Walk like an Egyptian
October 16th 2010 We arrived in Cairo dazed and confused as our flight was late. We finally got to our first hotel at 5am. It wasn't the best of accommodations, as I don't think they have ever cleaned our room. We stayed for one night and moved to Dahab Hotel, which is a backpackers on the rooftop of an 8 story building. It had a cool atmosphere and we quickly made it our home base. We spent the first few days
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Peter
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How they moved them...
The salvage of the Abu Simbel temples began in 1964 by a multinational team of archeologists, engineers and skilled heavy equipment operators working together under the UNESCO banner; it cost some $40 million at the time. Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was carefully cut into large blocks (up to 30 tons, averaging 20 tons), dismantled, lifted and reassembled in a new location 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from the river, in one of the greatest challenges of archaeological engineering in history. Some structures were even saved from under the waters of Lake Nasser. Today, thousands of tourists visit the temples daily. Guarded convoys of buses and cars depart twice a day from Aswan, the nearest city. Many visitors also arrive by plane, at an airfield that was specially constructed for the temple complex.