Here's Richard again, helping out the villager and his son. You could tell he had the time of his life on this trip. He was constantly making everyone laugh with his antics. A very fun fun guy to travel with.
Later, we went on a camel ride for a couple of hours along the Nile and through villages.
(To see more of the camel ride, click on the photo below)
After checking in to our hotel in Luxor (The Mercure), we went to McDonalds for dinner. I thought that this one was better than most of the ones in Canada. The food was actually really hot!!
The hotel we stayed at was pretty nice, but not as luxurious as the Nile cruise. I guess we got spoiled by that. Now that I was back on land at night, I decided to hunt down a place that had an internet connection, so I could send e-mail back home to my friends and family. Grant came along with me for a while, but after searching out a few leads with no luck, he gave up and decided to go back to the hotel. I pressed on though. After a couple more places turned up empty, I decided to try one more place. By this time, I was starting to get a little lost. The streets and alleys at night here all look exactly the same and follow no real pattern. I ended up finding the place I was looking for. I had to go through a few dark and dirty alleys and up a few floors of what looked like a deserted building. When I found the office that was supposed to have the internet, it turned out that all it had was one computer with no access and was selling a couple of ancient keyboards, a mouse and a few outdated programs. So much for that. They were nice people though and we chatted for a while. After that, I gave up and managed to find my way back to the hotel, two and a half hours after beginning the search.
Later that evening our group toured the Luxor temple. It is an extension of the famous Karnak temple. It is situated right in the middle of the city. There are two large statues of Ramses The Second and one of two obelisks that are on either side of the entrance. The other obelisk was removed and donated to France in the 19th century, where it stands today. Inside the temple are many large statues (mostly of Ramses) and 46 giant columns. There is also a muslim mosque that was built inside part of the temple many centuries ago, but cannot be removed because it too has historical significance to the people of Egypt.
As a group, we were there for about an hour. We were only about a five minute walk from the hotel, so I decided to stay in the temple after the tour was over. I spent about another hour and a half there exploring around. It was just so interesting that I couldn't leave. I soon realised that I was the only one wandering around inside the temple grounds. It turns out that it closed about 25 minutes before I realised this. Oops! I walked toward the main gates when I was approached by a few soldiers who gave me the 20 questions thing and after sorting that out I was allowed to leave. But they wouldn't open the gates for me, so I had to climb over a 5 foot wall to get to the street. Nice guys!
This is one of the many beautiful statues (Ramses The Third??) that stand inside Luxor temple. There is a picture from 1856 on my other Egypt page that shows the discovery of a statue in the same temple that looks almost identical to this one. I think it might be, and I'm glad I had Vicki take this picture. It's kinda neat comparing the two photos. To view the older picture, click on the photo above.
