Day 331 - 18 May ‘24 - Cairo. Our bed in our apartment was extremely comfortable, and the duvet was the right size for the bed. Sleep should have been easy.
Cairo is not, however, a city that sleeps. The wild dogs barked, the drivers honked their horns, the muezzin made his calls. Add to that the constant hum and click of the air conditioners, and our sleep was incredibly broken.
However, the view at 6:45am of the pyramids FROM OUR BED (the window had no curtains), certainly made it all worth it!
Our tour guide/Egyptologist, Ahmed, and our driver, Mohamed, picked us up at 8am. Our first stop was Saqqara, where we saw the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the first pyramid to be built.
The construction of this pyramid displayed a shift from the traditional mud brick to the use of limestone, but there is no knowledge as to why. Inside part of the complex, the towers had been carved to represent bamboo and the ceiling was made to look like palm tree logs.
At one part of the complex, we got to go inside a pyramid that had partially collapsed and eroded. This pyramid was an extremely special one, as the inside had been carved with the Book of the Dead hieroglyphics, as well as stars in the ceiling.
Half of the walls were alabaster, which glowed when a torch was pressed against it, and if the angle of light was right, you could also see an image of the pharaoh etched into the wall.
The next room we looked in was the tomb of Inut, probably the daughter of King Teti, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty. The walls were decorated with beautiful inscriptions depicting everyday life, including fishing, farming, and tax payments.
There was also an incredible scene of a hippo giving birth, and a crocodile waiting to eat the offspring!
“This scene shows how evil hippos and crocodiles were perceived to be, as children of the god Set,” explained Ahmed.
We got back in the car and drove to the nearby Bent Pyramid. This pyramid got its name due to the change in construction angle, which started as 54° and shifted to 43° when the pyramid got to 47m high.
Access to the inside of the pyramid was included in the ticket price, so we decided to go in!
“You need to be very fit,” Ahmed warned us.
“We’ll be fine!” Dan and I told him.
We’d watched a video just the day before, so we knew what to expect - lots of low tunnels, and lots of stairs.
(As I write this, eight hours later, my knees are STILL recovering).
The first path was 80m long, at a steep angle, and had very low ceilings. We were all bent over (yes, even the kids), and various methods were tried to work out the easiest way to walk down.
At the bottom (which was actually below ground level) we were met by some very steep steps, that led to a 15m high set of rickety stairs.
At the top of the stairs we had to practically crawl through another tunnel, this one without the benefit of wooden steps. This second tunnel was half the width and height of the previous one.
At the end of this tunnel, there were two more flights of steps, and then we were at the top! We could see the interior angle of the pyramid, as well as a few bats who were flitting around. The sarcophagus that was found here, had long since been removed.
As with all things, what goes up, must come down. And there was only one way out - the way we came in.
I’ve experience ‘jelly legs’ before, and they usually come right once I start walking again. Not this time.
Every single step down the stairs was slow and measured, and it was a miracle I remained upright.
“Hurry up mummy!” came the oft repeated statement.
“It’s not a race!” I would cry back.
Going up the main access rampway was an awful lot easier than coming down, but I still had to stop a few times to catch my breath and straighten my legs.
Fortunately, Dan’s back and stomach were both okay. Unfortunately, Alex quite badly scraped his back on a particularly low part of the tunnel ceiling.
Once back outside, we could allow our heartrates to settle, and breathe in the fresh air. But it wasn’t fresh - it was hot. Hot air. Hot 40°C air. Have you ever tried to catch your breath when the air is hot?!
We decided not to go inside the nearby Red Pyramid, even though the path was a bit easier, and carried on to visit a carpet school.
We were told that in the 1950/60s, the government realised that only 20% of male children were at school and the rest were working, so implemented a new strategy. The carpet schools were given money that would be split three-ways: one third to the children as a wage, one third to the families for public schooling, and one third to the school. Rules were also put in place that the children were only allowed to be at the carpet school for no more than two hours a day, twice a week.
