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Published: January 22nd 2007
Eggshells in Antony's hair
This is how one stays amused on an overnight trainTo get to Aswan was a mission in itself. It takes an overnight train to get there. And not any overnight train, an EGYPTIAN overnight train. The selling point of the train is that the seats recline to 45°. That's it. Oh, the other advantage....there's A toilet at the end of the carriage which you really really really don't want to use. The boys checked it out and were themselves extremely relucant to use it, but when you drink lots of Egyptian vodka on a 13 hour train trip, like they did, you kinda need to use it. Now might be a good time to mention that our lovely train driver somehow managed to get us 3 HOURS BEHIND SCHEDULE. Talk about smelling the roses...meaning our bladders had to hold on another 3 hours...that made it 16 hours in total..
Sash and I managed to do the whole train trip without going to the toilet. How did I manage it? To this day I don't know, but I kept myself highly distracted. After about three hours, here was my train of thought (no pun intended):
"Must not think of toilet...must not think of toilet....ooh hard
A thorn between two roses..
On our first boat ride, to Fillae temple boiled eggs! What could I do with these? I know! I'll put them in Antony's hair. Must not think of toilet...must not think of toilet".
So, since the boys were asleep Sash peeled the hardboiled eggs (from our delicious breakfast box *cough*) and I carefully placed the shells in Antony's hair (lucky for Ross he was wearing a hat). That kept us entertained for a good ten minutes. Then, Mohamed of all people, had the devilish idea of writing on Antony. So Mo runs to the other carriage and fetches Klara's bright red lipstick and proceeds to write "POOF" on Antony's neck. I've never seen a grown man giggle like a schoolgirl before. How we had already corrupted him. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Mo only got to "POO" before Antony woke up. Sashi and I paid dearly for this stunt in many ways throughout the trip as the Canadians declared war on us.
Good times were also captured on film as this French guy decided to stand infront of the boys to talk to a buddy of his in the next row of seats. This was fine at first, but after about 5
minutes of staring at his behind the boys had decided enough was enough. But instead of prodding him gently and asking him to move, they decided to place everything they could possibly get within reaching distance and place it on his back without him noticing. The blanket you see in the photo below doesn't belong to the French guy...go figure. These Canadian boys have talent I tell you. It was slightly awkward when the man stood up straight and a bunch of eggshells, chips, tissues, the blanket, among other things fell to the ground...
So we finally arrived, busting for a toilet and slightly delusional from not having drank anything for the last 16 hours. Off to our first temple!
Philae temple We took our first boatride over to an island called 'Philae Island' which funny enough is where 'Philae temple' is. Apart from being incredibly pictoresque on this little island in the middle of the Nile, it also had some cool facts relating to it. Firstly, the island isn't actually Philae Island, it's Agilika Island. The temple used to be on the true Philae Island, but this island kept getting flooded because the Egyptians
Philae temple
Give the Egyptians credit for chopping it up and moving it from one island to another had built Aswan dam. So what does one do in this situation? Move the temple of course! So in 1977, the temple was moved a whole 550 metres away...every single piece of the temple chopped up and transported to this other island and put back together like a giant (important) jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle that took 3 years to put together. That's patience for you.
Abu Simbel Now, if we thought catching an overnight train to Aswan was hardcore, we had a surprise coming to get to Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is an archaeological site comprising two massive rock temples about 4 hours southwest of Aswan. Because of the threat to tourists around these types of areas it is necessary for tour groups to be accompanied by a police convey all the way to the temple and all the way back. (Between you and me, it's not so much for tourist safety now than it is for the police to earn a little extra cash..wink wink). So much to our pleasure it turns out that this police convey leaves at 4am in the morning. This meant a 3:20am departure and a 3am wake up call to
Myself and Vanessa
Outside the greater temple at Abu Simbel. Well worth the journey. get down to the lobby in time because in Mohamed's words "I LEAVE WITH OR WITHOUT YOU, DON'T OBLIGE ME TO LEAVE WITHOUT YOU". This was serious business, no police convey, no Abu Simbel for us. And by gorge I wasn't going to wake up at 3am for nothing! So being the smart girls that Sashi and I are, we request an EXTRA-early wake up call at the lobby, for 2:30am. That way we'd never miss the bus. When the wake up call came, I got up, got dressed and then went to wake up Sashi. Glancing at my watch I get this sick feeling in my stomach...
me: "sashi, dude...i know I'm really bad at reading the time, but...my watch says it's 3:20am.."
sashi: *wearily looks at her watch* "dude...why does my watch say 3:20 too.."
both: "arrghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!"
