Surprisingly Friendly Egypt!

By Michele Perrin Gustafson

Our family of four, including our children Anne (12) and David
(10), just returned from an Easter Break tour of Egypt. Prices
are great right now: we booked our 12-day tour through Gate 1
Travel for $2,859 per person, including airfare from Orange
County, flights within Egypt, a five-day Nile River Cruise with
sightseeing all along the way, a flight to Abu Simbel, most
meals and a knowledgeable guide who was with us the entire time.

When we got to Cairo, we hired a guide to take us into the city

for a Nile River cruise featuring whirling dervishes and a belly
dancer. As we returned to the hotel at 10:30 pm, we heard loud
music in the lobby. Our driver said, 'It's a wedding!" and he
trailed us in to get a look. I saw that the bride and groom were
surrounded by their guests who were dancing to the music of the
drummers and the flute player, so I couldn't get close to take a
picture. Finally, their professional photographer grabbed me by
the hand and pulled me to the front of the crowd to take
some great shots of the lovely bride in her heavily-beaded
gown. Then one of the guests asked me if I wanted to join them
for the wedding! My husband and I ended up seated with the
mother of the bride, and the women of the wedding party pulled
me up to dance with them at every opportunity, taking turns
trying (unsuccessfully!) to teach me to belly dance. We danced
until the party ended at 1:30 am even though we hadn't slept in
24 hours! We exchanged e-mail addresses at the end with promises
to meet again.

We flew the next morning to Hurghada on the Red Sea. We

chartered a boat for a day there to take three of us scuba
diving, with my son snorkeling with a crew member. Our daughter
completed her PADI certification there, and was very comfortable
with the local dive instructor. The diving was outstanding! We
saw lots of giant lionfish, many sea anemones, each with its
pair of very territorial clownfish, a huge octopus, and a purple
moray eel over 6' long who swam among us like a pet.

Then we transferred by van with our small tour group of 13 and

our guide to Luxor to check into our floating hotel, the Queen
of Hansa. We headed out for the Valleys of the Kings and Queens,
where over 100 pharoahs and their consorts are buried. We found
that the tombs were lavishly decorated with colorful reliefs of
the gods and pharoahs, although all but the famous tomb of
Tutankhamun had been robbed before modern times.

Near the Valleys is the beautifully reconstructed Temple of

Hatshepsut, the first female Pharoah of Egypt. Here we met our
first of many groups of local school children touring the site.
They swarmed around us, asking where we were from, how old we
were and what our names were. Then they begged us to take
pictures of them, jumping and mugging for the photos. Even their
teachers smiled shyly and took photos of us with the children,
as if we were part of the sightseeing!
We stayed overnight at Luxor to tour the huge temple complexes
of Luxor and Karnak. We began our cruise down the Nile the next
afternoon, accompanied by many similar 5-story ships, each
carrying about 150 people, all topped by a swimming pool and
deck area. The cool breezes on the wide Nile were refreshing as
we watched the local people along the palm-lined shore
harvesting the sugarcane crop, loading it onto wagons pulled by
scrawny little donkeys. The farmers’ children would run along
the shore, waving wildly at us as we passed by, shrieking with
delight if we waved back.

We stopped along the Nile to tour the Esna, Edfu, Komombo and
Philae Temples. We took a short flight to Abu Simbel to see the
Ramses II and Nefertari temples, carved into solid rock
hillsides. Unbelievably, these two temples and the large
complex at Philae were relocated due to flooding from the Aswan
Dam.
We returned to Cairo from Aswan by plane, and finally got to see
the Great Pyramids at Giza. The best part of this visit was the
20-minute camel ride which cost $10. The camels made lots of
funny noises and even funnier faces, and we got some wonderful
photos of our family on camelback with the pyramids behind us.
We also visited the extensive Cairo Museum, where we got to see
many of the 120,000 items recovered from the Tutankhamun tomb,
including the solid gold sarcophagus and the brilliant gold mask
that has become a symbol of Egypt.

We toured the Citadel and some of the largest mosques and Coptic
churches of Cairo, as well as the giant statue of Ramses II at
Memphis and the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. We were surprised to
see donkeys pulling carts on the freeway as their owners beat
them heartily with sticks to try to keep up with traffic.

I loved the Khan El Khalili bazaar, a maze of alleys with shops

of every description overflowing with colorful wares and
navigated by throngs of people. Our tour agency provided an
armed guard in Cairo, and our guard, Rafik, accompanied our
family in the market. Whenever we wanted to buy anything, he
told the merchant we would pay a tenth of what he asked, with a
small nod towards his gun!
As much as I enjoyed Rafik’s company, I didn’t feel that a guard
was necessary, because everywhere we went people were
“annoyingly” friendly (per my 12-year old daughter!). People on
streets, at the temples, and in the shops, asked where we were
from, and were delighted when we told them “California.” They
always responded with a heartfelt, “Welcome!” I believe one
reason we saw almost no other Americans in Egypt is that
Americans don’t know how “welcome” we really are there.