We had an early wake up call, 5:30, to try to beat the extreme heat. We headed to the west bank of the Nile to the famous Valley of the Kings where numerous tombs have been uncovered, some even recently, of Egyptian rulers. What was t so remarkable is the condition of the painted hyroglyphics on the walls of these temples. The colors are so deep and well preserved. With the erosive nature of time, sand and flooding, you’d think that these would have been destroyed as well. All the contents of these tombs are now in the Cairo Museum, with the exception of the body of King Tut. Because of the hasty mummification of his body (apparently the boy king was murdered rather than dying of illness), it has deteriorated, and they fear it would not survive moving it. Just to think of how these were built, buried for centuries, found and excavated is pretty amazing. Our next stop was the temple of Hatshepsut, a huge multi-story temple built into the rock. The story goes that when she became queen at the death of her husband, she did not want to share power with her son, made him a commander of the army and sent him off to war, thinking that he would probably be killed. Contrary to her plan, he became a strong warrior, came back as victor and defaced every monument made for her. So much for close family ties. Last stop was the statue of Colossi of Memnon, once one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There are actually two statues, 60 ft. tall, standing in the desert of the west bank. Again, the heat took its toll, and we were ever so thankful for the AC on the bus. This has been the down side of this journey, the inordinate heat which prevents you from being outside for half the day; just unbearable. Once the sun begins to go down, you can stand to be outside or on the upper deck.
Tonight there was a cocktail hour before dinner with elaborately carved fruit and vegetables used for candle holders. We had a long chat with a couple in our tour group, Russell and Diane from Melbourne, Australia, before dinner. What a hoot he is! And we witnessed and took part in the most “bizarre bazaar”shopping experience we’ve ever seen…..from vendors in boats coming up alongside our boat, yelling in various languages (for some reason, a lot of Spanish) to get our attention. They began to throw garments up to the rooms and the upper deck! Apparently the procedure is to take a look, yell back to them to bargain price if you are interested, and throw the money back down to them in the plastic bag that the garment was in. Now this is something to see! I came up to the deck at the end of this whole shopping spree, just before entering the locks of Esne, which was as far as these vendors could go, which turned out to be the best bargaining tool. I got a lovely dress for 30 pounds, the equivalent of $6, which only an our ago had gone for 200-250. I had no idea, but it turned out to be a good shopping/bargaining strategy.
The evening ended with a very interesting time of bingo, unlike any bingo we’ve ever seen, just numbers on a very different looking grid, to accommodate all the various languages on board. There are just a hand full of us English speaking folks, so this was interesting indeed. John won one of the games, the prize being a gold Egyptian cross pendant, another neat momento of the trip.
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