Enchanting Egypt

Jelley’s Mum (Chris) and Grandma (Dot) were 2 weeks into their bucket-list Holy Lands Tour. Starting in Israel and Palestine, through to Jordan and then onto Egypt and Turkey, we were so excited to join them for the Egypt portion. Dot viewed their Holy Lands trip as a way to “walk in the footsteps of Jesus before she meets him”. Incredible.

We were super intrigued to learn about Egypt's rich history spanning over 5,000 years (wow!). It’s no wonder there is an entire degree dedicated to “Egyptology”. Tackling Egypt in one week was a huge task, and we were overwhelmed at times with the layers of history and impressive age of the temples and monuments. It truly was the bucket-list trip of a lifetime, and we feel so lucky that we were able to share it with Jelley's Mum & Grandma. It was also especially meaningful for Luke as his grandparents had completed a similar trip through Egypt when he was a young kid. His Grandpa had actually lived in Cairo on a work assignment for a number of months and Luke had recalled many of the sites/stories from his Grandpa's experience. Luke often felt as if he was walking in his grandparents footsteps, too.

With the logistics of getting from Dubrovnik to Cairo via Athens, we arrived a couple of days before our travel companions. We immediately appreciated the change in pace and travel style as we were greeted airside in Cairo with a sign with our names on it (Luke’s favourite!), and a guide who made the entry permit process a breeze and drove us through the middle of the night to downtown Cairo. One perk of arriving at 1am is avoiding the city’s notorious traffic, and the vibe of the street we stayed on was a complete contrast when we woke up the next day to the orchestra of horns and shouting.

The heat hit us harder than expected, and we spent the first couple of days acclimatising, to not just the weather, but the culture shock and chaos of Cairo. Jelley had spent time in Morocco and drew parallels to the cities there, but it was Luke’s first experience in this environment and a little intimidating at the start. We explored this hectic corner of the city, walked along to see the Nile and tried to avoid getting hit by a car, kept cool during the day and braved the insanity of the streets at night to find local food. Luckily our hostel had an epic rooftop to hang out on, chat with other travellers, and relax before our busy itinerary for the next week.

Chris and Dot picked us up on their arrival in a lush air-conditioned van from outside our hostel and onto our far more luxurious hotel in Giza near the pyramids. The last time we were together was in New Zealand 9 months ago, so it was surreal to be reconnecting halfway around the world in Egypt. We spent the afternoon exchanging travel stories, catching up updates, and swimming in the huge pool with view of the pyramids.

We were met early by our guide Marsha, who had a plan to show us around the many important sites of Cairo both today, and at the end of our time in Egypt. Luke had his notepad out ready for Egypt 101. Having a guide in Egypt was a must because we were eager to learn the deep history of the region. Plus, watching other travellers try to navigate Cairo on their own didn’t look like fun at all! There is such value in having everything arranged for you, endless information at your fingertips and the option to just jump in the air conditioned car if everything gets too overwhelming.

While it was just the beginning of the peak season, some of the sites along our journey did feel crowded and busy at times. It's difficult to imagine how intense these areas can be in the height of the tourist season. All of the local guides we interacted with were grateful to have tourism returning to Egypt in numbers not seen since 2010. Tourism is the largest industry in Egypt, behind the Suez Canal (that one that had the cargo ship stuck in it a couple years ago). Egypt was hit hard by the Arab Spring in 2011, attacks on tourist sites, then Covid-19. It will always be an iconic place to visit and it is obvious why they invest so much in educating guides and having security checks at well-known sites and hotels. There was never a moment we felt unsafe (except maybe crossing the roads in Cario!!).

