Abu Simbel

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At 3:00am the alarm starting harassing Michael and I to wake up. I hit the snooze button as if I was at home, but when the wakeup call rang I realized I was in Egypt and literally jumped out from under the covers. I took a quick shower, packed our backpacks and we went to meet our tour guides to Abu Simbel at the front desk. Knowing that we were leaving before the complimentary breakfast the Isis Corniche Hotel offers, the receptionist handed Michael and I each our own to-go breakfast bag. We left our backpacks with the front desk as we were going to return to the hotel again before catching our train to Luxor that evening.



We turned and found our tour guides waiting with a car out front. You could see the relief in their face that we actually showed up. Our guide’s name was Mostafa, but I never did get the name of our driver. Mostafa was a younger man who spoke near perfect English. Later I found out that he studied at the American University in Cairo. Normally this tour to Abu Simbel has a group of people, however due to the state of tourism in Egypt at the time it was only Michael and me for this trip. We got in the car and started driving the 3 ½ hours it takes to get to Abu Simbel from Aswan. Within the first 10 mins I was curled up in the backseat with my head on Michael’s shoulder. There’s not much to look at during the trip – just miles and miles of sand.



We arrived at Abu Simbel around 8:00am. It was already very hot. Mostafa got out and flashed a tour group badge that allowed all three of us to pass through the ticket counter to the visitors’ center no questions asked. Once to the visitors’ center Mostafa gave us a history of Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a pair of temples built by Ramses II at the southernmost tip of ancient Egypt’s border to Sudan. The main sun temple is pretty much meant to show the strength and might of Ramses II to any enemy traveling down the Nile into Egypt. The other temple was built to honor Nefertari, Ramses II’s chief wife.



After our introduction from Mostafa we were given some time to explore the visitors’ center. Most of the visitors’ center’s focus was on the rescue of the monument in the 1960s. The waters of Lake Nasser were rising and threatened to engulf the temples. The UNESCO, and a couple billion US dollars, cut the temple from the mountain in sections and reassembled the pieces in front of an artificial mountain 210m behind their original location. It’s pretty incredible seeing the pictures of Ramses’s face being cut off and lifted away by a crane. I can’t wait to see the monument in person.



We walk with Mostafa around the artificial mountain from the visitors’ center as soon as we’re done. We can see Lake Nasser off in the distance as we round the mountain and gaze upon this giant monument. It’s gorgeous! The closer temple is the Temple of Hathor, the tribute to Ramses the II’s wife Nefertari. We were told by Mostafa that Nefertari is the only wife of a Pharaoh to be represented in temples as large as her husband. This is because Nefertari was made a deity during her lifetime, which is rare as most pharaoh’s wives are made gods after their death. “Ramses II really loved Nefertari”, Mostafa tells us.



We wander through the temples admiring the pristine condition of the hieroglyphics. Other than the hieroglyphics at the Prince Tombs and the small temple at Giza, this is one of the first times Michael and I saw the ancient form of writing up close and by far the best quality. It’s absolutely incredible how consistent the writing is. The size and thickness of each chiseled character is very discipline throughout the entire temple. They all look the identical, yet you know hundreds of Egyptian workers had to have completed the masterpiece together thousands and thousands of years before computers. We were unable to take pictures within the temples, but I will always remember how beautiful it was.



We grudgingly left the Temple of Hathor, but knew that we had an even larger temple to see before we started heading back. We walked to Ramses’s temple Sun Temple and were in awe as the 4 statues of Ramses II out front appeared larger and larger. There was absolutely no one around, so Michael and I decided to take some pictures of just us with the entire massive entrance. We jumped off of the stairs and smiled and laughed – what a rare opportunity to have this temple all to yourself. We walked inside and, Mostafa was right, it was even more beautiful than the first temple. I’m glad he had us visit Nefertari’s temple before Ramses’s temple – otherwise we wouldn’t have appreciated Nefertari’s nearly as much as we should have. We walked paste the Ramses pillars the line the entrance way up to the Inner Sanctuary at the back of the temple. The condition of these statues was amazing as well. We then headed up to the inner sanctuary and saw four seated statues of Ptah, Ramses II, Amun-Ra and Ra-Harakhty – all of which this temple was dedicated to. We probably spent another hour and a half admiring the hieroglyphics and consulting my travel book. There were scenes depicting battles, love, sacrifice, etc. – anything you could imagine being a part of Egyptian society in ancient times. Incredible.



Soon we left. We grabbed a bite to eat at a shop near the visitors’ center and then met back up with Mostafa and our driver to head back to Aswan. It was about noon. I spent a few minutes writing about our morning and then fell asleep again as we ventured through the endless fields of sand. Before we knew it we were being dropped back off at the Isis Corniche Hotel. We tipped Mostafa and our driver and heading back into the hotel. We had 2 ½ more hours until we needed to catch our train. We went down toward the water to relax. I ordered a mint tea and sipped on it while staring out at the felucca’s dancing on the water. Michael decided to take a quick dip in the hotel pool – we had a very relaxing two hours.



Eventually we headed to the train station a short walk away. We boarded the train and arrived in Luxor a few hours later.



Once in Luxor we were met with a crowd of horse drawn carriages yelling bids to take us to our hotel. One older man wasn’t yelling nearly as loud as everyone else, but was clearly interested in some business so we decided on him. We made a good choice. He helped us on our way and knew exactly where the Nile Palace Hotel was that we were staying at.

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Comments

[Dad]

Looks like no one is there?
Do you have the country to yourself?

[Maeve Hanley]

Re: Looks like no one is there
Hi Pops! There are just a hand full of tourists here. We saw some Chinese and some Germans, but definitely no Americans. At Abu Simbel today we actually stood in the Great Ramses temple for about 20 minutes without anyone else in there. It was incredible. Yesterday we went out on the Nile in a felucca, our captain was beyond excited for business. He sang to us the entire way and just kept thanking us. Up in Giza, as I mentioned in my blog, there was maybe 6 other tourists. The rest were all Egyptian guards or merchants. We really do have the whole country to ourselves. It's incredible. I love you lots! See you soon!