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Sunday, February 12, 2012
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Updated travel information, in date order:
9 April 2011
Treated like a King on Egypt Trip (Letter appeared in The Saturday Star Travel Section - 09 April 2011)
“THINKING of going to Egypt? Then do not hesitate to give Kim Lings a call at Nile Travel. I was the October 2010 Star Travel Club and Nile Travel winner of a trip to Egypt. Everything was so well organised from the time I boarded the plane on the 19th March to the time I disembarked on the 28th March, it was scary that it could have run so smoothly. The itinerary is precise down to the last detail. Three days before leaving I had a last minute briefing with Kim on the dos and don’ts whilst there. Arriving at Cairo airport, I was met by a representative of Nile Travel and whisked through customs etc to board a plane to Luxor. One of many tours was organised in Luxor. A very informative guide took me around and later in the day I went to the Nile cruiser (floating hotel) for a 4 day cruise down the Nile to Aswan stopping off on the way. I then flew from Aswan back to Cairo. I stayed in the most luxurious hotel with a view of two of the pyramids from my bedroom window. In conclusion. The guides assigned to me were very informative and are an encyclopaedia of knowledge. There were tours to numerous to mention, a hot air balloon trip that gives you a view of The Valley of the Kings, that takes your breath away. The people of Egypt are friendly and most of them speak English. The taxis are plenty full, should you need to go somewhere. Not once did I feel threatened even acting the real tourist part with an expensive camera hanging around my neck whilst walking in the streets.”Andrew. If anyone wants more details, they are welcome to e-mail me: andrewclark@iburst.co.za
17 February 2011
SCA Press release:
"After a meeting between Dr. Hawass, members of the Ministry of Antiquities Affairs, and the Antiquities and Tourism Police discussing security measures, the Minister announced that all of the Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic, and modern sites would reopen to the public on Sunday, 20 February 2011. Dr. Hawass stated that he hopes tourists from around the world will soon return to Egypt.
Unfortunately, Dr. Hawass was also burdened with announcing the sad news that several sites had been vandalized. Today, Dr. Sabry Abdel Aziz, head of the Pharaonic Sector of the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs, reported to the Minister that the tomb of Hetep-Ka, in Saqqara, was broken into, and the false door was stolen along with objects stored in the tomb. In Abusir, a portion of the false door was stolen from the tomb of Re-Hotep. In addition, many magazines also suffered break-ins: magazines in Saqqara, including the one near the pyramid of Teti, and the magazine of Cairo University all had their seals broken. Dr. Hawass has created a committee to prepare reports to determine what, if anything is missing from these magazines. The Egyptian Military caught, and dismissed, thieves attempting to loot the sites of Tell el Basta; the military also caught criminals trying to loot a tomb in Lischt. There have also been many reports of attacks on archaeological lands through the building of houses and illegal digging. Dr. Hawass has asked all of the sector heads in the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs to make full reports for each site in Egypt."
16 February 2011
A TIME TO BE IN EGYPT (sourced from Travel Info)
Majestic Horus pulls its wings for an Airborne ahead
A Star Alliance member and Africa “Top Positioned airline”, EGYPT AIR’s passenger feedback on its 777-300s, which serves New York, Tokyo and Osaka, as well as its 330-300s, that soon will serve Johannesburg and now serve London and Paris, both feature the newest cabin including the fully flat seats in business class, is “extremely positive”. EGYPT AIR serves the 20 major airports of Europe, MS biggest market, and has added the Copenhagen service on OCT 1, 2010 aboard a new fleet of 20 medium-haul Aircrafts of the latest Boeing 737 - 800s, all with individual in flight entertainment systems.
Press of the world: Time to witness a historic moment.
The Prime minister of the United Kingdom also recognized this phenomenon since he is asked and so stated that the movement to true democracy, which took place in Egypt, should be placed into United Kingdom’s educational system. Since the movement took place in a very civilized and peaceful manner. The current people’s democracy which is taking place in Egypt can be viewed as “The Social Contract”, which was developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole... (http://wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Social_Contract). An idea long before him stated on the Pharonic Papyrus Roll as the Egyptians given the world irrigation system. Once again Modern Egypt has given the world an example as it has before when in the 60’s gives the Non-Alignment movement and in the 70’s the Middle East Peace Treaty.
