Nile River Cruise, by Chris Hsu

以前很少注意到旅遊埃及時應該事先閱讀的資料。我的弟弟夫婦剛遊玩尼羅河，回來寫這篇遊記。前半段寫各個景點，後半段描述很多旅途細節，很有趣，可以讓有意觀光埃及古蹟的人做參考。

                     

                       Nile River Cruise

By Chris Hsu

The Nile River cruise is a tour long anticipated by us and planned for ten months.  Finally, we arrived in Cairo on the 27th of November, 2007.  That night we moved into the Pyramid Meridian Hotel near the Giza Pyramids.  On the 28th, we went by bus to a place called Sakkara to see the first pyramid ever built in Egypt.  It is a step pyramid.

  

Then we visited a big statue of Ramses II in a nearby town called Memphis.  This statue is in a lying position exhibited in a hall.  It was toppled by an earthquake in ancient time thus it had sustained some damages.  But the upper body and face were nicely sculpted.

 

Then we returned to Cairo to visit the Great Pyramids of Giza and Sphinx. 

We paid $10 to enter the Great Pyramid.  One could not stand straight at some places inside so we stooped our backs while climbing the steps with hands holding the railings.  Luckily, it was not too crowded when we were there.  The air was somewhat stifling.  People with bad knees or bad backs were discouraged to go in there.  It was all uphill with steps for about 50 meters.  The passage was narrow and dimly lit the entire way even when we reached the King's chamber at the end.  No photo was allowed inside since one had to leave camera outside.  But some with cell phone camera took our photos.  (But the Swiss young man has yet to e-mail me the photos he promised.) 

 

We also saw the 4000+ year old boat of the pharaoh Cheop for his sail to eternity.

 

When people discovered this 40+ meters long boat in a pit near the Pyramid, it was disassembled pieces of wood.  The wood was Lebanese cedar, which graced the flag of Lebanon.  Some major pieces were very long but were preserved in amazingly fine shape.  The Egyptians invited foreign expert to reconstruct the boat, which is now being exhibited in a hall next to the Great Pyramid.  That evening we saw the light and sound show at the Great Pyramids.

 

On the 29th, we went to the airport and took an 8:30 flight to Luxor, which took an hour.  We went directly to the Karnak Temple (more than 4000 years old.)

 

The scale of the temple was enormous.  There was an Avenue of Sphinx, which was one and half miles long with sphinx lining both sides of the avenue. 

I remember one James Bond movie was shot at this temple.  This temple took from 2000 BC to 300 B.C. to complete.  Ramses II’s imprints filled the entire place.  Then we boarded the boat Ms. Giselle northward to Denderra.

 

On the 30th, under police escort, we went to visit the temple worshiping the goddess Hothur in Danderra.  She was the one with cow ears and eyes.  Sometimes, she was depicted as a cow.  She was the wife of god Horus, who ruled the Upper Egypt.  Upper Egypt was the current southern part of Egypt and it was based on the upstream of Nile River to call it the Upper Egypt.  In Egypt, the word “You have cow’s eyes” is a great compliment for woman’s beauty.  There was a carved image of Cleopatra at the back of the temple.  This temple roof is still intact.  It is covered with thick stone slabs.  It was said that this is the best preserved ancient temple in Egypt.

 

That afternoon, we sailed back to Luxor.  Then we took a horse carriage to the Luxor Temple,

 

 

actually it was the other end of the Karnak temple.  The driver was rushing the horse all the way and kept turning back and said "Good!" with his big thumb up.  He appeared to be trying to get a bigger tip.  On an intersection near the Temple of Luxor, we saw a horse collapsed on the street.  People surrounded it.  It could be another horse rushed by the driver.  A belly dancer and dervish dancer came to perform that evening.  This dervish dancer turned around at the same spot for 15 minutes straight.  When the music stopped, he walked away with a smile and totally steady in strides.  We were more than impressed.

 

On 1 December, we took a bus to the Valley of the Kings where many pharaohs were buried.

 

More wait to be discovered.  We saw four tombs.  One of them was the Ramses VI’s tomb, which required special entrance fee as it was recently reopened to the public.  It has vivid colors.  Then we went to the Deir el-Bahari Temple of Queen Hatshepsut.

