Dok Dok Felucca Dock

Thanks to a glitzy hotel casino in Vegas, Luxor inspires images of wealth and grandeur in the mind of the uninitiated. As we disembarked from our coaches into the dirty streets reminiscent of Indian standards of cleanliness, the illusion rapidly faded from our minds. Nevertheless, we fought to conserve what fantastic imaginative imagery we could in every attempt to give this heinous town - complete with injured horses laying in construction holes while owners try to beat them up onto their broken legs - the benefit of the doubt. After all, there's a casino named after it, right?

Yet here a single piece of felafel atracts the price of one pound when an entire sandwhich should be 0.50. A bowl of Kushari receives a 100 percent markup, and touts drag us from the dingy crowded streets of vegetables and meats that they claim is the "tourist bazaar" to the well-lit, comfortable den of papyrus-arts and tacky souvenirs that they deem the "Egyptian Bazaar" where vacationing Brits think we must be extremely wealthy to afford such an adventure as ours. Even out of town, the Valley of the Kings does not live up to the wondrous glories that the name had come to inspire in my mind; mostly as a result of just how unfathomable it is to comprehend the age of the colored hieroglyphics adorning cavernous walls. That, and as is common among traditional arts - they all look the same. To wander an ancient hallway of life symbols and figures walking "like egyptians" is to wander a hallway covered in French text when one does not speak French. Without a knowledge of the ancient egyptian written form, the wonders lose much of what their wonder must have been.

Likewise, the temple of Hatchetsup (or some other variation of an inevitably incorrect spelling), where 58 tourists were massacred a few years ago, lost much of its allure to the 100 plus degrees of hot desert sand. The ampitheater of desert cliffs provides a fantastic setting, to be sure, but we were glad we paid a guide to push us along rather than suffer the heat in our usually fog of sketchy navigation.

The heat caused a second day full of laziness and lounging, whereupon we met a christian arab wholly distraught by his situation in life. When one's dreams are formed around a utopia caused by the US driving Mubarak and his cronies out of power here, as in Iraq, one can indeed be deemed apathetic. This occasion proved a marked contrast to the usual pleadings to tell all at home that not all muslims are terrible people, or terrorists, as instead we take on the roll of persuaders toward peace and he the defender of the offensive.

But even the wonderful temple of Karnak with a forest of stone papyrus pillars could not salvage this Nile Valley settlement and all of its sleazy men offering the most intrusive comments regarding my "wife" as we have yet experienced anywhere on the planet. Perhaps the Vegas creators were instead implementing their own form of irony: you would indeed have to offer the prospect of winning millions to get us to come back here.

A night journey brought us back to the bustling town of Cairo, which has essentially defined our Egypt experience. Here, I was afforded the opportunity to reflect on the recent bombings in Dahab - on the very bridge where I walked, and the supermarket where I shopped only a few days past. The reaction I have is somewhat bland - I feel for the new friends I know there, and I feel for the devasting effect on the economy and lifestyle of the place, but I do not find extreme fear - or a crushing realization that it could have been me. The invariable truth is that traveling in the Middle East has its risks, and to be unable to recognize them would involve shoving one's head so deep in the ground he'd drown in the Pacific. It is not entirely surprising that such an event occurred, and for all the complaints about Egyptian security forces, the next one is seemingly inevitable. No number of metal detectors or security checks will stop that (see: Tel Aviv's most recent attack). So, to think of the incident in Dahab inspires first sorrow for those affected (all of us, in our own way); and second a feeling similar to hearing about a fatal car accident on a familiar stretch of highway. The risk was known, and the choices have been made, and, alas, it wasn't us this time.

Cairo afforded us the opportunity to settle back in on the floor at Miles and Colter's apartment, to dine well on Koshari at normal prices once again, and to nap frequently and blissfully. It also has afforded some excellent traditional Nubian music, and tournaments in the national past time: Backgammon.

As travelers here, and in the world as a whole, we have come to wholly despise discussions of visa-acquisition, which inevitably become a battle of wits. Who waited the longest, or got screwed over the hardest, or paid the most, or had the most creative method? Who wins? So, I will spare you our saga, though I do implore you to know that it has been a heinous process from which you should learn, if nothing else, that bureaucracy is wholly unnecessary and, in Africa, magnified. Oh, and it's fun to note that this particular fiasco was not Bush's fault, but Clinton's. And, depending on your viewpoint, Osama's.

Tomorrow night I will head southward solo. On Sunday Jenny will fly to Addis Ababa. In a few weeks, we will rendeszous anew.