Egypt - Journey to Luxor

Truck loaded with Sugar Cane

Over the last two weeks I’ve been lucky enough to have Sheila visiting me (she’s posted a couple of comments here as So Kay).

Somehow, the two weeks went past without us achieving everything on the “To Do” list, but such is life. We did manage a trip to Luxor, but since I’ve already blogged about that once, I won’t go into detail again. However, there were a few differences this time.

Everything started off fairly smoothly. We packed for the two-night / three day stay, Safi kindly booked the taxis and guides for us, and the taxi was waiting outside El Andalous as we stepped out of the building.

However, we got only as far as the security gate out of Sahl Hasheesh when we realised that maybe Sheila should have her passport with her – either for the hotel or for police checks on the way. We got the taxi to turn round so that we could fetch it.

On arrival at El Andalous, we were accosted by an Egyptian guy telling us to get out of the taxi and not to get back in because there was a big problem. I imagined a tourist attack in Luxor and my heart sank. This was the last impression that I wanted Sheila to have of Egypt!

After trying to get some information out of the guy about the problem, he said he needed to speak to Safi. At first I thought this was because he wanted to explain the problem in Arabic to her so that she could relay it back to us. I couldn’t reach her on the phone, so I started to go in and then thought I could get Medhat to explain rather than disturbing Safi.

I returned to hear him explaining to Sheila that the taxi had basically been double-booked and that it had been agreed that he would take us to Luxor and not our original taxi driver. At this point, I realised that maybe I needed to get Safi after all.

I felt really bad for her as she had gone to a lot of effort to help us book and it wasn’t her fault (our taxi company had failed to inform the other taxi driver that it had been agreed that the other taxi driver should be cancelled). Anyway, she came down and told us just to get in our original taxi and drive away immediately; she would sort out the other guy.

We did as we were told and drove away leaving an angry taxi driver and Safi in the back mirror.

As it turned out, we didn’t need Sheila’s passport, although this time there were a lot of police checks (we didn’t have any when I went with Lena), including one where we got a bit confused when they asked for our hotel room number (how could we know when we hadn’t even arrived?). However, it turned out they meant our previous address (El Andalous).

At first there was an unusual amount of traffic and it turned out that a cycling team was riding down the road – they were described by the driver as tourists, but we suspect he may have meant foreigners, as they were all dressed up in what looked like team cycling gear.

Half-way down the motorway we stopped to hand over a package to someone in the middle of the road having apparently come from the middle of nowhere; this is pretty typical for Egypt. Sheila was surprised when we picked other passengers up in our taxi on other occasions, but it’s just more efficient, even if it does all seem a bit random at times.

Last time I did this journey, we took the ring road and bypassed Qena; this time we passed through it and it was very interesting. It was sugar cane season, so there were tons of trucks and donkey carts carrying the sugar beet and a small train with carriage upon carriage of sugar beet. If the locals saw us looking, they would wave to us.

I guess we took the ring road last time because it was quicker. The journey was quite a bit longer this on this occasion, but it was also more interesting to see the city and daily life going on.

On arrival at the hotel, we paid the whole expenses up front, as last time. At least I now knew to expect this. We also received an apology for the mix up over taxi drivers.

It’s rare to have a journey out of Sahl Hasheesh that doesn’t involve some kind of adventure!