Day 1 with Mum & Grandma was action-packed! We started by visiting a huge bucket list item, The Pyramids of Giza which were truly astonishing. There are over 118 Pyramids in Egypt, but the 3 most famous ones are located in Giza, which is just on the outskirts of Cairo. The tallest of the 3 Pyramids belonged to the Pharaoh Khufu who was mummified and buried at the pyramids core. At 137 meters (or 450 ft) high, The "Great Pyramid of Giza" stood as the tallest man-made structure in the world for nearly 4,000 years. We were gobsmacked by its mountainous size. But even more impressed by the fact that all of its 2.3 million limestone blocks, each weighing a staggering 2.3 metric tons (or 5,000lbs), were placed over 5,000 years ago. Somehow, the pyramids have outlasted the test of time and still stand today, albeit a fraction shorter due to erosion.

There are a lot of theories for how the ancient Egyptians actually pulled it off. Some say it was Aliens. Others say it was Gods. However, Egyptologists generally agree it was 100,000 paid workers (not slaves) and took about 20 years to construct. If you do the math, that means 1 block would have to be laid every 5 minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day, for the entire 20 years. How's that for a feat of human ingenuity?

Luke and Chris were feeling extra adventurous and ventured into the belly of the beast via an old passageway carved out by looters. The journey into the centre of the pyramid (or tomb) was claustrophobic and unbearably hot, so it was a quick visit for Luke and Chris. Interesting to see, but hard to appreciate while suffocating. We then all ventured up to a different vantage point where we could see all 3 pyramids, along with a temporary squash court being built for the upcoming Egypt Squash Open (pretty neat!).

We continued down to see the Great Sphinx of Giza (a limestone statue of a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion) before spending an hour or so in the Cairo traffic going across the city to the Egyptian Museum. We had a quick stop at a local tourist shop along the way showing how the first generation of paper was made using papyrus plants, which was quite interesting and also showed how a lot of the history was recorded on these papyrus papers with natural paint and preserved throughout time.

Our hotel in Giza was actually opposite the newly built GEM (Grand Egyptian Museum). Construction is complete, but the grand opening has been delayed multiple times, and is still not open as we publish this! It looks huge, like you could spend a solid 5 days and still not read every piece of information in there. The original Egyptian Museum was just fine for us, and even though it had been cleared of some artifacts which had been relocated to the GEM, there was plenty to look at and inspire us. A top exhibition was the treasures of found at the tomb of King Tutankhamun (or simply "King Tut"). Luke recalled learning about King Tut in elementary school so it was especially neat to see these ancient artifacts in person. We were also glad to have our guide Marsha to point out the highlights, navigate the museum then make a swift departure as we started to tire in the heat (this museum didn't have air conditioning!).

We had a busy itinerary in our short time in Egypt, and upon reflection, we still have no idea how we managed to experience so much in this time! Day 2 was an early start, back to Cairo airport where we flew South to “Upper Egypt”, and visited the ancient city of Luxor (it’s called Upper Egypt because The Nile river counterintuitively flows from its highest elevation in the South to its terminus point in the North). It was interesting to fly domestically through Egypt - a seemingly endless landscape of desert and sand. We occasionally spotted the lush greens of the Nile river which serpentined its way through the barren landscape. The most fertile land is alongside this important water source, which we learnt a lot about over the next few days.

On our arrival in Luxor, we were greeted by our next Egyptologist and guide, Rami, who would be showing us around for the next 5 days. We went straight from the airport to Karnack Temple, followed by the Avenue of the Sphinxes and Luxor Temple. This was the first temple we had visited on our trip, and we were in awe of the size, design, and meticulously drawn hieroglyphics. Fun Fact: 1/3 of all of the world's ancient monuments can be found in Luxor!

Around lunchtime, we embarked on our cruise boat - we were lucky to be upgraded to a nicer boat, and it was such a lovely place to call home. Our rooms were spacious and had balconies to enjoy the views as we cruised along the Nile. Luke's favourite part was the unlimited buffet and gym access. We even arrived in time for the Queen’s funeral, which kept Grandma fixed to the TV for the afternoon. Luke started to question our usual budget hostel travel style and wondered why we couldn't always travel like this, but CFO Jelley quickly reminded him that our 9 months abroad may have only been 9 weeks if we lived like this every day! Regardless, we were very thankful for our new digs and ready to enjoy every moment, especially sharing these precious moments with Mum and Grandma.

