We arrived in Cairo as the sun was setting on my 26th birthday. Just as in Italy, no customs official wished my happy birthday when perusing my passport :( We knew we had to get visas on arrival, but finding just where to buy them was tricky (turns out the 2 bank branches before the passport control are there for that). Getting a cab was a muddled affair too, but after being passed from fluent English-speaking taxi representative to broken-English speaking faux-driver to non-English speaking real driver, we set off for downtown Cairo. The driving is pretty similar to Turkey: where there are lanes, they're ignored. Where people in the west would use indicators, they use horns. Lighting a cigarette (with a match) while drifting across "lanes" at 60km/h in 2nd gear... that's driving Cairo style.

We arrived at our hotel at 7:30pm and just had time to drop off our bags and freshen up before the pre-departure meeting for our tour with Geckos at 8pm. There were 18 ppl on our tour: 2 Kiwis (us), 2 Americans, and the rest were evenly split between Australia and Canada. Early the next morning we all went to the pyramids and sphinx. It was quite hazy (polluted-looking) to begin with, but as we rounded the 1st pyramid, things began to clear and the photos improved. We went inside the burial chamber in the 2nd pyramid. There's nothing in there anymore, and it's darn stuffy, but it was worth it just to know what it was like. In the afternoon, a group of us went to the Egyptian museum to check out the kind of things would have been in the tombs. The same guide that showed us round the pyramids gave us a whistle-stop tour of the museum's masterpieces, which on reflection was a great way of seeing the place. There's so much stuff there. All of it amazing. Of course, seeing King Tut's sarcophagi (he had 8 in total, like a russian doll), and all the stuff he was buried with was a highlight. Bit of a shame you're not allowed to take cameras inside the museum, though. That evening we caught the overnight train south to Luxor (10hrs). The train left at 12:30, so everyone was pretty b*****ed by the time we got on board. The train itself was okay. We were in first class, and it seems wrong to complain when there are people in 2nd and 3rd classes in other carriages. We got some sleep. Not as much as a normal night, but enough. After checking into our hotel and having about an hour to freshen up, we rode horse drawn carriages to Karnak Temple, which is about 4 miles from Luxor town centre along the Nile. We had another guide with us to explain everything, starting with the basics of ancient Egyptian temple design, mythology and hieroglyphics, to the more specific details of Karnak. The temple itself is actually a complex of seven or eight, all of it in the open. The first thing that strikes you is the level of preservation. At the entrance there's an avenue of ram's headed sphinxes, some of which looking like they've just been carved (though others haven't faired so well). After Karnak, I felt a little blown away, but also felt like a picture of ancient Egypt was coming together. That evening before dinner our tour leader, Mohamed, organised a game of football for us at a local field. The pitch was dry dirt (it doesn't rain in Luxor) which was a bit slippery, but it was floodlit and came with a crowd of local kids to cheer us on (read: groan when we botched shots on goal). For dinner we took a boat to the western bank of the Nile and ate at nice restaurant with a view of the river. I haven't mentioned the food yet. It varied from good to fantastic in quality, and okay to cheap in price. Even our meal on Egyptair from Rome was amazing (though the Americanised meals on the flight to NY weren't so good). I'm a bit sick of falafel now, though. In the morning we crossed the Nile again and rode donkeys to the valley of the Kings. The donkey ride took about an hour, and was absolutely hilarious. Despite the sore behind I had for the next three days, the donkeys remain a highlight of the trip.

As for the valley of the kings, we had a guide to explain the significance again (more flesh on the ancient Egypt story), and entered three tombs, all with different styles and quirks. Interesting to compare and contrast the way pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings with those at the pyramids (though neither approach was successful in preserving the king's treasures for eternity... damn tomb raiders).

That afternoon we took the bus to Aswan (3.5hrs). We followed the Nile the whole way, so there were trees and signs of civilisation, but as always the desert was not far away.

We had a free morning in Aswan while most of the tour went on an optional extra to Abu Simbal (getting up at 3am, 6 hours travel, hundreds of US$... the sleep in just seemed better value... maybe one day we'll regret it). In the afternoon we all boarded our felucca and drifted down the Nile. It was great to lie back on the padded, shaded deck and just relax. We docked on an island the Egyptian govt gave to Nubians who lost their original land with the construction of the High Dam, and ate a great dinner at one of their houses.

The next day a few of us went to the Philae Temple, which, like the Nubians, was moved from one place (the island of Philae, funnily enough) to another due to dam building. While not as big as Karnak, Philae was astounding a) because it was all moved from one island to another brick my brick (1972-1982) b) because the art and hieroglyphics were some of the best preserved: the relief carvings looked so fresh it was hard to hold back the compulsion to touch them, c) the way Coptic Christians back in the 700s AD defaced some of the carvings (literally, they chiselled out the faces of the gods) and turned it into a Christian church, and d) the amazing setting on a brilliant blue day in January.

We all caught the 5:30pm train back to Cairo... 13 hours later we arrived.

After an hour to gather ourselves, our group split in two, half off to see the valley of the whales and the other half (including us) for a day trip to Alexandria. It was 3 hours straight drive through the desert to get there (and three back), so it felt like we had been on the move for the last 24 hours when we got back to our hotel in the evening. But it was nice to see another Egyptian city (one away from the Nile).

One thing it crystallised for me was how the tour to that point had had such a large bias towards ancient Egypt, which is why most people come, and is amazing. But modern Egypt is a very different place. It's an Arab state, strongly muslim, highly conservative. There's a lot of poverty (more than I expected). We managed to eek out some idea of how Egyptians live nowadays by interrogating Mohammed, but there was definitely something of the real ("now") Egypt we didn't get to understand as well as we got to know ancient Egypt.

We stayed on an extra night after our tour ended, which was best as I was struck down with a bug that had been going through some members of our tour. So our free day in Cairo was spent with me vomiting and Marisa running to the pharmacy and fanning me with pillows to keep my temperature down.

The good news: I survived.

I was well enough to make the flight to New York the next day (though I was unable to keep down the roast beef dinner they served mid-flight)... And it's only now, four days after being struck down, that my appetite has returned.

But it's all part of travelling, eh?

Hopefully that's the first and the last bug of this final leg.

Next: New York and Boston (brrrrrrrrrrr)