Please Do Not Climb the Monuments, 1-21-07

I’m sitting at the Luxor airport waiting for our flight to Cairo in three hours (Toumazou is not taking any risks with our missing planes. We’re not even able to check in yet!). Yesterday we went to the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut.I think there is a chance that the Valley of the Kings is one of the most touristy places in the entire world. It made for prime people watching. This morning we visited the Karnak Temple and Temple of Luxor.
We got to into three underground tombs of Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. They stopped making pyramids for their tombs in the Middle Kingdom to detour grave robbers. The paintings on the walls still have incredibly vivid colors. At the Temple of Hatshepsut we had our first encounter with creepy Egyptian men asking to take pictures. Our tour guide Hashem assured us they they were just interested in our culture but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. He also tried to tell us that the obelisks in the Karnak Temple were fingers pointing to the sky shooing forth "the water of life" and I’m pretty sure that’s not true either.
At Luxor Temple there were many Egyptian men hanging out there waiting to try to take their picture with American tourist girls. When we finally agreed to let them to take our picture they were very excited until they figured out that we meant only with the boys. They were pretty annoyed about that.