Dara3034

I am writing to praise one of the guides we had in Egypt on our recent trip, Ahmed Sabry on the Nile cruise part. He was professional, courteous, informative, and his English was close to the best we encoutered in Egypt. He didn't have a thick accent like many others from the tour; we were actually able to understand what he was saying. I also interrupted him constantly with questions and he never seemed to mind. The day I got heat exhaustion at Luxor Temple, he kindly helped me back to the air-conditioned car and if he hadn't been paying attention to me, I would have passed out. He took extremely good care of my mom and I and went out of his way to help us on multiple occasions. For example, after my mom's camera took a bath in the Nile, hitting the dock on the way in, it stopped working. Two days later, mine died and we were left cameraless. Ahmed spent his own money and time to take a two hour trip ahead of the boat to Luxor and tried to buy one for us, but it broke so he returned it to the store, and finally resorted to bringing us his own father's 50 year old Japanese camera, which still worked beautifully, just so we could take pictures of all the temples he was guiding us through. He moved heaven and earth and was unceasing in helping my mom the last day, the day she discovered her passport was missing. First, he talked to the boat crew and got them to search and give us a room in which to open up all the suitcases. Then he helped us look through them for another hour. Then, he took us to two separate police stations to report it, acting as translator. He even helped her file the report version that said the passport went missing on the boat, which resulted in a boat crew member being arrested and the whole boat crew being extremely angry with our guide. Of course, we told the police multiple times the crew member had nothing to do with it, but they arrested him without any evidence anyway. Apparently, that's the Egyptian justice system. Next, we actually did manage to fit in a tiny bit of sightseeing. Ahmed took us to the Luxor Museum, which was lovely, air-conditioned, and short enough to fit in. While we read the plaques, he was on the phone pulling strings so that my mother could get on the plane out of Luxor to Cairo without her passport. After lunch came the great bank hunt. Since we didn't know how quickly my mother could get a new passport, it looked like she'd be staying in Egypt for possibly another week and she needed more cash. But it was Ramadan, so everybody closed early. We went to four different banks before we finally managed to get the money, driving all over town. Then, Ahmed took us to an Internet cafe and begged an international cell phone off somebody, so that my mother could call the embassy (only open between 1pm and 3pm that Sunday), while he, without any prompting, went off to make photocopies of all her important documents. Next, thankfully, my mother located the missing passport, tears rolling down her face. Around 4:30 pm, we checked into the hotel and passed out while he went by himself to free the boat crew member from jail. Finally, while driving to Luxor airport, we made the discovery that my mother had thrown the tickets in the trash. So we stopped at the nearest EgyptAir and he got us new tickets, so we could actually enter the airport and get back to Cairo in time to make our flight home. Without his tireless effort, we would never have made it out of Luxor. He also runs his own tour company, EgyptTravelLuxe.com. Several of the other guides and staff from Memphis were of similar quality, including Mohammed in Aswan. Memphis didn't understand certain requests we made, such as needing a non- smoking guide due to allergies (they generally sent smokers who weren't smoking at the time) and my mother's step-climbing disability, but overall we were well-cared for and never alone. Complaints I heard about other tour companies such as tourists being pressured to add on more tours, etc. did not apply to our experience.