Back from Egypt
Unfortunately, I came back last night from my holidays in Egypt. Right now, I feel a bit
sad to be back, since I’ve been having a great time, and I’ve really fallen in
love with Egypt; not only the temples, pyramids, landscapes are awesome, but also the
Egyptian people are just wonderful, all the time laughing and trying to pull your leg,
while being very warm and polite, and with a lot of things similar to the Spanish
people, which made a perfect combination for Yolanda and I to fall in love with the country.
Only a couple of bad things, which were the tourist guides, who try to get all your
money whatever you tell them, by asking for a mad amount of money for all optional
visits (33 ¤ for a ride in van and a ticket to a museum/temple, the ticket being just
a little more than 2 ¤), bringing you to shops with European prices (while you can
buy the same stuff by a 1/5, or even less sometimes, in other places) for getting a
commission of everything you buy, lied to us telling Egypt was really dangerous to go on our
own, so that we paid the optional guided visits, and the hyperquick visits to some
temples, with 1000s of tourists and being unable to really enjoy the temple. Fortunately,
as we are experienced travelers, we paid only one optional visit (to
Memphis and Sakkara),
and we did the rest on our own, to find out that things are much more cheaper and that
tourists are looked after much more than the monuments themselves.
There is a special police, Tourist and Antiquities police, which is all around, while also
the Egyptian people need the money from the tourists, so everybody treats the tourists very well,
no danger at all. Also, while going on your own, you really get to know the Egyptian way of
life, which we really should learn about a bit (no heart attacks and no stress in Egypt at
all). Going on organized travels have a few good things though. First, is that you meet other
people (good thing if you just go with your boy/girl/friend); second, is that you don’t have
to take care of the bags, which was a good thing on the way back, since we had a lot of extra
baggage. So, if anyone who reads this wants to visit Egypt, please drop me a mail and I’ll answer
back with lots of tips about it. With those and if you read enough about Egypt history before
going, you’ll save a lot of money and enjoy your visit much more. It was indeed a very clever
thing to read all about the places I was going to visit before actually going there, so
I really enjoyed all the places and I even came to see much more places than what was
scheduled on the organized trip.
I have been writing a journal of the trip, which I’ll put on electronic format soon. For
the time being, all photos (over 600, so take your time) are here.