The next day we headed to The Temple of Hatshepsut (pronounced "hot-chips-suit" haha) at Deir el-Bahari. This temple was commissioned by Queen Hatshepsut, one of the first female Pharaohs in the history of ancient Egypt, and is considered to be a masterpiece of ancient architecture. Strangely, when the Queen died she wasn’t buried here at the mortuary, but instead at the Valley of the Kings. Many of the pictures and statues of Queen Hatshepsut were later destroyed or erased by her stepson Thutmose III (apparently he was a bit jealous), and the temple was further damaged by earthquakes and rockslides from the cliffs above. It wasn’t uncovered until the 1890s when major excavation and restoration works brought the temple back to its original glory.

We continued through the impressive landscape to the Valley of the Kings, home to over 60 known tombs of former Egyptian rulers, including the well-known King Tutankhamun, and many more tombs still to be uncovered. It was really crowded and hot inside the tombs so you could really only bear going in to take your photos before it was time to get out. It was also really hard to breathe because the tombs go so far into the earth and there’s no air circulation. It feels like a common sense decision to limit the number of visitors in the tombs at any one time to make it a more comfortable experience, and to further protect these remarkable artifacts, but Que Sera, Sera.

Heat aside, the tombs were fascinating and larger than expected, with different rooms inside and intricate drawings on the walls. Because the ancient Egyptians saw their Pharaohs as Gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, mummifying and enclosing them in elaborate stone coffins (called a sarcophagus). They would then surround their tomb with rich treasures to accompany the Pharaohs into the afterlife. All of the discovered tombs have had their original artifacts moved to museums in Cairo and elsewhere around the world, but it was still really neat to explore them. Our favourite tomb was Ramses IV, which we paid a little more to enter and subsequently had the place to ourselves! The artwork was the most impressive, with vibrant colours telling stories on the walls and ceilings and amazingly preserved in the mountainside. We unfortunately didn’t visit Tutankhamun's tomb who was surprisingly only discovered buried here in the Valley Kings in 1922 by Howard Carter. Our guide Rami told us that every 100 years there is a groundbreaking discovery in Egypt. 200 years ago (1822), the Rosetta Stone was discovered (a unique stone which translated hieroglyphics, Demptic and Greek languages, unlocking the many mysteries of ancient Egypt). Then, 100 years ago was King Tut’s tomb. This year, the mystery continues as archeologists believe they have discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun's mother, Queen Nefertiti.

We then made our way over to the Valley of the Queens. It was interesting to view this after the Valley of Kings, and draw comparisons of both sites - from the size, scale and elaborate designs. As to be expected, the Valley of the Kings was far grander. We had a couple of quick stops along the road back, visiting a local textile shop where craftspeople made scarves and clothing by hand using a loom, a rock carving exhibition, and a few more random old temple remains just on the main highway with no signs and plenty to still be discovered below the ground. This area, and Egypt as a whole, has so much history to be explored, and we saw several archaeological sites meticulously digging in the sand and rocks, hoping to find the next big discovery. It's incredible that even after 5,000 years there are still new discoveries to be made from this ancient civilization.

We were all feeling the heat, and happy to head back to the boat for some chill time in the pool on the rooftop as we cruised “down” the Nile to the North (still hard to grasp). The scenes along the Nile were beautiful, with children waving, and even local boats coming alongside our boat to sell their wares by throwing the item to the rooftop, with the guest throwing the money back down below (the lengths that some people will go!). The Nile River is often referred to as the "lifeblood" of Egypt. In addition to Egypt, the Nile River runs through or along the border of 10 other African countries, namely, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Controversially, the Ethiopian government has nearly finished construction of a new hydroelectric damn which 85% of Egypt's water originates from. This could put Egypt in a difficult situation as all of its major cities rely so heavily on the Nile River.

We had some evening entertainment and drinks, but called it an early night. Mum stayed up to experience the boat going through the Esna lock around midnight , the small local boats who had followed us along the Nile trying to sell clothes snuck in the lock too, which was quite terrifying as the consequences of anything going wrong would not have ended well for them.