We were shown the silk thread on silk base threads, cotton onto cotton, and wool onto cotton. Alex, Abi, and I got to try knotting the silk threads onto the rug, and were amazed at how fast the man who knew what he was doing could tie his knots.
Once each thread was looped individually over two strands, it was pushed down to the bottom, then cut off. After a while, all the threads were hand trimmed by shears.
A hand-knotted silk rug takes 4-6 hours to do just one square centimetre, and around two months to do one square metre! A rug that was made with cotton threads would take half the time as the threads were thicker. I could now fully understand the price attached to the rugs.
We were offered ‘Egyptian hospitality’ of a drink while we were shown an array of beautiful, and I mean BEAUTIFUL, rugs. The silk rugs would shimmer in the light, and looked lighter or darker depending on which way the rug lay.
If I ever win Lotto, I’m going to buy a hand-knotted silk rug. I would also never stand on it.
It was then time for lunch, which we had at a hotel restaurant. We ate inside, and when we stood on their balcony to look at the view of the pyramids, we were blasted by the hot wind - it was like standing next to a large hairdryer that was set to maximum.
After lunch we went to a papyrus gallery, where we learned how to make papyrus, which was a fascinating process that involved rolling a section of the papyrus reed before soaking it in water for six days, then pressing it together in sheets.
We ended up spending almost 45 minutes in the gallery, and didn’t leave empty handed! Hopefully the framing costs are not too exorbitant when we return to New Zealand.
Our final destinations of the day were the great pyramids and the Sphinx. We were all struggling in the heat, including our guide, who said it was 8°C hotter than usual. It was by then 41°C, and the four of us tourists had red faces. The sweat was running down our backs, and it was hard to breathe. The wind continued to blow hot air, which definitely didn’t perform any cooling function.
The largest pyramid was that of Khufu, although inside there was no tomb, statues, or artefacts belonging to him, only the cartouche of his name carved on the inside at the top. His only statue was a mere 7.5 centimetres high and found in a totally different place in Egypt.
Behind Khufu’s pyramid was the one belonging to his son, Khafre. This second pyramid was smaller than the great one, however, stood higher than his dad’s because he built the base up by 10m first. His pyramid was also the only one that still had some of the external covering at the top.
The sheer size of the pyramids was incredible. From a distance they looked huge; from close up we could see the size of the individual blocks, with the total amount weighing 6.5million tonnes!
Nobody knows how they were built (aliens, obviously), but the idea of slaves has been poo-poohed due to the dynastic time periods. Nearby these pyramids were tombs of workers, and they know this because inscriptions listed the amount of food needed to supply the workers…and they didn’t do that for slaves. Also, nobody was allowed to be entombed anywhere near the kings until the 6th dynasty, and the pyramids were built long before then.
By the time we had finished walking around the pyramids, the heat had really taken its toll, so we bought some drinks from a nearby vendor, then drove to the Sphinx, which was a distance we would normally have walked.
When we got to the Sphinx, Abi gave up, and sat down on the ground. We stood in the shade of the mummification temple, and were awed by the stone masonry of the building. The stones were cut with exacting precision, in perfectly straight lines, and were stacked in such intricate ways that they would be supportive and also flexible in the event of earthquakes.
We rounded the corner of the temple and then came face-to-face (well, side on) to the Great Sphinx itself. Thought to be built as guardian to Khufu and Khafre, the legs looked disproportionate to the head and body, and the whole thing was much smaller than we imagined.
“Or is it in fact rather large, but the pyramids are so massive that they make it look small?” Dan postulated.
It was then about 4:30pm and we were now completely done-in. We desperately needed to get somewhere cooler, as even the shade was hot. We didn’t stay long at the Sphinx before making our way back to the car, and then our apartment…
…where it was a fantastically cool 26°C thanks to the air conditioner we’d left on all day! Only when the outside was over 40, would 26 ever be considered ‘cool’!
