Bob Marley time at the temples and valleys

Day 49

Managed to get about an hours sleep on the bus to Luxor. As the bus neared Luxor, I got to see lots of sand, crap houses and people riding donkeys.

At the bus station, I got a taxi to the centre of Luxor. The driver asked if I had sorted out acccommodation and I told him that I was staying at the Sherief Hotel (aka the Bob Marley Hostel).

The driver then pointed out one of the owners of the hostel to me who was riding his motorcycle. He then drove his motorcycle alongside the taxi towards Luxor. After the taxi stopped, the owner told me to get on the back of the motorcycle.

There I was with my rucksack weighing heavily on my back and holding my small bag in one of my hands. It would have been too girly to use my other hand to hold onto the stomach of the hostel owner so I just had one hand on his shoulder. I was very concerned for my immediate welfare and all I was thinking was, 'Please don't go over any bumps, please don't go over any bumps'.

As for the hostel, there were pictures of Bob Marley everywhere together with pictures of Che Guevaro and cannabis related pictures. The place was very cool and laid back. Ants obviously thought so too as loads of them had taken up residence here as well.

At the hostel, I got chatting to an American girl, Valerie and a Brummie rastafarian, Adie. The brummie was a very interesting and cool character. He sounded more Jamaican than from Birmingham. He was very loud and very friendly with it.

We all went for a cheap horsedrawn carriage around Luxor. We had a few pit stops at shops where Adie would barter with the shop keepers. His bartering style was 'You give me good price' and then lots of shouts of, 'No money, no money'. His coolness started to go down quickly when I noticed that he was buying utter tourist tat like hand carved wooden camels and elephants.

In the shops, Valerie would get sleazy attention from the carriage driver and the shop keepers. Egyptians really do like ogling women. Throughout Egypt I found that if there was a good looking woman then if l looked around then I would almost always find some Egyptian proper staring at her.

Back at the hostel, I booked a couple of tours for the following day for the Valley of the Kings in the morning and Karnak in the afternoon.

Later on, I went to walk along the Nile to see if I could get a felucca ride to Banana Island. I haggled and haggled and eventually got a price that I was happy with (about English £5).

There nothing special about Banana Island - there were just lots of unripe bananas on the island and a crocodile in a cage. I ate about 5 bananas (which tasted like, erm, normal bananas). I had hoped to sail back down the Nile as the sun was setting but I got my sunset times wrong and was an hour early.

In my spare hour, I had the time to look at Luxor Temple. I don't know why tourists pay to get into the place as you can see everything from outside the fence.

And then I watched the sun set over the Nile whilst listening to trance on my mp3 player. Truly beautiful.

Day 50

Had breakfast under the watchful eyes of Bob Marley posters and with the unpleasant company of lots of ants.

Before I got on the mini-bus for the tour of the Valley of the Kings, the driver told me not to mention the price that I had paid for the tour to anybody else. This obviously meant that I had either got a bargain or had been massively conned.

However, I began to feel that I had got myself a bargain tour when the tour bus kept stopping at much nicer establishments than the Bob Marley hostel to pick up passengers. Surely, a four star hotel stayer would have had to pay more for the tour than a minus one star hostel stayer.

When the tour arrived at the Valley of the Kings, we were told that no photos were allowed either in the tombs or outside the tombs. The latter seemed ridiculous and all this meant was that there were stupid amounts of touts selling Valley of the Kings picture souvenir books.

The Valley of the Kings ticket allowed the entry into three tombs. The guide said that only 9 of the 30 odd tombs were open. She said that we would see the best three tombs which were Ramses III, IV and IX (which just happened to be all closest to the entrance......hmmm).

The tombs that we saw were not that big but the hieroglyphics were rather impressive. Given all the detail and amount of the hieroglyphics, the Pharoahs were obviously worried about the prospect of death. Some heiroglyphics were more faded than others but alot were still rather bright and colourful. However, after three tombs, they all started to look the same. The guide did say that alot of them are exactly the same as each tomb have the same stories along the walls.

The guide advised us that there would be a mad scramble of people trying to sell things to us when we left the place and she was not wrong as a swarm of touts descended on us at the exit.

The guide also warned us about the quality of the items that we would try to be sold, particulat alabaster items which would not be genuine alabaster but made of plastic. Ten minutes later, the bus stopped at an alabaster factory and shop....oh dear, the evils of the guided tour.

After 5 minutes, I decided to leave the alabaster factory/shop and go back to sitting on the bus with the hope that people would follow my lead. However, I was only followed a few minutes later by a Chilean guy and a Croatian woman. Whilst we chatted, the other people spent 15 minutes buying overpriced genuine items.

The day before when I went into the shops with Adie and Valerie, the shop keepers told us that as we were not with a tour guide then we could automatically knock 50% off stated prices as that amounted to a tour guide's commission on a sale. Well, a tourist fool and their money are easily parted on a guided tour.

And then onto the Valley of the Queens where there were apparently over 70 tombs but only two were open. The tombs in the Valley of the Kings were more impressive though one Queen tomb (which was actually a princes tomb) had the disturbing remains of a foetus.

And then to the Temple of Hatshepsut, the Pharoah king who was actually a woman. Maybe the Egyptians were not that an advanced civilisation if they let their women pretend they were men kings.

Finally there was a quick visit to the Colossi of Memnon. Twp rather big statues but not overly impressive.

After an hour break, it was now for the tour of Karnak which was a very impressive set of temples, pillars and obelisks. As I was walking around, most of the time I kept thinking about the scenes from The Spy who Loved Me that was filmed here and had James Bond music going through my head.