Into the Desert... (part 1) - White Desert

After Luxor, we headed into the desert. We stayed first at a little town called Dakla, and then drove into the White desert to camp for a night. All of the Oasis towns were quiet and small. They dont get tourists as often either. I think every single child we passed, as well as most adults... always said "Hello! Hi!", practicing their english I assume. So friendly.

The White Desert was an experience. I was pretty nervous for this part of our trip, not knowing what to expect with camping in the desert. I have to say I was very happily surprised though. The weather was great... maybe 65-70 degrees, we actually had to where jackets while camping because with the wind it got a bit chilly.... much preferred to crazy hot weather though. The other thing was that the landscape was like nothing else I've seen, something about the white desert, it makes you feel almost like you are on the moon. It is hard to even capture in pictures, but we've tried.

Our drivers for the 5-6 days through the desert were awesome also, they had to get going pretty fast to get up some of the dunes (we have a couple videos I might post later), and also just drove fast for fun and to entertain us. It was great, and they also served as our cooks for the night camping... some of the best food.

Dakla Oasis, the view from our hotel room.

Taking a walk around town. An inventive garage we saw made of cardboard.
All the kids were pretty excited to see us. They wanted Pens or candy. Luckily I heard about this ahead of time and brought some pens with me from home.

View from the top of a hill of old mud houses.

Another little town we stopped at on our day driving into the White Desert.

Picked me up a few of these!

Our Jeeps for the desert journey

A little oasis we stopped at for a picnic lunch.

baby camels!

Matt & Matt

The White Desert

Our camping spot for the night

Fox tracks in the morning. Had to keep our shoes in our sleeping bags, and everything else in the Jeeps. Apparently they will come right up to you in the night and steal your stuff, especially shoes.

Matt and Stacey getting engaged in the White Desert. She said yes!

We spied on them to get a bunch of pictures of the proposal.

Celebration dance.

Leaving the white desert after camping, seeing a few sand dunes, before heading to see the black desert.

Our awesome drivers

The group.

Luxor

After leaving the Nile, we drove for about an hour to get to Luxor. On the way we stopped at a temple - that is what the first couple pictures are of. We also saw over the next couple days the Valley of the Kings (unfortunately we could not take pictures there), as well as Karnak temple, and sights around Luxor. This part of the trip was probably the few days when I feel like we saw the most as far as historical buildings, temples, tombs, etc. We crammed a lot in!

Here is the temple we stopped at on the way to Luxor. It was discovered and used to be covered by mud from old "christian" mud-brick houses which surround it. Egypt believes something like 60% of its artifacts from ancient times are still buried throughout the country.

more brightly colored doors.

Hibiscus tea. Served both hot & cold, and very popular.

Karnak. A massive temple complex right in the city of Luxor. Many kings/pharoah's added on to it over the years.

It's crazy that you can still see colors on the walls and ceiling!

Luxor

Ancient tombs in the hillsides you can see, on the drive to Valley of the Kings.

The market in Luxor

The Nile

After Aswan we were off for a full day on a Felucca boat on the Nile. We spent all day slowly cruising north up the river, and then "camped" on the boat overnight. The next morning we landed not far from Luxor and took about an hour drive into Luxor for the next part of the trip there.

On the Nile we saw quite a few huge cruise boats.... that is a popular way that many tourists and Europeans travel the river, complete with pools, dance floors, and fancy restaurants. We enjoyed our little Felucca/Sail Boat with just the 14 of us in our group... along with Ahmad our tour guide and our 2 Nubian boat captains. The Nubians cooked our meals for us as well, and that Nubian food is just so good...

Since the Damn was built in upper Egypt, there are supposedly no longer crocodiles in the river north of the damn. And in fact we did not see any... oh well. We did see plenty of beautiful landscapes and countryside though, locals bringing their animals to the river for water, a lovely sunset, and hordes of mosquitoes at night. It was crazy to think the it is the same river that Florence Nightingale and the early european explorers spent months on exploring Egypt and its sights so long ago.

chilling out on the boat

food!

Matt and Matt in the Nile.

Our boat during a brief stop along the way

A view of our boat and a neighbor boat where we docked for the night to camp.

Aswan (part 3) - Abu Simbel

Pictures from Abu Simbel. This was the temple in the far south of Egypt which Ramses II built. The one next to it he built for his wife (Nefertari). They are amazing and huge. We couldn't take photos inside these 2 temples- but it was impressive how intricate the carvings were, and that after thousands of years you can still see paint and colors on the walls!

It was really hot this day also, and inside the temples it was hot & humid and jam packed full of tourists... a sweaty mess. It was worth it to see everything, but I couldn't imagine being a worker here building these temples, it must of been grueling.

Another temple on the way back to Aswan from Abu Simbel

Apparently these were all recipes for types of perfumes.

The Holy of the Holy's.