 

It was a recent National Geographic program correctly identifying her mummy amongst four mummies, which intrigued my interest in her.  She was the longest ruling queen in Egypt.  She ruled for twenty two years and achieved many accomplishments.  This temple was very beautiful as if it is a modern building.  It has been reconstructed.  It was here that the 1997 massacre took place.  Fifty eight tourists and four Egyptians were killed.  Thirty five victims were Swiss, ten Japanese and some other nationalities.  Most of those terrorists went into hiding in a cave nearby after 45 minutes of attacks and committed suicide there.  The boat cruised further south toward Edfu.

 

On the 2nd, we went to visit a temple built by the Egyptians for the Greeks in Edfu.  It worshiped the god Horus with a falcon head.

 

 

This temple is 2200 years old.  We cruised further south to Kom Ombo and visited another temple, which worshiped Horus' father Horeres and Seth, another god.

 

That night, we had an Egyptian night.  We all dressed up like Egyptians and had a Egyptian dinner.  There were games afterwards and it was a fun evening.  The boat arrived in Aswan that evening.

 

On the 3rd, we took a motor boat to a Philae Temple, which was moved to an island from its original place nearby due to the rising water after the big dam was built by the Soviets.  It cost $17 million for this reconstruction task.  This temple worshiped Isis, the mother of god Horus.

 

 

We then went to visit the big Aswan dam, which apparently had managed to control the flooding and generate electric power with its General Electric turbines.

 

But now the farmers have to rely on chemical fertilizers not the fertile silts that they relied on for many thousands of years.  We also went to see an already-cut granite at a quarry that Queen Hatshepsut wanted it for an obelisk.  Due to unexpected cracks, they gave up.  I kept wondering how they were going to move that 40+ meters rock out and transport it.

 

 

We also visited a botanical garden nearby on an island.  They led us to ride on a sailboat called feducca.  It was quite romantic and soothing.  The Pakistan Muslim leader Aga Khan's mausoleum was on a hill overlooking the city of Aswan.

 

It was his favorite vacation place.  He was the father of Ali Khan, a famous playboy, who married to the actress Rita Hayworth at one time.

 

On the 4th, we left the boat early to the Aswan airport since we opted to visit the Ramses II and his wife Nefereti’s temples at Abu Simbel.

 

It costs each person $224 for this excursion.  The flight took half an hour.  This was the temple moved to a higher ground with the help of the U.N. at a cost of $42 million.  It took engineers and workers four years to complete the task in time.  Since the temples were carved into rocks, they cut the rocks into pieces and reassembled them into the original form.  Under the surface rocks, it was actually a concrete dome.  Two days a year, the rising sun could light up three gods' statues about 30 meters inside the caved rocks, except the fourth god, the god of the night (or darkness.)  However, the newly transplanted temple got the date wrong and it is now one day late every year.  Ramses II, with his long reign of 67 years and great achievements, was quite narcissistic.  His temple has four big statues of himself at the entrance.  Even his queen, Nefereti's tomb next to it, has four statues of his and two or hers at the entrance.  After we flew back to Aswan, the boat immediately set sail downstream.  That evening, we docked at Edfu.

 

On the 5th, it was all sailing toward Luxor.  We paid $60 tips for the boat crews as recommended by the travel agency when the cruise came to an end.

 

On the 6th, we ate the last breakfast on the boat and headed to the airport to fly back to dusty and crowded Cairo.  The tour guide took us to a typical kabob restaurant at our request.  It costs $10 each and we only got six pieces of either beef or chicken plus other dishes.  They tasted pretty good, however.  That afternoon, we moved into the Ramses Hilton Hotel right across the street from the back side of Cairo Museum and near the Nile River.  However, looking at the people crossing that wide spans of roads down below, we had decided that we should not walk to the museum on our own.  We ate simple dinner from the Hilton shopping mall across the street.

 

On the 7th, we went to visit two famous mosques, 200+ year old Mohamed Ali Mosque at Citadel of Salah al Din built in the fort to defend against possible attack by crusaders and 600+ year old Sultan Hassan Mosque nearby.

