, and the Botanical Gardens before boarding our small cruise ship, the Ninfeadue, to begin our sail north to Luxor. The Ninfeadue is a small ship compared to the other passenger vessels docked along the Nile. It holds only about 50 passengers, but it is much nicer than the ships I had sailed on in the Yangtze River in China. Our evening was taken up by with a cocktail party to introduce the crew of the Ninfeadue, followed by a great dinner. Thus another day came to a close, this time with a belly dancing exhibition by an attractive young performer. I was one of several guys that got pulled onto the dance floor, and I found that all the sit-ups I had been doing had absolutely no effect in helping in a belly dancing situation. CRUISING THE NILE: Our first port in our three-day trip downstream on the Nile was the Nubian village of Kom Ombo. Here we walked to another beautiful old temple. From the Graeco- Roman era, this temple is unique in that it is a double temple with one side dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek, and the other to the falcon god, Horus. The entire structure is unusual in that everything is doubled and perfectly symmetrical along the main axis: twin entrances, twin courts, and twin colonnades. We went back to the ship and continued north for a relaxing afternoon of nice weather and scenery. The evening had been declared "Egyptian Night"; we enjoyed a fun night when we all dressed Egyptian-style in our newly purchased galabeyas and enjoyed relay games as well as a belly dancing demonstration. When we awoke the next morning we were docked at the city of Edfu. After breakfast we disembarked and Ihab led us to a long line of horse- drawn carriages. The temple at Edfu is a regular stop on the cruise ship route. It was built between 300 BC and 200 BC, after Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt. The temple was dedicated to the Egyptian god Horus and to the Greek god Apollo. The next morning we were docked at Luxor, which would be the end of the cruise although we would spend another night on the ship before moving to a hotel in town. After breakfast we took a bus to the huge Karnak Temple complex. This was certainly one of the most fascinating places in all of Egypt. It was built for the god Amun-Re, whom the Ancient Egyptians believed first created himself and then he created everything else. Because the temple was such an important place for so many centuries a walk around the many acres of the temple site, with it many sanctuaries, monuments, kiosks, obelisks, and statues, is like seeing an Egyptian history lesson set in stone. The time spent in the Karnak Temple complex was much too short to take everything in and since we were going to have some free time after lunch we decided to return to this amazing place for some additional exploring. VALLEY OF THE KINGS: As we were going to leave the Ninfeadue, we finished packing before going for breakfast and put our luggage out for the porters, who would make arrangements to get our bags to the Winter Palace Hotel. Several of the group had opted for an optional early morning hot air balloon ride, so those of us who had passed had a relaxing wait for their return. By mid-morning we were off to see more of Luxor. Our first stop was at a charity animal hospital and next we visited a Catholic girl's school. After a Chinese food lunch at one of the restaurants in the Hilton hotel, we drove to the elegant, Victorian style Winter Palace Hotel. The oldest part of the hotel was built in the 1880s and served as a winter retreat for the wealthy in the early 20th century. At 5am we all gathered in the lobby for a sunset tour of the Luxor Temple. When we arrived Ihab gave us a brief history as we waited for the darkness to come. As darkness fell the temple became awash with artificial lighting and the huge columns and façades took on a surreal appearance. Our guide interpreted the wall carvings, which told the story of the ancient Opet Festival that was celebrated once a year during the annual flooding of the Nile. We finished our day with a walk to the local market, where we found a table in a local street café and Ihab ordered us drinks and water pipes. The following morning we had another early wake-up call and before dawn we were warmly dressed and sitting on a boat crossing to the west side of the Nile. After a Bedouin-style breakfast on the West Bank we travelled into the valley and had time to tour three of the huge tombs of the Valley of Kings. Several of us paid the extra fee and went to the small tomb of King Tutankhamun. It was the least impressive of all the tombs, probably due to the young king's untimely death. But the fact that it was so small and insignificant was probably the only reason why it was not found and looted like all the other tombs. Still, it was thrilling to see the three small rooms where so much wonderful treasure had been stacked and stored for over 3,000 years and to see the giant sarcophagus where his mummy had been encased. We also visited the Valley of the Queens, where we entered an additional three tombs belonging to the queens and children of the Pharaohs . On our way back to Luxor we stopped at the Colossi of Memnon. These are two seated statues standing almost 60 feet tall. They are all that is left of what was a huge temple that probably surpassed the Karnak Temple in size and grandeur. Over the years earthquakes, plundering and the flooding of the Nile have left only the two giant statues as reminders of what had to have been one of the most spectacular places in the world. We returned to the hotel for a late lunch and a relaxing afternoon, and as evening approached we went back to the Nile for a sunset sail on a felucca where we were treated to wine and roasted peanuts. We got back to our room to, once again, pack our bags and deal with the sad realisation that our visit to Luxor was over, and we had less than two days left of our wonderful tour of Egypt. ON TO JORDAN: After sampling some delicious crepes at the breakfast buffet we were off to the airport for a flight back to Cairo. We arrived at around 2pm and checked into the Mövenpick Hotel located right next to the airport. A few of us who were going onto Jordan decided that we would use the afternoon to make another trip to the Cairo Museum. We all met back at the hotel for our farewell dinner with those who would be getting up very early for their flight back to New York. Our flight to Amman was not scheduled until the early afternoon on Saturday so we had enough time to do some more touring in the morning. We had decided to visit the oldest section of Cairo, known as the Coptic area, where there were several Christian churches and the one synagogue in Cairo, plus the Coptic Museum. Ihab negotiated a round trip taxi ride for us and, since the other husbands had decided to stay at the hotel, I took the women -- Pam, Beverly, Jewel and my fiancee Pam -- and we made our way into the Cairo traffic. We arrived at the Coptic section and walked through narrow alleyways to the various old churches and the synagogue. We returned to the hotel in time to finalise our packing, check out, and head for the airport to catch our flight to Amman. Our two-day excursion in Jordan was very exciting. We visited the top of the seven hills, which was covered with the ruins of the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic civilisations. We also visited the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, along with the ancient cities of Jarash and Petra. We returned to Cairo to take a flight back home. The EgyptAir flight was two hours late taking off which meant that our connection to Phoenix was going to be really tight. We arrived in New York at 5pm, but by the time we had got our bags, gone through customs and caught the monorail train to the right terminal we had missed our non-stop flight to Phoenix by 10 minutes. We ended up flying to Atlanta, spending the night there, and then catching a flight to Phoenix the next morning. Needless to say we were pretty worn out but we have both travelled enough to understand that these things happen and that one should deal with them and make the best of them. Such mishaps are a small price to pay for the opportunity to see the world. We made it home at last with new-found friends, a couple of hundred photographs, plenty of stories to tell, and wonderful memories. Danny Spitler is a 55-year-old businessman from Phoenix, Arizona. He and his fiancee have made many trips all over the world since they met in 1998. Danny keeps detailed journals of their trips on their Web site, www.danny-www.danny-pam.freewebsitehosting.com
