Luxor

we left yesterday at 445am. ewwwww. it was still dark. It took an hour picking up the others and finally we were on our way. there was 120 buses! 120! To travel on a bus with tourists in Egypt, a military escort is required. anyway, it was a 4 hour drive on this tiny little bus with no leg room for poor Doug.

it was SOOOOOOOOO hot. Apparently, it was only 100, but the guide told us 44C, which is like 110. it was quite disgusting. we went to Valley of the Kings burial site, which is where King Tut was buried, but we had absolutely no money, so we couldn't go. the bank was down, and the Canadian bank restricts me to 100 CDN a day. very frustrating. so we were moneyless. English was also like the third language spoken by our tour guide and made it sound like if we didn't pay extra for this boat trip across the Nile, we wouldn't get to do it. then we found it it was for the return trip, but we had all ready paid. sigh. and spent the last of our funds. but it ended up being a very good trip. The driver of the boat was pretty funny, I kept making motions about crocodiles being in the water, and he said "nnoooooo, crock-e-deals", and later he actually jumped in the water for a swim bc it was so hot. that was pretty funny. he also gave me the handle and let me steer the boat as well for about 5 minutes. I have a picture that I will post. The other people in our group were German and were giving our tour guide a hard time, I guess being very rude, though we missed much of it. when we got to Valley of the Kings the tour guide told us that that German man, who was very gay, a fact I picked up on before I saw him holding his partners hand, and called him a harlot. funny. so the Germans were not allowed on the boat back across the Nile. we were in it with some nice Belgian people who were celebrating their 25th anniversary.
Doug swears he saw a crockedeal. I am not so sure. but there was no way in hades I was climbing in there either.

we also went to this MASSIVE temple early in the morning, whose name is escaping me. I will post pictures of it. I can't imagine how it would have looked a few thousand years ago. It would have been stunning. I was thinking how cool it would be for someone to do computer generated photos of what it would have looked like thousands of years ago. I am sure it was utterly majestic.

So today I finish my shopping. I seem to have misplaced my hat and still hold hopes of finding it. I love that hat. it was SO NICE yesterday and its going to be in all my pictures. it was such a fabulous hat. sigh. I hope I find it.
tomorrow we are off to Cairo at 830am and hope to catch a 445 to Frankfurt. we stay a night in Frankfurt and then we are going to hopefully get on a flight to somewhere in North america on Saturday and make our way back to Calgary. the joys of flying non rev.