Aswan
Caught the sleeper train down which was a really good way of doing it, so glad I didn't try the sitting option!!! Slept pretty well on it and got plane type dinner and breakfast while on board. We had adjourning cabins and Daniel managed to annoy our porter guy by not wanting to buy his Coke as it wasn't cold enough Was delayed by about 3 hours, so took 15 hours to get there but we are on Egyptian time. Got a hotel with a rooftop pool and nice view of the Nile and spent the rest of Monday wandering about the town and relaxing by the pool.
Got up very early Tuesday morning to go out to Abu Simbel. Surprisingly Daniel managed to haul himself out of bed at 3am without too much nagging!!! The temples were pretty spectacular. The effort that went into them when they were made and then again when they were moved to build Lake Nasser is pretty amazing. We got a brief run down on the temples and then just took ourselves around. The inside of both were covered in paintings and hieroglyphics and really well preserved, probably one of the highlights of things we have seen.
Around about at Abu Simbel
We didn't get up to much else in Aswan really, wandered the markets, organised our felucca trip to Luxor and went for a sunset sail on the Nile. Was a bit of a pain dealing with all the captains constantly bugging us and one we ruled out as soon as we found out he was Sudanese after the taxi driver episode but found one we were happy with.
Felucca Trip
I have to say before doing the felucca trip I was a little apprehensive about how much I would enjoy it based on what I had heard others say, the hygiene standards of a few places and the dodginess of a lot of the felucca captains we spoke to. The two days ended up being fantastic though!!! Our captain Nassar and his first mate Jimmy were great and we had organised to have a boat to ourselves so had heaps of room to spread out while we relaxed. We had the same size boat as groups with 10 people!!!
Cruising along the Nile
The food was really good, though I was getting a bit sick of the bread we were having by the end (kind of thick pita style bread), even bought some camel meat to cook up from a camel market village we stopped at to have a look (can't remember the name). Camel meat was ok, though a bit tough and stringy and lots of fat, kind of a stongish flavour though not too much different to beef.
Was a lovely relaxing few days; lots of sailing, drinking beer, eating and reading. Stopped at a little Nubian village to have hibiscus tea and Jo got a henna tattoo. Callan and I braved it and swam in the Nile River!!! It was one of the clean, fast flowing sections, so we were told anyway and the water was sooooo cold. I only stayed in a few minutes, no matter how much you moved around you just didn't warm up!!!
Luxor
Our felucca trip unfortunately ended on the Friday morning, we didn't get as far as we wanted, only got to Kom Ombo (done on purpose we think so our captains didn't have as far to try and get back). A private taxi later and we were visiting the temple at Edfu and then onward to Luxor. Visited the Luxor Temple at sunset that afternoon. Jo and I also got to visit a little jewellery workshop to see how they make the cartouches (not sure how it is spelt).
Edfu and Luxor Temples
Next day we hired bicycles and spent the day riding around the city, visited the Mummification Museum, caught the ferry across to the West Bank and rode out to Karnak Temple to look around. Jo, Dan and I had by now decided we were going to take the easy way from Luxor to Dahab and fly, so Callan made his first attempt at organising his bus/ferry journey across.
Valley of the Kings was our destination for Sunday. We looked inside 4 different tombs but didn't bother doing Tutankhamen's. Lots of people had said others were better so there's no point. The tombs themselves weren't as big as I had been expecting but the few that we went into (Ramses VI in particular) still had all the paintings and hieroglyphics on the walls and roof with all the colour still there. Some were water damaged but mostly good. Wasn't really much inside of them, except a very musty smell and in one tomb fans to circulate the air.
Valley of the Kings and over the ridge and out
We took the option of walking over the ridge of the Valley to the Temple of Horatus. The walk wasn't hard at all but it was pretty hot, anyway it was worth it for the views we got at the top of the area and in particular the Temple. At the bottom all but Daniel decided to go in to look around (he made the right decision) and it was definitely much more impressive to see from afar. Not much to see, was so hot and I think by now I am pretty templed out. Rooftop relaxing took up the rest of our afternoon with a few nice sunset beverages.
