Knossos

We went to the Heraklion Museum in the morning. There were amazing figurines, rhytons, frescoes and the weirdly flashy Minoan pottery. We found the Olympic Airways office and asked about the procedures for flying home earlier.

Surely I can’t be morning sick all day and night and have headaches. Went to the museum and I staggered around – really felt terrible. Leon began talking of home and catching an earlier plane. Surely I’ll get better! Had some Panadol and caught a bus to Knossos. It was peaceful and quiet and it was nice to take ourselves around.

Inevitably Lyn enjoyed catching the bus more than Knossos itself...

The oldest road in Europe

Knossos

  

The crowds of young people in Heraklion celebrated New Years Eve that night by beating all and sundry with long thin balloons.

Cairo-Athens-Heraklion

5.00 am Brrrrrrrr!! Wake up call! Hassle over breakfast. We took a piece of toast from the wrong area – fed up with Egyptian hassles.

The plane was late.

Ho hum!

Next morning we left Egypt for Athens, killed a few hours, then flew to Heraklion in Crete – an island which was largely closed for the winter.

In Crete we were independent. We went for “voltas”, found our own food and made our own schedule.

Heraklion in 1986 was no doubt beautiful but Lyn was very sick and I was very worried.

Doing as little as possible

Next morning, feeling very jaded, we were driven from Giza Station to the Sonesta Hotel. The driver showed us the monument on the site of Saddat’s assassination and told us how bored he was when he worked in Saudi Arabia.

We spent the day at leisure: reading, writing, playing cards, and watching in-house movies on the TV. Lyn was still very ill.

The Great Felucca Jam

In Lyn’s diary she comments on how ill she felt that morning. She assumed she had a case of what I had suffered the day before. She probably did, but in retrospect it is obvious that she was also beginning to suffer from the dreadful morning sickness she endured for the rest of the trip.

After a morning of relaxation we took a tour on a felucca to the islands and the Agha Khan’s Mausoleum. Lyn enjoyed it all – even the chaos at the end. She chatted with two middle-aged ladies who were on holiday from working in Saudi Arabia. They regaled us with tales of Saudi restrictions on women.

The next day went from idyll to farce. A wonderful felucca trip on the Nile was thrown into disarray when I left Lyn’s bag, with camera and spectacles, at the Agha Khan Mausoleum. Our poor felucca captain did much extra rowing. I was punished for my sins by being forced by necessity to heavily tip and then embrace the local who recovered the bag.

Mausoleum of the Aga Khan

Then we had to cross the river to our hotel in time to get to the railway station. But we got caught in a “felucca jam”. Two feluccas collided when squeezing between two rocks. Several more drifted into the tangled mess. Darkness was falling. Chaos reigned. After eventually escaping, we were met at the riverbank by very agitated travel agents, we fetched our luggage and then enjoyed being fanged through the streets of Aswan in a taxi. Finally, we were shoved aboard our train with seconds to spare. We took a breath and relaxed – and then the locals next door began to party through the night.

 

Our train ticket - souvenir of a memorable day...

 

Tut's Curse

 

Old Cataract Hotel - Aswan

This day began with us waiting for 45 minutes, bags packed, in the lobby and no guide? I was suffering from “Tut’s Curse” so Lyn stormed the Abercrombie and Kent tourist office with little result. Eventually we were put into a car with a driver for our long drive to Aswan.

We follow the river and railway line all the way – sugar cane, cabbages, donkeys – donkeys do so much work here, camels. They have water buffalo, cattle and goats. Irrigation channels ... village houses with blue windows and doors to ward off evil ... The schoolchildren, all the girls wear sober modest clothes ... the boys multi-coloured ... much more peaceful out here ... Stopped at first temple. Had to cross the Nile – soldiers guard all the bridges.

Lyn had fun but I was sicker than an Egyptian dog.

Our driver doesn’t really know where he’s going so we got lost in the market place – great for us – big market town, people, carts and donkeys everywhere.

Apart from feeling wretched, I have one vivid memory of this day. In Esna, the driver took us down a narrow street until we could go no further for the crowds. We stopped. Lyn was wearing shorts that came down to just above her knees. A crowd of young men and boys began to peer into the back seat windows. Lyn has great legs but I doubt they have ever drawn a more openly appreciative crowd. I was very relieved when the driver found a way out. 

Esna?

Eventually, after skipping Kom Ombo, we arrived in Aswan.

In Egypt things get messed up proportionally to your distance from Cairo... We skipped Kom Ombo and arrived at the haven of Aswan where:

(a)  our hotel bookings were mucked up

(b)  the plumbing had to be repaired in our room

     (c) we learned that we were not going to be flying to Abu Simbel because there were no tickets

The first two problems were eventually fixed. Neither of us was in the mood to be mucked around. However, Egypt Air was unsolvable. Everywhere we went in Egypt the national airline was considered a basket case. Our travel agents just raised both hands palms up, shrugged their shoulders and said “Egypt Air” and pulled faces.

