So we discovered something almost as ubiquitous as sand in Egypt.

Americans call them speed bumps.

On the 155-mile, 3 hour-30 minute drive from the port of Safaga to Luxor, our SUV driver Hamed, navigated hundreds of them with great skill. Despite the fact that he makes this drive almost daily and seems to have the location and size of the bumps memorized, I could not help but think we'd have been making better time on a camel.

Most of the bumps were in the final third of the trip to Luxor and they weren't ordinary rounded bumps with a 4-inch rise. Most were uneven, diagonal ruts and rises that could have been formed by the paws of an enraged living version of The Sphinx.

It's a shame that speed bumps are the dominant memory of a wonderful day in Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, the pharaohs’ capital at the height of their power, during the 16th–11th centuries B.C.

I'm grateful that I booked the SUV via Viatour because that meant I was only 7 hours on the road compared to the 8.5-hour tushy torture bus ride suffered by my fellow Crystal Symphony passengers who chose a ship excursion. They paid more than twice as much as I did too for virtually the same trip. (Yes, I'm gloating about it and that two of us had our own driver and a certified and brilliant Egyptologist to explain what we were seeing.)

I will let my photos stand as the evidence of the wonders of the tour through the Karnak and Luxor complex of temples on the east side of the Nile and the tombs and temples of the dead pharaohs on the west.

The relics were in much better shape than at Giza. Most of the goodies, like King Tut's coffin, are removed and in museums. But many of the stone structure are standing with the aid of recent renovations.

One common view was that the higher up you looked at a structure with hieroglyphics, the more colorful the figures, symbols and writing were. The reason the bottom sections were faded or completely ruined were the hundreds, maybe thousands of Nile River floods the sites endured over the centuries.

I found it ironic that the same geniuses who figured out how to build the pyramids, temples and tombs did not conceive of building even a rudimentary dam to prevent the floods.

That was finally completed in the 1890s and 1960s when both parts of the Aswan Dam were completed.

The temples of Ramses II and IV were beautiful on the Valley of the Kings side. Everything was much easier to walk and climb than the Giza pyramids and there was more to see.

We also heard the story of the only female pharaoh other than Cleopatra. Her name was Hatschpsut and she ruled for 22 years in Thebes.

I had a secret wish of having a motorboat ride on the Nile come true when Mahmoud, our guide, arranged for one without being asked.

If only could have arranged a camel or a Star Wars hovercraft for the 200 minutes back to Safaga.