Pretending to be mute does not keep the street vendors away, actually it’s even worse.

So we have made it to Aswan which is more south on the Nile. Our time in Luxor was pretty nice. We did toured the Valley of the Kings and went into a couple tombs. Then we went to Hatshepsut’s temple (HUGE!), Karnak Temple (even more HUGE!) and Luxor Temple. When I post pictures (hopefully when I get back to Cairo) I’ll go into more details. I do wish I could have gone into more tombs but we didn’t have time for more that day so there were only two.

Our guide said there were over 11,000 tourists that day and that didn’t count the people staying locally in Luxor like ourselves. These were just the people bussed in. so you can imagine how crazy and busy it was. It was difficult to imagine the time when Pharaohs walked the land but I did have a moment (while 40 other people probably in this one stone room) where a Pharaoh would come to this small stone room and make offerings to his god. For about 5 seconds I was able to put myself in that time and imagine what it would be like. It’s pretty amazing.

Today we are heading off for another full day of tours. This time we are joining with a larger group (British) I think and heading Aswan Dam (which is where the Nile is dammed and where all the crock’s stop making their way up the river (as well as the sediment that once made the farm lands more fertile sadly) and we’re going to an island or two.

So some explanation for the mute subject line. Merchants of various kinds approach tourists on the street and try to get them to take a ride on their boats or horse drawn carriages or buy their stuff. Normally I just say la, la shukran, which means no, no thank you. But this time I pretended to have lost my voice. Well the little bugger followed me to the point that I had to cross the street. Next time I’m going to pull a Nell and just start making up my own language.

So it looks like my trip started with a bang and has progressed to a nice lull. When I get back to Cairo you’ll see more stuff because I can just use Hazem’s computer then.

Until next time…