Upon the peoples whishes being met many of the Egyptian International Businessmen are returning to their home country to amend various sections of the Egyptian business sector. In addition Egyptian Nobel Laureates are currently returning to Egypt such as Ahmed Zowel and El Bradaey, to assist in the proper development of the prosperous country. Therefore Egypt will definitely prosper and grow in the coming future, peaceful, constitutional and civilized as it is now.
As reported by the New York Times by two of the revolutionary organizers calling the revolution: “a historic achievement that has not happened since the era of the pharaohs.” In addition according to the independent newspaper of the United Kingdom; the former prime minister, now a peace envoy in the region, said it was a "moment of excitement but uncertainty" and the West should engage with supporters of democracy across the Middle East.
So the words of Mr. Seif – EGYPT AIR’s Regional GM Southern Africa – intrigues us to read a glint of a daring spirit in eyes that sees deeply into this young yet pioneering carrier, EGYPT AIR , that deploys 1200 weekly flights to 72 worldwide destinations, with a young fleet of 85 aircrafts in 2011. Indeed it is a Majestic Airborne Ahead. Egypt Air was established in May 1932, it was the first carrier in the Middle East and Africa and a founding member of the IATA. Egypt Air Airlines considers air transportation as its main business. We have successfully extended our network to 72 major destinations across the world. EgyptAir has been an active member of the Star Alliance since July
EGYPT and its capital, Cairo, are ready to welcome visitors again, after 20 days of protests that brought about the resignation of President Mubarak. According to a statement released by Travel Vision from Excel Travel, most archaeological sites are open to tourists, except one or two that will be opened during the course of next week. The statement also said that clean-up efforts were under way and it was expected that daily life would return to normal in the next week. The statement encouraged local and international clients to explore ‘a new Egypt’.
12 February 2011
Mubarak Resigns
Today has been an extraordinary day in Egypt and it goes without saying that we send the people of Egypt our very best wishes for a stable, happy and prosperous future.
Up-date on Antiquities Damaged in Cairo Museum
Egyptian Museum remains shuttered; pyramids are open, but no sign of tourists
By Christopher Torchia (CP) – 2 days ago
CAIRO — One of the world's great museums resembled a military camp on Thursday, with soldiers patrolling behind its wrought iron gates and armoured vehicles parked nearby. Inside, workers with white coats and latex gloves delicately handled artifacts that were damaged in the chaos sweeping Egypt. The country's priceless trove of antiquities has emerged mostly unscathed from the unrest so far, but tourism, a pillar of the Egyptian economy, has not. Tens of thousands of foreigners have fled Egypt, many on evacuation flights organized by their governments, draining a key source of employment and foreign currency. Egypt's most famous tourist attraction, the Pyramids of Giza, reopened to tourists on Wednesday after a 12-day closure. But few came to visit. The heavily guarded and shuttered Egyptian Museum in Cairo is next to Tahrir Square, a protest encampment that draws hundreds of thousands of people on some days.
"We will open the museum after the strike is finished. I don't know when the strike is finished," said Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, referring to the upheaval. "I need things to go back to normal."
Egypt's conflict pits autocratic President Hosni Mubarak against protesters who want him out now. Anti-government demonstrators and Mubarak supporters battled in front of the Egyptian Museum's pink-walled facade last week, raising fears of widespread destruction of the most coveted artifacts from the age of the pharaohs. In earlier unrest, the adjacent headquarters of the ruling party was set afire, and its blackened shell looms over the museum. Some 70 objects at the Victorian-era Egyptian Museum, many of them small statues, were damaged after looters broke into the museum and smashed showcases in late January. On Thursday, several dozen items lay on tables in a conservation room, examined by experts with small tools and adhesive. Some were funerary items of Yuya and Tuya, parents of a queen. Their tomb was found in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor in 1905, though that remarkable find was eclipsed by the discovery of Tutankhamun's well-preserved tomb by British archaeologist Howard Carter less than two decades later.