 

 

Then we went to a Coptic Christian church.  The church was built on some wood planks perched on two towers of an ancient fort built by the Romans, thus, it had the name of the hanging church.  Unlike most big cities where the water tables are quickly lowering, Cairo is just the opposite for unknown reason.  Thus, we were unable to go down to see the bottom of the church. 

 

We paid $80 tip to the tour guide for 10 days of service.  He was quite knowledgeable about Egyptology and was well received by our group.  His English was quite good, which made it much easier for us.  For a tour like this that you received so much new input, a patient and knowledgeable guide is essential. 

 

That evening we went to the 37th floor restaurant called "The Windows of the World."  From there we could see the night scene of Cairo with Nile River nearby and pyramids at a distance.  The night lights obscured the dust and pollution of this great but dirty city.  It looked beautiful at night and from a distance.  When there was light and sound show and the pyramids were lit up, we could barely made out their shapes.

 

There were occasional fireworks that evening as if they were greetings to us.  The Rack of Lamb I ordered was too well done.  It was not as tender as one could get in the U.S.  The dinner for two cost about $100.  The waiter wanted tips even we had paid the service charge on the bill.  At that time, the waiter’s English became not quite understandable but he was insistent.

 

At 1:00 a.m. on the 8th we headed to the Cairo airport for NYC.  It was a trip that took us about 18 hours via Milan.

 

It was indeed an interesting and enjoyable trip if one is interested in ancient civilization and archeology.  We had never visited the Middle East or Africa in the past, thus it was quite exciting for us.  The time to go is when the weather is cooler there, either in the fall or early spring.  Our timing was great.  Our cruise is not with any cruise line but with a British travel agency called Trafalgar.  I think it is a pretty well-run agency that we were quite pleased with its services. 

 

There are more than 400 boats cruising between Luxor and Aswan.  At this season, I was told that about 300 boats were running.  Each boat can take about 120-150 passengers.  Our boat had three levels of cabins, which are slightly more spacious than the ocean cruise ships.  The ground level half below the water line is the restaurant.  On some boats, there were private balconies but not ours.  The meals were buffet style except the gala dinner one night.  The food was mostly western style except one night of Egyptian cuisine, which we liked it better.  All three meals during the cruise were served on the boat.  Nobody that we knew of got sick eating the meals on the boat.  On the boat, we dressed very casually.  Only three people wore tie and jacket at the gala dinner, including yours truly.

 

The River is merely 6 to 7 feet in depth.  The boat did zigzagging in the river in search of deeper channel.  There was no sophisticated equipment for navigation.  It was purely experience and feel.  The captain of our boat told our guide that he knew every tree and landmark along the river.  When sailing at night, the headlight would occasionally be turned on to determine the location. 

Our captain was a serious looking middle-aged man from north of Luxor.  In that region, there were many clans sailing boats for generations.  He had two co-captains and they took turn in steering the boat.  He did not look pleased when a bunch of infidels flocked to him and took photos with him.  With four hundred boats on the river, the captains knew most of the captains of other boats.  Interestingly, the age not the seniority of captainship determined the priority right of the passage.

Some days, we had to get up early for the trips to the tourist sites.  Half of the day was cruising.  On the final day it was all cruising back from Edfu to Luxor.  In general, it was a relaxing trip.  While on the deck enjoying the breeze, the sun and looking at the peaceful farming lives of both shores, one forgot about many earthly things.  Some places we could see the desert not far behind.  We also marveled at how the Nile River could afford to raise so many people of Egypt.  Unfortunately, we did not stay a bit longer to visit Alexandria and the Nile River delta area.  If we could, we would have stayed a couple of days longer to explore that area as well since it might be once in a life time experience to visit that region. 

  

The tipping is a way of life in the Egyptian culture.  Everybody who provides a service is expecting a tip.  Thus, going to a toilet at tourist site, it is nice to have some small bills at all times.  We even got solicited by an armed guard at the Pyramids of Giza to give him a tip.  At many tourist sites, if you want to do something extra, it required entry fees.  For example, entering the pyramid required about $10 despite we had already purchased tickets to enter the Pyramids area.  If one wanted to see the mummies in Cairo Museum, he required extra payments in addition to the entrance fee.  The Egyptian government knows how to squeeze money from this golden goose. 

