Egypt: Day Seven, Part One

An hour after our wake-up call, we’re in the bus to go to the airport for our flight to Luxor.  Everyone’s tired, but in a good mood, which speaks well for us as a group, and individually.  With his commute home and back, Ahmed is even more tired than we are.
       There isn’t a lot of traffic, but more than one would expect at 4 am.  And amazingly, a lot of businesses are open.  Not just the belly-dance joints (where no women ever go, dixit Ahmed), but also American fast food joints such as KFC and Buffalo Burger (made with camel meat instead of bison?) and countless small corner grocery stores, not to mention the streetcart vendors.  This is truly a country where people have recourse to The Early Morning Munchies. 
       The white minivans are already plying their trade, so I guess people need to get around the city around the clock.  And so gas stations are also open.
       Our progress is impeded nonetheless by multiple speed bumps (initially called “sleeping policemen” in the States).  As there are bloody few streetlights in Cairo (and Ahmed says people would drive through them anyway), this is how traffic is slowed.  And as they aren’t marked in any way - paint or signs - you have to pay attention or your shock absorbers will take it on the nose.  Everyone seems to know where they are - which is impressive - but sometimes new ones appear overnight.  All part of the game, I guess.

Louxor

The trip from Cairo to Luxor takes just a little over an hour in an Embraer 170, an 80-seat twin jet.  Embraer is a Brazilian aerospace company; it seems fitting for a developing country to buy from another developing country instead of from Boeing or Airbus.  (Besides, I’m not sure either of those companies even make small planes of this capacity any more.)

Luxor is a city of almost half a million people located on both banks of the Nile about 300 miles south of Cairo, and surrounded by sugar cane fields.  In ancient times, it was called Thebes.  And as Thebes, it was the capital of Lower and Upper Egypt combined, which accounts for all the monuments. Often called the world’s greatest open-air museum, it’s home to the temples of both Karnak and Luxor, plus the Valleys of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens directly across the river... all of which we will be visiting over the next five days.
       Thebes is the name the Greeks gave to the original Waset.  It became the wealthiest city of ancient Egypt, due to its geographic location.  Being close to both Nubia and the eastern desert, it cashed in on their valuable mineral resources and trade routes.  Its present name, Luxor, was given to it by invading Arabs much later; they thought the tombs were palaces, “el-Uqsur.”  And the name Karnak in Arabic means fortress.

Karnak causeway