We ordered some local food from an app recommended by our host, and were absolutely stuffed by the veritable feast that arrived, and all for a paltry $25NZD.
We ate our dinner while looking out the window.
“What a view,” Dan said. “It’s the pyramids! The pyramids!! Right outside!”
No matter how many times we looked out the window, it was still mind-blowing to see the pyramids just there!
We had a laugh at Alex while eating our dinner. I’d bought some lemon and mint cordial to flavour our water, to encourage us to drink more. I’d chosen that flavour based on a lemon and mint juice I’d had in Morocco. This one was nowhere near as pleasant, however, it was better than plain water.
Alex sat down with his glass he’d made, took one mouthful and proclaimed:
“I don’t like it mummy, would you like to have it?”
“No thanks, I’ve had my glass,” I replied.
“It’s really not very nice. It’s got a very strong flavour.”
“Well, how much water did you add?”
“I HAD TO ADD WATER?!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” we all laughed. “Yes! Of course you had to add water! It’s a cordial!”
“I can’t read Arabic!”
“Neither can I,” I laughed, “but I’d have thought the picture of a glass with the number 12 beside it would have been a dead giveaway?”
Oh, it’s good to laugh!
Day 332 - 19 May ‘24 - Cairo. A 7:45am alarm today, which was most welcome, as we were all pretty wiped out from yesterday’s heat.
“Today’s going to be the same,” I told everybody, “but most of the day will be inside.”
I got out of bed…
“Oooooowww!”
Every muscle in my legs and bum was stiff and sore. They weren’t like jelly anymore, just agonising instead!
At 9am we were picked up and taken to our first stop of the day, the Citadel of Salah ad-Din (Saladin). Saladin ordered the building of the citadel, which was completed in 1183. The citadel remained the seat of Egyptian government and the house of the rulers for almost 700 years, before it changed to Abdeen Palace in the 19th century.
Inside the citadel was the mosque of Mohammad Ali, built in the Ottoman style between 1840 and 1848.
The domes inside were painted a dark green colour, which helped offset the gold everywhere. It was now predominantly a tourist mosque, so Abi and I did not have to cover our heads like we had done elsewhere.
It was fantastic having our tour guide Ahmed with us, as he answered a lot of questions we had from visiting other mosques. We learned there were 365 lights, one to represent each day of the year.
We also learned that according to the Quran, Muslims are required to pray five times a day; if men pray in a mosque, the reward is 27 times greater than praying at home, but for women there is no change, so there is no obligation to pray in the mosque. Because of this, the men get such a large area to pray in compared with women. The women’s area is also at the back of the room so that the men are not distracted by women while inside the mosque - while they are praying, they should be focussed on the prayer, not on women.
The citadel was built on the top of a promontory of Mokattam hills, and if it weren’t for the smog, we would have been able to see the pyramids.
Our next stop was the Egyptian Museum. This was built in 1902 and housed the largest collection of Egyptian artefacts in the world. We had seen the second largest in Boston, so we were very much looking forward to it.
As with most museums, we could easily have spent hours wandering the halls and looking at everything, however, the information panels about the artefacts were not very prolific, which was rather disappointing.
Ahmed very sensibly took us to just the key pieces of the museum, rather than slowly walk around the whole place. He taught us that when you saw the female statue with her hand on the arm or hand of the male, then that meant they were king and queen, but if her hand was on the shoulder of the male, that meant they were god and goddess.
One of the exhibits was the capstone of the Black Pyramid. The pyramid is now a collapsed ruin at Dahshur, but the capstone had survived relatively intact. Ahmed told us it was a meteor sent by Allah to the prophet Mohammed, that it was magnetic, and that it couldn’t be carved by anything less than a laser (“so how was it done?”). A bit of my own research revealed it was simply a large block of basalt, which makes up more than 90% of Earth’s volcanic rock. Of course, it could still have come from a meteor.