If Egypt held a chook raffle: it would take a week, nobody would win and the chook would be off.

Aswan’s saving grace was that it was beautiful. The islands in the river, feluccas, the green against the desert – you breathed it all in while taking tea from the balcony of the Old Cataract Hotel.

Writing a letter home having changed into jeans - very wise.

Feluccas as seen from the balcony

Valley of the Kings and sunset at Karnak

We were checked into our hotel at 100 mph and then rushed off to the Savoy Hotel to meet our guide who was taking us to the Valley of the Kings etc. Didn’t like him much, big group – people everywhere. Caught a ferry across the Nile, then a small bus – CHAOS – people, buses, hawkers, noise everywhere. I went to Hatshepsut’s temple ... But desert, sand, dust, rock, heat!!! Wow!! Imagine in Summer.

This is Hatshepsut’s beautiful temple. The most beautiful sight in Egypt in the Winter of 1986 can be seen slightly obscured bottom left.

Then to Valley of the Kings and ... alabaster factory

“This guy is an OPERATOR” said one of the Americans.

The guide took us first into the tomb of one of the Ramses ... and then to Tutankhamen’s little tomb. There was a line up in the heat and it was very crowded inside. Lyn stayed outside while I went in.

One poor Australian lady came out from the crush white and sick. I helped her. She was obviously wealthy. They flew their own plane over here. Nice though.

I had had enough of our guide and when we were given an optional 30 minutes I left Lyn and her new friend and ran off up the valley to find the tomb of Thutmose III. The entrance is halfway up a cliff. It was, compared to the gaudier tombs we’d seen earlier, beautifully simple. The masterpiece is the cartouche-shaped burial chamber with the Amduat unrolling around the walls like a giant papyrus. I had a blissful couple of minutes and then I had to power walk all the way back.

Lyn kept her surely unique record of visiting Egypt without entering tombs...

Our fearless guide stopped to pray (or was he collecting his cut from the alabaster shop?) and sent us all back to the ferry. With several others we got on the wrong ferry, went on a tour of every cruise boat in the river, and eventually arrived back at the Hotel Isis by cadging a lift with the lady Lyn had rescued. My highlight of the morning was Thutmose III but no doubt Lyn most enjoyed the side trip!

 

... just got to our rooms when the guide rang for the next tour – No way Jose!

 

We refused to miss lunch for an afternoon tour of Luxor. After lunch we had a nap and then took ourselves to the Temple of Karnak. It was one of those inspired decisions ...

This is how you took a panorama photo with a Kodak instamatic in 1986

Leon - in shorts

... walked around ourselves ... felt good ... huge place, great lake, hypostyle hall – saw a man on top of a column. Had tea (piggy but I’m just starved lately) then haggled for a magazine for Leon ... to bed EXHAUSTED. 

 

Christmas at the Pyramids

A time for silly hats.

All day Egyptians wished us a ‘Merry Christmas!”.

In the morning we went to Memphis and Sakhara, seeing the mud huts and irrigated fields of rural Egypt for the first time.
 

irrigation canal

The most-photographed donkey in Egypt

The water-damaged alabaster Sphinx at Memphis

Restoration work at Memphis

I was trying to get a sense of the desert

 

More restoration work - the technology being used hadn't moved far from 3100 BC

 

I loved Sakhara and inevitably lapsed into school teacher tour guide mode, as when I raced around Djoser’s step pyramid to find his serdab. The stop at the rug-weaving workshop on the way to lunch was confronting. Seeing little kids hard at work didn’t inspire us to cough up $500 for something for the living room floor.

We saw some fine mastabas. Here is the deceased at his offering table.

Unas' causeway

Djoser's Step Pyramid complex

Djoser's serdab.

The remnant of Unas' pyramid

At Giza walking into the Great Pyramid was never an option for claustrophobic Lyn. She also, more reluctantly, decided that pregnancy and camel rides were not compatible. This meant we got to spend time walking around instead.

Lyn is probably running away from yet another ancient history lecture from me.

Our fellow tourists take advantage of the opportunity to ride camels.

Along the way we took the usual shots and then went to see Cheops’ reconstructed boat in its purpose-built museum. To see something so old, so beautiful and so neglected by the hordes, was a highlight of the trip for me.

Pharoah's boat

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the papyrus workshop where we bought three souvenirs. Our favourite was a reproduction of the Meidum geese.

We had only a short rest before being taken to the railway station for our overnight train trip to Luxor. The train was French, which might explain why the coffee was excellent.