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Published: January 14th 2011
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7th Jan – Day 98 – Aswan
2:55am, still half asleep, we dragged ourselves downstairs, collected our breakfast boxes and piled back onto the same coach as yesterday. The Egyptian government believe it is safer for the tourists to travel in convoys when travelling long distance, so tours groups are allocated a time slot when they must meet the convoys so this is why we had to get up at such a ridiculous hour. Jess didn’t get any sleep on the coach but Mischa managed two one hour stints. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride, knees jammed into the seat in front of you. We drove to the meeting point where the coaches lined up to be scanned by the police for bombs (especially after the bombing at a Coptic Christian church last night, not nearby). Then we waited in line for the other 40 or so coaches and mini-buses, so we actually didn’t get on the road until about 4am. Along the way Jess munched on her breakfast (bread rolls with cheese and jam, a hard-boiled egg and a juice) while Mischa slept. Everyone began to stir at about 6:30am as we approached the town of Abu Simbel. There is
actually two towns of the same name; the north and the south. The southern one is the original, and the northern one was created when the community had to move due to the flooding of the Nile after the construction of dams in Aswan. Abu Simbel is 300km for Aswan, 60km from the border of Sudan. The two temples here were created by Ramses II, one for himself, dedicated to the god Ra Amun and the second for his favourite wife Nefertari, dedicated to the goddess Hathor. The most impressive part about the temples is the feat accomplished in moving them. The temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, however when the dams were built in Aswan (again) the rising Nile waters threatened their existence. In 1968, 6 countries contributed funds and people towards saving them; this meant numbering, dismantling, moving and reconstructing them, 200m further back and 60m higher. We spent about 2 hours here, our guide (the same one as yesterday) explained the history and some of the carvings in each of the temples and then it was back on the bus and back to Aswan. We got back at about 1:30pm
and went straight to lunch. Today we had brekky (boxes) and lunch at the hotel as in the evening we had a Nubian dinner planned. We set out to quickly explore the second half of the souk in search of magnets, we ended up leaving pretty fast and making our way to a souvenir shop that we had seen yesterday down by the Nile. We picked up a few magnets as well as a few snacks for our days on the feluccas and made our way back to the hotel. We had just enough time to get changed and our pick up was at 4pm. 7 of us decided we would take a camel to dinner while the rest of the group had a walk about Kitchener’s Island (a botanical garden). Our skipper for the next few days, Ashraf, met us with his motor boat, just in front of our hotel and we went upstream a little. Our camels were awaiting… the ride was very enjoyable and lasted about an hour and a half, arriving at Ashraf’s house just before 6pm for dinner. On the way we wandered through a village and over many desert hills trying to catch a
sunset. We didn’t quite manage it but it was fun trying! Dinner was great too… some cuisine a little different from the hotel, which was nice; chicken, a staple, a pasta dish, the usual tomato and cucumber salad and rice. We sat on pillows on mats over the sand around a really long table, outside in the courtyard of Ashraf’s house, great atmosphere. Some of the girls, including Jess, also got the chance to get a henna tattoo drawn on them by one of Ashraf’s daughters. She was very good, steady hand and very quick. After dinner we all piled into the back of two utes that took us back to the motor boat, docked on the West bank, then it was a short trip back across the Nile, in the dark (nothing and no boats have lights on them), to our hotel and off to bed… tomorrow our felucca adventure begins…
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