We saw the tiny 7.5cm statue of Khufu, which was actually found headless; they sifted the sand of the dig site for six weeks before his head was found! This was the only statue ever found of Khufu.
Rameses II would inscribe his cartouche on previous kings’ statues, but in order to stop that practice on his own statue, made sure his cartouche was carved in numerous places on his body!
There was also a statue of Khafre made from green diorite, the second hardest stone known to man. How it was carved with the technology of the time is baffling.
Of course, the most famous exhibit of the museum was Tutankhamen’s mask and coffins (his sarcophagus containing just his body was returned to his tomb once the excavation was over, and lies there to this day).
The mask, the solid gold inner coffin, the solid gold second coffin, the jewellery, the arm bands, and the chest plates, were all on display, and incredible to see. I’d also been fortunate to see them about 25 years ago when they toured to New Zealand.
Tutankhamen only reigned for about 11 years and died at 18, and was known as the ‘poor king’ because he hadn’t had the time to amass his fortune. He was hastily buried in a noble’s tomb as his kingly tomb was not finished.
“If that’s what was discovered in his tomb, imagine what must have been inside the tombs of greater kings than he, before they were robbed by thieves,” Ahmed said to us.
Further along the same hallway was the Silver King’s coffin. Silver was more precious than gold, but this king’s tomb was found in 1940, and despite his coffin being made entirely of silver, there was not the same amount of attention given him due to the war.
(We weren’t allowed to take photos in either Tutankhamen or the Silver King rooms).
We left the museum around 1:40pm, and we were all hot and hungry. The museum was not air conditioned, which helped speed up our visit! (A new museum called the Grand Egyptian Museum was partially open, and would ultimately house all these artefacts, and many others, in air-conditioned comfort).
Lunch was at a restaurant beside the Nile. Even though we would all much rather have eaten inside, I said we should each outside.
“We’re right beside the Nile! We’re not coming to Egypt and eating inside a room where we can’t see the Nile!”
“But it’s cooler in there,” complained Abi. “I’m hot!”
“We’re ALL hot.”
We had soup, salad, hummus and bread, and then our main dish, followed by fruit slices in what could only be described as runny jam - yummy!
And that brought an end to our Cairo tours with Ahmed. He had been phenomenally informative and educational, and could easily have talked for far longer than he did, we’re sure!
We said goodbye to him outside our apartment, and welcomed the cool air indoors. I also welcomed the couch, and then the bed - every single step today had been hard work, and going up or down stairs, or climbing in or out of the van, or getting onto and off of seats (including the toilet variety) had been particularly painful. I honestly looked like an old woman, and Dan had laughed at me a couple of times!
“You should have a cold bath, get rid of the lactic acid,” he said.
No thanks - not even in 41°C heat! I’m fine hobbling.
Day 333 - 20 May ‘24 - Cairo to Aswan. We had no reason to get up early today, so despite the broken sleep from constant horns etc, nobody ‘woke up’ until around 8am. Awesome!
We also had no plans for today. Originally, we’d thought we might explore more of Cairo, but since we were in Giza (not Cairo city proper), and since we’d had two hot days in a row, and since we were going to have even more hot days coming up, we decided just to spend the day in our air conditioned apartment, and enjoy the view out the window.
Dan went for a walk to a bank to claim some money he’d wired there, and returned almost an hour later! Seems that banks, no matter where in the world you are, subscribe to the same delaying procedures.
We left our apartment at 4pm and were driven to the Cairo airport, where we caught our 7:15pm flight to Aswan.
When we arrived at Aswan an hour-and-a-half later, the temperature had cooled to a pleasant 35°C. I say that with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Our taxi driver was a lovely man. Our taxi was not.
