Day 89 – 4/13 – Luxor, Egypt

This was a long day. We met in one of the ship’s lounges at 6:30 am, and got back to the ship at 11:00pm. It was a nice trip, but the logistics were painful. Egyptian immigration clearance was slow. They had only one agent who had to find the stamp in each passport. The transportation was in a convoy of buses with a police guard. There were 9 buses. The trip was only 145 miles, but they had security checkpoints, sometimes every mile. At these points the traffic was single file in one direction at a time. Police guards had to change when we changed jurisdictions (2 changes per direction), and sometimes that was a 15 minute wait for the new one to show up. Bottom line of this: it took 5 hours in the morning to get from the ship to Luxor, and another 5 hours in the evening to get back from Luxor to the ship.

The first 70 miles were through desert, and the second 70 miles were parallel to the Nile, but in the zone that was green from irrigation water. The desert was different from expectations because it was very hilly terrain, with lots of boulders on the slopes. This would have been very unfriendly environment to lead a group of people over on a major trek.

There were over 300 passengers who took this excursion. I believe about 120 did the overland (3-night) excursion that get you back to the ship in Port Said (outside of Cairo). Given the logistics on our trip, and the same situation that will exist between Port Said and Cairo, it looks like the overland excursion is worth considering, especially if it is your first visit to Egypt.

Putting aside the pain of the travel, the sites are very special. We had 5 stops in total: Karnak Temple, Valley of the Kings, Temple of Hatchepsut, Colossi of Memnon, and the Temple of Luxor. I’ll write some on each with the photos below.