TLDR: Poorly communicated trip using the sketchiest low-cost guides, last-minute ship assignment, a dirty ship, institutional food, and many unhappy passengers. Advice: get a reserved spot on a named ship (with good reviews) for a specific embarkation time.
Good: We did get on a vessel going down the Nile for two days and didn’t pay too much for it
Bad:
Rather than being picked up from our Luxor west bank hotel, we were instead directed to go to a different hotel far away on the east bank. We uncomfortably sat in front of a strange hotel waiting to be picked up. The dead-fish-eye drivers showed up an hour late in a van (with Concord Travel written on the side), never learned our names, never told us theirs, and didn’t help with luggage. We were then driven to 2 random spots where we waited in the van while one of the “guides” wandered off and did 25-minute activities that were never clear. Despite asking repeatedly, we could not get the name of our ship, embarkation point, or embarkation time. At one random stop, I got out of the van and started taking pictures of the van and license plates and forwarding to relatives as a safety measure. Eventually, we were taken to board a ship (which was, ironically, near our actual hotel). Our guide dropped us off in a lobby and said he was going to leave. This caused us anxiety as it started to look like a scam. We had no tickets, no ship name, and no boarding time. I demanded he give us some kind of contact info. He wrote a name and number down on paper. After waiting in the lobby of a random ship for two hours, we were summoned by another random person who didn’t introduce himself and pushed us onto the ship Papyrus (also previously called the Etoile Du Nil II). We went to check in and were asked “where is your guide”? I told them that he left. The yelled response: “I don’t think you are hearing me! You can not board this ship without a guide and voucher!” I gave them the contact info the guide gave me. They immediately saw that format was invalid for an Egyptian number and a fake number. After many arguments, I was allowed to board and they said they were going to be forced to “give us a room for free.” Our role for the next two days was to be unwelcome interlopers. Apparently, one doesn’t get a reserved spot on a specific ship for this activity – just a guide-provide voucher to be pushed onto whatever ship they feel like (perhaps the cheapest they can get away with). They confiscated our passports (never quite sure why). I was never convinced the ship actually had a passenger manifest other than a cabinet-full of passports. We found out that we were joining a cruise already in progress. Other passenger complained regularly about cleanliness, food quality, and spending very little time traveling on the Nile - just docking for days at Luxor or Aswan. Our room was in the bottom of the ship. It was dirty with months of grime build-up and diesel fumes. Food was similar to a publicly-funded retirement home in the US and repetitive.
We eventually figured out that the ship didn’t provide the tours but private guides were supposed to be assigned to us at each location. In Edfu, a guide met us, put us on a carriage, said he had someone else to meet, told us that a guide would meet us at the temple, and then literally ran away at full speed. We enjoyed the carriage ride. When we got to the temple, there was no guide. Because we only had 1 hour total to get to the temple and back, we had to buy a ticket and rush through ourselves. Being by ourselves, we got a good going-over by the vendors. At the exit, a person met us who claimed to be our guide and apologized. Later at Kom Umbu, we hadn’t received any notification that a guide had been assigned, so we just went to dinner instead. Soon, an unknown person actually tracked us down in the dining room claiming to be our guide. He didn’t have our names our any information about us. We decided not to follow a stranger out into the Egyptian night and stayed on the ship. We were so glad to get off the ship after two days and felt genuinely sorry for other guests who had booked the 4 and 5 day versions. I thought these 2 days would be the highlight of our Egypt trip but were actually our least-favorite part. Our other trips/tours/guides outside of this one were amazing. This was more like a semi-traumatic experience you immediately forget about to protect your health.
Magnifique bateau, personnel tres agréable, nourriture varié et très bonne je recommande en tout point