Saturday, Feb 18th, Samburu Sopa Lodge

Greetings!

After breakfast at the hotel in Nairobi, we boarded three small vans and drove north across the equator to the Samburu Game Preserve.

For lunch, we stopped at a trout tree restaurant, and were treated to the arrival of Calabas and Sykes monkeys, and a tree hyrax. We suspected this won’t be the last time the animals come to visit us.

The Samburu are a peaceful tribe, who live in low huts, carefully crafted with interwoven sticks, and plastered with mud and cattle dung. Unlike their Massai relatives, they are not war-like, and are nomad pastoralists.

Once in the Preserve, we spotted baboons, squirrels, elephants, dikdik, antelope, gazelle, impala, eagles, and ostrich. Time kept us from pursuing more, and we pushed the four-wheel drive, all-weather, and all-terrain safari vehicle into the heart of the Preserve. We checked into the Lodge, met for dinner and an orientation to tomorrow’s wildlife searches, and retired to our rooms. Under a mosquito net drapped around our bed, I’m typing this as Pat drifts off the sleep. I heard her say this evening at dinner that this was the most exciting wildlife day ever, and e look forward to many more.

For a look at all of the photos we took today, click on: Sat, Feb 18th

Gregory

Friday, Feb 17th, Nairobi

Greetings!

This morning, we arrived in Nairobi early after a flight from Cairo via Khartoum. Pat shot off an angry email to Adventures Abroad for the only mistake it seems they have made in our itinerary so far. Leaving us at the Nairobi Serena Hotel at 6:30 in the morning without rooms ready for us (after 27 hours without sleep) seems like poor planning. We waited for four more agonizing hours before we were assigned a room, and could sack out. Because the next tour didn't start until dinner this evening, it would seem they could have kept us in Cairo and flown us out today, or made sure there were rooms reserved last night which were ready when we arrived.

After a long nap, we went to dinner in one of the restaurants in the hotel, meeting with our new tour leader and our travel mates. There will be 14 on the Kenya tour, mostly Canadians. When we get to the Tanzania, the number expands to 20. After breakfast and an orientation tomorrow morning, we'll board three small vans and travel through the "White Highlands," so called because of the large number of Europeans who settled here, northwards into the Samburu National Reserve. En route, we stop for lunch on the lower slopes of Mt Kenya where we may catch a glimpse of the glaciers coating the summit of Africa's second highest mountain.

The Samburu Reserve is mainly semi-desert savannah plain with the seasonal Ewaso Nyiro River supporting a wide variety of game such as elephant, buffalo, cheetah, leopard and lion, as well as dik-dik (a tiny antelope), and warthog. On our afternoon game drive, we hope we can see elephants, giraffes and gazelles. We end at the Samburu Sopa Lodge.

The photo above is the only photo taken today. Beginning tomorrow, Pat is taking along her camera.

Gregory

Thursday, Feb 16th, Cairo Museum & Giza Pyramids

Greetings!

I'm looking forward to the day that tops this one. We flew from Luxor to Cairo. We stopped by Anwar Sadat's monument, placed across from the site of his assassination, on the way to see the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,the Pyramids and Sphinx in Giza, an architectural walk through the city's backstreets, dining upstairs overlooking a grand outdoor bazaar, and a flight to Nairobi. It was a long day, true, but one filled with non-stop 5-stsar travel experiences.

Each time we hear at a ruin that some European capital's Museum has the treasure, we learn a bit more about national heritage. And we are planning on visiting the Berlin Museum, not because we want to go to Germany necessarily, but because of the vast amount of stuff they have collected over the early years of foreign archeology. This visit to Egypt, however, has given it looks and feels like when a country has a world treasure in its artifacts.

The museum's collection is a candy store for those who love this great civilization. Except for the copy of the Rosetta Stone in the entrance (We've got to get the original back to them), the thousands of original artifacts found in the temples and tombs are original and as awesome as anything we've seen. Its organization provides a clearer understanding of the evolution of the ruling cultures over the 3,000 years of Pharaonic existence, and adds to our knowledge of the contributions made by each dynasty and regional shifts over time. Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed inside the Museum.

Unfortunately, some of the treasure has been stolen during the recent revolution. Empty cases greet visitors with no explanation, and guides point to police and museum guards as the culprits. Specifically, we should be on the lookout for eight golden shields made for Tutanhkamen.

