Location: Rezeiky Camp, Luxor
Miles travelled: 170 miles yesterday and 350 miles today
Weather: 34ºC – Scorcio
Today we mostly listened to: Louis Theroux, The Call of the Weird
We awoke yesterday at the Aqua Sun hotel and headed off at about 10. We were planning to get as far as we could and find somewhere to camp but as we got closer to Mut at lunchtime we decided that it looked quite nice and worth staying. We actually went to a place outside of Mut called Al Qasr and stayed at the Desert Lodge which had some spectacular views. They let us camp in the car park next to the hotel and we enjoyed an afternoon of reading on their terrace. Ric even managed to find a welder in town to fix the anti-roll bar which broke whilst I stayed at the lodge to get some snaps of the sun going down.
We had one small problem yesterday though. Monty’s gearbox is still sounding pretty ropey which is incredibly frustrating. In the last two months we’ve had 5 mechanics look at the car, spent far too much money and still it isn’t running well. To ward off the impending depression that was destined to hit us both we decided that there was nothing left to do but drink beer. So we skipped dinner and managed to get nicely pissed on a few Stellas (not the same as the Stella from Belgium by the way).
Despite sore heads this morning, things looked a little brighter and we set off from the Lodge around 9.30 with the aim of reaching Luxor before sundown. Monty was actually running a lot better today. Ric fiddled around this morning with the diff lock gear stick and it seems to have fixed things – for the moment at least….
Our day consisted of endless stretches of desert road, peppered with the occasional roadblock where the same conversation was repeated….
‘hullo, welcome to Egypt’
‘hello’ (we’ve actually been here for a few weeks now but never mind)
‘Where are you from?’
‘Britain’
‘huh? where?’
‘London’
‘Ahhh, London’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Luxor’ (like we told the chap at the roadblock 5 minutes ago)
‘Okay, bye’.
I’m really not sure the point of all these roadblocks, but the guys on them are all really friendly and we go through the same motions at each one.
We reached the Rezeiky Camp at about 5 and set-up camp. Happily they have internet, beer and a washing machine (the bedding has been on since England and is in desperate need of a wash!). Ric has been roped in to helping set-up the camps website. The owner walked up to him and said ‘you look like an internet person, can you help me?’. Ha, he may as well have ‘Geek’ stamped on his forehead. He’s working on it now and in return the owner is going to give us a free meal tomorrow night – great.
We had great fun in the desert – particularly our first night in the white desert, which is truly an eerie and amazing place. It was nice to get back to the Nile though today. The landscape changes dramatically as you go from arid nothingness without another soul on the road for miles to lush fields and farmers riding around on donkeys. Tomorrow we’ll be doing the tourist bit around Luxor.
