A Slow Ride

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I am so glad that we didn't have to find the train station in Cairo on our own, because I don’t think we would have figured it out. It was under construction so it didn’t look like anything, and there were no lights in the front, it was very shady looking! The guy walked us all the way to our sitter car, which was small and had only 3 seats! No door, cold, and a window that banged as the train swayed but nice because we had it to ourselves. I was stuck in the middle, and got no sleep. The train ride was something around 15 hours and I only used the toilet once because it was really gross!!! Breakfast was 30 Egyptian Pounds and was 2 of those rolls we have seen lots of with a slice of white hard cheese in it and a croissant with a small bottle of mango juice. We arrived in Aswan early in the morning, the sun shining woke me up! We only had to walk like 2 blocks to get to our hotel. Our room was a good size, and only 3 floors up! We got settled in and changed our cloths and then headed out to get some food quickly before we were picked up to go to the Phillies Temple. We found a little sandwich shop that was open and ordered schwamas... What we got was more of a chicken sandwich with a mustard sauce than a schwama but it was still pretty tasty! We headed back to the hostel and met in the lobby, there was a large group of people going with us. We got into a van with bright orange shag carpet seat covers! We were taken to a boat dock and then we took a short ride to the Phillies Temple which is on an island in the Nile. We spent just over an hour walking around. It was pretty, lots of flowers and the temple itself was in pretty good shape still. After that we were driven across the Aswan Damn. There are 2 damn's. We drove across the lower one, and saw High damn in the distance, Alex and I smiled because High Damn is 111 meters high which is how high the bridge we jumped off of in Zambia is! On the way back to the hostel everyone in our van decided we would go on the search for beer! Beer and alcohol is not easily found here. We walked around for quite a while and had to ask a few people for directions before finding a man at a Shisha bar who walked us around a corner and down an ally into a garden area. It was like being taken into a secret society for beer! We all enjoyed what seems to be the only beer here, Stella. It says it is Egyptian, but a subsidiary of Heineken! 😊 After that we went to look for food. We ran into a couple that had also been at the temple and they showed us a place they went to eat at. We had Falafal, tea and then most everyone headed back to the hostel to go to bed.(Our next morning was to start at 2:30am) Alex and I walked around with Yukiko and Dan(the couple that showed us where to eat) for most of the rest of the night. We walked quite a ways down the market which seemed to just go on and on. Then turned off onto a side street and down to the river. We walked back along the river and got back to the hostel sometime around 10pm. After that they went to bed, Alex and I, for having gotten no sleep on the train, were still wide awake. We sat down in the lobby area and talked, and watched Jeepers Creepers on the little TV with Arabic subtitles running across the screen in yellow. Before we knew it, it was midnight. We headed up to the room for a nap!
2:30am of course came too quickly! We were given a boxed breakfast, 3 of the long bread rolls with cheese(that looks like the laughing cow cheese) and jam. I ate 1, then slept in the car. It is a 3 hour drive from Aswan to Abu Simbil.
Abu Simbil was amazing! The Temples faces are massive. I found them to be absolutely stunning. I really loved it! We drove 3 hours to get there and had 2 hours to walk around before we had to go back to the van. It was plenty of time to see everything, but I would have liked more time there. It was peaceful, right by the Nile, and no one was inside hassling you! I slept a bit on the drive back but not the whole time. There was a small sand storm at one point and the desert was more rocky than I expected it to be. It was not sandy dunes, but more like rocky piles separated by large spaces of flat sand. Power lines stretch along the road but otherwise, for a while, there is little to no sign of civilization.
