May 9

May 9

We decided not to stay in El Quseir.  It was a good eye-opener but also a little too humdrum.  The nice beaches are far out of town, the historical sites are unimpressive, and it’s really quite difficult to find a good restaurant.  Let’s just say El Quseir doesn’t have much of a draw for tourists, though I’m glad we dropped by.  We took a taxi to Safaga an hour north up the coast and waited at an empty run-down bus station for about an hour for our bus to arrive to take us to Luxor along the Nile.  In the meantime we bought some snacks including an imitation crazily chemical-infused apple flavored ‘Coca-Cola’ and I braved one of the most disgusting bathrooms ever (I couldn’t handle the stall so I peed on a wall where a urinal had once been – I don’t think it made a difference – yuck!)

We caught the bus to Luxor – about 4 hour drive.  The bus was pretty full so Leah and I ended up sitting in different separate seats.  I was oblivious to what was happening (my headphones were in), but two lusty delinquents were making eyes at Leah for a couple hours before she finally motioned for me to come over.  She explained to me the situation, my intrinsic defender-protector instincts kicked in, I gave the guys the stink eye, held up my hand, pointed proudly to my nifty two-dollar wedding ring, and crossed my arms toughly victoriously when they finally backed down.  Thank you Egyptian guys for helping me realize you blessed I am to have such a beautiful wife.  “You are very lucky man,” is something I’ve heard dozens of times now since out time in Egypt began.

We arrived in Luxor.  A promo-agent out scouring for tourists joined us in our bus-taxi, led us to the hotel he works for, showed us a room, and told us about our complimentary buffet breakfast.  We found ourselves cornered again.  The room is a little bit more expensive ($20 per night) than we hoped to pay in Luxor but we were tired and unwilling to search for anything else.  We both agreed then and there we’re calling our Egypt trip our second-honeymoon, so I guess it doesn’t matter too much if we spend a little extra.

We walked outside to try to find some food for dinner (it was late already) and got hassled right away.  Welcome to Egypt!  (We’re still slowly realizing how to smartly avoid unrelenting hasslers – sometimes you get hassled to the point of near-insanity.)  A horse and buggy driver clip-clopped alongside us as we walked and an aggressive guy in a track-suit nearly demanded that we temporarily employ him as our tour guide.  We jumped on the carriage reluctantly to escape the agitated, aggressive track-suit guy and asked if our driver could take us to a restaurant for dinner.  We had a nice, relatively cheap dinner, clip-clopped back to our hotel, paid the guy, and exhaustedly dropped into bed.