Day 10 - Aswan

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Up at the crack of dawn today at 3.00 am for the drive down to Abu Simbel in the little bus that could. We had another armed escort however this time there were heaps of buses heading out. We started in the middle of the convey but were soon passed by almost everyone.

Another breakfast box broke the drive and we arrived at the new resting place of Ramses II and his favorite wife Nefertari. Our guide here was good but after while we were longing to have Adel back.

The temple structure of Ramses II was absolutely incredible and it was hard to believe that it had been moved as it looked as if it had been resting there for centuries. It is hard to get an appreciation for the size of the statues both the four colossi that guard the entrance and the 8 “smaller” ones inside until you are standing underneath them.

The colours and scenes inside the temple are quite remarkable. It is hard to imagine the impact that temples like this would have had on the general populace when they were constructed. Now that we are here it is easy to see how these monuments that can still awe us in their weathered state who today are surrounded by modern marvels and access to information must have convinced ancient Egyptians that their kings were indeed gods.

The smaller of the two temples that Ramses II dedicated to his favorite wife show not only how much he loved her but also how much he loved himself as there are more statues and hieroglyphs of him than her.

After walking around the two temples for a couple of hours we made it to the visitor center where you can read about the huge task of relocating the temple from its original position whilst battling the rising waters of lake Nasser.

On the bus ride back to Aswan we saw a massive mirage where it looked like the whole dessert had turned into a lake with the mountains being small islands. We had just time to have a quick shower and then it was off for our felucca trip down the Nile.

We had forgotten how nice it is to be on the water in a sailing boat. We sailed for about 2 hours before pulling up to the bank so that we could have a swim. We were a bit skeptical but Shady assured us that the Nile was flowing too fast where we had stopped for there to be any problems swimming so in we all jumped.

After our swim we sailed down river a bit more until we got to our mooring place for the night. After the gang plank was rolled out and our toilet rocks were pointed out we headed into an Nubian village to the Chief's house for dinner. We had a lovely dinner on the roof of the Chief's house whilst we were entertained by his youngest son and other members of the family another one of our top 5 favorite things we have experienced in Egypt.

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