 

Bargaining is a way of life.  A boy selling a calendar asked for $7.50.  I said I would buy it for $2.  After some negotiations I bought six for $2.75 each.  Some bought it later from the same boy for $2.00.  My wife bought a pajama at one place for $7.50 but one lady bought the same kind of pajama at another place for $20.  When people got on board the boat, they immediately flocked to the gift shop. 

It turned out to be more expensive than any store along the river.  When we were waiting to pass a lock to cross a couple of dams, people on small boats got near our boat and threw merchandises in plastic bags to the tourists on deck.  Then the bargains ensued by shouting back and forth.  The tourists will throw the money in plastic bags back to the boats.  When I opened my curtain, I saw one man threw something toward my window.  I just closed the curtain and did not know how he retrieved the merchandise.  One lady opened the window, there flew in a bag of merchandise.  She was obliged to throw it back or bargain.

The tourists are from all over the world. They all wanted to see the king Tutankamen's golden mask now being exhibited at the Cairo Museum.  He was merely a minor pharaoh and his tomb was never found by the grave robbers.  Thus they found a lot of treasures from it.  Without those grave robbers, one could imagine how many glorious discoveries would be in those tombs of more prominent pharaohs.  We were told that those grave robbers were families of several generations working in concert on the same "project."  To be able to penetrate a place like Pyramids attested to their skills and tenacity.  The rewards could also be invaluable.

 

On this trip, the weather was perfect.  It was the most suitable time to visit Egypt since the weather is about 50-80 degree.  The crews of the boat tried to cook food for the westerners so the food was so so.  One night, when they prepared food Egyptian style, it was more appetizing.  We also made a couple of stops to local restaurants in Cairo and the food was quite tasty.  Our favorite was grilled pigeons.  I also found ripe guava at a fruit store across the street from the Hilton.  It was about 20 cents a piece.  It looked almost like a pear.  The color was yellow, sweet fragrance was mild but there were few seeds in them and it was like the old type guava in Taiwan.  I ate them with relish since I had not eaten this kind of guava for a long time.  Unfortunately, we just missed their mango season.  The other fruits, such as, bananas, oranges, small grape fruits and grapes were not very good.  Dates are their favorites.  The fresh ones did not taste good but preserved ones were very sweet.

 

The cruise was so relaxing.  We saw the farming and fishing along the river that probably were not much different from the days of the pharaohs.  The cows and water buffalos still plowed the field.  You saw many donkey carts or donkey riders. Occasionally we saw tractors in the field.  Mia saw one fisherman did catch a fish but I failed to find any who caught fish in so many days during the cruise.  The silence of the cruise would often be broken by the broadcast of prayers by many mosques along the way.  The smell of burning grass also filled the air in some areas.  We saw women washed their clothes, pots and pans along the bank.  Many kids shouted “Hello!” to the tourists on the boat along the shores.  It was pure Egyptian and Nile River life style.

 

The cost of living is probably not that high in Egypt.  The cost of gas and bread are subsidized by the government.  We were told that gas was a bit over $1.00 per gallon.  With the bad traffics in Cairo, it probably needed to be subsidized.  The clothing was not that expensive.  But there are many poor people living in the City of the Dead (old grave yards.)  I was told that the gap between the rich and poor is very wide.  The quick pace of inflation seemed to be quite worrisome.

 

Fire (sun) and water (Nile River) dictate the lives in Egypt.  A fertile delta nourished by the river sustains the lives of many.  Egypt does not have a good count of its populations.  They estimated 20 millions live in Cairo.  In a dusty and hectic place like Cairo with many vehicles and tour buses, there is almost no traffic light that I could see.   There are traffic lights in Luxor.  You can imagine when the traffic is bad, it is terrible.  Occasionally, you would see traffic cops directing traffics at some busy streets.  But it was not big help.  Pedestrians walking across the streets required skills and courage.  It was an art form of sort.

