At Luxor airport the rates for the taxis to the downtown area are written on a large board but the taxi touts that approached us as we arrived still wanted to quote higher prices and say the rate was per person and not per taxi. All that detail was unfortunately written in Arabic on the sign so we had to stand our ground for the 25 Egyptian pound it cost. John slipped the money under the wipers and we continued into our hotel and the driver gave up hassling us. That was our welcome to Luxor.
The hotel was in a dirty dusty unlit street but near the main part of town and a few streets from the train station. It was painted in pictures of Bob Marley with Marley flags hanging in the hallways. Nevertheless it was OK for the price and everything worked well. On the rooftop was the breakfast area and a bar with a happy hour and half price beer but it was extremely hot in the early evening.
The first day we strolled around town and visited the Karnak temple a few minutes walk from the hotel. It was pretty crowded and pretty hot. In the evening we watched the sunset over the Nile and tried to ignore the dozens of touts wanting us to take a felucca (sailboat). The Nile River cruise boats were lined up 5 deep by the river. They look like 3 storey buildings with ranch slider windows on a barge and are not at all attractive but have romantic names. 32 years ago they were smaller wooden boats with lots of character; like something out of an Agatha Christie mystery. The felucca of old were unpainted and didn't have motors or neon flashing light and loud music either.
We joined a tour run by the hotel and headed off to see the Valley of the Kings. When I last visited here you had to cross the river by a small ferry and ride around the site with an early morning start. Now there are electric carts to take you to the entrance and no photos are allowed inside the tombs. It was about 40 something degrees and pretty crowded. There are a few more tombs now than before and there are still more to be excavated in the area. Having a Japanese fan, a gift from our ex-student, and a light-coloured umbrella to provide all over shade, was helpful in keeping Kerri and I cool.
There are extra charges to see more than three of the tombs these days so you have to decide before you go in what tombs you want to see.
There are no objects in the tombs, just hieroglyphics and carved reliefs, some painted and some not. The air is hot, humid, still and stale inside and the heat from the queuing bodies adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere.
From here we were off to Hatshetsup's temple.
When we arrived here two Korean girls complained that they had to share one seat in the van as the tour manager had overbooked the tour. The Egyptian guide told them that it was their fault as they had accepted the situation when they first got in the van so she was not going to do anything about it or take any responsibility for it so the two girls left and we never saw them again. That left a sour note with the group as no one agreed with the guide. When we entered the van the manager told us not to discuss the price we had paid with any of the others because they had paid more. This is so typically Egyptian.
As we strolled around the temple looking at the columns and sculptures a local guy called to us to look at something in the corner. This is a typical ploy to get a 'baksheesh' (tip) from you, he thinks because he has shown you something you should pay him for it. Of course you would see it anyway as you walked about.
We read that the locals have to have loads of small coins and notes as they will be asked to give baksheesh to policemen who signal them through the traffic, touts who dust their mirrors, touts who find them a park space and keep the traffic away as they reverse into it, waiters find them a table, bus drivers who lift their bags into the bus etc.
'Tss, come and look' the baksheesh manThe last stop was the Habu temple which was a military temple. This relief showed what they did to the foreigners when they caught them.
Luxor still has lots of horse drawn carts as I remembered. They cruise the streets selling fruit and all sorts of goods. The gas bottle guys cruised the street in front of our hotel and signalled their arrival by bashing on the empty bottles with a crescent spanner, it was deafening. There are still lots of cats everywhere but Arabs consider dogs dirty so it is rare to see any.
We had planned to have an extra night in Luxor and take a day train to Cairo but discovered that tourists could not use the day train from April 1st so we had to take a night train at 8.30 pm.
