Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/MnCeUGjemNDGabnc6
After Ukraine, decided to go to Egypt again (already went for a week a few years ago) primarily to scuba dive again. Flew to Istanbul for a night to get my COVID PCR test at their airport (~$30 and a 4 hour turnaround, which is amazing), and then flew to Hurghada on the Red Sea coast.
Dove there for a week and it was fantastic. I think overall, Nusa Penida in Bali was better for the “big” sightings (manta rays, sea turtles, octopii, barracuda, etc.), but the visibility in Hurghada was beyond amazing for 4/5 days I was there (the last day was only “decent” visibility of like 10-15 meters). As luck would have it, the only day I was with a diver who had a Go-Pro was the final day, so the few pictures that are there really don’t do the Red Sea justice at all. Otherwise, we could see ~35 meters which is basically as clear as you can get, and this let the colors of the reefs and the fish really shine on through. We would dive past massive cliff walls of coral reef that were probably close to 100 feet tall, shimmy through narrow coral reef canyons, and float over rolling hills of coral. It truly did look magical and fantastical, with all these brightly colored fish darting around the rainforest of the coral reefs. It was just a cacophony of bright colors. The visibility really elevated these dives above and beyond. In terms of wildlife sightings, we saw one whale shark in the distance (probably 30ish meters away so not too close), a white tipped shark sleeping under a coral umbrella, various stingrays, a bunch of red sea walkers, some moray eels, a ton of lion fish, and of course clownfish in their wavy coral homes. On the final day, we also saw two wrecks off the coast of Hurghada – these were probably more recent sinkings as the coral growth wasn’t too strong. The first one was a derelict submarine that unfortunately we couldn’t go into, but were able to dive around it. The second was this sunken ship which had the beginnings of a reef growing on it. Obviously these weren’t quite as cool as the ruins of Chernobyl, but it was still really neat to see a couple of underwater wrecks for the first time. Also definitely a bit symbolic that I saw the wrecks the day after the US election.
Hurghada also had one of the better hostels I’ve ever stayed in. I think part of it was the buildup of COVID restrictions but it was a super social hostel and we all went out together every night to hang out. It was also pretty much filled 100% every night, and everyone there was a long term traveler (like myself! I guess). One of the coolest things I have ever seen was this one German kid who had surgery on the back of his hand to implement a card chip in there, so he could pay at contactless credit card machines by literally just scanning his hand…this was some cyberpunk shit if I’ve ever seen it. I also found a nice little British pub to watch some soccer games with some of the English guys from the hostel, though unfortunately Leeds got soundly beaten by Leicester in their match. We also stayed in and got $5 bottles of Egyptian Wine (surprisingly not bad!) from a nearby Indian/Italian restaurant (…) and just drank inside for a few nights as well.
After a week of diving in Hurghada, I took a bus to go back to Luxor. Figured that if I was already in Egypt for diving that I might as well see the country again. Was here with a kid from LA who I met in Hurghada. We spent two days in the Bob Marley Shareif Hostel, and the hostel owner was legit the most jovial and nicest guy I have met since my 9th grade Bio teacher Mr. Miraglia…both men were basically like Santa Claus without the long white beard. Luxor was pretty cool to see again for two days. The first day we spent in the East Bank, and saw Karnak, Luxor Temple, and the Luxor Museum. The museum was pretty compact but still a cool site, while Karnak was 80% eh but 20% out of this world – the hall with 100+ massive pillars still standing. Each pillar was like 10-15 feet in diameter and looked like 80ish feet tall. Honestly it’s just such an amazing area to wander around, and you can see all the hieroglyphs carved into the pillars. One thing we learned here from one of the guides who attempted to latch himself on us in order to get tips was that the Coptic Christian cross was derived from the Ankh Key of Life hieroglyph that is so prominent in almost every Egyptian site that we saw in Luxor. Luxor Temple was overall pretty decent – the clear highlight here were the massive statues of Ramses II sitting and standing that were scattered throughout the temple. Ramses II was basically like Kim Jong Un on steroids – I feel like the man had a massive inferiority complex as he spent much of his 70 year reign building massive temples left and right (Ramesseum in the west bank, the pillar hall in Karnak, the entrance to Luxor Temple, and Abu Simbel).
The second day, we went to the West Bank. First we went to the Medinet Habu temple, which was an overall cool temple that had some impressive hieroglyphs carved into the walls that still survived. After we went to the Valley of the Kings. The standard ticket lets you into three of the open tombs (there were like 8 open), and I also paid an extra 100 EGP for entrance to the Ramses V+VI tomb. This extra one was the clear highlight of the show, and was almost perfectly preserved with bright and vibrant colors shining throughout. Given how ubiquitous hieroglyphs are in pop culture, seeing them in almost perfect condition here was neat – I’m fairly positive I did not make it over to this tomb the last time I was in Luxor. Of the 3 tombs I saw in the standard ticket, the best by far was Ramses IV, which was similar to the V+VI one except it was in worse condition with the hieroglyphs. The other two tombs were sort of forgettable to be honest, but from what I looked up it seems like all of the other tombs open for tourists were not that cool compared to the Ramses V+VI and Ramses IV tombs. We then went over to Hatsheput’s temple, which is probably the single most scenic view in all of Luxor. It’s like a Roman style pillared temple (that outdates Roman temples by 1k+ years) set to a backdrop of an overarching mountain. The temple itself was a bit empty but the empty walk into it was pretty epic (and swelteringly hot). Our final temple stop in the West Bank was the Ramesseum, which inspired the Shelley poem Ozymandias. There’s a beyond massive statue of Ramses II that lies collapsed, and the temple had some of the best surviving hieroglyphs on walls that I saw.
