Not so intrepid tomb raiders

I realise I have been a collossal slacker on the blogger front.

In my defence, we have been travelling a lot (more on that later) and I got Ramses Revenge. Praytell, what is that, you ask? Every one of our friends who went on a Nile Cruise went to the Valley of the Kings and visited the tomb of Ramses II and all came back with debilitating viruses. Could we blame the extreme temperature fluctuations (23-25C during the day and 1-3C at night) or the fact that the cruises were very busy (up at 6.00am and entertained til well past midnight) or that we were all tired from travelling to Upper Egypt and back with coughing hacking masses from all over the world. Nooooo -- the consistent theory among our friends is that we have all picked up a pre-historic bug, contracted deep in the heart of the tombs we visited...

I guess it makes a better story than "we caught it from snotty kids and coughing old people." Whatever it was, it was BRUTAL. Fever, chills, coughing -- just hellish. I cannot remember the last time I was so sick. Luckily, we have cable and a million (I am not kidding) channels. I installed myself on our sofa with a fuzzy blanket, the remote control and a steady supply of hot drinks (supplied by my lovely husband. Maybe he was sick as well because we were having a lot of delirious conversations... Me to Yasir: "I'm feeling better, I think you cured me." Yasir: "Caribbean?")

We have downloaded all our photos, I'll sift through them and write more about our trips over the holidays (holidays that are only ending for Yasir next week). Here are the Coles notes: we spent new years in a desert oasis close to the Libyan border. Then, we returned, played tourist in Cairo, visited Islamic Cairo, Sayeda Zeineb (the granddaughter of Prophet Mohammed)'s grave and then decided last minute to book a cruise from Luxor to Aswan and all points in between. We even splashed out and spent a night in the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan (over the top colonial hotel overlooking the Nile).