Day 52- Cairo

Day 52- 6 October 2008 Today was the start of my top deck essential egypt tour. We went to the Egyptian museum and had a guided tour through some parts of the museum. In particular we saw the coffins, death mask and other treasures from King Tutankuman. This was a king who only reined for about 9 years and died when he was 18. After this we headed to Giza to see the Pyramids up close and personal. We first looked around the largest of the pyramids and went for a short climb up part of the pyramid climbing the massive blocks of stone that were brought here from Aswan by the egyptians (or little green men if you believe the stories), then the second pyramid (which we went into). Down a very small passage way and steps, where there is no fresh air, we went deep into the pyramid where the former tombs were. It was amazing but very stuffy (the smell of deceased pharohs was still in the air). We also checked out the small third pyramid and also got a great view of all the pyramids at the top of the hill. We then drove down and saw the sphinx which is massive and missing part of its nose which was blown off by a cannon by a disgruntled vistor who invaded egypt many many many years ago. The whole site is quite vast, but very close to civilisation but the dessert and nothingnerss is still behind the site and despite being so close to the city is just amazing. Its amazing that you cannot walk around any site without being hassled by egyptians to buy postcards or dodgy souvenirs. We were suppose to catch the train to Aswan tonight but there was to be a 5-10 hour delay so we were driven by bus to luxor instead. The bus was better than the train as the Rumours were the train is pretty auwful. This trip started at 9.30pm. From 6 am we had to go by convoy to the rest of the way to luxor. This meant that we were one of 60 coaches in a line (interposed with police cars with armed guards (holding machine guns) travelling along the road. At the start of the trip we saw a smashed up police in the starting depot (no doubt from a previous convoy trip) and along the way an overturned bus on the side of the road as well as a few cars smashed up onthe side of the road. Our tour guide though assures us that it is now safe to travel all around egypt but they go via convoy still as it is provided by the egyptian government... We arrived safely at 12.30pm the next day in luxor with a little, but not much sleep.