Wednesday 21st February 2008

The Temple of Karnak is the largest temple in the world. Its sheer size is overwhelming. The buildings themselves cover 67 acres but add the gardens and walls and it’s up to 102 acres! Words cannot describe the impressiveness of this place. The columns are immense, there are enormous obelisks and statues everywhere and as well as the sphinx avenue joining it with Luxor temple, another avenue lined with rams leads to the main entrance. Each ram has a statue of Ramses 2nd under its chin. On every wall, column and statue are thousands of hieroglyphics and cartouches, a truly amazing place.

After a relaxing afternoon, its dress-up night; an Egyptian theme night, food, belly dancing, good fun. We also go through a lock on the Nile around midnight. Excellent. Pete.

Tuesday 20th February 2008
After a divine breakfast (or breakfeast as I now call it) we headed for the 2 huge statues known as the Colossi of Memnon. They’re 18m high and weigh a “colossal” 1300 tons. Theywere built in the 14thC BC but were broken during an earthquake, along with the temple they were guarding in 27BC. I tried to buy one of them from a vendor who wouldn’t leave me alone. No sale!

Next stop, Valley of the Kings. The early Pharaohs built pyramids to mark their graves, easy to find if you’re a grave robber, which is exactly what happened, so the later kings hid their tombs here. Of course there were people who knew the location, ie the workers who built them, so they raided the tombs once the pharaoh was dead. Greed has no fear! We were allowed into 3 of the 64 tombs. You have to pay extra for King Tutankhamen’s tomb, which is empty anyway as they have moved all the good stuff to the Cairo museum except for his actual mummy which is still in the tomb. The other tombs were amazing, hieroglyphics everywhere. The tomb of Amenophis 2nd still had the huge sarcophagus in almost perfect condition. There are also real live archaeologists working excavating. National Geographic found a new tomb here a couple of years ago and they say there may be still others that are as yet undiscovered.

We then drove to an alabaster shop. Evidently, alabaster comes from Egypt, Luxor in particular, and it was an alabaster jar that Mary Magdalene broke when she poured perfume on Jesus feet. The showed us how it’s crafted into bowls, vases, candlestick holders, etc. They also had some breathtakingly beautiful onyx vases and bowls, very nice!

Our guide Kalid Osman with an Onyx vase worth well over $5000

Next stop, the valley of the Workers. The worker’s tombs did not have carved hieroglyphics but painted ones. They dug their tombs (much smaller than the kings and queens) and rendered them with mud and gypsum then painted them. These are the best preserved examples of ancient Egyptian art, the colour is still perfect. We also saw Queen Hatshepsut’s temple but there was no need to go inside as it’s empty.

After boarding our home for the next 3 days, the massive cruise ship “Movenpick” we visited the “Al Fayed Perfumery”. All of the worlds essential essences (just 20 flower essences and 8 spice scents) come from Luxor and are then bought by French perfumeries who blend it, distil it with alcohol or water and sell it as Chanel#5, Poison, etc. They also make their own exquisite perfume bottles. You can buy the actual essence oils here that are blended already into your favourite perfumes for a fraction of their cost if they were a branded perfume, just add water!

Last stop for the day and arguably the highlight of the Egyptian tour thus far, the temple of Luxor at night. This is absolutely spectacular. Apparently temples like this were also used as schools and hospitals as well as places of worship and monuments to the kings. Luxor was the capital of Egypt during Moses time, so this temple is where he would have spent much of his time growing up until he was 40. Again, the columns are HUGE! It is totally mind-boggling to try to comprehend the engineering and building techniques of these people nearly 5000 years ago! There is another huge temple 3kms away which we will visit tomorrow, and the 2 temples are connected by “the sphinx avenue”, a street lined with sphinxes on both sides for the entire length of 3kms. Most of them are now buried beneath people’s houses, so UNESCO are spending $2 billion moving houses and unearthing them.

Monday 19th February 2008

4.15am flight to Abu Simbel, so we had to get up at 1.15am. Yawn. It was worth it though. Ramses 2nd built a very impressive temple as a monument to his wife Nefertari and then built a bigger one as a monument to himself. They are the classic iconic Egyptian temple, very cool. As well as the 4 huge statues of Ramses on the outside, the sun comes in through the opening and lights up 4 statues of 3 different gods inside (Petha, Horus, Amun-Ra) and of course, Ramses 2nd himself (maybe he was insecure). Twice a year the angle of the sun only lights up Ramses, on the summer and winter solstice. The British dammed the Nile in the 60’s which flooded hundreds of archaeological sights, including this one at Abu Simbel, but they saved it by cutting the entire mountain up into 4000 huge blocks and moving the entire site to higher ground, a truly amazing feat! We hopped straight back on the plane and flew back to Aswan where the Nubians create the best quality gold in the world apparently. I don’t know about their gold quality, but the Nubian restaurant served pretty good quality food for lunch! By the way, the restaurant in question is actually on an island in the middle of the Nile; again, very cool. Drove 3 ½ hours to Luxor in a bus. Not very cool. We’re all wasted from the lack of sleep last night. Pete

