Valley of the Kings and a Mint Massage January 21

Woke up early and met up with Kendra out front – the three of us walked down to the Nile to meet our guide who took us across the Nile in a local taxi boat, the plan being to avoid all the other tours who tend to offer 1 hour trips to the Bridge. It was kind of fun travelling across in the boat and on the other side we picked up a taxi to the Valley of the Kings. We bought a three tomb ticket (there are hundreds of tombs it seemed) - our guide was really good explaining things as we went! We went to the tombs of Rameses (II and III) – the insides were incredible – perfectly engineered – square cut walls, plastered, carved and painted – incredible! The first one we went down was slightly downhill along a straight corridor for about 50m and at the end there was a huge granite sarcophagus – it was massive. The colours on the wall were incredible.

The reason we visited the second one was because of the artwork – most of it was absolutely perfect – but what was unusual was that the artist had copied it from other tombs – this is not normal – usually they are the original work of the artist.
The third one we visited had been completed in a hurry we were told – there were some very steep steps that led further down below ground than the others again to another big sarcophagus – the colours inside were amazing – very bright – possibly because this one was further underground?

We then had a look at Tutankhamun’s tomb – but it was not that spectacular because it was quite empty – everything is kept at the museum in Cairo! We then got back in the taxi and went to another temple – this temple was even more amazing than the one we had visited in Luxor yesterday! – much bigger and less ruined! It was really cool to walk around and imagine what it must have been like – such a grand place for prayer – and not even for that many people to pray in!! The carvings here were much deeper – it seems that they learnt later to carve deeper. However this made it more difficult for a new King to carve over the top with new symbols when he took power! A lot of the faces had been chiseled out – sometimes because of robbers and sometimes because a particular religion did not believe in some of the Gods depicted and so would chisel out the faces! We spent quite a long time here and took loads of photos!

Our guide then took us to a shop selling papyrus type paintings – similar to yesterday but much nicer! They gave us tea and falafels and less of the hard sell – so I bought a small painting! We then took the boat back across the Nile – there was a lot of stuff going on on the river – a crazy amount of boats ranging from the little water taxis to huge houseboat/hotels which offered week long trips on the Nile – also a lot of old fashioned sailing boats!

We decided it would be good to have a massage so we found a floating hotel with a pool and then went back to camp to get our swimming costumes. Well we all agreed it was an awful massage – not exactly what you would call a sports massage – I don’t think she was actually trained at all – but anyway she rubbed some mint oil on us which burned at first and then cooled down to the point you felt really cold!. The swim in the pool was nice – there we were in a pool in a big barge floating along the Nile!! More falafel and time to return to camp and get ourselves organized! Ready to ride again the next day!