The Luxor Temple, our lunch with the Nubian, and the beach

Well our lunch with the Nubian, his name was Hajaj, was kind of a bust. First of all, I was asked what a Nubian is and to clarify, the Nubians are a tribe that comes from the area in the south of Egypt and the north of Sudan. The lunch itself was great, we sat around with him on the floor in his house and had some rice, stewed vegetables and a couple pieces of dried beef with lemon that was reminiscent of jerky. While we were sitting around he offered to show us the nearby village and then asked if we wanted to ride a donkey or a horse. Tara picked a donkey, and I picked a horse. After riding around for about two hours and seeing the village, which was nice, but nothing really different from what we saw in Aswan. When we got back to his place, we had some more tea, and then we got up to leave, at which point he stopped us and said we had to pay him for the animals... we hadn't expected this at all, as he had seemed nothing but hospitable the whole time and the ride was offered the same way the lunch was, and he had explained to us a few times that he was against working for tourist money, preferring to be a farmer instead. Anyways we paid him some money for it, but were pretty bitter about being deceived yet again for the next day or two.

That same night we went to visit the Luxor Temple, which was really impressive to see at night due to the way it was lit up. I'm not sure if it was the lights or the temple itself, but we liked this one the most out of the temples we've visited here. After the temple we made our first stop at McDonalds... Big Mac combo = 23 Egyptian Pounds, about 4.50 Canadian.

The following day we went to the Mummification Museum, which wasn't very big, but it was cool nonetheless. We saw the tools that were used in the process, including the brain scoop and chisel. As well they had a mummified crocodile.

We had to waste a day and a night in a resort town on the Red Sea coast, called Hurghada, a pretty ugly town. From there we caught the ferry to come here, to Dahab, which is in the Sinai Peninsula, close to Mount Sinai. It's basically a scuba diving and snorkeling paradise, there are reefs around almost the whole peninsula. Today was our first full day here, and we decided really what this vacation needed was a day of doing nothing but lying on the beach and tanning. Over the next two days we're planning to go see St Katherine's Monestary at the base of Mount Sinai and to follow in Moses' steps and climb to the summit, as well as going snorkeling.