The most magnificent temple in Egypt
Trip Start
Aug 04, 2009
1
7
17
Trip End
Aug 22, 2009
Aswan, Nile River Valley, Egypt
Saturday, August 8, 2009
After we reached our amazing hotel, Isis, which was on the Nile and complete with granite bathrooms and amazing pool we headed out for our first excursion of the trip to the Unfinished Obelisk, High Dam, and Temple of Philae. While the Unfinished Obelisk was impressive as it was about 150 ft and would have been the tallest one in Egypt if completed, it was mostly just a quarry that was very hot due to the August temperatures. The High Dam was also impressive as it was similar in style to the Saqqara pyramids, and used 14 times more stones than the three pyramids at Giza combined. These were interesting, but my favorite had to be the Temple of Philae.
The Temple of Philae, shown in the movie The Mummy 2, is an island temple that was moved when the dam was made as to not be flooded. While a dive site temple would be great, the water would have destroyed the complex very quickly, and countries from around the world and UNESCO funded the project that moved the temple, brick by brick, over to a more secured setting. It was our first introduction to beautiful hyrogliphics, and is a moment I will never forget. The large images of the Pharaoh smiting his enemies is a common hyroglyph found throughout Egypt, and it quickly became my favorite.
After the day tour we grabbed lunch at a tourist restaurant on the Nile near the hotel. I had a margarhetia pizza that cost about 50 pounds with water, a bit pricy but I was hungry. In the evening we headed across the Nile to Elephantine Island to go on our 40 minute camel ride around the area seeing some isolated castles and mausoleums. My camel was a bit grimpy and didnt want to go, so the kid that was helping me along beat it a lot. I was told on the way back the camel threw the kid off into the ground... those poor things. It was a lot of fun, and after we went to a Nubian village for a traditional dinner with a Nubian family [although they didn't eat with us since they traditionally eat much, much later] which I had my first introduction to my favorite dish: mousaka. Mousaka is an eggplant dish that is reminiscent of ratatouille and is incredibly tasty. I believe I ate it about 5 or 6 times on the trip and will be getting recipes to make it at home. After eating the family sangs songs and we danced until the sun set and we headed back to the hotel as the following morning we had a 3am wake up to go to Abu Simbel, the most magnificent temple in Egypt!
After getting up at 2:45 am we had to quickly catch the convoy that left at 4:30am to make the 3 hour drive to Abu Simbel, about 20 miles from the border with Sudan. Our coach actually got one of the armed guards who rode the whole way with us carrying his AK-47. I felt safe, I swear. The breakfast left much to be desired but no one cared and most of us slept the whole way. Since other people went and grabbed a coach on their own outside of GAP, we had a lot of room on the coach and could spread out and sleep which was amazing. We reached Abu Simbel at about 7:30 and had a few hours to look around the site. Unfortunately pictures are not allowed inside, but I stole some video which got me yelled at by a 16 year old British girl and her mom. I tried explaining that the sign said no photos, not no video, but they were not having it. Some people. This complex was also moved up and over from its original site and was reconstructed, brick by brick. I cannot imagine the engineering that was required to do so without damaging these fragile monuments significantly, but, I am glad they did.
Abu Simbel is organized so that twice a year the light will come in the main corridor and light up the shrine at the end at sunrise. This day is to mark Ramses II coronation [they think]. The move was so accurate that the day was only off by 1! The temple for Ramses II and his beloved wife were so well maintained and protected by the sand that the colors are spectacular. One of the side rooms was not completed and the drawings where they were going to etch the hyroglyphs is still intact [assuming it was not added later by excavators]. While we only had 3 hours there, I wish we could have more, it was definitely my favorite.
I took some time to go shopping and found some canopic jars which were quite interesting. For those who don't know, a canopic jar is a set of four jars with god heads that the pharaohs organs would be placed in after mummification. The ones I found were large and stone with medium quality carving of four different gods and pharaoh heads. The traditional bartering ettiquite in guide books says take the starting price and go 10%. This salesman was rather pushy and asked for 900 pounds starting. I told him I only had 100 pounds and he was very offended. Well, the price kept going down, and he wouldn't let me leave and would not take no for an answer. He even had me show him that I wasnt lying. It is a good thing I had the rest of my money in my money belt. In the end I got the canopic jars for 87 pounds, 4 USD, hand sanitizer, and a pen. I felt pretty accomplished. I feel that with the recession and it being low season people are not spending as much, and you can get much better deals as some of the touts are very, very desperate to earn money. Good deal for me.
Another 3 hour drive back and we were back in Aswan. We went to McDonalds to get lunch, which is something I would normally shun in regular scenarios, but I was on a quest to get a McFalafel. Unfortunately that was phased out a few years back, but it was replaced with a McArabia, which is a kofta sandwich in pita bread. A combo costs 33 pounds and was quite tasty for being kofta and McDonalds. We chilled the rest of the day at the pool and hit an internet cafe which typically costs 5 pounds for 30 minutes or 10 pounds for an hour at non-hotel sites. We headed to another tourist place for dinner and I tried Kabba Halla for dinner with some strawberry juice which was about 50 pounds after getting another water. Kabba Halla was like a beef stew and was not something I would get again, but it wasnt bad. We ended the night at the bazaar in Aswan and smoked some sheesha with our tour manager and souvenir shopping before crashing from exhaustion. Later in the evening we found out one of the couples on our tour had our camera stolen from a bookmark boy. Luckily I have 3 cameras with me at all times and I let them borrow one for the rest of the tour and had plenty of them on my SLR camera since we hung out a lot at the other sites. Warning, watch out for the kids touting bookmarks, they will get into your bags even if it is zipped!
Our final day in Aswan was for relaxation. We got up at 8:45 without an alarm to have breakfast before loading up on our felucca sailboat for a day of relaxation on the Nile. The felucca was slow going but we did big out and backs along the banks of the Nile which gave us some great speed and amazing wind. Not bad for temperatures of 110+°F. Halfway through we stopped for a decent lunch and visited the village of Paqlawis (spelling may be off), the home of one of our guides. It was a tiny village that appeared very poor. These villages were my favorite because there were tons of kids chasing us saying Hello and Goodbye, which was quite adorable. After the tour of the town we were invited into his home and given dates while watching some Arabic soap opera. You can really see that people in the Middle East aren't different from anyone else by these experiences.
We had another couple hours on the Nile before stopping for dinner on a beautiful enbankement. Feluccas are not allowed to sail after dark since they have no lights and it would be dangerous. Our bank had many animals ranging from cows to tick infested dogs. They were quite adorable but the jumbo ticks were sad enough to break your heart. We played an Egyptian sports game that was like a modified form of keep away and dodge ball which was good for a laugh although my team was stomped quite easily. Probably should have put my SLR down for that, whoops.
We slept on the Nile for the night under the stars, seeing 2 shooting stars, and was woken up early in the morning by the most amazing red sunrise I've ever seen and puppies running up and down the banks of the Nile going yip yip yip yip yip yip yip over and over again. It was cute and annoying at the same time! We ate breakfast and cleaned up before catching our transfer to head to Luxor! We had determined that we would pay extra and hit the temples of Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way (next entry), and paid 55 pounds to have the driver stop at these two temples along the way.
