Cruising the Nile

On our final morning in Cairo before the cruise, we received a wakeup call at 3:49am. It’s difficult to recover from jet lag with that type of schedule! We flew to Luxor to begin the cruise on the ship River Tosca, with its capacity of 82 guests. We first visited the Karnak Temple, a vast complex built and updated for almost 2000 years.

From Luxor we cruised north to Dendara, where we explored the Temple of Hathor the next morning, and then we returned back to Luxor that afternoon to tour the Luxor Temple. Lots of temples! All amazing, though. Especially Hathor Temple, which still maintains its original rooftop! How many ancient ruins have you seen that still have their roof? And not only that, but we could even walk on it – they engineered and cut the stones to fit together in a way that locked them into place and prevents a cave-in. And at Karnak, much of the paint remains bright after thousands of years of exposure in the harsh Egyptian sunlight! I kept having to repaint portions of a side wall of our house in Asheville because of fading each year, and the Egyptians could produce a paint to last that long? Not all technology has improved.

Just as interesting, and really more so, was watching the people and animals along the Nile riverbanks. Little kids shouted hello from the banks and some swam toward the ship as we traveled by. They seemed so genuinely excited to see us, though later I noticed that some of the more mischievous ones threw rocks at the ship, luckily not having enough distance to matter. Women washed their rugs in the Nile, then left them out to dry in the blazing sunlight. Men rode horses along rocky beaches. Kids swam with their horses and water buffalos! Melodic calls to prayer issued from countless minarets in the villages along the river.

The staff onboard the ship is congenial, all Egyptian, and all male. No women staff at all. One very friendly barman named Mohammed (three of the four barman are named Mohammed) introduced himself to Dad and me the first night and shook our hands. Every time thereafter when we saw him he’d come over and say hello and ask how we were doing. He had just started work on the ship, but later he told me that he’d worked on the Viking line before. The ship itself is constrained in size by the depth of the Nile and the width of the locks. This is my first river cruise, and I rather like it! I’d say that overall I prefer it to an ocean or sea cruise with hundreds or thousands of passengers because you get to know the passengers and staff much better, and it’s simple to find a place to sit out on the top deck. I feel like we’re making good friends here. We’ve mostly been hanging out with British people as it turns out, along with some Americans and Australians. There are many nationalities onboard, along with a range of ages. There aren’t only couples either – there is a mother and son, a group of American ladies, and a Chinese-American family. There is some challenge with hearing in the restaurant given the din, and one American guy thinks my name is Chad and that I’m from Australia – I tried to correct him, but heck, it doesn’t matter, haha.

It’s quite sunny, hot, and dry, getting up to 106 degrees maximum along our journey, so loads of sunscreen, hats, and water are musts. Our tour guide, Ahmed, is friendly and entertaining, and he speaks excellent English. He’s given tours for many famous people and has been doing this work for 30 years. He relayed a story of touring Axl Rose, where Axl bought two $180,000 carpets without negotiating with the dealer. Unfortunately for Ahmed, he caught Covid very early on in January 2020 from a Chinese tourist – she sneezed directly on him while on a tour, and he says he felt the droplets hitting him. He got very sick and had to spend time in the hospital intubated. He recovered, but then got Covid again, again requiring hospitalization, but this time he was very close to death. So close that he was convinced he was about to die, and the doctors had him call his children and his mother to say goodbye. Somehow he pulled through, but he gained 50 pounds while not working because his lungs are so scarred, and he has trouble walking far now. It’s a long road to recovery.

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Today’s ultimate tidbit (TUT): Not unlike ISIS (Islamic State, unfortunate name in Egypt) today, Christian priests in medieval times chiseled out faces on ancient Egyptian temples to remove symbols of paganism.

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Today’s mystery audio recordings: As you likely guessed, in the previous post the quiet airport was Munich, while the loud one was Cairo. For the new audio recordings below, think about what they might be, and I’ll tell you in the next post (please don’t guess in the comments).