We had the rest of the afternoon open. Everyone that we met was leaving that afternoon for the Felucca’s but we still had another night in Aswan. Stacy, Alex and I headed up to the room. I got in the shower and when I got out I stepped into a pool of water on the floor... I had not realized that the tub was leaking but there was a drain on the floor that seemed to be working. Alex called at me through the door said there was water on the floor, my backpack and some of its contents got wet. We waited for most of the water to drain and then Alex got in the shower, we didn’t really think anything of it because the same thing happened at the hostel in Cairo. After Alex showered though the water seemed to not drain anymore. Stacy went down stairs to tell them and found that there was water running down the stairs and out of the ceiling into the lobby!!! The people working in the hotel didn’t think to come and knock on our door and tell us that our shower was flooding the hotel!!! We took them into the room and they said " you switch room this one broke". We were moved up another floor. Having worked in a hotel for so long Alex and I understood what the hotel staff was now going through and the evil side of ourselves made us burst out laughing! We also found it funny that they were just trying to clean up the water but not trying to find out where the water was coming from!!! A guy came up to our new room to bring us Stacy's sunglasses that she had left in the other room and we found that we could not open the door! We were locked in, our door handle was broken! This of course made Alex and I laugh even harder! This time even Stacy joined in! I laid most of my stuff out since it was wet and we did laundry. Then the 3 of us went and walked around town and found a little place to have dinner at. We stopped at a place that had Baklava out on shelves. They made "Egyptian Pizza" which I didn't find any different from regular pizza but it was good. We got a couple different types of baklava to go and headed back to the hostel where we ate our sweets and had coffee. It was an early night for us compared to the night before. We got to sleep in the next day since we didn't have a ride to the Felucca till 1 pm. Sleeping in was wonderful! We got ready and finished our packing and then hung out in the lobby till it was time to be picked up.
We had a short but steep walk from the road down to the river where the felucca was. A Felucca looks a lot like a sail boat to me... There is a super tall triangular sail and then a flat covered area where we would be spending the next day and a half sitting, reading, eating, sleeping. The first night there were 8 people on our felucca. We had a zucchini soup with pita bread and rice for dinner that was really good and then we all played Uno for the remainder of the night! It was pretty awesome. There was a guy from S. Korea, a girl from China, a guy from Chili and 2 girls from the UK. It was easy enough for everyone to catch on and we all had fun for a while playing by candle light. It was cold over night! And there was no bathroom on board, we had to go outside, which was fine for me, I’m used to camping, but a lot of the girls were not too happy about it, which I found funny! We stopped for the night, the two young guys who were manning the ship pulled a sheet around the outside of our little makeshift room to block us from the wind and then dirty blankets were handed out. 2 people per blanket cause they only had 4, they looked not so nice but it was cold and so we all ended up using them rather than freezing to death. I slept alright, although it seems I was the only girl who did 😊 The 2 girls from the UK got off that morning and then we were on our way again. Breakfast was fried pita bread with that cheese that is like Laughing Cow cheese and Jam.