Hawass said "the only important piece" that was damaged was a statue of Tutankhamun, the boy king, on a panther. The figure of the standing king, one arm broken off, lay separate from that of the panther. "The skilled hand of this man will return everything back," the minister, gesturing at a colleague. "This is the most damaged piece of the group." Workers also planned to restore a walking stick of Tutankhamun that was stripped of its thin gold sheeting when it was thrown on the floor.
The Victorian-style building is a place of marvels, even if the lighting is poor and there are none of the interactive displays and other novelties of modern museums. Faded, typewritten cards perch in the corners of display cases, explaining the heritage in tiny print.
On a normal day, the museum is jammed with foreign tourists, surveying treasures of an ancient civilization — mummies, alabaster caskets, granite statues, chariots and gold sheet thrones. One bed incorporates wildlife shapes — the head of a hippopotamus, a leopard's body and the back and tail of a crocodile.
But on Thursday, the majestic stone faces and forms lining the halls had the place largely to themselves. Only a few museum workers, soldiers and journalists walked the dimly lit chambers. In their haste and in the darkness, looters had rampaged just a few feet from the room containing Tutankhamun's gold burial mask and other invaluable pieces. Its padlock was intact. Hawass said the looters were looking for gold and a fictitious substance called "red mercury" that, according to local lore, can be found in the throats of ancient mummies. Some people think it has magical powers and can be used to summon spirits. "They live thinking about it. They could kill each other to get it," Hawass said. "When I enter any place in Egypt, people ask me all the time about this." The museum is still checking to determine whether any items are missing. On his website, Hawass said an additional five items that were stolen from an archaeological storage site in Qantara, near the Suez Canal, were apparently discarded in the desert and police returned them Tuesday.
Authorities have recovered a total of 293 objects at the Qantara site, and an inventory was under way. Hawass sought to project a sense of normalcy, reaching high for comparisons. He suggested that other great repositories of culture — the British Museum and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art — were equally vulnerable to plunder or destruction. "It can happen to any place in the world," said Hawass, who faces demands for higher wages from antiquities workers who demonstrated outside his office this week.
Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Not getting away with it
Looters were prevented from removing their spoils from the Egyptian Museum, and restoration of the 70 artefacts damaged during the foiled raid has already been completed, reports Nevine El-Aref
Eleven skilled restorers have been working flat out in the first-floor laboratory of the Egyptian Museum, the cantaloupe-coloured building on the north side of Tahrir Square that has featured on our television screens over the past two weeks. The restorers, all Egyptian, have each been working on individual objects and have succeeded in repairing them and returning them all to their original condition.
The 70 objects were damaged during attempts by a criminal mob to enter the museum on the night of Friday 28 February, as the uprising by young people in Tahrir Square reached its peak. As chaos spread in the surrounding streets, vandals grasped the opportunity to break into the Egyptian Museum and steal jewellery from the gift shop at its eastern side of the building. Ten of these outlaws succeeded in entering the museum galleries by means of climbing the fire escape stairs to the roof, where they broke the windows of the dome and used ropes to gain entrance to the Late Period gallery. Looking for gold to steal, they broke the glass of 30 showcases and threw their genuine contents on the floor, causing some to break. Among these objects was a statue of the golden Pharaoh Tutankhamun riding a panther and another of his father, Pharaoh Akhenaten.
On their way out, the vandals smashed two skeletons kept in the storage gallery next to the X-ray laboratory in the garden. At the museum entrance gate the robbers found themselves trapped by a human chain made up of young Egyptian protesters, who held them and prevented them from escaping with their looted pieces of Egypt's priceless heritage.
Three days later, as a ferocious clash was taking place in Tahrir Square between protesters and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the wall of the museum and set on fire one of the army tanks placed in the garden to safeguard the museum. The spreading flames and smoke led many people to believe that the museum had come under fire, but in fact the museum was unscathed and the fire was immediately extinguished by soldiers.