It was the most dilapidated vehicle I have ever been in. The car shook sideways. Every time we went over a bump, the back half of the car felt like it was going to fall off. Once the driver had finished wringing out first gear, we could feel the shudder under our feet when he shifted to second. The windows didn’t wind up, but I didn’t have a window winder anyway. Neither did I have a door handle. The smell of fumes from the LPG tank behind us was overpowering. The headlights didn’t work. The heater was set to on.
But the stereo was cranking some pretty sweet 90s tunes!
Once we reached the water’s edge, we caught a water taxi to our accommodation on Elephantine Island. I made sure to sit very still, so as not to rock the rather low-riding skiff.
We had chosen our apartment based on the reviews that proclaimed a stunning sunset over the Nile - we would need to wait for tomorrow for that.
For a two-bedroomed apartment, it was an amazingly cheap $56NZD per night. I have stayed in only one place I can think of that was more basic, and that was a square room in Boryeong in South Korea, with a thin floor mattress to sleep on, two curtains for five windows, and no bathroom.
This place, however, had air conditioning in both bedrooms, even if there were no windows anywhere. The apartment was stifling hot, and the air outside the same, so I guess windows really wouldn’t have made the blindest bit of difference.
“At least we won’t get woken up by light!” Dan pointed out.
“Or horns!” I added.
We turned the air conditioners on and prayed the rooms would cool enough for us to sleep. Since we only had a large handtowel each to sleep under, we definitely couldn’t get any hotter!
Day 334 - 21 May ‘24 - Aswan. Believe it or not, both Dan and I woke some time in the middle of the night feeling cold. Dan got out of bed and grabbed his Turkish peştemal, and shortly afterwards, so did I. Later on, Dan went rummaging in the wardrobe and found a proper blanket.
The dark rooms, with no windows, and no cockerels to wake us up, and no horns, and a pleasant 20°C, meant we didn’t wake up properly until 8am, but we tried to keep quiet so the kids would sleep a little longer.
“I’m hungry,” came Abi’s voice about 15 minutes later.
“…”
“I’m hungry! What are we going to eat?”
“Guess we should get up.”
When we left the house around 10am, it was 38°C. We walked across to the other side of the island to go to a recommended restaurant, where we ordered four Nubian breakfasts, and enjoyed the busier side of the Nile.
We were very pleasantly surprised by our meal - scrambled eggs with tomatoes, tomato and cucumber salad, bean and vegetable casserole, hot chips, and bread and ‘white cheese’, which was kind of like a cross between whipped feta and cream cheese, and very tasty!
After we’d finished our breakfast, we walked a different way back to our apartment so that we could buy some drinks from a shop. It was by then 41°C, and even a short eight-minute walk had us panting. Any shade that we came across was bliss. And so was the cold can of Coke that I held to the back of my neck, then temples, then forehead!
Once we returned to our air conditioned bedrooms, the idea of going back out in the heat was not one any of us wished to pursue. Instead, I braved the very old washing machine, and Dan and I hung out the washing on the upstairs terrace. By this stage, the temperature was an unbearable 44°C!
We stayed indoors until dinner time, then walked to a much closer restaurant. We all wished we’d gone to the one we went to this morning, as the service was slow, they forgot Abi’s drink then argued with us that we hadn’t ordered one, and then when we got the food, the portions were small and not anywhere near as nice as what we’d had for breakfast.
However, the view of the sunset over the Nile was what we came for.
I didn’t actually see it, as I had gone back to the apartment to throw up - I’d made the foolish mistake of eating the tahini we’d been served, even though I knew it gives me the same physical (but not allergic) reactions as peanuts. I’m not allergic to sesame at all, and can eat sesame seeds and sesame oil and hummus that contains tahini, but straight tahini makes me feel sick - go figure.
When I returned, Dan showed me the pictures while I politely ate some of my dinner (courgettes and rice). The waiter had asked me a couple of times if my meal was good, so I couldn’t very well leave it uneaten!