What follows was a mad rush to the door, followed by a non-functioning lift which meant a sprint down about 4 flights of stairs and a shriek of joy as our tour members are out the front boarding the bus. We made it...just! Needless to say we were not impressed at the hotel's skill in remembering wake up call times...grrrr
So the temples...they were carved out of a mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC. The big mama of the two temples was dedicated to the three deities of Egypt at the time and you can see in the pic of Ness and I the four large statues of Ramesses II.
The baby temple (though still massive) was dedicated to Ramesses' wife Nefertari and also to Hathor, the goddess of love and beauty. Aww, now that's love.
And get this...these temples also had to be relocated....because the Egyptians created Lake Nasser. *Sigh* they just don't learn. So to avoid it also being flooded, some poor fellow (or multiple of them) had to cut the entire thing into large blocks, dismantle and reassemble it 65m higher and 200m back. Bet they were cursing under their breath the whole time. For four years and a cost of USD $80million I'd be saying some pretty nasty words too...
Nubian Village That night we caught a boat to dinner (as you do) to a little Nubian village. (Nubians are the ethnic group of Egypt and Sudan). Turns out they can cook awesomely well
Catching a boat to the Nubian village
We all sat on the roof of the boat...naturally and have a creative streak for henna. Probably wasn't the best idea for some of the girls to get henna seeing as we were going onto a felucca without a shower for 3 nights...meaning a scribbled on hand for way longer than desired.
Anyway, the food, the company, the atmosphere was fantastic, though it was about 3 degrees and we were sitting outside the entire time. Wondering WHY we were invited to dinner in their outdoor "courtyard", I only find later on that Aswan is one of the driest cities in the world and rain happens like every 5 years so many of the Nubian villagers don't bother to roof their houses. So we weren't dining al fresco after all that...we were in a really cold dining room!
Midnight soccer As if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, our tour leader decides to initiate us into the Egyptian soccer world. I really shouldn't have mentioned earlier on in the tour that I love soccer. So after "accidently" telling us it would be an indoor soccer game...we rock up at an outdoor concrete pitch. Like we weren't cold enough at dinner?
This turned out to be such
The winning soccer team!
Rob, Ronaldo (in skill), me, Matt and three locals a fun night though. Firstly we had two taxis transporting us all, who after I learnt how to say faster in Arabic...decided to race each other. I really should keep my mouth shut. Well, we thought we were going to die, mind you having fun at the same time. Egyptians normally drive like maniacs, so this....was...mad. Our taxi actually bumped the taxi infront of us to move him out of the way so we could overtake. We won! Yah! And we made it there alive.
Secondly, I ran into someone I knew. Yes. I knew someone in Egypt! Actually it was a guy I met on the plane on the way to Cairo who was doing another Gecko's tour and his tour leader is friends with Mo so he brought his tour along to the soccer match. So after Matt and I caught up, we commenced playing soccer. This was an experience, because I knew that soccer was Egypt's number one sport, but I had no idea how seriously they took it. Sashi and I being the only females that volunteered to play, did our best to look simply ornamental and clap when our crazy local Egyptians scored goals. Sashi
Dinner at the Nubian village
This was a time where I really should have worn my thermals. made a hillarious contribution though...kicking the soccer ball straight into Mohamed's sacred section...and he was on her team. Karma is a bitch though, because Sashi got a ball straight in the face a few minutes later.
And thirdly and most importantly...my team won *grins widely*
The next morning it was the day we were getting on the feluccas. Naturally this meant we had to stock up on some alcohol for the trip which involved trecking to the ONLY shop that sold alcohol (the duty free shop) on a count of it being a Muslim country and all. This was a good 20 minute walk away and due to some mix ups in giving us the correct opening times, we walked there a whole 5 times. Why didn't we take a taxi which would have cost us 20cents you ask? Hehe...for the simple reason that each time we would ask for directions because we would get a response such as: "head straight down this road till you hit the
Nile, then chuck a left at the
Nile...etc". Much laughter follows. AT. THE. NILE. Is that not the coolest thing ever? We thought so...
UP NEXT...the felucca
journey!!
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Andrew
non-member comment
Hey that Abu Simbel place looks a lot like the place that's in the Egypt part of the whereismatt dance thingy!