Beyond the young king's complete treasure, there are statues that will dazzle you as technical and artistic masterpieces. Stone and wooden figures, made in 2,500 B.C. which contain ivory and crystal eyes as real looking as those the ophthalmologist with us has seen. Folding beds containing the first hinges, and papyrus leaf materials to keep away scorpions. Sculpting techniques on life-size figures designed to insure their survivability over these milleniums. Amazing beauty and workmanship, and vast numbers of pieces.

After lunch, we rest of the group went to the Citadel, and we gained a new guide for our trip to Giza. Out on the edge of the city of Giza, amidst an almost-accomodating sandstorm, were the most famous buildings on earth. What can you say? Giant, hard to construct, standards against which all other ruling monuments were imagined. And despite tour busses and vendors, able to bring a sense of what this part of the world must have looked like long before the rest of the world grew up.

That evening, sitting at tables in the open-air market in the bazaar, we were just grasping the enormity of what we'd just seen. Telling stories of the 11-day adventure, the group was soon to depart for home and other adventures. This has been one of the best groups we've been with, and we'll try to maintain contact in the future. Jonathan Hodgson has been a great tour leader, and our guides along the way were absolutely top notch. If you're ever going to be traveling in Cairo, we would wholeheartedly encourage you to contact Ahmed Hashem at ahmetto1982@hotmail.com and Bishoy Gamal at Bisho000.85@yahoo.com. They both provided us with great support.

Each of them asked us to please pass along our impressions of the country, and to do our best to keep all of you coming to Egypt. It's not as dangerous as you fear, and is just as exciting as you hope. We will remember it always.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on: Cairo Museum & Giza Pyramids

Wednesday, Feb 15th, Abydos and Dendara

Greetings!

This is the last day the group travels to the sites together. Tomorrow morning, we’ll fly early back to Cairo, and Pat and I will be taken to Giza to see the Pyramids, which the group visited on the first day we missed. One member of the group, who has been shadowing our tour guide in training, will fly back to her home in Uzbekistan, and the remaining members are going to the Cairo Museum and to the Citadel. We’ll reunite with the group at dinner, and then join two others to head to the airport for our flight late tomorrow night to Nairobi.

After breakfast in our hotel, we gathered box lunches from the front desk and boarded our bus. It was a tight fit into a small bus for the three-hour ride to Aptos and Dandara. This extra set of sites was an option we all chose, and we girded for the drive out of the tourist areas into the countryside. It gave us quite a few glimpses into rural life in Egypt.

We had no idea there was so much sugar cane being grown here. We saw it growing, being tied together in clusters while growing, being cut, stacked, dried, bundled, and then transported. From the fields, it was placed on backs of people, donkeys, and camels. It was fit onto rail cars between the rod and the fields. It was jammed onto large trucks, small vans, passenger cars, motorcycles and bicycles. And most of all, we saw it being eaten by kids everywhere.
While slowing down to cross a bridge near the center of a small village, a large truck packed with long shoots of sugar cane was attacked by a dozen awaiting kids. Each grabbed as many ends of the cane as possible, sticking out of the back of the truck, and pulled with all their weight to dislodge the stalks. The truck had no choice but to move with the flow of traffic, and hope that most of the cane would survive the attack.

We were surprised to see new housing sites being prepared, in anticipation of lower interest rates, and renewed government support for expansion out of the cities. Along the long drive, we encountered many desert tracts which looked like they had been claimed by settlers, and to which building materials were being assembled.

Because of the many speed bumps, the way out to the sites took longer than the way back (we took a short cut). The bumps seemed to coincide with community markets, small businesses, and side roads entering the highway. Each presented unique views of the people, their daily lives, and the pace of life.

One of the gods of ancient Egypt was Osiris. Involved in a major drama in which he was killed, and his body cut up, parts taken to lots of sites which were later retrieved by his sister and wife (Isis). Aptos was where she found his head, and it was here that shrines were constructed by Ramses II to both of them. In addition, shrines to Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah, and Seti (Ramses II’f father) are also included in the temple.

Dendara is a site dedicated to Hathor, daughter of Ra and goddess of love and pleasure, and patron of music and dancing. It’s unique column-head sculptures, and vivid colors in the shrines, make it a temple not to be missed. We’re so glad we were able to fit these two wonderful sites on our visit’s itinerary.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on: Wednesday, Feb 15th, Abydos & Dendara

Tuesday, Feb 14th, Madinat Habu & the Noble Tombs

Greetings!

