10.000 KM

Driving from Aswan to Luxor is only allowed in convoy.In the past there were some awful attacks on tourist and now the Egyptians are very, very careful. Police is everywhere on the streets, roadblocks everywhere especially where tourists are. A lot of protection at all the sites. It is not uncomfortable but driving in convoy makes you a sitting duck. Furthermore it is no fun to see some big coaches in front of you. William sent us an sms that convoy could be avoided to luxor. We tried our luck to skip the convoy and just left, with no problems. Only we had to avoid the word Luxor. We were city hopping first to Kom Ombo then Edfu were we visited a really nice temple and Esna. In Edfu we were all alone, well of course with a lot of protection. But this temple was really worth a visit. We even discovered the Nilometer. This gave the people in the past an idea whether they would have a good harvest or not. The Lonely Planet proofed to be a good guide. We enjoyed the beautiful carvings. There was even a laboratory. All the recipes were carved in the wall.

Twenty kilometers before Luxor we reached our first 10.000 km, we are halfway!!

We drove along the Nile valley, palm trees and the desert in the distance, it was a nice trip, arriving around four in Luxor were we found a nice hotel with rock bottom prices: air co, fridge, swimming pool, continuous Internet, including breakfast for 35 US dollars for 4 persons. We only had to blend in with the tourists. This is a rather difficult exercise because you either need a tattoo or a piercing, gold chains, short shorts and open shirts. Luxor is a kind of Costa like you have them in Spain, so this was and still is a culture shock. We better get used to it.