Another day, another temple! This one we arrived by horse and carriage which was a strange combination between scary, fun and a little sad for the horses. The horses did have large shaded stables which was probably the most well-funded building in the town. The town's only income stream seemed to be from tourism which has been lacking in recent years. The roads were dirt and rock, and the few other vehicles were constantly stuck either in holes or traffic jams. We think we were happy to be on the horse carriage, even if we did see several with the wheels broken off on the roadside.

The Temple of Horus at Edfu was built in dedication of Horus and Hathor who were both deities of the Sky. Of all the temple remains in Egypt, the Temple of Horus at Edfu is the considered to be the most well-preserved because for nearly 200 years the structure was buried under almost 12 meters (or 40 feet) of desert sand and mud from the Nile river. This helped to maintain many of the artistic elements carved onto nearly every visible surface of the temple. Interestingly, the temple was converted to a Christian monastery during the Roman Empire and many of the temple's carvings were scratched out or overwritten with Christian imagery. A familiar scene in our travels throughout Turkey and Egypt.

Following an afternoon on the water again, the next stop was Kom Ombo temple, which we visited at sunset along with hundreds of other tourists. Dedicated to Sobek the Crocodile God and Horus the Falcon-Headed God, the layout combines two temples in one with each side having its own gateways and chapels. We were very glad to have Rami with us, who maneuvered us through the crowds and always managed to get us our own intimate viewing of every important part of the temple. Crocodiles were considered sacred protectors and one of the god symbols to the ancient Egyptians, and Kom Ombo was home to an impressive collection of mummified crocodiles.

Every night of the cruise there was a lot of fun entertainment with performances, games and dancing. Grandma insisted we stay up for them, and she was the star of the show! The highlight may have been the belly dancing tutorials. We were sure Grandma must have done this before because she sure was a natural! We had a lot of laughs along the way, and it was a great way to end each action-packed day.

The last destination on our Nile Cruise was the small but lovely city of Aswan. We were docked here for a night on the boat, followed by one more night on Elephantine Island. There was plenty to explore in this area. First up was a boat trip to Philae Temple. We may have been a tiny bit ‘templed-out’ by this one, but it was a beautiful morning, and interesting to see how this temple had been reconstructed after the creation of Lake Nassar. Stretching south more than 500 km (310 miles) and reaching depths of over 180 m (590 ft), Lake Nasser is the largest artificial lake/reservoir in the world and was created after the construction of the highly contentious Aswan High Dam. The Dam was an international effort, with the majority of the funding and workers coming from former Soviet Union. There was even a large Soviet Monument constructed in honour of the Russian engineering effort that took place. With the installation of the High Dam, the landscape of the Nile and surrounding areas changed forever (hence, contentious). One of the interesting changes being that the infamous Nile crocodiles only live on the Southern side of the Nile River, which Jelley was happy about. Fun Fact: One of the former Kings of Egypt, Muhammad Ali (not the boxer), tossed around the idea of dismantling all of Egypts old temples and pyramids to sell/reuse for the building of the damn. Good thing that didn't happen!

Another couple of obligatory tourist workshop stops - this time, essential oils and glass blowing. These were always really informative and interesting, and they weren’t super pushy with selling anything which was nice. We then visited an ancient quarry in Aswan, home to the "unfinished obelisk". Apparently it was so big that a huge crack formed through it and so the ancient Egyptians decided to abandon it in the ground unfinished. Fortunately, this gave archaeologists further clues about how the ancient Egyptians managed to erect such large monuments all around Egypt. Still a mind-blowing achievement considering the combustion engine was still about 3,000 years away from being invented! At a lot of these ancient sites throughout our trip, there were National Geographic videos (think 1980s education style) which had great explainers about the history and discovery which we found super helpful to put into context. We had seen a lot of temples along the journey, but every temple and monument had its own unique feature and so many stories carved by hieroglyphs, preserved and discovered centuries later. It made us all appreciate history in a way that we had never really experienced before.

