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Stay-cation is not in Patrick and Rick Hamlin’s vocabulary it seems. The father/son duo recently finished an exotic summer trip to Egypt.
The land of pharaohs, mummies and more history than you could throw a stick at, was invaded by the two Wellington men who, after finding cheap tickets abroad decided to take their chances in the desert.
“I’ve always wanted to go for the history of it, and plane tickets from London to Egypt we got for little to nothing,” said Patrick Hamlin.
Cheap tickets weren’t as great as the currency rate.
“You can buy a Coke over there for one pound Egyptian, that’s 25 cents to us,” he said. A cell phone is $3 a month in US dollars, and gas an easy sell at 99 cents a gallon.
The two stayed at the Marriott in downtown Cairo, which was the former mansion of the man who discovered the Valley of the Kings. With elaborate gold decor and Middle Eastern designs, the Marriott was fit for a pharaoh.
Triple digits were common with temperatures as high as 112, but Hamlin said it felt like it was in the 80s thanks to no humidity and the dry desert conditions.
“They said if you walked out in the desert there, you would have six hours,” said Hamlin.
The two went to see the City of the Dead, the Sphinx and naturally, the Great Pyramids.
“Egypt has about 117 pyramids found so far and we went to the City of the Dead, Memphis — which was the capital of Egypt — we went to Saqqarah which is where the first pyramid was built by Imhotep,” said Hamlin.
Hamlin has pictures of himself next to the gigantic blocks of granite, some of which are as tall as he is.
He said Hollywood has tainted peoples’ perception of Egypt and a tour of the Great Pyramid made that clear.
“You see hieroglyphics on the walls in movies...but there is nothing there. There is nothing inside of there at all. You go in the shaft to get into it and it’s about 3 foot tall and 3 foot wide and you have to crawl through that until you get to the great hall and then it’s a 45 degree climb — no steps, all flat — about 10, 20 feet wide and it’s probably 40 feet tall and it goes all the way up into the burial tomb,” said Hamlin.
The approximately 30x60 tomb is blackened by the breath of its visitors.
“It’s weird cause you go in there and the walls are black. Since they opened it up and allowed people to go in, they breathe and the moisture gets to it,” said Hamlin.
The tour of the famed desert lands did have its drawbacks.
“Traffic is ridiculous there everyday,” said Hamlin. “If there are five lanes, they can squeeze five cars in those lanes. Lines on the road don’t mean anything. There are no rules when you are driving. We’ve seen people driving backwards down the wrong side of a freeway...there are people standing on the freeways and actually on the way going out of Egypt to the airport, we hit a guy. We clipped the guy and the taxi driver goes, ‘Idiot.’ It’s an everyday occurrence over there. He didn’t care, he shouldn’t have been standing there.”
A complete 24-hour day was spent getting to Egypt but afterwards the pair got deathly ill, having to call in a doctor to their hotel room because a local hospital was less clean then the Marriott.
“Dad and I got sick the second day we were there...we don’t really know what happened but we woke up one morning and within 30 minutes it just hit us. I remember laying in bed and getting a temperature and saying, ‘Wow. I’m getting a temperature. I need to go cool off.’ and by the time I got up my temperature was so high that my vision was gone,” said Hamlin.
A 30 minute cold shower may have saved his life.
“With me being cold it was 102, the doctor estimated I was between 104 to 106,” the Wellington man said.
One day and an IV later, the pair were “fantastic” the next morning.
Going overseas has opened Hamlin’s eyes as to what poor really means and how grateful he is for the life he has in Wellington and the United States.
“It’s a very, very poor country. The average Egyptian lives on a pound a day,” said Hamlin.
The Hamlins finished out their overseas stay with a trip to England for the Goodwood Festival of Speed. There, the pair met up with celebrity in the form of drivers, their cars, and their famous admirers.
Names like Sandra Bullock and husband Jesse James, Rusty Wallace, Al Unser Sr., Johnny Rutherford and even Jay Leno were next to every exotic car dreamed about including Lamborghinis, Maseratis, with some cars reaching a retail value of $10 million-plus.
Not a bad way to spend a summer vacation.
