Travel: Amid the glories of Egypt, armed guards are ever-present

The Gazette, Montreal (Helga Loverseed)

Policemen and armed personnel are part of the everyday scene in Egypt, where political opposition is ruthlessly controlled by a government concerned about the rise of extremism. But the government has another concern - the safety of tourists, who generate much-needed foreign currency. The slaughter of 58 tourists and four Egyptians near Luxor in November 1997 (and more recent terrorist attacks) made headlines around the world, and since then the government has taken extra precautions to protect foreigners.

We flew from Cairo to Aswan, where we spent our days floating serenely along the Nile (a welcome change from hectic Cairo) and visiting the famous ruins in and around Luxor, home to a third of all the ancient monuments in Egypt. At the end of this leg of the journey, some of my group flew back to Canada, but I took a couple of days to relax at Hurghada, a Red Sea resort.

We had to travel with an armed guard, in a convey of 100 or so vehicles - tour buses, private cars, old bangers piled high with suitcases on their roofs and trucks loaded with everything from stacks of papyrus to live goats.

Crossing the near empty Eastern Desert along Highway 77, there were few villages. But at each settlement, we had to stop at roadblocks, guarded either by armed police, soldiers or village elders. Machine guns aimed at the convoy poked out of towers, and in some places they were pointed at the locals to ensure that everybody stopped in their tracks as we rolled by.

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