We went back to our apartment and sat up on the terrace for a while as the light dimmed. It was a lovely peaceful view.
At least it was for a while, before the kids argued over space for a chair.
“I think I’m almost back to wanting to stop travelling again,” Dan said when we got back to our room.
“Yeah?”
“Yep. The kids just haven’t learned anything. They are still arguing and fighting over little things. They haven’t changed at all.”
“Nope. They still spread their stuff everywhere, they still make a mess and argue.”
“They don’t listen, and they’re told the same thing over and over and over.”
They really are quite tiresome.
Day 335 - 22 May ‘24 - Aswan. This morning we had to skip breakfast, as we got picked up by the water taxi at 9am, and the nice restaurant on the other side of the island didn’t open until 8am - an hour was nowhere near long enough to get there, order, eat, and get back in time.
Once we had made it back to the mainland, we were greeted by our tour operator Monty, who escorted us onto our cruise boat. We had booked a three-day trip from Aswan to Luxor, although the boat wouldn’t leave until later tomorrow.
The outside of the boat was a massive difference to the inside, which looked very fancy indeed! Monty was very conscientious, and stayed with us while we checked our two twin rooms were satisfactory.
They were not.
They were right at the back end of the boat, where not only was the noise from the massive diesel engines incredibly loud, but the floor was actually vibrating!
While I sat on the bed, trying to convince myself that we’d be able to sleep through the noise, Dan told Monty that he wasn’t happy with the rooms, and we were quickly moved. Dan and I would be on one floor with a queen-sized bed, and the kids would be on another floor!
“We’re trusting you two!” we told them both.
God help us!
We had an hour or so to relax in our rooms before heading to the restaurant for lunch. It was a decent-sized buffet, with enough of a selection for Abi to eat, including dessert, so she was more than happy! That being said, she had rice and green peppers, then raspberry marshmallow.
At 2pm, Monty led us to our tour guide for the afternoon, an Egyptologist called Bebo. Our first visit was to the high dam of Aswan, built between 1960 and 1970, and one of the world’s largest embankment dams at 4km long. It created Lake Nassar, which holds a three year water supply for all of Egypt, as well as all the crocodiles!
The dam has both supporters and detractors; both floods and droughts have been prevented, but over 100,000 people had to be relocated, as well as numerous monuments and temples, including Philae Temple, which was our next stop.
Both Dan and I were utterly gobsmacked by the revelation that the entire island worth of eight temples, was moved, rock by rock, to another island, to avoid being damaged by the newly formed Lake Nassar.
The columns that lined one side of the plaza had black stains that reached halfway up, caused by the annual floods, so it was definitely a good thing they weren’t left to be submerged.
Bebo walked around with us for half the time, teaching us about the different gods and goddesses carved on the walls. Some of the faces and some entire bodies, had been completely scratched out. Bebo told us the ones on the right hand side had escaped the damage as they had been completely covered by sand.
There was even some carved graffiti dated 1823, as well as a plaque carved in Napoleon Bonaparte’s name!
Bebo also showed us how to read the cartouches that were carved in so many places.
“It’s very difficult to learn,” he explained. “You read them top to bottom, or bottom to top, or left to right, or right to left.”
“How are you supposed to know what’s the right way?” we asked.
“Ah, that’s easy,” he said with a smile. “Only one way will make sense!”
We spent an hour on Philae Island looking at the temples, and marvelling at the beautiful, and incredibly detailed, carvings.
The air was again stifling hot at 44°C, and occasionally we would have a breeze of…hot air. Not entirely pleasant! We saw loads of water taxis berthed at the various piers and jetties, waiting for the next winter season to start. Bebo told us that there are usually eight cruise boats in operation in this area during high season, but now only one or two.
Once we returned to our boat, the kids went to their room, and I stayed in ours, while Dan got directions to a barber. When he returned, he was a fresh, new man, albeit minus some hair he’d never been minus before!
