We take off for the west side of the Nile, crossing over a bridge. Tombs are on the West side, as people, like the sun, when they/it dies go to the West. First stop are the Colossi of Mennon, 75-foot high, 1000 ton statues that once guarded the entrance to the now-completely-eroded mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. They are massively impressive.
We continue on to the temple of Queen Hatchesput at Deir el-Bahri, which is magnificently situated at the foot of sheer sandstone cliffs. The temple stands out against these cliffs, but is restored so that it looks almost modern, which is rather disappointing. Magdi tells us of the most interesting features, located on the second floor of the three-story temple, and we pretty-much limit our exploration to those. We have been carrying umbrellas to shade us from the blisteringly hot sun, which, again today, raises the temperature well above 100 degrees.
A quick stop at an alabaster "factory." Alabaster is a big product here and the "factory" is the type of place you see all around the world, designed to tell you a little bit about the product, but primarily to sell. Thus far, we've avoided damage at papyrus, perfume and alabaster factories in Egypt. Carol apparently is driving too hard a bargain on white cotton blouses, and so has come up empty-handed, despite having indicated a willingness to pay as much as four dollars for one. But she remains undaunted.
We drive next to the Valley of the Kings, which houses the tombs of so far about 65 kings, all built into the mountainside. The visitor's center contains a neat plastic model of the valley that shows the terrain, and, underneath the plastic contains small boxes showing location of the tombs. Magdi explains the construction of the tombs--the carving of the mountainside, polishing of the walls, carving of the figures set out in square grids and finally the painting. Construction of tombs began with the ascendancy of the king to the throne, but completion was delayed until after death, when the workers had the 70 days of the mummification process to complete the work. The length of the king's reign would determine the amount of work that could be done in a tomb.
Our entrance ticket entitles us to enter three of the tombs, and we pay $20 extra to see the tomb of Ramses VI, which we've heard is quite impressive. The graves that people can visit are rotated on an annual basis, to minimize the damage caused to any tomb by visits. Just the breathing of large numbers of people can cause damage over a period of time. Cameras are now not allowed at all in the Valley, because people did not abide by the restrictions on flash. While this is a bit disappointing, it does cause rungs to move more quickly. Guides are not allowed in the tombs (this was the case in some other places, as well). While this limits what one can see and understand, again it has the positive affect of moving things along. Given the very large crowds and the hear, this is really a blessing. Seeing the tombs was terrific, and paying to see Ramses VI was well worth it, both because it was the most impressive of those we saw and because the substantial extra fee meant that there were very few other people in the tomb.
We are driven next to our hotel on the West side, the Al Moudira, a beautifully-decorated old boutique hotel owned by a Lebanese woman.
Little known, it is favored by our tour planner, Jim Berkeley, who insisted we stay there after Dick Kiphart's friend recommended a change to the Winter Palace. We are completely done in by the heat, so we order cold drinks to go with the box lunches prepared for us by our ship and spend the afternoon relaxing. Grounds here are quite lovely. Went out to the pool around 5:30, and probably would have stayed and swum, except that there were bugs, and Germans, so came back to the room for a pre-dinner game of gin rummy. Actually, English is decidedly not the principal language one hears spoken among tourists, and the English that is heard comes mainly from people from the UK, who can pop down to Egypt in four hours for a holiday, something that many of them appear to do multiple times. There is a good deal of Spanish, Italian, German and French, as well as many Russians, who come for inexpensive vacations. Also people from various parts of the Orient. So, being from the US is a bit exotic.
Excellent dinner tonight in lovely courtyard setting at our hotel.
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