The wind blew a gale again last night. Several times during the night, we heard waves crashing against the hull but the harbor area is well protected and quite pretty. Again, we have breakfast in the room as the snorkeling tour to Ras Mohamed National Park leaves at 9:00AM from the dock.
We tried to get a dive worked out, but could not get them to pick us up and we were afraid that getting a taxi and getting there in time would be a problem. Nothing is easy in Egypt! Therefore, we signed up at the last minute to do the ships snorkel tour.
Things were a little confused getting off the ship, the tour company had not told the ship people that we would need to come in our swimwear and bring a towel so many have to go back and change and/or get a towel…this type of thing always chaps Dick. To top it off, when we get to the beach, there are not enough fins of the right sizes to go around. This is in spite of giving our shoe size when we signed up and some of the snorkels have faulty purge valves (we had the same problem in Safaga also). 
Anyway, the trip to the park takes about 45 minutes through various checkpoints. We have an armed guard riding on the buses with us from the pier and when we get to the Park gate, we pick up a truck with five police, each armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle. 
They follow us along the shore as we snorkel and then follow us as we drive around in the park! There are three 13-passenger buses carrying 28 tourists and we have eight, heavily armed guards! Interesting or scary, however you want to look at it! 
After a somewhat shaky start, the trip is outstanding! The water is beautiful with 100 foot plus visibility. The area colors are brilliant with deep blue sky, the many browns of the desert and the many blues of the sea! We go to a beautiful bay and snorkel for about two kilometers. We swim with a gentle current and can concentrate of the reef fish and underwater beauty. We swim along the edge of the reef that is at the beginning of a steeply sloping sand bottom. The coral reef is drop dead beautiful. We have never seen anything comparable. There are dozens of brightly colored fish, which we have never seen before, and the coral is pristine in all shades of pinks, creamy yellows and blues. After about an hour, we get out and the buses pick us up and take us back to the starting point for some time just enjoying the beach. Carolyn gets a chance to look for shells.
We get back into the buses and head around the bay and down to the very end of the Sinai Peninsula. 
It is a stunning area. We get out and can see the Gulf of Aqaba, which is shades of a rich blue on our left, and the Gulf of Suez, which is shades of aqua, on the right. There is a line of ships waiting their turn to go through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. We will be in that line day after tomorrow.
and then along the Kings Way,
our guide points out things of interest: several Bedouin camps,
the home of the Uncle to King Abdulla, the cleft in the mountains that hides Petra,
the Petra Vistors Center,
the town of Petra 
and various resorts in the area. Rudi buys our tickets and our mandatory horse ride tickets and we start. One used to be able to ride a horse all the way to the “Treasury” but they cut that out and now you can only ride the horses for the first 700 yards but you must buy a ticket for a ride whether you walk or ride!
You just have to love the graft in these countries.
you enter the Siq, the cleft in the rock that is the entrance to Petra.
Some of the Siq floor is soft sand and gravel, some is original Roman paving stones from the late first century AD and some is paved in modern concrete. The Swiss paid for this project 15 years ago and it sure makes walking easier. Original water channels line both side of the Siq. One was covered and provided fresh water to the population. The other is open and was probably used for watering livestock and for other uses not requiring potable water. The covered channel was actually clay pipe laid in a though cut into the rock and then covered with slabs of rock. Most of the clay pipe is broken but you can still see hard water calcium build up inside the pipe pieces. The walk through the Siq is very interesting. The colors in the walls are beautiful 
and there are many craving along the way. 
Rudi explains them as we go. We pass a small traveler’s temple, monuments to some of the gods and steps leading up through clefts in the walls.
and more. It is amazing to see it unfold as we walk the last steps of the Siq.
When we get there, the ambulance that had passed us earlier, on the way down, is loading several people from the ship. One is the friend that had the bad food in Luxor. They are transported to the hospital for treatment and then returned to the ship. We walk on down to the amphitheater
and see many more of the elaborate tomb faces.
The craving is unbelievable in its detail and the effect the colors in the rock have on the design.
We are still walking down hill and now the path is very rocky with lots of loose stones. We have been walking about 90 minutes and Carolyn decides it is time to start back since it is now all UP HILL!
We have a little time before we have to be back at the ship so we turn off the highway on the way back and drive 15KM or so out into the desert area. This is really a neat area with its sand dunes and colorful rock formations.
It was Lawrence of Arabia’s stomping grounds.
We get back to the ship at 5:00PM. It has been an interesting day, but we are glad to be “home”. We clean up and go have a cocktail and have a nice visit with a couple from England. There is a big barbeque tonight on the open deck. We are not sailing until 10:00PM and this is a very pretty setting in the Gulf of Aqaba with Aqaba Jordan on one side 
and Elat, Israel on the other.
As good as the food looks, the lure of AC and quiet in the restaurant are too much. We have a great meal there along with about a fourth of the passengers. 
in front of the hotel to watch the wind surfers and kite boarders enjoying the windy weather. 
when a uniformed man races up to stop us from taking photos. I guess they are protecting some state secret as to wooden boat repair techniques. Carolyn ascends the gangway and proceeds to take more pictures from that vantage point.
