So this morning we got up super early to head over to the Nile and meet up with a man named Tayeb to ride a ferry over the Nile to the West Bank and go see the Valley of the Kings, Queens and Hatshepsut Temple. It cost us 1 LE to ride the ferry one way, we sat up on top and could see both Luxor and the West Bank, very pretty!

We had arranged a taxi with Tayeb's brother for 25 LE, and it was air conditioned! YAY! I never knew I'd yearn for AC as badly as I have on this trip. He first took us to the Valley of the Kings because it is the farthest and takes the longest, you only get to see 3 tombs with admission and that doesn't include King Tutankahmen, which we were told by other tourists has been ransacked thoroughly over the years and most of its treasures are in the Egyptian Museum which we already saw. Plus the admission to King Tut's tomb cost the same as the general admission! No way am I paying that!

We decided randomly to see the tombs of Tawsert/Sethnakht, Tuthmosis III and Ramses II. Most had vivid colorful hieroglyphics in their entrances, from there most of them lost color or were only paintings of stick figures on the wall, rather than actually inscribed hieroglyphics. My favorite was Tuthmosis III, his had a large well and catwalk over it to deter thieves from that time period, and it was the most inaccessible tomb being built way up in this cleft of the mountain range and having many steep staircases that you had to climb up and down to get to the sarcophagus. You can even see inside the sarcophagus where the kings outline had been carved to show which direction he would have been laid to rest. All of them were impressive though.

After this we went to the temple of Hatshepsut, which is a grand splendor to behold, it is enormous and you get a feeling of being so insignificant as your walking up the massive stairs/ramp to the temple. Once inside though it's a bit of a let down, not much of anything interesting inside the temple. The exterior of the pillars do have some very beautiful and grand hieroglyphics though.

Our last site to visit was the Valley of the Queens, this was much less impressive. There were only four or five tombs you could go into, and they are much smaller than the kings. However they are way more colorful throughout and still were enjoyable, even with the haggling peddlers trying to get baksheesh. It only took us about 15-20 minutes to walk through these tombs where the Kings took an hour and 15 minutes and Hatshepsut took about 20.

After we finished we took the car back to the ferry and paid our 25 LE each for the half day's trip. We then took the ferry back over the Nile and decided to get a mango Popsicle which really hit the spot! Then we got some more liters of water and headed out on the quest for lunch! We found this place overlooking Luxor temple with an outdoor terrace and lots of shade trees, the staff were very helpful and prompt. This must have been the place for tourists because everyone there was one and most were from England. We got mango drinks (they are our favorite drinks on this trip!) and water as well as Shawarma and salad. The Shawarma is basically lamb with red and green peppers, and the salad was small bits of cucumber, tomato, parsley, onions, and TONS of mozzarella, it was SO GOOD!

Lisa is still very dehydrated so she wasn't up to exploring Karnak temple or the mummification museum, so we spent the rest of our time in Luxor at this restaurant just talking with each other and listening to the other tourists, then two people from England started talking to us and making jokes with us, it was fun and quite relaxing, though still really hot!

When it was time to go Lisa and I headed back to the hotel and got our bags and more water. We then got a taxi to the airport for 25 LE and took two small planes from Luxor back to Cairo and then after an hour layover from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh. The airport at Cairo makes no damn sense, apparently there are actually three different airports, the original one, and an add on, and now a new one undergoing construction they are all on the same land but some are completely inaccessible, its weird! The one we were in had all these different levels and every part of the security, baggage process is on a different floor, each airline has its own security checkpoint and waiting area (on different floors of course!) and they are completely glassed off from the rest of airport, so no one can actually walk around the airport, its so dumb and not cost effective at all!

After arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh we still had to get a taxi to take us to Dahab which was an hour away. We got a taxi driver to agree to 270 LE and began the trip. It was a little odd because there were 3 security checkpoints and we had to keep giving our passports to the driver, he'd tell them we were from Canada (because that's what Lisa kept insisting we tell everyone, she was all worried about how we'd be received as Americans) and then they'd see our US passports, I was kinda nervous about it being an issue but we didn't have any trouble.

Once we got into Dahab our driver didn't know where we wanted to go, so we had to keep asking people for directions to Assilah square. We finally got to the square and were close to where the next couchsurfing host lived so we had our taxi stop. He tried to get us to pay an additional 20 LE per person for the checkpoints but Lisa told him no way cause he had never even told us there would be checkpoints and he didn't have to pay anything to go through them! So he just drove off and we waited with some locals for Matt our next host to get home. The locals were very friendly even insisting that we have dinner with them :)

So finally Matt gets home and he goes over everything with the place (like there's no hot water, you can't flush toilet paper, etc!) We stayed up for a little longer chatting and then it was time for bed!