Egypt Travel Review: Nile River Cruise, Giza Pyramids, Hot-Air Balloon Tour, Valley of the Queens

This is my third trip with Zicasso, though my first to Egypt using this travel agency. I had already researched everything I wanted to do and structured it to what I thought was a pretty solid itinerary. They took everything I wanted to do, then shuffled a few things around for efficiency and practicality. I’m usually fine doing trips on my own, but there are several things about Egypt that make me recommend an agency.

First, the Nile Cruise only departs on certain days, and having them plan the rest of the trip around that and my flight helped a lot. Second, you get hassled a lot by street vendors all over Egypt, so having a private guide everywhere to tell them off saves a lot of headaches.

The partner agency on the ground streamlined everything, from meeting me at the airport gate, all the way through customs and immigration, to a driver, a hotel, and so on. I never had to think much about where I was going or how I was going to get there. I usually plan a lot and need exact times for everything, but it was nice to go with the flow and just have the next day’s schedule given to me one day at a time. I made sure to keep on top of the overall plan with the guides and they made sure we didn’t miss anything.

I needed a lot of help getting around, so it was extra effort for them, but the guides all followed most of my requests within reasonable limits and were considerate and helpful with my mobility issues.

Any minor problems or schedule hiccups that occurred were swiftly dealt with or solved in some way. Even though the cruise schedule was running late, they changed a domestic flight to a later time so I would be able to finish everything I wanted to do.

It was certainly an exhausting trip because I packed so much in and was up before sunrise almost every day, but I saw all the important highlights of the country in about 10 days.

The pyramids, along with Dahshur and Saqqara, were breathtaking, and my other big highlight was the hot-air balloon ride paired with the Valley of the Kings and the West Bank. Having the same guide for five days was helpful as we got to know each other and he understood my preferences. We actually became friends.

I had a few minor disagreements with guides, but nothing that really impacted the trip. Overall, I never felt unsafe (as a single male) and I think everyone involved did as much as they could to streamline things for me. I’m sure there were a few things here and there that could have been better, but it would have been hard to execute the trip much better than it was. Oh, and the fact that all the tickets were purchased in advance and we could mostly skip a lot of steps and time, we were able to fit more into a day by having a guide. You really would have no idea where to go or what you were looking at without one most of the time and some of the larger temples would take much more time to explore.