Here are the replies from the Travel Service on the questions about the Cars and Guides of the Egypt Private Tour you asked about a few days ago that I only had a general idea. So indeed there is a car, a driver, and a guide on all the tours. However the guides and drivers are positioned locally as I would think so.
1) You will have different drivers and different private English speaking guides.
2) The cruise docks near Edfu temple, then you take Local carriages for cruise to Edfu temple and back.
3) Yes, you will have different guides at each location, 1 in Cairo, 1 on Cruise till Edfu and 1 for Luxor sightseeing.
4) At hotels you will meet your tour guide at the reception, and we will give you his mobile no. in order to be connected by What's app if needed.
Since we arrive Aswan the day before boarding the cruise there is a transfer from airport to hotel followed by a few sightseeing activities, I asked my rep is this be the same guide for the subsequent 3 days for the activities along the shore on the Nile cruise. He confirmed it would be the same guide.
I also have concern on the arrival time at Karnak because we need to purchase the Luxor Premium Pass which are only sold at Karnak and VoK at Luxor. The Director's Office at Karnak may close before 4pm, even though the regular ticket office may still open. Temple day time visit is till 5pm? Then it switches to get ready of the night Sound and Light show.
He cannot confirm the arrival time to Luxor hence he agree with me about getting the Luxor Pass on our Day 02 in Cairo - that day is for Egypt Museum, Copitc Cairo, Citadel, Islamic Cairo etc. We will switch hotel from Mena House at Giza to St. Regis on the Nile river bank upper part of the Corniche. On Day 03 we fly to Aswan. We can get the Cairo Pass at Giza but only the Ministry of Antiquities in Zamalek, Cairo would sell the Luxor Pass.
1) Concerning your tour guide in Aswan, you will meet him on day 3 at your hotel in Aswan and will be the same guide on Nile cruise.
2) It is a Private tour, it will be just you with your Tour guide.
3) Yes, you can take a taxi instead of the local carriages in Edfu.
4) Arriving Karnak, this depends on the arrival of cruise to Luxor, so will be better to drop you off at the Ministry of Antiquities in Zamalek, Cairo to purchase Luxor pass.
5) Sure, upon arrival to Cairo you can buy a local Sim card.
On top of that, there is always a Note on Nile Cruise -
Note:
- Nile Cruise itinerary may change in sequence but not in visits.
Though I have seen most cruises sold thru various platforms online, has West Bank on the day of East Bank of our itinerary, then the disembarkation day is for East Bank. versus ours is for West Bank including those from Gate 1's packages.
Most such itineraries though, do not have Abydos and Dandera in it.
Gate 1 has Dandera in only one of their packages. The rest of them are all fly back to Cairo immediately afterward. Their packages spend way too many days at Cairo, with only 1 day in Luxor or not staying in Luxor at all but at Aswan. I really dont understand why the itineraries are designed this way because Luxor is where most of the best Egptian Ancient Cultural Sights are located. They never mention Valley of the Queens, Valley of the Nobels and Valley of the Artisans. Though I suspect those who bought Gate 1 packages may have not even known those sights exist, especially the most beautiful Tomb of Nefertari.
Most sights on Gate 1 packages are Add-On, "Optional Tours", plus they travel in a big group. Their excursion to Abu Simbel is by Bus, at $99 pp. Ours is by Private Car that we control when we go and how long we stay there, at $110 pp.
The other issue with Gate 1 packages is that they now only sell Air + Land. We do not need Air, especially do not want Egypt Air except there is no choice on the Egypt domestic flights, lol. Their hotels in their Egypt packages are of the lower quality except 1 at Aswan. Their Nile cruise ship is good quality but on the other hand you spend most of the time out and about, you would not spend a whole lot of time on the sun deck or at the bars no matter how nice and posh they look - as long as the cabin is a comfortable setting and the foods are adequate, that is all that matter, to us anyway.
The cruise ship 五湖以北 took, was the standard class. It already looked good enough to me. Ours is supposedly the deluxe class, therefore it should be perfectly fine. You can pay an additional 30 to 50% for the luxury class but I really don't feel it worths the premium.
Lepton recommended this blogger, Earth Trekker site to me. You can find many destinations in their blogs.
https://www.earthtrekkers.com/egypt/
They traveled as a family of 4, plus his mother. They booked everything (flights and lodgings) separately, essentially used 11 Private Tours from an operator called Egypt Tailor Made which specializes in Private Day Tours to string up the whole thing. At Luxor they stayed at Hilton Resort which strangely has a 30K per night for either a standard room or 2 rooms made for a family (perfect for them and it is 5th night free if booked as consecutive 5 nights award). Though the location is a bit on the far north side of the town but the facilities probably are one of the two best options in town. I think the Earth Trekker blog is very well written with plenty of useful information. That is another way to do the trip.
You would be better off to book directly with Travel Operators in Egypt versus using Gate 1 or Viator or TripAdvisor booking platforms - they all have to make their profits on both ends, i.e. padding the prices to sell it to you and taking the commissions from the operators. In most cases you pay less for a Private Tour than a big tour bus group tour with 20-30 people travel together. The selling point of the local tour operators that aim to sell direct is the Private Tour. As 老朽 often said, 包车 is much better.
About the Passes, it allows 5 consecutive days of unlimited visits with exception on Tomb of Nefertari and Tomb of Seiti I. There are also very annoying rules on how to purchase the Passes. It requires passport copies, passport photos, NEW 直板 form of US$100 or Euro90. Not sure now with Euro down to at par if it would go up to Euro 100 also.
Cairo Pass is $100, Luxor Standard Pass is $100 and Premium Pass is $200. If you buy both Cairo Pass and Luxor Pass, the second pass regardless which one, is 50% off. Tomb of Nefertari and Seiti I are not included in the Luxor Standard Pass. It costs $90 to see Tomb of Nefertari (only allows 10 min visit once per day) and $63 for Seiti I (no time limit but still once per day). Cairo Pass is not worth the $100 but the discount offered when getting the Luxor Premium Pass is much more than making up the "loss" on the Cairo Pass. Luxor Passes cover all places from Karnak to Abydos and Dandera.
We have 3 days on land at Luxor after disembarkation. The day of disembarkation is scheduled for the West Bank. The following day is to visit Seiti I, Abydos and Dandera. The last day is back to West Bank. With the Luxor Premium Pass we can revisit the Tomb of Nefertari on the 2nd visit to West Bank. We can discuss the arrangements with the guide when at Luxor, and make changes as we see fit. The rep emphasizes enough times that how to do each tour is totally up to us because it is Private Tour.
After 3 nights on land at Luxor, we take an 8:25am flight back to Cairo. Luckily LXR is only 11km from the hotel, a 20min drive. The next flight is 9:15am then all the way in mid afternoon. I might X the 8:25am one and get the 9:15am although not a lot of difference on the departure time. I have till 31 days before departure to decide because the 8:25am flight is booked with UA miles. You can cancel without redeposit fee 31 says before departure. I dont want to return to Cairo's bad traffic in the afternoon so the mid afternoon flight is out even though it is on a 737 versus the A200 used in the morning flights.
