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Published: February 4th 2009
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Apologises to our loyal readers for the lack of recent blog entries due to very limited, incredibly slow and costly internet, we are still alive and hope to catch up soon....
Day 246
"Bring Bring" at 2.45am was our wake up call that we did not ask for or expect. Not trusting backpackers like ourselves to be up and ready by 3.30am the hotel rang us and then came and knocked on the door, an early start to a big day of travelling to Abu Simbel. The temple of Abu Simbel is a 3 hour bus ride from Aswan, and due to the current Egpyt policy everyone travelling to Abu Simbel must do so in a convoy that departs at 4 am, apparently for security reasons. After three bus changes we had found the correct bus we made our way to Abu simbel, although arriving early in the morning at 7am the heat was starting to get intense, as were the hordes of pushing asian tourists.
Abu Simbel is an impressive 20m tall Temple built by Ramses the Second on the banks of the Nile. However, due to the proposed dam to be built to create Lake Nasser it
was carefully taken down and rebuilt 200 meters away. On site there was also another smaller temple dedicated to Queen Nefertiti. By this stage we were starting to be all templed out and after a brief look alot of pushed and elbows we went for a spot of people watching, always entertaining when massive tour groups of Asians (in particular) are present.
Back in the bus for the return three hour non-stop journey to see the dam wall at Lake Nasser, one of the largest in the world. However, we didn't buy the ticket instead Carly burst out of the bus in search of a toilet. After searching the nearby area, she managed to persuade the local military post to let her and a fellow traveller to use the mess toilet's (the worst toilet to date!).
Back on the bus we headed for the Temple of Philae, built on Philae Island which happily for us would be our last temple, as impressive as it was we were keen to get back for a beer. Back in Aswan we headed to one of the bars on the bank of the Nile and enjoyed a cold "Nile Special" over sunset. Lazy and keen to keep our stomachs happy to opted for macca's for tea and a very early night
Day 247
After a sleep in, our snooze was again disturbed by the phone, the manager demanding to know why we weren't at reception for our felucca trip, after explaining we had booked a sunset felucca (clearly the sun wasn't setting at 10am) and we weren't willing to compromise he finally agreed to organise it for 3.30pm. We then hit the net only to forget to check out prior to 12 much to the disdain of the manager (again), who apparently was not having a good day as he later told us off again for being five minutes late to take the bus 500 meters to the Nile for the "afternoon" local felucca trip.
We went for a local felucca ride (after sitting on it docked for 30 minutes) to the Kitchener Island, home to a beautiful botanical garden and dark and dusty museum which passed through quickly. Next on to Elephantine Island where they have more temple ruins and a small mueseum, however complete with it's own mummified head. It was a pleasent evening sailing on the Nile as the sun started to set over Elephantine island and a brief moment of serenity which unbeknownst to us at the time would be our last for sometime, as we had a train to catch.
Not just any train this was the train from Aswan to Cairo a 14 hour trip, with no sleeping quarters, but very cheap first class tickets and seats that you could recline in. However it was the end of the Hadj holiday and the trains and the stations swelled with thousands of Egyptions eager to get on board and head home, with enormous boxes and bags (filled with..... who knows?). A small problem for us was that we knew we did not have a ticket from Aswan to Luxor, we only had a ticket from Luxor to Cairo. Needless to say we were reluctant at first to show our ticket to get on the right train, but given the huge number of people, trains and platforms we required assistance. The Egyptions being friendly people, most of time, we had people coming from everywhere to help us, the only problem was that more often than not they were wrong. We managed to change platform three times, get on and store our stuff on three different trains until we finally found the correct one, and it was only 15 minutes late. We had a carriage to ourselves (until Luxor) and after some dispute over the ticket we got the all clear and were on our way to Cairo.
18.5 hours later we arrived starved, tired and cranky, and with extremely swollen bladders (the Egyptions are not known for their cleanliness, especially on the train) and we'd managed to hold on. We headed to our local cheap restaurent where we devoured chicken shawerma and fellafalls with garlic sauce. We had just enough time for a shower and a change of clothes at the very welcoming Lialy hostel before we headed of to the airport to fly to Nairobi, Kenya.
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