El Andalous - Aida

Aida in the Backdrop of Hatshepsut's Temple

In my head, my return to Egypt signaled a year of sitting back, relaxing and taking stock of how my finances would last. It’s been a while since I’ve had the luxury of not working and I thought I’d not do much at first and wait until I got a bit bored before I started to plan anything.

However, it turned out that my life had other ideas in store for me.

I was excited to hear that Aida was showing in Luxor with orchestra and singers coming in from abroad to perform it in the setting of Hatshepsut’s temple. Wow. How often in your life do you get to see something like that?

Tickets were expensive (cheapest was 150 USD), but it turned out that this included your return travel to Luxor from Hurghada, a night and breakfast in a 5-star hotel, and transport to the opera and back from the hotel. Suddenly, it didn’t seem quite so bad.

I tried to persuade some friends to come over and see it with me, but I didn’t get anyone taking me up on the idea. In the end, I decided I’d just go on my own, although fortunately, it transpired that Horst and Hilde were also planning on going, so I wasn’t alone after all.

Fox Travel, who were organizing it, at first seemed very efficient. They came to Sahl Hasheesh to collect our payment since for some reason they couldn’t supply an IBAN number for us to transfer money directly. Well, they tried, but it didn’t work as my bank wouldn’t recognize it as a valid code. Nothing is straightforward over here.

However, they came to collect the money and to give us our tickets, so it all went well. Nevertheless, after that, it was much more of a struggle. I emailed them to ask when they’d be picking us up and whether they could give us a full itinerary (eg, time of arrival, time of departure to opera, end of opera, time of departure to return, etc). They said they’d pick us up at 8am (but didn’t say where) and didn’t answer any of the other questions.

We waited at 8am on the day in question at El Andalous, assuming pick up must be from our residence. The bus was a little late, but not too badly so, considering this is Egypt. It was just a small minibus and we picked up other people from Sahl Hasheesh who were also going (Azzurra, Palm Beach, and Ocean Breeze buildings). We were then informed that we would change bus just on the border of Sahl Hasheesh. This was a bit surprising and we assumed we were joining a larger crowd in a larger bus that had come from Hurghada. But no, we transferred to another minibus with a different driver and our guide left us.

At around 2pm, we arrived in Luxor. We were staying in the Steigenberger, which was a wonderful hotel, and a band of men played to us as we arrived and entered the building. There was some kind of confusion over our booking when we arrived and the Steigenberger had to phone the agency to clarify. Consequently, we had to sit round and wait. We still didn’t have an itinerary, so we asked at what time we needed to meet for the bus to take us to Aida, but nobody was able to give us any information.

Eventually, we made it to our lovely rooms, but we still didn’t know what time we were going to be picked up. We all sat round for an hour while the agency tried to find out. The view was lovely and the bar was open, but it was still very frustrating.

In the end, they said we needed to meet at 16:30. By this time, there was only an hour left, so any plans of going out somewhere in Luxor were now scuppered. Horst, Hilde and I had lunch – I was wondering if we’d be given something to eat at the opera, but Horst and Hilde were sceptical (and, it turns out, were right to be so). After this, Mohamed, who used to work in El Andalous but had since become a teacher in Luxor, came to meet us in the hotel, so it was good to see how he was doing and to see photos of his new baby girl.

Soon it was time to change for the performance. We all sat round in our glamorous garments for 30 minutes and then were told that they’d got the time wrong and actually we wouldn’t be picked up until 17:30. Grrrr.

It still seemed quite early to be going to the opera if we weren’t going to be fed, but the journey there took longer than we were expecting. I think they’d laid out a specific route for all buses to the opera to take; every 500m or so there were police along the wayside. The security was amazing.

Once there, there were hundreds of people. We had to queue a bit, but really it wasn’t too bad. The seats were well spaced with plenty of legroom; there was a section for the people who had paid 750USD and who were provided with food and drink. Hatshepsut’s temple was lit up and it was amazing to see it at night in the backdrop of the mountains.

The performance was good, but was hindered by the wind which howled over the speakers. The choreographer was apparently someone famous but controversial in Germany and we’d been promised special light effects using modern technology, but all that happened was that they highlighted Hatshepsut’s temple in different colors and sometimes the mountains, too. The costumes and staging were a bit lacking with the characters mainly coming on stage and singing and not doing much else; the chorus merely stood in the background. I’d been expecting to see them marching down the temple and bringing the ancient setting to life. The orchestra remained largely hidden.

Nevertheless, I don’t regret going. Seeing it in the backdrop of such an iconic monument was incredible and it was hard to believe I was actually there and experiencing it. I can also appreciate that it took a huge amount of organization.

It must have been about midnight when we got back and at this point we still didn’t know what time we were being picked up the next day. In the end, they finally told us it would be 8am. We all complained, asking why we had to leave so early, but they would not budge, claiming that this was what the Opera had specified. Really? Why not benefit from all the extra tourists in Luxor who might spend money if they could stay a few hours longer? It didn’t make sense, but there was nothing we could do.

So, all in all, the organization was lacking, but it was still an amazing experience. And the benefit of leaving early was that by the afternoon I was swimming in the sea again.