We went and saw Jebel Barkal and we had so much fun we ended up taking 90 photos in 2 hours time. We climbed on top of a huge hill to take some photos, then jolopped down the sandy side. It was fun! This temple is the sister site to Karnak in Egypt. Look, no tourists! [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today we spent the most of the day driving, before stopping to take a ferry/boat across the Nile to see the Temple of Sulb. It was neat, again, we took a ton of photos. The beauty of this place is that it is in Sudan and therefore we had the place to ourselves - not another tourist in sight! [View Full Entry]

---

---

Upon arriving in Wadi Halfa we were immediately reminded that we were not in Egypt anymore when people stopped to greet us without trying to sell us something - how refreshing! After finishing laundry and exporing the town, there's not much else to do here in Wadi Halfa. So we climbed the hill behind the hotel and had a picnic lunch and took some photos. We are here until the Dragoman truck arrives, which ended up arriving almost 2 days after we arrived in Wadi Halfa. Interesting tidbit about this town: it was actually quite the place until its residents were [View Full Entry]

---

---

It's a 16 hour ferry ride from Aswan to Wadi Halfa. We arrived at the port at 11am ish and made it through passport control and the various checkpoints and numerous ticket checks and finally got on the ferry for noonish. It's nice, basic, we ended up with an inside cabin, which is actually quite nice, dark and cozy. We spent the better part of the afternoon on the top deck watching as the barge next to us gets loaded up with various goods including Twinkies. It's absolutely insane, we've tried capturing it in pictures, but not sure if even they [View Full Entry]

---

---

We got up super early (2:30 am) to catch the 4 am convoy to the temples at Abu Simbel which was 275 km or so away. We arived in time for sunrise and got some cool pictures, (well, we thought they were pretty neat). We stayed there for 2 hours then took the bus back, total driving time 6 hours. It was worth it though. Pretty amazing considering the whole site was relocated to higher ground to in the 1960s to avoid being flooded by the rising Lake Nasser. The artwork inside the temples is incredibly well preserved, but of course [View Full Entry]

---

---

There is so much history to see at Luxor that it is easy to get overwhelmed. We were lucky to have 3 full days to explore here, but after the first two we got pretty much tombed-out! Day 1 started with a tour of Karnak Temple. Simply amazing! You really have to go there in person to appreciate it all. What we found the most impressive, aside from the size, was how much colour remained in the artwork. It would have been mind-boggling to see it in its prime 3000 years ago. We followed up Karnak Temple with a trip to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Did we forget to mention that we don't have a truck? When we arrived in Egypt we were supposed to connect with another Dragoman truck that had been shipped from Mombasa. The truck made it to Suez where it remains stuck in customs while the co-driver is negotiating with the minister of tourism to release it. Rather than wait in Cairo, we set off on our intended desert oasis route in a mini-van and spent the night at Baharia oasis. From there we took 4x4 jeeps out into the Western Desert. There is no way that we would have seen everything [View Full Entry]

---

---

After 17 hours spent in planes and airports we finally arrived in Cairo from Douala via Casablanca (figure that connection out). Appropriately, the hotel where we met the rest of the group was called the Canadian Hostel - 7 of the 15 group members are Canadian. Our first full day in Cairo we went to the Cairo Museum and paid an extra $20 to see the royal mummies. Neat experience, no photos to show for it as they made us check our cameras at the door. The museum is incredibly disorganized and it probably helps to have a guide (we had [View Full Entry]

---

---

After several hours at the Nigerian side of the border trying to exit that country, we ended up spending the night at the Cameroon border post as we were already hitting night fall by the time entry was being sorted out. This is the real disadvantage to group travel, because border crossings take 10 times longer when you're trying to get 20 people and a large truck across. Christmas day was one to remember. We drove a total of 36km in 8 hours, the roads were that bad. This, after several locals and police men had told us the roads were [View Full Entry]

---

---

One of the real bright spots that we encountered in Nigeria was the Drill Ranch conservation project in the Afi Mountains. Drill Monkeys are one of the most endangered monkey species due to hunting and habitat destruction. The conservation project has a breeding and re-hab centre in Calabar and then the Monkeys are taken to the Drill Ranch in the rain forest of the Afi Mountains where they are prepared to be released back into the wild. The project employs local people and interacts with the nearby villages by using local produce to feed the animals. They truely are doing some [View Full Entry]

---

---