Sunday 18th February 2008
Up and on the bus to the old Egypt city in Cairo. The city was only 2acres long, they said that this was where Jesus was taken after Bethlehem. They built a church where they thought Jesus once was. We went to an old synagogue, in the 60’s they discovered the 2nd most important Christian documents (after the dead sea scrolls) Then we went to Sakkara where the oldest pyramids are, there are step pyramids, the bent pyramid and the tomb of a noble man. They used to put dead bodies under their bed before pyramids, which was not very clean, so they started burying them and put a bed looking picture on top of the grave to mark it. Pharaohs wanted a bigger grave mark, so pyramids are the ultimate monument to mark a grave. Then we went to a carpet shop, the adults looked around the shop and then we went back home. Elijah

Saturday 16th February 2008
Up at 7am for a 3 ½ hour drive in the bus with everyone to Alexandria. Alexander The Great came to Egypt on a spiritual pilgrimage and absorbed much of its culture. Many of the Greek gods had their origins here and are essentially morphed versions of Egyptian gods. Eg: Zeus came from Ra. We also went to the largest Catacomb in the world. It held 400 bodies. It was discovered in the 1960’s by a farmer who’s donkey fell in the ditch! Went to Pompey’s Pillar which also had a couple of smaller sphinxs. It’s HUGE. Solid granite. Then we went to see a palace and took a drive along the Mediterranean shore line, and went to Dodi Al-Fayed’s house that was near-by. Didn’t go inside but saw out-side. Looked abit run – down and bare. Home for a quick dinner, then straight to bed. Maddi

Friday 15th February 2008
Veg day again. Today we had a nice cooked breakfast and did some maths! We also read some pages on Ancient Egyptian history. Very interesting book. Rested abit, and had some drinks down in the lobby before we met the rest of our tour group. We will be on for a three week tour with them around Egypt. Had dinner with everyone and went to bed. Maddi

Thursday 14th February 2008

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY! Yippee. Thought we’d have another veg day. We’re doing a 3 week tour with an American evangelical group called “Pilgrim Tours” which starts tomorrow. It’ll be go, go, go, so we’ll recharge the batteries today. Just a quick trip to the pyramids, the Sphinx and a papyrus museum where they showed us how to make real papyrus paper, a valentines’ day yummy dinner and off to bed. Pete.

Wednesday 13th February 2008
Today we’re off to Cairo. Pleasant flight, 4 hours. Found out we’re staying out at the pyramids at the Intercontinental 5 star resort. No wonder this tour is so expensive! Nice place though, extra comfy beds! Pete.

Tuesday 12th February 2008
Today we went to the Burj Al Arab, the world’s most luxurious and only 7 star hotel, for high tea. Mum, Elijah and I had a strawberry drink which was in a slushy substance (it tasted like real strawberry). Maddi had a delicious fruit mocktail and dad had a coffee (BORING). We then went to see “the palm” which is a man-made island in the shape of a palm ‘of course’ (Tom Cruise and Michael Jackson each have a house on the palm). We then went to a traditional souk (market), had something to eat and had a look around, it was beautiful. Mahalia.We are now going to an Arabian desert and on the way we saw the tallest building in the world called “Burj Dubai”. We then went driving up and down the bumpy dunes. The driver was CrAzZzZzZy !!! Good experience though. Before we arrived at the base camp we stopped off at the camel farm and there was this one camel that had his head lying on-top of Elijah’s head. It was funny. Then we headed off again to a Bedouin camp where we were going to have dinner. Us three girls got henna designs done on our feet and hands. Then we had a two course meal while watching a belly dancer. We then went home and crashed. Maddi.

Monday 11th February 2008
After a 13 hour sleep we all woke up crook. Obviously we needed more than 13 hours. Very slow start to the morning. Once we THOUGHT we were okay we went to the old souk (market) on Dubai creek via taxi. Very similar to the markets in Broome but it was inside. Then we caught a water taxi to the gold souk on the other side of the creek, where we met some shifty guys who sold Dad a fake rolex... Back to the hotel to organise tomorrow’s events. We still had some time up our sleeves so we headed back to the Gold Souk again for a couple of hours. Maddi

Sunday 10th February 2008
Up at 1am in Delhi. Stayed in the airport for 4 hours in 4 queues. At least the 5th queue we were at the front. We finally got in a cool plane it was worth the wait. They had a personal T.V. It was a 3 hour trip to Dubai. When we got there we went to our hotel and had to wait another hour to check in because the rooms were full. After we checked in we got in a bus and went to the “Mall of the Emirates” and in the mall was a snow dome called “Ski Dubai”. It is the biggest indoor snow slope in the world. Maddi, Mahalia and I learned to ski for the first time while dad went on the main slope and Mum watched us from one of the restaurants in the mall because she felt too sick to ski. I got snow up my back but it was heaps of fun. Then we got a taxi and went to the hotel for an early night. By Elijah