Our Egyptian Adventure COMPLETED About This Page:

[debrabrown]

oh my... tear gas?

[KMB733]

Great pictures from the River Nile. I would be scared of being cut off from the outside world. Especially in a situation like that.

[Cam22]

I got a few days behind, but I'm finally caught up again. More beautiful pictures of the Valley of Queens and the palace. How sad that there was no wind for your felucca ride. You all got to see so much of this country's history.

[chezp]

Friday 28 January – part eight: what do you mean there’s tear gas in the hotel?

We went to sit outside on the balcony and enjoy the last of the sun and another spectacular sunset. Forget Key West for sunsets, this place takes some beating!


This was the only time we saw a boat dock outside the Sheraton and we suspect it was because they couldn’t dock elsewhere in Luxor because of problems...


If you look closely to the left of the sunset itself, it looks like grey smoke in the skyline...

Looking at this scene, you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong... :


While we were out there, we heard an English guy on the floor above us on the phone – and it was a mobile. I instantly said to Mark “maybe that means international ones are still working”, so I grabbed mine and got a good signal. I took the opportunity to quickly text Mark’s mum to let her know we’re OK and to ask her to let my parents know that as well. I then sent a text to Wendy, asking her to update Facebook and the boards as well. I’m hoping both messages got out fine – they seemed to have sent. A few minutes later, the same guy told us that the network was now busy and looked like it was being jammed.


This was the display my BlackBerry had from then until we got out of Egypt – note the “data connection refused” – I’d never seen that before! :

We chatted to him for a while. He’d just arrived two days ago and is here at the Sheraton in Luxor for another 12 days. He told us that he’d heard that there had been trouble in Luxor, as tourists were being advised not to walk any further than a certain hotel. As we talked, we saw black smoke rising, although it wasn’t in the direction of town, but a bit further down. Whether that was trouble or not, I have no way of knowing....



As the sun set and it became colder outside, we headed back into the room to watch developments in Cairo. All I could think about was tourists in hotels in the centre of Cairo. We had been to that area just a few days ago, so had personal experience of it. We had seen the Hilton Ramses hotel, looming large above the Corniche-el-Nil, and now along that very road, we saw the army out. We also saw footage and photos from a tourist and we’re pretty sure, judging by the shots, that it was from someone in that hotel. How terrifying that must be, I cannot begin to imagine. :

We had our own set of terror when we headed down for dinner shortly afterwards. We headed for the stairs, as we always do, ever since we’ve been on the first floor. To be honest, we’ve been about the only ones using it, but tonight, someone was coming through the door just as we were, then we noticed more people coming up the stairs. I held the door open for them, but they politely refused. The next words they said to me, I think will live with me forever... “don’t go down there, there’s tear gas”.

Well, us being Brits, we just shrugged our shoulders and off we went. Having watched almost wall to wall CNN and BBC today, I already knew that tear gas can affect people half a mile away and I also assumed that the people who were affected were people coming back from a tour into Luxor. : not at all. It soon became apparent that those affected had been in the hotel grounds, in fact in the Italian restaurant by the front entrance. Staff were telling people not to go outside, and apparently the Italian restaurant decamped into the restaurant we usually use, with their staff coming in, and them promising pizzas for those customers in here.

We were lucky, in that we were able to walk right in and get a seat. It was mayhem in here. We hadn’t seen it so busy, well apart from when all the American students descended in one go on the buffet, that is. We were seated by the window, and were soon joined by two other British couples. One of them had a room overlooking the town, and she said that they’d heard what sounded like gunfire, but now they realise it was teargas and they’d also seen fires and heard what they thought was gunfire. It was quite funny, because the couple next to them didn’t really appreciate the seriousness of the situation, until they saw a couple of people coming in with handkerchiefs over their mouths and wearing sunglasses, even though it was now night. Then they got it and realised no-one was making anything up. There really was teargas out there.

I cannot say enough for the staff tonight. There seemed to only be a couple of servers, as opposed to the five or six they usually have, but in their place, there seemed to be a lot more managers, which was a sensible approach to take. The place was getting quickly packed and Mark noticed that there were people queuing outside. We had asked for cocktails, but we cancelled that, feeling it wasn’t fair to put the extra stress on these guys, who were turning round tables as quickly as they could, particularly to accommodate those people coming in from the Italian restaurant.

Given everything that was going on, the food was its usual good quality and I really think the staff were absolute stars tonight. I don’t know that I could’ve been that calm and continued to do my job, knowing what was going on outside. They may have families living near the trouble, for goodness sake.

The whole time we were seated at dinner, I thought my eyes and throat were a bit sore, but I figured it was probably just more of a mental reaction. As we said goodbye to our dining colleagues, all of whom were due to stay here until Wednesday, and walked into the reception, the feeling became a bit stronger. The teargas was obviously still lingering, even half an hour later.

It was Mark who noticed that people were suddenly queuing up to use the computers in the reception, which could only mean one thing – and that was that the Internet was up. We quickly checked at reception and they confirmed it was, so I purchased a half hour card, so that we could get online and let people know we were OK, well apart from the teargas incident that was...

We also checked on advice from the Foreign Office in the UK, which was the obvious stuff, like avoiding the centre of Cairo and protests, which was something I had no problem sticking to. I checked on our flights for tomorrow and BMI, who were operating the flight from Cairo to London said that today’s were operating as usual and they would review tomorrow’s in the morning. I guess we’ll just check again then. I couldn’t get on the EgyptAir website or the Cairo Airport website to see how things were going, but later we heard that EgyptAir had suspended all flights from and into Cairo during the period of the curfew that had been imposed from 6pm to 7am. I guess we’ll only know tomorrow what both they and BMI plan on doing....