With mass anti-government protests still simmering throughout the country and unleashing a wave of violence on the streets, the Egyptian Museum was not the only monument under threat. Six wooden boxes filled with antiquities were taken from the store galleries of the Qantara East site in north Sinai, where objects from the Port Said Museum are being stored while the museum undergoes refurbishment. However, 288 of the objects have been retrieved with the help of honest local Bedouin.
Failed burglary attempts were also reported at the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo; the Royal Jewellery Museum and the National Museum in Alexandria; and the Manial Palace Museum. Luckily, foresighted employees of the Royal Jewellery Museum removed objects from the showcases and put them in the basement, which they sealed before leaving. Archaeological sites such as Saqqara, Mit Rahina, Luxor and Aswan also came under threat. Vandals forced open the padlocks of some of the tombs on these sites, but they did not enter the tombs or cause any damage.
Worried about the fate of Egypt's heritage, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called Zahi Hawass, the newly-appointed minister of state for antiquities, to ask about the recent situation in the Egyptian Museum and archaeological sites all over the country. Hawass assured her that all rumours about the Egyptian Museum and archaeological sites were unfounded and that they were all "safe and sound".
Hawass rejected the decision taken by the International Committee of Museums (ICOM) to establish an international supervision committee to oversee and monitor the Egyptian Museum in an attempt to protect it following the recent attempt to loot it.
"We don't need any international supervision. The Egyptian Museum and all archaeological sites in Egypt are under the protection of the army and honest Egyptian people," Hawass insisted.
He noted that some foreigners thought Egypt was not interested in protecting its monuments and museums, but said that was not true. "Egypt has 5,000 years of civilisation, and we love our heritage. We are not the Taliban who destroyed the monuments of Afghanistan," he said.
"I want everyone to relax and to know that I am here and we are all watching with open eyes. I want people to know that after days of protest, the monuments are safe. Why? Because the Egyptian people are protecting them," Hawass concluded.
In a statement released by the Ministry of State for Antiquities, Hawass stated that some reports published in the media claiming that the necropoleis of Memphis, Saqqara and Abusir had been plundered were untrue. These sites, he continued, like all archaeological sites in Egypt, were safe and had not been looted.
The tombs of Maia and of the two brothers, Mereruka and Tiye at Saqqara, which some newspapers inaccurately claimed had their paintings damaged, were unharmed, while the two mummies in the Egyptian Museum reported as damaged were in fact unidentified Late-Period skulls and not royal mummies. When they were recovered from the thieves on their way out of the museum, the skulls were in the same condition as they had been when in storage.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
10 February 2011
Egypt Air flights MS839/840 - Flight Operations Resuming as of 09 February 2011 Inbound
We would like to inform every traveller that Mega-City Cairo has restored peace and
order to all its provinces and as a result, EGYPTAIR flights have resumed to all
major destinations. Since the declaration of the curfew that affected Cairo, major
cities and airports such as Luxor, Aswan, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada and others were
not affected. All foreign media reported this solid fact. Operations of EGYPT AIR
flights to/from Johannesburg shall return to schedule on a reduced scale as of the
9th February 2011 and will be as follows;
MS839- 09FEB CAIRO – JOHANNESBURG 2330-0735
MS840-10FEB
JOHANNESBURG – CAIRO 2145-0540
MS839- 11FEB CAIRO – JOHANNESBURG 2330-0735
MS840-12FEB JOHANNESBURG – CAIRO 2145-0540
MS839- 13FEB CAIRO – JOHANNESBURG 2330-0735
MS840- 14FEB JOHANNESBURG – CAIRO 2145-0540
We would like to reassure that the Cairo Airport area is completely secured. To all who are reviewing their travel plans, we give confirmation regarding the return-to-normal of Cairo International Airport as well as the fact that thousands of tourists are already spending their vacations at Luxor, Aswan, Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. We look forward to welcoming you on board Egypt Air.
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