Felucca’s are not fast boats by any means. We slowly made our way up the river zigzagging back and forth to catch the wind. They played Bob Marley on a little stereo from a cassette tape and we slowly warmed up in alternating sunny and shadowy periods due to the shadow from the sail and the turning of the boat. We stopped at a little island for lunch. Pita bread with tuna, chopped veggies, and a super soft cheese mixture with tomatoes in it. I started drinking beer 😊 It is strange because I have never really been the big partier of a group but since I have been traveling Alex and I feel like we have been the crazy ones! As the sun was setting the wind stopped... No wind, no more movement for us. The boys pulled out two long poles, not paddles, there was nothing at the end to give them extra push, they were just poles. We VERY slowly made our way to the island that we would be stopping on for the night! I helped row for a bit while one of the guys climbed up the sail to tie it closed. It took forever! I had to pee so bad by the time we made it to shore I thought I might actually burst! We had an almost full moon both nights and so we didn't even need a flash light while scouting for a place to do our thing 😊 On the other hand it also sort of felt like squatting out in a spotlight! Dinner was another soup type thing with potatoes this time instead of zucchini and pasta instead of rice. It was again very good! I have to say that the food on the felucca has been some of my favorite of the trip(so far), simple, but flavorful! Everyone went to bed pretty early having not been able to get much sleep the night before. Even though the wind was not blowing it was colder than the previous night! I snuggled into Alex hoping for a bit of combined heat but the both of us were up most of the night cold and uncomfortable. The island we were stopped at for the night was a high traffic area. There were lots of other Felucca’s camped out there for the night and large cruise ships passed by us all night long. Every time a cruise ship would go by the Felucca would rock back and forth on the waves fairly vigorously. Morning brought a warm sun! Thankfully! Fried pita bread for breakfast again, I passed this time, one piece from yesterday morning was enough grease for me for a year! I went back up to the top of the hill for one last bathroom break before we set off and in a little divot by some bushes did my thing. As I was finishing I noticed a bull standing in the bushes staring at me! It scared the crap out of me and I ended up jumping, standing strait up, and taking a couple steps away before pulling my pants up! There were other people around… I may not have escaped that flash un-noticed haha. We didn’t have far to go down the river before docking for good. We gathered up all our things and then Climbed up to the road, which was not an easy task with our heavy backpacks and slightly weaker sea legs! The shuttle van that picked us up was packed! I was put in the front seat between the driver and a girl who gets car sick! Luckily she seemed to be ok for the day. It was kinda cool sitting in front because I got a good view of the streets. I tried to take a few photos as we passed by the more rural areas. We stopped at a temple, the driver didn't even know the name of it and said we had 30 minutes. Alex, Stacy, Myself, and one other guy decided we would just wait outside. No point in paying to get into see something when you can't take your time looking around. We were surrounded by kids trying to sell us necklaces and bracelets and cigarettes. After that we were taken to a small town along the Nile called Edfu where there is another temple. Edfu temple. We were given an hour for this one and so we decided to go in. It was pretty big, and for the most part still in good condition. Unfortunately, when you don’t have a guide with you explaining the history of a place or what the hieroglyphs are describing all the temples start to look the same. It didn't take us long to wonder through all the little rooms. We went to the Cafe inside, I had a mandarin ice lolly and Alex had an Orange Fanta. We walked through the little market outside the temple which was nice because the people were not hounding us to look or buy anything and therefore Alex and I were more inclined to look. Alex got a little statue of one of the Egyptian Gods and I got a little clay scarab which is supposed to bring good luck! After that we had an hour and a half drive up to Luxor. It took longer due to all the traffic police stops. More than when we went through Zimbabwe even and this time our driver had to pay them off every time. I don’t know what was said or why this was happening but every time we passed one the driver would pull out another bill fold it up and stick it in the vent by his window so that when we were stopped the police could take it and let us go through. At one of the stops, the police made the driver get out of the car, they seemed to be giving him a harder time at this one than any of the others, we were not sure what was going on and so we just sat and waited... He eventually got back in the car and we pulled off. He said something to the effect of the police being bad and that was it. We tried to ask him what happened but he didn't speak English and we could not figure it out. Once we got to Luxor we were dropped off at our hotel and checked in to a 5th floor room. There was a club above us and so we could hear music and the scuffling of chairs and feet as well as the cars outside the window most of the night. It didn't bother me but a lot of people we met the next day said they could not sleep because of it, I couldn't sleep because our room was freezing! Luxor is a large city, although still smaller than Cairo. Same sort of run down feel but the buildings are not as tall and the streets are a lot narrower. It was dusty and there was not as much trash as Cairo but still a lot. It is also more conservative than Cairo as far as what the women wear, you see more of them in traditional dress here. There are also a lot more horse drawn buggies. It was a long day for us so once we got up to our room we ate some of our snacks we had got for the felucca, as our dinner, showered and got organized for our next day which started at 6am.



*** There are some photos attached of the Menu from our hotel in Luxor! We got a good laugh due to them, check out the spelling!***

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Photos

Candle Light on the Falluca
This was our lighting for dinner! A candle put into a water bottle that was cut in half and had a bit of water at the bottom! Pretty inventive and worked for a while but then the plastic melted and it fell through!

Comments

[Kathy]

Amazing
As I read your blogs I just cant stop thinking what an amazing adventure you are on, and I know I have said it more than once. The places and things are your seeing will be something that you will remember for many years to come, and the many stories you will be able to share with us. Love and miss you mom.