Full of hot air

Well we have finally arrived home so it is time to try to catch up with our last few days of travel. Normally I would have gone on to explain the fantastic boat trip we did down the Nile. This would normally have included some similes and metaphors to explain the villages we passed and the scenes of local village women washing on the banks while children played in the water; I would then wax lyrical of the importance of the Nile to the people and used copious statements such as “life blood of Egypt” and “river of life”. Then I would have quoted a whole lot of facts about the length of the river, how many people rely on it and other trivial stats that I make up because I know no one ever checks if they are correct. But unfortunately, I cant do any of this. Not because it wasn’t a fantastic and relaxing 7 hours cruising to the Temple of Dendera and then back but because my diary is hopefully somewhere in transit on its way to Sydney as we speak.

But again I am getting ahead of my self. Before I explain why the diary has its own first class ticket to Sydney I need to finish our trip in Egypt. The last few days involved more temples than you can poke a stick at. It seems that all the who’s who of Kings were buried in Luxor. Tutenkhamon, Ramses I through XI, Seti and Elvis Presley have tombs here – well – I cant really vouch for Elvis. While many were buried in the Valley of the Kings, even more visually impressive was Karnak Temple where they all tried to out do each other with the biggest temple, poles or statues. Built and enlarged over a thirteen hundred year period and covering 247 acres, the Temple includes the Hypostyle Hall of 135 Pillars, a towering site even with the bus load of tourists that descended on the temple at exactly 11.05am (so we found out!).

But the highlight of Egypt had to be an early – And I mean early – NO, I don’t think you really understand - A BLOODY early wake up to get catch a bus, then a boat then a bus before boarding a hot air balloon over this fantastic country all before the sun popped its head over the horizon. Thanks to Bethany’s money making skills we decided to do something special and you could not get more special than this. It gave Egypt a whole different perspective as you floated silently (except for the deafening roar of the burners every few minutes to propel us into the stratosphere) over the temples, sugar cane fields, villages and desert. Forever memorable.

As the plane took off, I was reminded of something I read which described Egypt as "A Land of Contrasts. You can't either love or hate Egypt. You simply have to do both. You love the history, you hate the dirt. You love the natural beauty, you hate the chaos. You love the chaos, you hate the noise. You love the food, you hate the daily evacuation of your bowels. You love the heat. You hate the cold. You love the warmth of the people, you hate that they all see you as a walking wallet. You love The Nile. You hate the pollution.” A good summary of an incredible adventure.


Ps: Over the last month we have had the most amazing weather with sunshine all the way. Unfortunately I made a joke in my previous blog that I hope we don’t break the Egyptian drought. Well, it turns out that we did. For what the locals tell me was the first time in somewhere between 2 and 10 years (depending on who you spoke to) we encountered cloudy skies on our last day and a spattering of rain that was just enough to disturb every particle of dust and dirt and propel it into the air and ultimately into your clothes, hair, lungs and every other orifice no matter how well covered. I think it was a sign to say time to go home.