And now for something completely different

I am going through old files this weekend and came across something I thought was worth sharing. I guarantee it has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening.

Our dream trip to Egypt

In the fall of 1997, my wife, Betty, and I were contemplating a late autumn vacation. We wanted to go somewhere we had never been.  Someplace exotic and, hopefully, warm. We had already been to five continents, so why not add Africa? We were keenly interested in history and so why not Egypt?

We usually traveled on our own, but neither Betty nor I could not wrap our tongues around Arabic and so we looked for a tour. We found a two-week excursion through Overseas Adventure Travel and settled on a departure date of November 25, returning December 9. We applied for and received our visas, and were set to go.

Double-click to read the gruesome
details of the murders

Then, on November 18, a heretofore unknown group called the Muslim Brotherhood attacked two busloads of tourists at the Temple of Hatsepshut in Luxor, killing 70 and wounding 30 others. Because the tourists were Europeans, it was not huge news in the U.S. We knew about it, though, and wondered if our trip was cancelled. Two days later came a letter from OAT asking if we wanted to cancel or go somewhere else on the same dates.

OAT offered us a out...

We looked at each other, then talked it over. Our lone dependent was our cat (and Alfred loved for us to travel because it meant he would be overfed). If we put off the trip, we would likely never again find two weeks for such a journey. We decided to go. So, as it turned out, did 12 other souls – out of more than a hundred who had originally signed up. We did not know it then, but rival Abercrombie & Kent was similarly finding almost every one of their travelers were opting out. And, as for Europeans, governments were flatly telling their citizens that no help would be forthcoming if there was further bloodshed.

At Giza. There is no one in the 
background.

And so, we went to Egypt as planned. And, at the height of the tourist season, the outbound EgyptAir jumbo jet carried perhaps two dozen passengers. When we arrived in Cairo, we found the country was empty of foreigners. There were 14 of us and 12 from Abercrombie & Kent. That was the entire tourist population. As a result, we saw Egypt as no one had seen it since before the advent of the Boeing 707. We had entire hotels to ourselves; the river boats that should have clogged the Nile were instead berthed tightly along the river for a hundred miles. At Hatsepshut’s temple, the bullet holes were not yet plugged and we knew the scrubbed red patches on the floors were the remain of blood stains.

Blonde, ergo American!

President Hosni Mubarak learned there were western tourists in the country and flew to Luxor to personally greet us. Betty, with her blonde hair, was singled out to be filmed with Mubarek, and we would see those 30 seconds of videotape everywhere we went for the duration of our stay as the Egyptian government tried to reassure the world it was safe to be in the country.

Abu Simbel, no tourists

We flew to Abu Simbel with two military aircraft as our escort and six of us saw the light enter deep into the Temple of Ramses at dawn the next morning. A year earlier, the crowd would have numbered more than 500. We also saw the then-recently restored Tomb of Nefertari, where tourists lucky enough to get a ticket could spend only ten minutes inside its magnificent space (carbon dioxide and water vapor from breathing are the enemy). We spent an hour inside its walls because we were the only visitors that day.

Were we foolish to go? I can make the argument either way. Certainly, anyone with children under a certain age would have rightly been labeled narcissists or worse. And, as the letter clearly states, we could have shifted to a date when things were more settled. But we sensed this was an opportunity that would not come again, and we were right. Or, perhaps we were just very lucky.