Dick goes to the cabin, gets his 400mm lens and records all the secret techniques he can see as well as the irate port cop.
There is not a sign of any vegetation. This turns to a sandy desert landscape
and the sky is a dusty from the wind, but it is not a sand storm; yet! As we start this sandy, desert section, we stop for a break. Sam gets a STRONG Turkish coffee and Dick bargains with a shop owner for a shirt. I think Dick wins because the owner is obviously furious when we leave, but Dick has his shirt!
However, the living conditions step back to about 100AD! 
People are farming completely by hand on tiny plots of land. We see men sitting on the ground cutting the wheat with a hand sickle and tying the stalks into sheaths. Women and children then pick these up and load them on carts pulled by donkeys. The only sign of modern farming is a thresher sitting in someone’s field to which the wheat is hauled and threshed.
Of course, they then pick up the grain and chaff by hand! People are living in mud huts -- literally. There is unbelievable poverty.
We felt like we were looking through a time machine window back two thousand plus years into biblical times. 
We get to Luxor after our three-hour drive and see donkey carts driving down the main street
and The Temple of Karnack and Luxor Temple as we drive along the Nile. We will stop here later, but now we trade Sam for our guide, Michael, and head to the West Bank! Our first stop is the Colossus of Memnon,
the two statues that guarded the entrance to the now destroyed Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III.
There is actually work in progress on the Temple and there is a field full of interesting bits and pieces waiting analysis and assembly.
Michael is doing the tour a bit different from the plan as he thinks his way is better…welcome to the Egyptian male! So at his direction, we head to the Valley of the Kings. On the way, Michael points out the burial sites of the nobles, the artists and the workers. The hills and cliffs are pocked with openings to these tombs.
In the Valley of the workers, people have built their homes at the entrance to the tombs. This practice has been going on for 100’s of years.
There is a modern visitor center at the Valley of the Kings and, after buying our tickets, we sit with Michael for a very informative half-hour and learn the basics of the religion and the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. All the pyramids around Cairo and on the Giza plateau are from the Old Kingdom (3,100BC – 2,400BC). The only known burial from the Middle Kingdom is a mud brick structure outside of the Temple of Hapsepshut here in the Necropolis of Thebes. The burials in the Valley of the Kings are from the New Kingdom period that ended in 320BC. 
Our tickets give us the right to go into three tombs. The tombs open on a cycle, so what is open when you are here is somewhat chancy. King Tut’s tomb requires an extra price ticket to enter. You can walk from the visitor center but there is a tram for an extra cost and, since it is 110F in the shade, we buy and ride. Once at the gate, you show your ticket and enter the area of the tombs.
I believe there are twelve tombs and King Tut’s open at a time and you just pick the ones you want to see, present your ticket, get it punched and walk in or down, as the case may be.
KV6 – Ramses IX, which is edged and painted, and KV16 – Ramses I, the most detailed in the bas-relief method.
The light is bad or worse. In one, we are handed a flashlight. One tomb is a fairly flat walk back into the mountain, one has several flights of wooden steps but they are not too steep and the last one is down wooden steps at a 45 degree angle for some 60 yards -- down and then back up!
we return to the trams and then the visitor center. Our cool car (sort of) was most welcome and we then moved on to the Temple of Hatshepsut. As we pull up to its visitor center, the right rear tire on the car spontaneously explodes from the heat!
Archeologists have substantially reconstructed it using its original materials.
There are still fields of stone pieces waiting identification for use in this ongoing project.
While it is interesting to see what it looked like when built, the temple is grand but sterile 
and we did not linger in the ever-increasing heat.
We found this complex to be the most impressive thing we saw the whole day.
Its stone carvings are unusually deep and well defined 
and much of the original color is still intact.
One gets a very good feel for how it looked 3,000 years ago! We are not sure why it is not shown off more.
up river past the Temple of Luxor 
toward the bridge
and across to the Sonesta Hotel while the driver takes the car on the 30-minute drive to the bridge and then back to the hotel. The hotel is, supposedly, one of the best in Luxor but it is well used. Later, we find out that some of our fellow passengers who stayed here on the two-day trip into Luxor got extremely sick from the food.
This is a most impressive place with huge pillars
and with some of the roof stones still in place.
One can still see the landing stage where the barges of the Pharaohs docked. There was a canal from the Nile to the temple as there was to all of the Mortuary Temples on the west bank of the Nile.
for a few pictures 
before we must head out of town.The most interesting thing about Luxor Temple is that a recent mosque was built on the site of the Temple and when the ruins were excavated the mosque was left several feet above the floor of the temple. 
For some reason, no one may leave Luxor after 6:00PM in the evening. There is a bit of confusion as our car had the flat earlier and they change cars so we have four good wheels and a spare for the trip back. Sam joins us again at the Luxor Temple and at 5:55PM we leave the front of Luxor Temple. There is a huge traffic jam at the checkpoint and both Sam and the driver are very tense until we get cleared to leave for Safaga. It is a three-hour drive back to the ship, once again through interesting country side.
The wind is kicking up dust as we head east out of the town of Qena. 
We arrive back at the ship about 9:30PM, order a room service dinner and fall into bed! 