The next day, Mum, Jelley & Luke had an early start, with a flight down to the historic site of Abu Simbel. It seemed bizarre to take a flight just for 2 hours to see yet another temple, but everyone on our flight was there for the same reason so we must have been doing something right. Located near to the border with Sudan, Abu Simbel is a historic site comprised of two rock-cut temples commemorating King Ramesses II (or "Ramses The Great") and his wife Queen Nefertari. The temples themselves were astonishing, but what really made this complex so impressive was that everything in its entirety was relocated in 1964 to prevent it from being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser (the artificial lake formed after building Aswan High Dam). Remarkably, an international team of archeologists, engineers and skilled heavy equipment operators dismantled, lifted, and reassembled both temples moving them 65 meters (213 feet) higher and 200 meters (656 feet) back from their original location beside the Nile river. It took the team 4 years and an estimated US$300million (adjusting for inflation) to complete and it is widely considered one of the greatest archaeological/engineering feats in history. One of the signs we read said that the workers even had to prevent droplets of sweat from falling onto the delicate sandstone cubes for fear that they could disintegrate and erase history forever. This was especially hard to imagine considering this area of Egypt was the hottest we had experienced. A huge highlight nonetheless!

We flew back to Aswan to meet up with Grandma who had a relaxing morning catching up on much needed sleep, fixing a hole in Jelley’s shirt, and reflecting on the journey so far. This afternoon we went on a traditional 'felucca sailing' on the Nile past Nubian villages and enjoying the views. It was tranquil and relaxing, the perfect way to end our time in the region. We had been so spoilt with the delicious food on the cruise over the past 4 days, but didn’t have the energy to venture far into the local markets after a long day, and we settled on some traditional Egyptian McDonald’s for dinner, with a view of our final Nile sunset. The staff were stoked to practice their English, and nephew Brodie will be happy with the sweet toys we got in the Happy Meals for Mum to bring home to him.

We flew back up to Cairo where we had started our Egyptian journey. Back with Marsha again, we were exploring 2 different sides of the city's rich heritage - both the Islamic and Coptic Christian Cairo. We started out in Bab El Futouh, along Al Moez Street to visit the local markets and Islamic architectural heritage including a bath house, mausoleums, mosques and medieval houses. We also went to the Mohamed Ali Mosque, which happened to be one of the clearest days of the year where we could actually see the pyramids in the distance across the city! We then went through a very local neighbourhood where the community are surrounded by trash and sort and recycle the city's trash for money from the government. This was a humbling experience, as the community were so happy with so little, and very eye-opening to be able to meet locals in this corner of the city. We explored the Coptic region of the city and a Roman fortress, followed by an impressive Cave Church, carved out of the mountainside. It was great way to round out a wonderful trip, and we feel we just scratched the surface of this diverse capital city.

Egypt was filled with constant surprises and delights. While it was challenging to keep up with the history at times, we were pleased with how much we could recall after just one week (still can't believe this was only 1 week!) After a terrific week together, sadly, it was now time to part ways. Grandma & Mum were heading to Turkey - the final stop of their Holy Tour, Luke was flying direct to Doha to work at the World Cup in Qatar, and Jelley was booked to head to Jordan to start 3 months of solo travel. However, after an impromptu job interview somewhere along the Nile, Jelley changed those plans and started preparing to ‘join’ Luke in Qatar. It was an exciting prospect to both be working on the same sporting event, albeit in very different circumstances, and we were hopeful to see out the rest of the year together there. Highlights and photos from the experience coming in the next blog post.

As we post this (very retrospectively, we were in Egypt in September !!), Luke has made it home to San Francisco for another Christmas and New Years with family & friends, and Jelley has travelled Europe, finished a contract in Exmoor National Park, popped over to Mallorca for the weekend and is currently packing up our life in the UK for now, sharing final moments with incredible friends whose support and friendship has meant everything, especially in recent months. This Kiwi & Cali can’t wait to be reunited together later this week back in the US, for another exciting adventure after far too long apart!

Until then,

- A Kiwi and A Cali

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