Our wakeup call came in the form of a loud pounding at the door, courtesty of Ahmed, who hadn't gone to sleep at all. At 3:15, we boarded yet another minibus, and headed into the desert for a 4 hour ride to Abu Simbel. The bus traveled by convoy, and we had to go through a security check for the bus itself. Mirrors checked the underside of the bus, then they opened the back door and looked inside. Once approved, we were on our way.
The ride was uncomfortable, crowded, etc, but we tried to sleep anyway. At one point we were all VERY rudely awakened, by what we thought was our bus flying down the side of a rocky hill. As it turned out, it was a flat tire, and we pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of the desert, under a clear, starry sky. I got a great shot of G standing in the broken tire in front of the bus as they put on the new one. Surprisingly, they were quite efficient, and we were back on the road within 15 or 20 minutes.
We arrived at Abu Simbel around 7:30 am, and bought our tickets. For the most part, everything in Egypt is very cheap. That's with the exception of "tourist prices", baksheesh (sp? bribery/tips), and temple/tomb entry fees. Here they were 80LE each. We walked down a stone pathway, and all of a sudden, we turned the corner and were struck by the amazing sight that is the Ramses II temple and his wife Nefertari's temple. They are colossal and amazing to see. There are four giant Ramses sculptures at the entrance, and inside, a lot of the original paint has been preserved. The Nefertari temple also. I snuck some non-flash photos inside the Nefartari temple, but didn't want to risk having to delete my photos by being caught in Ramses II.
One of the most amazing things about these is that they were relocated here, mountain and all. Piece by piece, they were cut into squares and transported, again, to escape flood waters from the creation of Lake Nassar.
After our 2 hours was up, we started heading back to the bus. There are a million guys that want to sell you something, and of course at a site like this, they're offering items for inflated prices. I ended up buying a scarf for 20LE and a pen (apparently a hot commodity) for a scarf that was originally 120LE. Oh yes, don't haggle with this one-they never see me coming!
We boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel. We then had 10 minutes to buy water and snacks before boarding a felucca (sail boat). There were ten of us on the trip, including the four Aussies we rode the train in with (David and Susanna, Richard and Fiona), another Aussie named Rob, 2 Brits named Nick and Glynn, and our friend Jorge from the previous evening. Our captains, Mohammed (yes, another) and Ramadan took our bags and placed them in a storage space underneath a foam mattress-covered platform, where we would be hanging out and sleeping for the next two days.
Naturally in a Muslim country, one has a difficult time finding alcohol, but they offered, and we bought some beer and wine for the trip. Keep in mind there are no bathrooms on board- just a couple stops along empty beaches where you can dig a hole and bring some tissue. We set sail early evening downstream (North) on the Nile River.
They prepared all the meals on the boat; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most were vegetarian, and included pita, cucumber salad, rice, vegetables in thin tomato sauce, etc. Mohammed was the cook, and quite a good one at that. We had a great time with our captains, and everyone on the boat really clicked. That evening, we played cards, told jokes, and finally slept while "docked" at a small empty beach.
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