Day 41

Our wake up call came in at 5:45 am on the dot. All of our tour group except the Canadians were on the 4th floor and our cabines were next to/opposite each other so you could hear the chorus of telephones going off. We got up and made our way down to the restaurant for breakfast. Surprisingly, we were the second ones there being beaten only by the Canadian family. Breakfast and afternoon tea are the only meals of the day when drinks are free. Unfortunately, the drinks are tea and coffee which didn't really help us although there was a really sweet orange drink that we had at breakfast instead.

At 7:00 am sharp we were all ready to head off. We piled on to the bus and headed out to the Valley of the Kings! We had to ride these little open buses from the entrance to the area around the tombs. Our entrance tickets gave us entry into three tombs in the valley. Special tombs, such as Tutankahmun, were extra so we decided not to take up the extra tombs. I can't remember which ones we visited now but they were all of the Ramses dynasty. The tombs were pretty cool, there was still lots of the original carvings and colours inside. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos. There were also hundreds of people already there and it was shaping up to be a hot day so we could understand, if not appreciate, the reason for the early start.

We left the Valley (had to fight our way through a group of hawkers whom had all set up shop around the exit - nasty( and headed to Queen Hatshepsut's Temple. On our way we stopped by an alabster shop where the workers still find, carve and paint alabaster stone in the same method that the ancient Egyptians used to. We succumbed and bought our first souvenir of the trip - a little limestone carving for home.

Queen Hatshepsut, or as Ibrahim joked, "Hot Chicken Soup", was the only woman to rule Egypt as a Pharoah. Her temple was carved into the side of a mountain but unfortunately a lot of the temple was damaged due to natural disasters, such as earth quakes and floods, and vandalism. One of the really sad things is that a lot of the carvings in a lot of the temples were vandalised by early Christians that were using the temples as refuges before Christianity was legalised. They found the carvings offensive so defaced them. The interesting this about this temple was that this was one of the few temples that hadn't been defaced by early Christians. This had been defaced by Hatshepsut's step son. There was a struggle for power between her and her step son and when he finally won he ordered her name and all carvings bearing her face to be destroyed.

We had to catch little open buses from the car park to near the temple again. The temple was hot. Really hot. There was absolutely no shade and it was midday and there were three different tiers. Needless to say, we didn't spend too long on each one before making our way back to the shade of the cafeteria. We caught the bus back and once again had to duck and weave our way through the hawkers lining the exit.

From here we went to see the Collosus of Memnon, two large statues that are all that remains of an ancient temple. It was just a quick stop, out of the bus for some photos and then back on the bus to the ship for lunch and to start sailing up the Nile. One of the best things was walking back onto the ship to find warm towels and refreshing lemon drinks waiting for us. It was a fantastic cure to feeling hot, sweaty and dirty.

We had all had lunch and were sitting around chatting when we realised that the ship had started moving so we all dashed up to the sun deck and watched the ship leave. We changed into our swimmers and bobbed around in the pool while we watched the scenary pass. We didn't have any other excursions planned for the rest of the day so we spent it swimming and reading on the sun deck. Hard, I know.

We had to meet Ibrahim that evening for an information session regarding our visits and the harsh reality of working in the Egyptian tourism industry. Most people working in tourism earn bugger all so the way they make their living is off tips. So he informed us when we should tip, who we should tip, how much we should tip, etc. In summary, we should tip almost everybody - the porters, bus drivers, the cruise crew, the toilet cleaners,the cats and dogs... It wasn't so much the amounts as when you do the conversion, it's a few dollars here and there. But it's a few dollars constantly and it's just such a different culture to what we have at home that we were quite uncomfortable about it. He did mention that tipping wasn't obligatory and that if you were happy with your service then you could but sometimes it didn't quite feel that way, especially when the people asked for a tip!

We were starting at 7:30 am the next morning so we had dinner, sat around chatting with the other people in the group and then retired to our room for the night. There was meant to be a disco at 9:30 in the bar but when we walked past it looked pretty unlively.