Safaga (Luxor), Egypt April 6, 2022

 We arrive in Safaga in the morning and the temps are already in the upper 80’s.  It is the gateway to the excursions to Luxor,  on the Nile for exploration of the sprawling Karnak Temples.  It was a ten hour tour and the temperature was forecasted to be 109, though it turned out to be only 102.  Since we had seen Egypt at its best via a Viking Nile River Cruise and had seen the Karnak Temples, we chose not to go.  Instead we spent a leisurely day on the ship.  

We could have taken the shuttle to Safaga, however with the heat and air pollution we forwent that as well.  And from what I heard from others, there was nothing there.  The most exciting thing we saw was watching a tractor- trailer trucks being unloaded from a truck ferry and then lining all up on the pier waiting to be cleared by customs.   This particular port certainly ranks among the ugliest,  noisiest and outright awful.  Next to where we docked there was a cement factory that was grinding away all day long and imitated a cloud of cement dust.  It was so bad I wore a mask during my usuals 10,000 steps walk.    

View from our balcony,  some blue sky, buses ready for the tours, and an unimpressive city skyline.

The ever so noisy cement factory whose grinding noise was a consistent 79 decibel, (yes I measured it)

When we arrived we had blue sky, see previous picture,  many hours later this was the view.  

Only a few hours later the mountain range was invisible 

Another few hours and the city was invisible.

Watching the truck ferry unload and seeing the trucks loop around and then line up for custom’s clearance.