Exploring the Nile and Aswan
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2007
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56
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Trip End
Jan 10, 2008
Aswan, Egypt
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
I spent some time rearranging the itinerary to try and fit as much in as possible before January 10, the day I fly to London. So it looked like I only really had one full day in Aswan to try to see all there is to see. There were also 3 other guys at the hotel who had the same plan as me so we thought we would check out the sights together.
First stop was trying to find the ferry to cross over to Elephantine Island, where there were a few sights to see as well as a couple Nubian villages to explore. Trying to actually find the official ferry was much harder than it should have been much thanks to many felucca owners lying to you about the ferry to try and get you to pay them to take us all across.
Anyway in the end we got across OK to Elephantine Island. For centuries the island, located in the middle of the Nile, was the centre of life at Aswan. Nowadays the main highlight of the island is the two Nubian villages that despite modernisation of Aswan itself still have a very rural feel. The first sight we visited was the ruins of Abu and the museum located next to it. Both of these sights were very average despite receiving a fantastic review by Lonely Planet. This seems to be becoming a bit a common recurrence where LP says something great about a place and then in fact it turns out to be very average, or perhaps I am just becoming a jaded traveler? Who knows.
So after an hour of non-interesting wandering around these sights were once again tried to find the ferry, this time to cross to the west bank of the Nile. On our way we got ourselves (deliberately) lost in the Nubian Villages which was great fun as the winding warren of streets was extremely colourful and all the villagers were very friendly. It was also interesting to be in an actual Nubian village and see people go about their everyday life.
It ended up that there was no ferry to the west bank from Elephantine Island (thanks for the misleading information again Lonely Planet), so we had to negotiable to get a boat across there. Unfortunately the only boat we could find was some guys small row boat, and unfortunately about 4 locals wanted to cross as well. So it ended up about 8 of us all packed into this small row boat where a man who was not a day younger than 60 proceeded to row us across the Nile on his little boat. The sides of the boat were literally only centimetres above the water due to the weight and I must say I was extremely nervous as were the other guys I was with. The locals... well they couldn't care less and were laughing at us for being so scared. We finally got to the other side and gave the old man some extra baksheesh to put towards his retirement fund for rowing us across and making it there alive.
The west bank of the Nile didn't really contain too many sights to see, and by that time we were more concerned about making it somewhere for some food than seeing the actual sights. So no sooner than we arrived we found a ferry back to the east bank. They tried charging us 5 pounds ($1) for the government run ferry, when the actual price is 50 piestres (10c), needless to say we were a bit annoyed and of course the American in the group, Gary, started calling them all sorts of names (and rightfully so) which I'm sure they didn't understand. Anyway we got the fare for 1 pound in the end but all of this being lied to and trying to be ripped off all the time was really starting to wear thin and getting to me. Back on the west bank we enjoyed some cheap falafel (again!) for dinner.
Later that afternoon we all decided we wanted to take a sunset felucca rise on the Nile, something that is regarded a "must do" while in Egypt. After a good 10 minutes of negotiating we got a reasonable price on the felucca for 1.5 hours. The felucca ride was very nice but was marred by one of the felucca owners pointing out things we already knew about Aswan in an obvious attempt to ask for more money at the end of the ride, and he even managed to drop in how many hungry children he had as well quite a few times throughout the ride. Anyway despite the negatives the ride was very beautiful and it was well worth doing.
That night we spent exploring the "souq" looking for bargains, but the souq was more like a truckload of tacky tourist shops. I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity and try to purchase myself the absolute tackiest tourist t-shirt as well as the most awful hat I could find. I was visiting Abu Simbel tomorrow, which no doubt would be packed with tourists, so I wanted to look the most touristy out of all the tourists. It didn't take long to find a tacky t-shirt; two camels looking stoned smoking a sheesha in front of the Pyramids, and I got it for 15 pounds quite easily ($3). Next stop was finding a tacky hat to wear. I found a fluro yellow one saying "I love Egypt", fantastic, but I couldn't get it for the price I was after so I had to give it a miss. I later realised the t-shirt I bought was a small (when I asked for a medium) and it wouldn't even fit over my head so I had to give the "dressing like a tourist" gig for tomorrow a miss, much to my disappointment.
So tomorrow we have to be up at 3am as we are going out to the Abu Simbel temple, which is near the Sudan border, for sunrise. The hostel owner told us off for coming back at 11pm when we had to be up so early in the morning, it felt like being told off by your dad for being out too late!