There was nothing more we could do tonight, so we started packing, with our larger case coming in well below our 20kg weight limit, which was something. Now to see whether that luggage would be making on to a flight tomorrow....

In all the chaos, I’d almost forgotten about my insect bites. that’s right, in the plural. That pesky little mosquito got me good, all on my left arm. I now had four bites all on my upper arm and one on my left index finger. Not fun....

However, it wasn’t all gloom and despair, as we found Arabs’ Got Talent on TV again – and this time, I can confirm that they do use the buzzers! With that, it was off to bed. Tomorrow would certainly be an interesting day...

The weather today was very hot and sunny, with temperatures in the high 80s.
The best thing today was the Valley of the Queens and the tombs of the workers.
The worst thing today was the teargas incident in the evening.
The funniest thing today was
Today we tried taking a felucca ride
And the result was it was a lot of fun and very relaxing.
The most magical moment today was going into the tombs of the workers and seeing the amazing designs in there.

Next: now this advice is getting scary!

[Colexis Mom]

Great pictures of the sunset! Scary about the tear gas! Getting a little too close for comfort!

[scrappyjae]

Tear gas...not something I would want to have to deal with on vacation. Glad you guys were able to get something to eat in any event.

I feel so sorry for the guy that had to row the boat instead of being able to raise the sails. They will do almost anything I guess for money, whereas here in America, I tend to think that the trip would have been canceled if they had to do all the rowing. Many are a bit to "spoiled" around here.

[honeybee723]

Wow...tear gas on vacation...you don't hear that too often.

[cubfancolleen]

So glad I already know the outcome of all this, or it would be much more stressful. Even so, I can't imagine what it would be like to have been in your shoes!

It did look like there was at least one ship with sails up - sorry you didn't get that, but kudos to the guy for rowing you around! The river looked beautiful, from a distance (if you didn't look at the trash on the shore).
And the sunset WAS gorgeous!

[debrabrown]

The sunset pictures are beautiful but the signs of smoke then knowing there was tear gas is quite frightening.

I love that you watched Arab's Got Talent!!

[KMB733]

How scary about the tear gas!

The sunset pictures were beautiful!

[mommapants]

A very scary update - thank God you weren't "hit" with the tear gas. So glad that you still had a wonderful day.

[clio]

Beautiful pictures of the sunset. The report is getting scaring with tear gas and smoke. I'm glad I know how it turned oout in the end.
Liz

[chezp]

Saturday 29 January – part one: now this advice is getting scary!

I was woken by Mark at 4.00am, who told me that there, yet again, a mosquito in our room. I guess, either the hotel didn’t spray our room or we got another one in here. Either way, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, with five bites already on my upper left arm, all of which were swelling up nicely and one on my left index finger. Fortunately, I don’t think I was bitten again, although Mark thought the little pest had got his hand a couple of times.

That’s it – we are buying a mosquito net for future use. We had toyed with the idea, but I honestly couldn’t see how they’d get into the room, so I opted not to do it for this trip. Bad decision....


Mark decided to get a photo of my arm with all the mosquito bites later, so you can see how bad they were!

I was woken again by the call to prayer at 5.00am, although I did think this time, it might be someone in a nearby room praying. Finally, I managed to get back to sleep and woke up around 7.00am to watch an old episode of CSI: New York. It is bizarre how much American TV there is here – and perhaps this is contributing, in some small way, to the unrest here, as Egyptians really can see how the other half live. But it’s the choice of programmes that has stunned us. We never expected to see the like of Nip Tuck and Dirt airing over here, as both have some pretty overt sexual content.

Breakfast was very surreal. It was all very peaceful and quiet and that’s what made it so surreal. The staff are obviously very concerned about the whole situation and I think every single person we saw asked us how we were. Despite last night’s events, it was all very ordinary this morning, almost as if the events of yesterday hadn’t happened. As I say, very surreal...

When we came out of breakfast, we went to enquire about the Internet. There’s still obviously some confusion about this, as one guy told us that it wasn’t working, but then another guy ran after us to say that it was working. He logged me into the computer in reception for no charge and I tried to find out information about our flights back, but it was pretty tough going. The BMI website still had the same message up as yesterday, about reviewing the situation around today’s flight today, which was helpful.

The outbound flight was still showing up as leaving Heathrow this morning, but it was already an hour and a quarter late. I couldn’t get on to the Egypt Air or the Cairo Airport websites again to find out about our connecting flights, so I had no idea what the score was with those.

The Foreign Office website suddenly became a lot scarier, as they’d obviously updated it late last night, well at least after we were last on the Internet last night anyway, and now it was saying that Britons should only travel to Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria, only if their travel was “essential”. It did, however, say that if Britons were already there, they were recommending that they stay put and were not evacuating anyone at this stage. Well, that’s something. Of a bit more cheer was the fact that this advice did not apply to flights connecting through Cairo Airport, which was something of a relief. I guess we’d just have to see what happens over the next few hours....

We spent the remaining time at the hotel back in the room, occasionally pottering around on the balcony outside in the sun, which was rapidly warming up nicely to make it look a pleasant day.


As I took this, a bird flew through my shot – if I’d have tried, I wouldn’t have been able to do that!


Soon it was time to head home.... and the rest of that adventure can be found here...

[Wendyismyname]

I have more stress after reading the last couple of bits.

Just one more week............



oh and AWESOME bird shot!!!

[scrappyjae]

Great trip up until the night before. How awesome to see all that you have up close.

No way, catching that bird in the picture was too cool. I don't think I have ever seen a picture with a bird that close in flight.