Asha Treacy

What kind of summer is this?! Just a few days of sun here and there and that’s all we’ll see of the big round thing. So you can imagine how pleased I was when it was time to pack our bags and head off to Ancient Egypt for our next holiday adventure and guaranteed sunshine. This country is riddled with history and we were dead excited about going there…

We stayed in Luxor; in upper southern Egypt where our hotel was situated along the river Nile and the sun just soared right in…..it was hot woohoo :-) Some parts of Luxor really reminded me of India, their little shops, people sitting outside their houses staring out the foreigners and in India where they have their rickshaws, here they had a horse and carriage thing going on and they called them Ferrari’s. They were also a bit in your face when going to the shops but not nearly as bad. I did like all the little kids all smiling and waving, well apart from two little boys who put their middle finger up at me. Charming but it did make me laugh and I thought it only polite to return the gesture lol.

We spent the first couple of days having pool time in the sun and visiting Luxor and Karnak Temple. Of Course the high light of the holiday was seeing the Giza Pyramids. This trip had us up at 4.00am (it was like I never slept) where we took an internal flight to the city of Cairo. This was a one hour flight and I desperately tried to sleep on the plane, didn’t happen. It was really amazing driving through this city, one minute I was looking at parade of shops and the next minute there was a pyramid popping up behind them, kind of bizarre really. We queued for a while to go into the second pyramid and looking at the people’s faces coming out, made Mish and me a little nervous. As you crouch and descend down, it’s hot, no air and it smelt of everyone’s body odor…Oh my god eww not pleasant at all. Then there was a bit you could stand up straight in and then up we went (still crouched down) and we were eventually in the heart of the pyramid. There was some Arabic writing on the wall and an empty tomb. We had a quick look and out we went. It was very claustrophobic, hot and smelly. Not something I’d do again in hurry but an experience nevertheless. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in more history in the Museum of Egypt. I couldn’t quite get my head around the mummies of the queens, why on earth would you put a wig on a couple of thousand years old corpse?? Looked odd and I didn’t get it :-/ Cairo was a long hot day but loved it..

Back in Luxor we spent an evening get acquainted with some sheehsa, quite liked it too, camel riding and having a cobra wrapped around my neck. There was a lot of bellying dancing going on too and I loved the Arabic music. Then we had another early start, got an extra hour this time and had to be up at 5.00am, destination Valley of the Kings and Queens. We got there in no time and I was really amazed at these massive tombs, the writing and the colour on the walls were still very much intact on most of them. The tomb of Nefertari was closed for restoration so missed that one but you have to pay extra to see the mummy of Tuk Ankh Amun. His tomb was not as big as the others because he was only Farah for such a short time and they based the size of the tomb on this. Imagine being King at 14…his mummy was tiny and is the only one kept here rather than museum of Egypt. The good thing about these early morning/late night trips were you had the day to chill by the pool, read, eat and play table tennis (I was shite). It really would have been too hot to do these trips in the middle of the day; we just about got through it in Cairo.

With a few days left we had time to fit in some other excursions, so with another 5.00am start (getting tired now) we were on the boat to the mountains to get thrown into a hot air balloon. The breeze this particular morning was a little strong and the first balloons that went up got lead away to the other side of the river, so they had to pack it all up and drive it back around to us. We watched them put the whole thing together from scratch and it’s not a fun looking job in that heat. So eventually we were up and away, taking in the fabulous views and floating quite comfortably over the villages and having a good look at people getting on with their lives. This again reminded me of India, where people sleep outside on the top floor and all the kids running around and waving. Wonder how they felt having noisy tourists like us snooping right in on their homes….hmm. No one swore at me this time so that was a plus lol. Our balloon landed right outside this village and all the kids would come running, trying to sell their little statues and stuff.

And last but not least quad biking in the dessert…oh yeah. This was such fun but I didn’t take to it straight away but got there in the end. We stopped for a bit to watch the sun go down, goes down in two minutes. This was our substitute to jet skiing which we missed out on because we were inland. We did ponder on the thought of doing the Red Sea but quad biking in the dessert isn’t going to happen again any time soon. We were covered in dust from the sand but boy was it blast.

The hottest temp while we were there was 46^oC, now you know me and heat have a thing but even I needed the occasional shade and ice cream. All in all we had a fun packed 2 weeks with lots of time to chill too. The food was great and people are very friendly, particularly our hotel waiters. They work very hard and do very long hours but were always entertaining and smiling. We loved Egypt, the heat, all that history and would recommend it for sure. We’re already browsing for our next holiday, not sure where yet but I can’t wait a whole year before flying off somewhere….can’t sit still for too long me, too much to see..

So have you been anywhere this year/or going and why did you choose this place? Would love to hear about your exciting ventures and what kind of places interests you?