Aswan - Dams & Philae Temple

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6th Jan - Day 97 – Aswan
Late start (finally!!), we made the most of it. Slept in and missed breakfast but were able to make our way along the Nile to Maccas, where the breakfast menu was available until 11am. Yay! We weren’t the only ones from our group to make the short journey up the street… After brekky we walked back one block from the water to the souk. A bustling and quite lengthy stretch of market stalls (mostly selling the same things as their neighbours!). We were in search of ‘cheap’ traditional Egyptian costumes as we had a dress up night planned for our first night on the feluccas. What an experience… every man invites you into his shop to “just look, no hassle” (yeah right!). It is a dampener on the fun of bargaining. We tried in one store but weren’t willing to pay the price so walked away. When we had our nerves back we tried another store and walked out about 30 mins later with two costumes and some scarves, having spent approx. AU$100, not bad. After making our purchases we exited the souk as soon as we could, a little less hassling on the cornish that led back to the hotel (mainly offers of felucca rides). It just so happened that KFC was located directly across from our hotel so a group of us stopped in for some lunch. The afternoon was passed with a guided tour of the Aswan area. Picked up at 2pm we travelled by coach across the Old Dam and around to the High Dam. Nassar Lake the 2nd largest man-made lake in the world is located here, 500km long, 35km at its widest point (shared with Sudan). The High Dam is incredible itself, almost 4km long and almost 1km wide at the base. A beautiful monument of peace and friendship with Russia stands in the form of the lotus flower on the West side of the dam. From here we continued by coach to the Philae Temple port where we watched the chaos of motor boats fighting to pick up and drop off passengers, literally running into each other! Luckily it wasn’t too hard for our boat to get out as some of the congestion did clear. A short 10 min ride and we arrived at the island where the Philae Temple now stands. Threatened by the rising Nile, after the dam was built in the 1960’s, the temple was numbered and disassembled block by block, and moved to Agilika Island piece by piece. It was then restored and reassembled and still stands today. Construction of the original temple began in around 4 BC by Ptolemy II and was finished in 4 AD by the Roman Emperors. This temple is dedicated to the goddess Isis, the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. These three are some of the main characters in the Egyptian creation story. Our guide explained one of the creation stories along with the different parts of the temple and some of the pictures carved in the walls. Then we had a bit of free time for photos before we piled back on the boat, then back on the bus to the hotel. The hotel, Orchid Hotel, provided half board, meaning each day we got 2 meals. Today it was breakfast (which we missed) and dinner, so everyone ate together and then it was off to bed. Our room here was quite interesting; we were definitely back to South America standards, maybe even a little lower. We did have a double bed with a blanket (in fact a blanket was all that it had on it!) and the en-suite was a little room to the side, toilet and shower in one combo. This meant that when you showered everything got wet. Again, in the suburban areas, the mosques have their ‘call to prayer’ 5 times a day, including 5am and 8 or 9pm, we haven’t really been able to determine exactly what times they do it at as they have varied in the different towns; all we know is that it is very loud… Early to bed tonight though (10pm) as our pick up in the morning was a bright and early 3am, to travel to Abu Simbel.

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