Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt. 19, Cruising the Nile on the Omar Sharrif

     Our last day in Egypt began slowly. Pack. Check out of the hotel before 11. Sit in the hotel lobby until Nagy arrived to collect us for our last excursion -- a boat ride on the Nile. Sounds good. Doesn't happen every day. 

    We had the morning to figure out how to incorporate things we had bought here and there over our ten days in Egypt so that they wouldn't break or throw any one bag over the airline weight limit. We had found "a little something" for each one of our ten grandchildren and a family gift for each of our four children's families as well -- some breakable and some made of alabaster -- so this task took some specialized engineering. 

    At 11 Nagy ushered us out the back of the hotel and down to the river front where we waited for our ride, the "Omar Sharrif," to pull up to the dock. From there we motored slowly upriver for a while before tying up near the opposite shore for hot mint tea. Our boat captain, a good friend of Nagy's, made the tea at a special set up under one of the seats in the back part of the boat.

It was an efficient setup. The tea was great.

Tea time was an opportunity to debrief with our team, Matt and Chandra, veterans of missions work, and Danil, like us, new to missions travel.

    Danil is not only resilient and good-natured, he had the coolest sunglasses on the team by far. He was tolerant of the old folks, he rolled with the teasing that followed him everywhere (Sorry, Danil), and he loved the heat. We took all of those to be special gifts. Danil was a great teammate!

    Matt asked us what we thought was the best part of our trip.

    Donna and I agreed that what stood out most about our experience was the opportunity to meet people, to be with them during worship, and to enlarge our understanding of the Egyptian church. This engagement with people included this opportunity to bond with the Friedmans and Danil. Being sent to Egypt was a privilege.

While we sat drinking tea and chatting, a ferry pulled up to a dock nearby with several dozen villagers who make the trip to Luxor and back via these flat boats. There are bridges across the river, of course, but the ferry is clearly more direct and faster for folks who would have to travel by foot. And,no doubt, the ferry is safer too.

The roof of the flatboat is held down by used tires. The ferry boat captain docked for his passengers, then sat and waited, presumably for  more people to arrive to warrant a journey back across the river.

When tea time was over, the Captain of the "Omar Sharrif" started the engines and steered us back into the current for a leisurely ride down river. The bank opposite Luxor is fairly undeveloped although new construction is clearly visible back from the bank. These photographs show what an undeveloped river bank might have looked like for hundreds or thousands of years -- reeds and palm trees and wildlife. In the distance rise the barren mountains housing the Valley of the Kings.

I tried unsuccessfully to photograph any number of the birds that inhabit the river environment, so this one hunting in the shallows will have to represent many species. 

A bit further down river we tied up to some unoccupied boats and our captain disappeared to get our lunch, which he brought back in due course.

    So we ate in leisure and looked at the scenery. Among the interesting things on display were a number of boats like ours with names like "Agatha Christie" -- a bit more upscale or at least more literary than Omar Sharif -- and my favorite "New Titanic. That didn't seem like a logical choice for a river craft given the fate of the original Titanic, but it did catch our attention!

    Private boats modeled on ancient Egyptian sail craft were moored at various points near what I would think to be upscale housing being built close to the river -- like waterfront development anywhere, I suppose, for people of means.

    At other spots along the riverfront we saw villagers swimming. Here a group of boys had herded sheep out onto a spit of land, perhaps to clean them off, perhaps to keep them close while they took a swim. We couldn't tell for certain except that the boys seemed to be having more fun than the sheep.

Then, lunch over, we motored back to the hotel, loaded into the van and headed for a traditional market for a last cultural experience.