Day 97 - Tuesday April 4 Luxor, Egypt

Luxor Day 2 photos
Ship still docked at Safaga
We were told that we had a wakeup call at 7am, but that is also when they were supposed to be serving breakfast and then we were to be on the bus at 7:55am. So, we had set our travel alarm for 6am. We did not wake up or maybe even roll over between 11pm and 6am! Debbie woke up coughing again. She is not looking forward to today's morning pill. The 2 pills she took yesterday caused terrible burning and pain in her stomach about an hour after she swallowed each one. She is also finally suffering the ill effects of taking antibiotics. They have killed off her internal flora if they have not yet completely killed off the infection. She is dragging, but very happy to be here and not on the ship! We went down to the breakfast buffet early and it was already open. We got seats out on the balcony of the restaurant and it was very crisp morning air and pretty out there with the view over the pool to the Nile in the morning light. Breakfast buffet was pretty extensive. They had the special local dish of fava beans that Hoda had described, but neither of us braved it. Sorry! They also had a complete Japanese buffet and we did not have that either. Clay had eggs cooked to order and Debbie had pancakes. Debbie had a cup of coffee and Clay had a glass of orange juice but they would not serve water without an extra charge. This was very strange because they put a great big liter bottles of water out at lunch and at dinner. (Dinner last night was catered by our hotel and served out there at the Habu Temple on their china!) We wandered around the floating patio on the Nile and just soaked in the ambience and then went up to the room where we had a bottle of water left from yesterday for Debbie to take her pills. (There was no cranberry juice here. Though they did have a juice bar set up at the buffet. It had orange, lemon, watermelon and some others, including a sign for Karkara? But, Debbie is allergic to citric acid and careful about beverages, it is either cranberry juice or water for her in the morning.)
We were back on the bus by 7:55am. Today we are touring the Valley of the Kings, a photo stop at Hatshepsut, back to Habu, a photostop at the Colossi of Memnon and then back to the hotel to check out, have lunch and drive back to Safaga and Voyager.
The Valley of the Kings is a barren looking place. You walk through the valley and see what looks like man made cave entrances leading into the hills oneach side of the valley. These entrances are tombs of the pharohs that have been excavated and opened to the public. You cannot take pictures inside the tombs. Your entry into the Valley of the Kings lets you visit 3 of these tombs. We visited Ramsses 3, 4 and 9. We also went into Tut's tomb which requires a separate ticket. Inside these tombs, you can see reliefs and painted walls. Tut's was by far the smallest, but it still had his burial vault and mummy still there. His other relics at at the Cairo museum.
The photo stop at Hatshepsut was quick. This is a large, multi-level mortuary temple built into the side of limestone cliffs. It is a natural placement that melts into the cliff. The photo stop was from about 200 yards away, so you can see it situated against the cliffs.
We then rode back to the Medinat Habu temple where we had dinner last night. The drive took us through the Nile Valley and its agriculture. It is clear why the Nile is the life of Eqypt. Once you move away from it, all you see is desert. Habu was certainly different in daylight. It was much larger than it looked at night, and our guide was able to point out special scenes and stories in the reliefs that we would have never spotted on our own (certainly not in the hour or so we had here). Ar dinner last night, we were facing a column that had an 8-foot tall Egyptian holding a serving tray with what looked like 4 ice-cream floats. It seemed appropriate for our dinner experience. In daylight, we saw this same relief in a couple of other places. Have no idea what it signifies. We had about a 40 minute guided tour of the temple, and then were set free to roam for about 30 minutes before we had to be back at the bus.
The photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon was also quick. These are 2 50-foot statues that were part of a mortuary temple for Amenhotep III. They are about all that is visible now from the temple.
By 12:30pm we were back at the hotel and checked out of our room. We have to be back on the bus by 1:45pm. We are to go in one big convoy back to Safaga and have to meet the other buses and our police escort to leave by 2pm. The lunch buffet was pretty much like the one the day before with the main courses cooked a little differently. It was good. We were seated at a table for 4 with one other man alone. (Yesterday we were seated with 2 sisters from Mexico that Debbie knew from the gym.) The man's wife could not come to Luxor because she is too ill with whatever it is that has made its rounds of the ship. He said this was her 2nd bout with it and she had been treated with antibiotics for the first bout as well. He said he is a retired neurosurgeon and he called whatever the respiratory illness is, "the crud." Debbie felt terrible about his wife being too sick to come and told him about the IVs and how devastated she would have been not to come. He told her that he thought she must have been very sick to be given IV antibiotics. (This was a little strange because last night at dinner one of our companions was minus a friend who is about 12 treatments into IV antibiotics and she herself had had 2 of the treatments just like Debbie. We were joking that there is quite the IV antibiotics franchise being run out of deck 3 and it must be turning into a real profit center for Voyager.) He hoped that his wife was better when he got back and so did we. We had time to use the restrooms and wander a little in the hotel shops before it was time to reboard the bus. Debbie found a granite canopic jar that she liked and Clay asked for a price on it. The price quoted was $45USD. This was clearly too much, so Debbie put the jar back on the shelf. The salesman became very agitated because that was the price for a set of 4. We did not want 4 granite, lidded jars so we still passed. He tried to sell us a single alabaster canopic jar, but it was not at all as appealing as the granite ones were so we just passed and went back to the bus.
By a little after 2pm we were under way for the 3 hour drive back to Safaga. The route was the same and so were the dramatic scenery changes in reverse.
We had been warned that we would unload the buses the same way we boarded them. One at a time at the gangway and that we might have to sit in the buses on the dock for as long as an hour or so again on our return. This was sadly not to be. All 20 buses parked and opened their doors. It was a free for all of luggage retrieval and mass shuffling between idling buses for the gangway. It was not pretty. The Voyager band was on the dock playing Dixieland jazz as we turned in passports and reboarded the ship after a long and busy 2 days. We sailed right away.
Tonight was Country Club Casual again and we had another time change. Since we are headed back to the east for a change, we lost an hour. Too bad because we could really use an extra hour's sleep about now with another early morning and long day of touring ahead. We should bedocked in Aqaba, Jordan by 7am and our tickets for tomorrow's tour, Petra, Jewel of the Desert, say we should be on the pier at 7:50am. More wonders await us.
Luxor Day 2 photos