The only new thing I saw from this trip vs. my last one was the Ramses V+VI tomb, which might have been the highlight of all of Luxor for me. Still, I am glad that I made it out here and it’s really cool to see these epic, massive structures all on your own due to the lack of tourists. The single most impressive thing is the age…everything I saw was between 3000 to 4000 years old, with most a bit closer to 3000. Having just seen the Roman ruins in Turkey, I definitely think the Egyptian ones are way more impressive given how much more of it has survived (arid desert climate certainly helps here) and how much older they are. It’s definitely way more impressive than the Hindu temples of India and Cambodia in that these are a full 2000+ years older, but I think overall prefer the ancient Hindu ones simply due to a preference in architectural style.
One unique thing I ate in Luxor was hemp…it was a part of some mint curry that was used as a dip for bread and pita. Honestly it was delicious…speaking of hemp, while in Luxor, the kid from LA I was with was accosted by the locals ~20 times a day (this is not an exaggeration) to buy some weed. Think it was a combo of him being white, having visible tattoos, and smoking cigarettes. Think I brought this up before but one thing I like about travelling is just how many people have tattoos and smoke…coming from my yuppie circles of Manhasset, Northwestern, and then “higher end” Chicago, those were two things that were not really common at all. I feel like the majority of long term backpackers I have met aren’t actually wealthy at all, and are rather solidly middle class at best (certainly less well off than anyone I know from high school or college). A lot of them either work in service or in seasonal jobs (logging, farming, oil rigs are some of the more common ones I’ve seen) so travel for 6 months and work for 6 months, or do some sort of computer science shit to work while travelling. It really is a question of will power and desire more than anything else…I actually get kind of annoyed when people tell me what I’m doing is “so impressive”, to me it’s the same as a 16 year old wanting to become a doctor and planning around that, except my plan was more “unorthodox” for the career focused bubbles that I have been in. Especially when you come from the background that a lot of my peers in high school and college are from and what I was fortunate enough to have, a lot of people can do long term travel if they really want to/are willing to sacrifice other goals.
I decided against going down to Aswan to see the Philae and Abu Simbel (which is AWESOME but it’s like a 1hr visit tops for 8-10 hours of total driving from Aswan) or from taking day trips to see the Abydos/Dendera/Kom Ombo/Edfu temples from Luxor. Not sure why I wasn’t quite feeling it…Egypt was great, but just sort of wanted a change in scenery I suppose. Was originally going to meet up with some people in Cairo and take a trip to the Siwa Oasis but getting there was complicated due to security measures and we collectively felt it wasn’t worth the effort and price (plus the expected bribery), so I just hung out in Cairo for a few days after Luxor.
Cairo was pretty nice overall, definitely got a better impression of it than last time. The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square has a world class collection that is so poorly displayed that it’s impressive. The definite highlight there was seeing King Tut’s mask, though I opted against paying the ~$40 fee to take a picture of it. I also made it out to the Coptic quarter, which I did not do last time…this was a shockingly tranquil area that was a literal oasis near the center of one of the most crowded and hectic cities on the planet. These were all Coptic Churches allegedly built on the sites of where Jesus and his family spent time in during his early childhood…I didn’t even know he made it out to Cairo but I guess that’s pretty neat. And I also made it out to the Islamic quarter again which was really nice. Some of the mosques and the Ottomen era buildings there had some stunning architecture that was close to rivaling the stuff in Istanbul.
The highlight of Egypt though (even more so than the diving!) was the pyramids. Because of COVID, there were like 50 total tourists there. I spent close to 4 hours just hanging out in the area, and it’s honestly the most impressive site I have ever seen, ahead of the Taj Mahal. It’s not my favorite, but it’s definitely the most awe-inspiring. It’s just mind-boggling to think how old they are, at ~4500 years old. I hiked up to a hilly viewpoint where I got a panorama of all 3 pyramids and spent close to two hours just sort of zoning in and out and staring at them, with a good soundtrack to accompany it. Egypt is 100% worth visiting if only just for the pyramids. I don’t think any words or pictures can ever do them justice, and because of COVID you get it pretty much all to yourself. Met up with some of the hostel people near the Sphynx afterwards as we all wanted to do our own thing…honestly, it’s going to be tough for the hostels in South Africa and onwards to top this as the Egypt group I met (was mostly the same people in Hurghada and Cairo) was absolutely one of the cooler groups of hostel people I’ve ever met. One of the girls I met was interested in going to Kurdistan (in Iraq) sometime “soon” so that’s something I definitely will look into if our timelines match up.
Flying to South Africa after was a fun little ordeal. The PCR test in Cairo was a whopping $170, compared to the $30 one in Istanbul. But my one way was only $400 (and booked 3 days in advance) so I went with that. When checking in for the flight in the airport, Ethiopian insisted that I needed a return flight to Cairo with them in order to check in…even an onward flight with another airline would not work. I wound up buying a return on a random date, and after landing in Cape Town found out that Ethiopian has a no cancellation policy. Luckily my Chase Sapphire card said that I can contest the claim and get the money back since I tried to cancel within 24 hours of booking, so there’s no real monetary loss here, but I 100% will never fly on that clown airline again.
Anyways, the plan is to spend a week lazing around Cape Town and doing some stuff here (hikes, surfing maybe, cape peninsula tour), before hopefully making some road trip friends to rent a car and see the rest of the country (and Namibia afterwards maybe!).