After breakfast, we cross the Nile and the desert to visit temples and tombs. It would be boring if what we saw was not so knock-your-socks off awe-inspiring. For today's details, don't consult the timeline I posted earlier. In fact, don't worry about where we went. Just let me tell you somethings in general about what you'll see in the photos.

First, they were built between 1560 B.C and 1350 B.C. Covered with sand, they were discovered in the early 1900's. Successive dynasties added and improved the designs, and each new king added his own story, and sometimes erased previous stories. But if you've got centuries to work on it, and generations of builders and sculptors and painters to employ, you can get pretty good at it.

But let's give them credit. These were made when Irish farmers were piling stones into large heaps at Newgrange, and 2,000 years would pass before Mayans would build their temples, and another 500 years more until the Incas and Aztecs would construct their own pyramids. And remember, these were built in the New Kingdom, 500 years after the Egyptian pyramids.

And speaking of Pyramids (which we'll see in a couple of days), the tombs we saw yesterday, and saw for the nobles and workers today, were built not in pyramids but in hidden caves in mountains where the stone was hard enough to bore deep down into the earth. The Egyptian government doesn't allow cameras in most of them, so you'll have to take my word that the best drawings (not sculptures) are in the tombs of the workers. The couldn't afford sculptors, so they concentrated on painters. Their scenes were more about the family life, as they wanted to both honor their family's lives, and show their devotion to their gods. They didn't have lots of space devoted to the Pharaoh's image.

But they were all building these tombs and temples in tribute to the Pharaonic gods, and to the belief that they could make it into the second life (after everyone died on earth) if they led a good and generous life in the first. That same theme seems to have permeated most of the world's religions since then, but few have created such lasting monuments to it.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on: Tuesday, Feb 14th, Madinat & the Tombs of Nobles

Gregory

Monday, Feb 13th, Donkeys & Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple

Greetings!

If you aren't contemplating Camel rides, how about donkeys? This morning, we saddled up 11 donkeys, and rode through the backroads of the town of Luxor. There's not a lot to prepare you to ride a donkey. With no stirrups, and little to hang on to, I can say with certainty that it feels pretty stupid. It works, however, if that's all you have. But I'm sure the tourists provide the locals with plenty of satisfaction knowing someone would pay that kind of money to look that odd passing your sugar cane fields.

But the real destination today was the Valley of the Kings. The most well-known set of Egyptian temples, notably for the Tomb of Tutanhkamen, the 63 tombs in the valley have rotated openings each month. General admission tickets get you into three choices from among about ten which are open. Guides are not allowed inside, and so ours prepped us in the shade outside. This month, those of the Ramses dynasty were featured. The colors of the images of Ra and Anubis crowning each of the rulers were bright and vivid. But no cameras are allowed in the valley, so you'll just have to see them for yourselves. The short version of briefing is that the images depicted on the walls

tell the stories of activities of gods and pharaohs passing time in that space between the first world and the second world, and confirming that the life the pharaoh led in the first demonstrated the generosity necessary to qualify him for passage to the second.

After our tomb visits, we drove to the other side of the Valley to see the tomb of the first female Pharaoh, Hatsepsuok. Fulfilling the roles in her life as daughter to the Pharaoh, sister to the Pharaoh, wife of the Pharaoh, mother of the Pharaoh, aunt of the Pharaoh, and finally Pharaoh, she nevertheless lost almost all of the images of her when her step-son order the defacing of all statues and images throughout the land when he took over the throne. She appears to be the ultimate woman to have not gotten credit for a life of struggle. She did rule for 20 years at the height of the Pharonic millenium, and accomplished far more than that other, more well-known female Egyptian leader, Cleopatra.

To see the photos taken today, click on: Donkeys and Hatsepsouk

To watch a short video of the sunset over the Nile, click on: Nile Sunset Sailing

This evening, we checked into the Sonnestra St George Hotel in Luxor, a five-star location where we'll be staying for the next three nights. I've paid for two days of internet access, and the speed and bandwidth seems just fine. We'll be going to more temples and tombs, and have time for some restaurants and museums.

We're okay, haven't lost anything, in good health, and enjoying the good weather and sparse crowds. Will catch upon the news now that we have lots of internet access and a television that works. Hope the rest of you are well and happy.

Gregory