Stay-cation is not in Patrick and Rick Hamlin’s vocabulary it seems. The father/son duo recently finished an exotic summer trip to Egypt.
The land of pharaohs, mummies and more history than you could throw a stick at, was invaded by the two Wellington men who, after finding cheap tickets abroad decided to take their chances in the desert.
“I’ve always wanted to go for the history of it, and plane tickets from London to Egypt we got for little to nothing,” said Patrick Hamlin.
Cheap tickets weren’t as great as the currency rate.
“You can buy a Coke over there for one pound Egyptian, that’s 25 cents to us,” he said. A cell phone is $3 a month in US dollars, and gas an easy sell at 99 cents a gallon.
The two stayed at the Marriott in downtown Cairo, which was the former mansion of the man who discovered the Valley of the Kings. With elaborate gold decor and Middle Eastern designs, the Marriott was fit for a pharaoh.
Triple digits were common with temperatures as high as 112, but Hamlin said it felt like it was in the 80s thanks to no humidity and the dry desert conditions.
“They said if you walked out in the desert there, you would have six hours,” said Hamlin.
The two went to see the City of the Dead, the Sphinx and naturally, the Great Pyramids.
“Egypt has about 117 pyramids found so far and we went to the City of the Dead, Memphis — which was the capital of Egypt — we went to Saqqarah which is where the first pyramid was built by Imhotep,” said Hamlin.
Hamlin has pictures of himself next to the gigantic blocks of granite, some of which are as tall as he is.
He said Hollywood has tainted peoples’ perception of Egypt and a tour of the Great Pyramid made that clear.
“You see hieroglyphics on the walls in movies...but there is nothing there. There is nothing inside of there at all. You go in the shaft to get into it and it’s about 3 foot tall and 3 foot wide and you have to crawl through that until you get to the great hall and then it’s a 45 degree climb — no steps, all flat — about 10, 20 feet wide and it’s probably 40 feet tall and it goes all the way up into the burial tomb,” said Hamlin.
The approximately 30x60 tomb is blackened by the breath of its visitors.
“It’s weird cause you go in there and the walls are black. Since they opened it up and allowed people to go in, they breathe and the moisture gets to it,” said Hamlin.
The tour of the famed desert lands did have its drawbacks.
“Traffic is ridiculous there everyday,” said Hamlin. “If there are five lanes, they can squeeze five cars in those lanes. Lines on the road don’t mean anything. There are no rules when you are driving. We’ve seen people driving backwards down the wrong side of a freeway...there are people standing on the freeways and actually on the way going out of Egypt to the airport, we hit a guy. We clipped the guy and the taxi driver goes, ‘Idiot.’ It’s an everyday occurrence over there. He didn’t care, he shouldn’t have been standing there.”
A complete 24-hour day was spent getting to Egypt but afterwards the pair got deathly ill, having to call in a doctor to their hotel room because a local hospital was less clean then the Marriott.
“Dad and I got sick the second day we were there...we don’t really know what happened but we woke up one morning and within 30 minutes it just hit us. I remember laying in bed and getting a temperature and saying, ‘Wow. I’m getting a temperature. I need to go cool off.’ and by the time I got up my temperature was so high that my vision was gone,” said Hamlin.
A 30 minute cold shower may have saved his life.
“With me being cold it was 102, the doctor estimated I was between 104 to 106,” the Wellington man said.
One day and an IV later, the pair were “fantastic” the next morning.
Going overseas has opened Hamlin’s eyes as to what poor really means and how grateful he is for the life he has in Wellington and the United States.
“It’s a very, very poor country. The average Egyptian lives on a pound a day,” said Hamlin.
The Hamlins finished out their overseas stay with a trip to England for the Goodwood Festival of Speed. There, the pair met up with celebrity in the form of drivers, their cars, and their famous admirers.
Names like Sandra Bullock and husband Jesse James, Rusty Wallace, Al Unser Sr., Johnny Rutherford and even Jay Leno were next to every exotic car dreamed about including Lamborghinis, Maseratis, with some cars reaching a retail value of $10 million-plus.
Not a bad way to spend a summer vacation.
