Thursday: Breakfast at Rezeiky Camp, then the majority of the riders boarded the Luxury Bus to be driven to the Valley of the Kings, where we went to visit the tombs. To get there we had to cross over from the east to the west side of the Nile River.
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Road to the Valley of the Kings.
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The Nile River looked more impressive than I thought it would, but what was sad and depressing was the amount of Nile Riverboat Cruisers which were floating in the water, idle and without any activity on them. Egypt just doesn't have the tourists it should have.
Tourism used to be their greatest money earner, followed by the fees generated by the Suez Canal, but there just aren't any tourists around any more!
We arrived at the Valley of the Kings, and our Tour Guide Tony, issued us our tickets.
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| Listening to our tour guide, Tony. |
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| Judith in front of The Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple. |
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| Group photo in front of the temple at Al-Deir Al-Bahari |
Our tickets only allowed us to visit three tombs of choice, so we visited;
- KV 14 Tausert & Setnakht
- KV 8 Merenptah0
- KV 2 Rameses IV
Judith and I also paid an extra 100 Egyptian pounds each and bought tickets to see KV 62 which was Tutankhamen's, the famous Child King's Tomb. We couldn't come all this way to Egypt, and not see the most famous of all Tombs!
All the tombs we saw, were most impressive, and it was amazing to see how they were constructed (especially looking at it from a mining and rock engineering perspective).They were developed in relatively soft Limestone which is quite jointed.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos of the outside or the insides of any of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, which was a major disappointment :(
After the Valley of the Kings we traveled to Al-Deir Al-Baharu Temple which is a Complex of Mortuary Temples and Tombs, opposite the City of Luxor, part of the Theban Necropolis, built by Pharaoh Hatshepsut.
Our final destination was the Habu Temple Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, at Medinet Habu. The Temple is probably best known as the source of inscribed reliefs depicting the advent and defeat of the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramesses III.
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| Inside the Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple. |
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| An-May, Kyle and Charles inside the Habu Temple. |
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| Ceiling murals at the Habu Temple |
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| Team Treloar inside Habu Temple. |
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| Inside the Tomb of Ramesses IV |
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| Ramesses III Defeating the Sea People in the Battle of Djahy. |
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| Looking like an Egyptian... |
About 18 of us had a late lunch at the Oasis Restaurant just down the road from the Rezeiky Hotel Camp, although we had to wait over an hour for food (Kitchen went into panic mode!) all was not lost though, as the food was worth the wait.
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| Lunch at the Oasis Restaurant. |
We spent the second night at Rezeiky, had a late dinner, repacked our bags, before enjoying another night in a hotel.
Cheers,
Mike T.
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Our rest day's late night beer-shandy and ice creams!
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