 

On this trip, the temples and tombs were our major touring sites.  They are usually more than several thousand years B.C.  The artistic and architectural accomplishments of ancient Egypt are truly impressive.  Some were quite unbelievable.  The recorded history in this ancient civilization was almost five thousand years old, probably longer than any civilization in the world.  Just looking at the uniformity of hieroglyphics carved in stones, one wonders how those artisans were trained.  Looked at the duck, which meant, son, was always so nicely and consistently shaped.  The carving tools in ancient times were probably made of bronze.  One wonders how they could carve granite into such beautiful forms and polished them so well.  The excellence of sculptures a couple of thousands of years earlier than the Greeks and Romans was truly remarkable.

 

Without the discovery of the Rosetta stone, which first showed the same text of ancient hieroglyphics, demotic language and the ancient Greek in late 19th Century, there would be no Egyptology of today.  People would not be able to decipher the written records carved in stones, which often half buried in sands.  It would not develop the tour industry of Egypt, which has earned the second highest revenues next to the Suez Canal. 

Despite the use of rocks, granite, lime stone and sandstone in most ancient constructions of temples and tombs, the natural deterioration and destruction by the heat, sun, sands, winds, rain, earthquakes and flood over the centuries were unavoidable.  Those high wall made of mud bricks suffered the greatest deterioration despite the dryness.  Many statues or buildings were toppled by earthquakes.  I noticed some vertical indentations or markings on the walls and pillars and asked the guide about it.  He said it was the marks of flood and silts.  However, these markings were not exactly on the same level.  It was like musical notes, some high and some low.  

Human destruction also reflected the tortuous history of Egypt by foreign invasions, political strives, and shifting of religions. The Greeks led by Alexander the Great came to Egypt about 200 B.C.  They tried to pacify the Egyptians by incorporating ancient Egyptian religious practices with their own.  Many temples were Greeks.  The Greek leaders were depicted in dresses of Egyptians.  However, they started to incorporate erroneous hieroglyphics, according to our guide.  Then the Romans came in A.D.  When the Christianity came to dominate Egypt about 200 A.D., they did wanton destruction on Egyptian temples.

One could see the stone carvings chiseled out, sometimes, almost to most of the carvings on the temple ground.  It was quite thorough in some temples.

There were also political struggles, for example, Queen Hatshepsut's son destroyed many things recording her mother's accomplishments not necessarily due to hatred.  In front of the temple at Dier Al-Bahari, there were supposed to have statues of the Queen on every post but many were destroyed. It was interesting to note that because of her power and authority, she was given a false beard.  When the Muslims came in the 7th or 8th Century, they also built mosques to replace the churches.  When the French troops of Napoleon came, they fired gun, which destroyed the face of the Sphinx at Giza. Some high level Egyptian officials, not knowing the values of their ancient heritage, gave away some valuable monuments without hesitation.  One Obelisk stands tall in Paris today. Many ancient treasures and relics are now nicely stored in western countries.  In some respect, they maybe better stored there than in Egypt.  I was quite amazed at the extensive Egyptian collections at the Metropolitan Museum of NY.  I am sure that there are more in England, Germany, and France. 

Although Egyptians resent the fact that their treasures are collected by foreign countries, they had grudging acceptance that without these anthropologists and archaeologists from foreign countries interested in ancient Egyptian civilization, they would not be the flourishing tourism and world-wide interests in Egyptology of today.  I learned that the Egyptians had asked the Rosetta stone be returned to Egypt from England. 

In order to protect the tourism, the golden goose, by the Egyptian government, one could find armed guards everywhere.  At airports, hotels, roads leading to the temples and tombs, temples, and museums, they are many uniformed or private guards with handguns or AK47.  When the tourist buses arrived at the hotels, there were barriers to be lowered.  The guards used mirror to inspect the bottoms of the vehicles.  There were sniffing dogs as well.  Our tour group, at times, was escorted by armed bodyguards.  I even noticed a machine gun mounted at the stern of the boat deck and accompanied with an AK 47.  The two guards asked me not to take photos of them.  I had to do it from a distance.  I don't know whether these guns worked but they were there.  One early morning, one lady in our group found these two guards sound asleep on the deck.  Were we protected?  God knows.