We woke this morning and after breakfast met our guide, Fadi and driver Mahmoud for a private tour around Jordan. Jordan is a small country, only 400 kms from North to South. The population is about 10 million, which has doubled in the last 8 years due to a massive influx of refugees from Syria, Palestine and Iraq, all of whom share it's borders. We left Amman about 8:00am. Jordan immediately surprised us. We were expecting to be in the middle of the desert. ...

It was our last day in Egypt today and I must say it has been a fantastic trip. We spent the day in Cairo. First stop was the museum. Having seen Tutankhamun's tomb in Luxor, it was great to see all of the artefacts, sarcophagi, etc. taken from his tomb. His mummy was found with a full head mask on, and then 8 layers of sarcophagi and boxes, all laid inside each other like a Russian Babushka doll. Just incredible. All were covered in gold leaf except the head m...

Today was one of the highlights of our trip to Egypt. We left our Nile cruise and went to the airport in Aswan, where we took a charter flight to Abu Simbel. There is obviously nothing in Abu Simbel except this one temple, because we landed, went to the temple and then went straight back to the airport to get on the same plane to fly back to Cairo. A big day, but totally worth it. Abu Simbel is simply stunning. Built 3,500 years ago by Pharaoh Ramesses II, it...

Well, if we thought Egypt had impressed us before today, we were in for another jaw-dropping experience in Luxor. We started the day by visiting the magnificent Karnak Temple. Before we got onto the bus today, we noticed our tour guide speaking to a machine gun-toting police officer who escorted us to the bus. I asked Wael what he was speaking about with the officer, and interestingly, he explained that the police track all tourists. He was writing down the r...

Today was a huge day. We were up at 3:30 to get to the Cairo airport in order to take our flight to Luxor. It was a Nile Air flight and fortunately only one hour long. As the plane came in to land, we started to drift sideways, which was different, but luckily the pilot corrected before we rolled along the runway in a fiery mess. Luxor was the capital of Egypt for centuries and most of the important pharaohs ruled from there. We drove straight from the airpo...