Requiem for a Pen (And Goodbye to Egypt)

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Modes of transportation: 🚗🚢👟🛫🚐

Nothing like waking up to a desert sunrise.

We got our wake-up call at 4:00 in the morning, but we were already slightly awake this time. We had mostly packed the night before, but we still had to put the finishing touches on. We met Ashraf just in time, left our tip for the wait staff, and said goodbye to the beautiful boat. Ashraf grabbed Sarah’s bag, which earned him some angry words from a porter (he went back and, we assume, tipped him to be polite).

We slept in the car on the way for about an hour and a half before stopping at a pit stop. We awoke to exactly what you’d picture for the Egyptian desert. There was nothing except power lines and sand as far as we could see. It was awesome.

Thought this was a wild Egyptian cat, but it definitely belonged to the owners.
What a cutie!

We ate our breakfast and saw a supermodel cat. But everyone must have thought so, because there were always groups around it trying to pet it (it didn’t seem amused).

It was a 4 hour drive to Abu Simbel, so most of our morning was from the car. This is where the road forked to Sudan.

The temple at Abu Simbel was amazing! It’s also pretty astonishing how they were able to move the whole thing. Basically, they knew creating Lake Nassar would flood the site of this temple, so they cut it up and elevated it up the mountain it was on. It’s a pretty amazing feat, and the temple itself is awesome. It was built by Ramses II (the big one) to help convert the Nubians and unite Egypt. It’s pretty sick.

On October 22nd and February 22nd, the sun rays illuminate the “inner sanctum” of the temple. People think that these dates are King Ramses’ birthday and coronation day. We were close enough to see a little light (pictured above).
We stayed around an hour and a half, and then started the long drive back. We took naps and arrived in no time, about an hour twenty before our flight. We said our goodbyes and tipped Ashraf and the drivers before heading into the airport.

First off, we had to go through security just to get into the airport. They had to go through Eric’s bag, so the security guy was talking and making jokes. He pulled out a pen (which was in the outer webbing of the bag) and said “bomba?” to which Sarah, thinking he was speaking Arabic, said “yeah.” So that was good.

Then he asked if he could have that pen (which was a pretty nice G2), and Eric just stared at him, trying to get out of it. Eventually, the security guy sort of just kept it. Was the whole “secondary screening” a shakedown for Eric’s pen? We’ll never know.

The line was very long for the check in counter for Air Cairo (which only had one flight, so we knew they were all there for the 2:40; we weren’t worried). We had an e-ticket, so we asked a security person if we could get on the flight with it, to which they said “yes.” And then they let us through security (they confiscated Eric’s nail file……)

Debating whether or not to wait in this line. (We decided not to but had to come back anyway)

Turns out, it wasn’t a boarding pass, so we left our gate (and security) and stood in the check-in line. We got our passes and headed back through security. Luckily our flight was delayed heavily so there was no rush.

Interesting collection from Egyptian TSA, one nail file richer…

The flight was all good and we made it back to Cairo without issue. We ended up booking an airport hotel since we had an early flight, and we decided to walk. It wasn’t a bad walk, but strangely, the hotel security was like an embassy or something. We had to put our bags through X-rays and go through metal detectors, and the guards stopped us as we were entering. It was strange.

Whoops, the $5 headphones we got in Vietnam didn’t quite make it.
We didn’t want to pay for an Uber so we walked to our hotel from the airport. Turns out walking was the right instinct…

We wanted to get some last Egyptian food, so we called an Uber and headed to a decent looking shawarma place. It just so happens that we ended up in the worst earnest Uber of all time. This guy literally couldn’t follow directions, and kept getting off at the wrong exits. It was a 10 minute ride that took 45 (and it’s not like he got paid extra—Uber is a fixed price). At the end, it took us 10 minutes to get him to understand that we paid in the app already (he had 28 rides, so maybe he was just trying to scam us? Who can tell in Egypt).

Anyway, we got some shawarma and it turned out to be sort of strange. Sarah thought it tasted rancid, but Eric was convinced it was just the marinade that made it slightly tangy. We have a little to some cats nearby, but overall finished our food and headed back.

After that, we wrote some postcards and went to sleep around 9:30. We had to catch another morning flight—fortunately, business class this time.

We saw this cool map showing many of the places we’ve visited along the Nile.

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