It's Time to Cruise the River Nile

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CONVOY TIME AGAIN

We need to leave at 8:30 this morning to join the convoy back to Aswan from Abu Simbel. When we check out of the hotel, the guy in reception tries to give us a crash course in how to write in Arabic, it looks so nice but I think it would take a long time to learn.

For the first time ever I am given a true gift. I bought a badge from the shop at the hotel and he gave me a free postcard, it was really nice.

Ahmed the guide still isn’t there at 9am so we give him a call (Memphis Tours gave us a mobile phone before we left Cairo in case we needed to call anyone, nice touch) and he tells us the convoy won’t be leaving until 10am so he will pick us up at 9:30. He phoned the hotel at 1am and left a message for us. The hotel didn’t want to phone us then (yay!) and then forgot to let us know in the morning. Doesn’t matter really as either way we were going to have been sitting somewhere together, in the room, in reception or in the car driving, so same, same… Tim was a bit dark because he could have had an extra hour sleep!

We get to the convoy start point and there are loads more vehicles and buses than before. Apparently because there wasn’t as many vehicles going back today the police decided to do only one convoy back to Aswan. A lot of people leave Aswan on the 4am convoy, see the temples and drive on the next convoy back - makes for a big day when you have a 3-4 hour drive each way. So the later convoy back means there is plenty of time for those people to have a good look around.

We get going and this time we all pretty well all stay together, to the point that there is another van from the same company that we play leap frog with for a while and then we sit behind him sometimes no more than 1-2 metres away doing 120kph!

TIME TO JOIN OUR CRUISE SHIP

We go directly to our ship, we have to walk through another ship to get to ours as they are parked side by side, pretty bizarre.

We are met by our new guide Salem. He will stay on board the whole time with us. He seems a really happy friendly bloke, even though initially, as expected, he directs all is talking to Tim, after a while I’m involved and then he chats to me all the time. He gives us our schedule for the next couple of days; it’s handwritten, complete with smiley faces!

We go straight to the dining room for lunch and are given our table for the duration of the cruise, we’re at table 2. Lunch is a buffet, with something yummy to suit everyone - and lots of it!

After lunch we get to our room, it’s really much bigger than I expected, but without any wasted space. So there is room for only one person to go between the bed and the drawers for example and we’re back to single beds pushed together. It even has a small balcony of sorts, we can open a sliding door and there is perhaps 30cm to the railing. We can see on a lot of the other boats the rooms don’t even have windows that open, so we’re pretty happy.

TIME TO BE A TOURIST AGAIN - DAM, TEMPLES AND A SHOP

We meet up in reception and head to the High Dam, this was the reason Abu Simble was moved. It now generates electricity for all of Egypt and it’s pretty impressive - for a wall that holds back water!

We then go by motor boat to Phillae Temple. There are some really big sturdy looking boats but because it’s just the two of us (plus our guide) we just get a small one. It’s the kind of boat that when he just gets it going we all breathe a sigh of relief; although I think I’ll be happier when it starts for the homeward trip! There are carpets on the floor of our boat, and I soon realise this is done because it’s a wooden boat and there’s quite a few bits of wood missing on the floor, so you have to be a little careful where you step.

But it gets us there no problems, it’s nice and cool with the breeze and the water which makes Tim happy - me though, I am LOVING this heat, I’ll be sad to leave it!

It’s a bit of a funny boat convoy heading there as everyone is going to the same place.

When we arrive, Salem walks through it all with us and explains everything and then leaves us to it to take photos. This Temple also had to be moved because of the High Dam.

The sheer size, as with all of the temples we’ve seen, is all encompassing. You feel completely dwarfed and the heat is reflected off all the rock so it’s really hot.

Back on the boat though cools everyone down.

We then go to a place that makes handmade blown glass ware and also incense, in other words it’s a shop with a show. We see some glassware being heated and blown into shape which is pretty cool and then we are shown their range of incense oils, a lot that are the same as commercially made perfumes, but these are without any chemicals or alcohol added. We are told that we don’t have to buy anything (as usual), but these guys are by far the most persistent, I leave feeling irritated (but with a bottle of Lotus Flower oil in my hand) and ask Salem not to take us to any more shops like this, he assures me that they weren’t meant to hound us and that he will not allow it to happen again.

So it’s back to the boat and we have a bit of pool time upstairs before dinner, very relaxing.

At tea we meet the other people who are sharing our table, they are a Polish couple who are doing their trip with alone, with no guide. On the table next to us is an American family, a grandmother, her son and his teenage son and daughter.

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