Abu Simbel - Saturday September 23

Saturday started off as another early day, with our wake up call at 3 am. The only way to get to Abu Simbel, which is close to the border of Sudan, is by being in a bus as part of a police escorted convoy. The convoy leaves at 4 am and makes the 100 km trek to Abu Simbel. We all left the boat armed with our blankets, pillows and breakfast boxes which were packed by the boat staff. (they looked like giant floral kleenex boxes!) J and I each snagged our own seats so we were able to stretch out a bit and sleep. Arrived at 7 am and began our tour with an Egyptologist. Abu Simbel is made up out of two temples, both of which were built by Ramses II. He ruled Egypt for 67 years and had 350 daughters and 250 sons. His huge statues on the front of his temple show his daughters craved between his legs, as his sons were just waiting for him to die to see who would be the next king of Egypt! These two temples were also moved when Lake Nasser was created by the construction of the High Dam. (Lake Nasser is the largest artificial lake in the whole world) It took 4 years to cut the temple into blocks, label all the blocks and then reconstruct the temple on higher ground. We had about an hour to tour the site before the bus convoy left again at 9 am. Slept some more on the way back and arrived back at the boat in time for lunch. Since lunch wasn't included on our last day on the boat, J, Kym and I decided to try out a pizza place for lunch. It cost approx $4 Cnd for a medium size pizza with whatever you wanted on it. However, even though the list of toppings was quite extensive we soon discovered that what they actually had available, was not. After lunch we headed out to the market again and poked around before heading back to the boat. Managed to buy a few more things without too much hassle and discovered that the pens we brought from home really did work out to our advantage. (Don't know why, but plain Bic pens work wonders in bringing prices down!) After some banking and emailing we headed back to the boat and packed everything up. Arrived at the train station at 6:30 and started the 13 hour journey to Cairo!
We're currently in Cairo where our first tour ends and our extention to Jordan starts on Monday. Hoping to take is easy over the next couple of days and see a bit of Cairo.


Abu Simbel






Aswan market


Spices and dried fruit in the market.