“I was a bit worried for a while,” he said when he got back. “The man brought out his clippers and went shoozh over the bit above my ear!”
“And the back of your neck, too, it would seem!”
“And then he brought out some thread like dental floss and went over my face, and that really hurt! I’m going to have to put on more sunscreen!”
We went down for our buffet dinner at 7:30pm, which was lovely, and the chef had even prepared a plate of food just for Abi. At 8:40pm we said goodnight to the kids, and told them that THEY were responsible for how much sleep they got tonight.
“It’s a 3:30am wake up call, and if you choose not to go to sleep, then you will be tired in the morning, and it will be your own fault.”
No sooner had we got back to our room, than our phone rang:
“Hello?”
“Hello mummy! It’s Abi!”
“Yes, I can tell.”
“Ha ha ha, Alex wants to talk to you…”
“Hello mummy! It’s Alex!”
“Yes, I can tell.”
“*putting on a silly voice* this is reception, can I take your order?”
“I see you’ve decided to not go to sleep?”
“*still with the silly voice* what is your order?”
“Goodnight Alex.”
About 12 seconds later, the phone rang again:
“Hello?”
“*silly voice again* this is reception, would you like fries with your order? Ha ha ha ha!”
“Listen to me carefully. You are not being responsible. If you keep this up, you will not only be very tired tomorrow, but you won’t be left to your own room again. Do you understand?”
“Ha ha ha! Would you like fries with your order?”
“GO TO SLEEP!”
Ooh, tomorrow is going to fuuuuuuuun.
Day 336 - 23 May ‘24 - Aswan to Edfu.
*ring ring*
“Hello?”
“Good morning! This is your wake up call.”
“Thank you.”
click
“What time is it?” asked Dan.
“3:25am,” I replied.
Five minutes later my alarm went off. One can never be too careful!
After not admiring the puffy-eyed version of myself in the mirror, I called the kids in their room. Alex answered quite promptly, and when I asked, informed me that reception had not called their room. Luckily I had decided to check!
Shortly before 4am, we were all together in the lobby, as well as quite a number of other people, who were also going on tours. At 4:15am, we grabbed our breakfast bags and walked outside to meet our driver; we’d been expecting him to come to the lobby, but after Dan had called to find out where he was, he’d sent a message to say ‘go outside’.
There was one other man in the van when we got there, and soon afterwards we collected a further three people, then we were on our way.
It was still very dark, and a three hour drive to Abu Simbel, so everyone tried to get some sleep. Everyone, that was, apart from Abigail.
“I’m hot!”
“It’s not hot.”
“I’m hot!”
“It’s not hot.”
“Why is the cool fan not up to high?”
“It’s not hot.”
“I want the fan up to high!”
“It’s not hot.”
*she took off her seatbelt*
“Put your seatbelt on.”
“But I’m hot!”
“Your seatbelt is not making you hot! Put your seatbelt on!”
“I don’t want my seatbelt on. I’m hot!”
“It’s not hot! Put your seatbelt on and be quiet. People are trying to sleep!”
On it went for almost 15 minutes, conducted in the shouty-whispery hiss that parents worldwide use when trying to control a recalcitrant child in a quiet environment. Eventually she shed a few frustrated tears and fell asleep.
We all dozed on and off for the rest of the journey, and when we arrived at Abi Simbel, we joined our own private tours.
Abi Simbel was one of the temples that had been moved from its original position to a new one because of the dam construction. The entire temple, in fact, the whole mountain face, every single rock both vertical and horizontal (including the ground), was painstakingly chopped up and moved 65m vertically and almost 200m horizontally, and reaffixed to a man made mountain. What an astounding feat!
The original construction of the temples took 20 years to complete, finishing in 1244BC. At the great temple, the four colossal 20m high statues of Rameses II apparently showed him from youngest on the left, to oldest on the right. The second one on the left lost the head and face in an earthquake some time after it was built, and when the temple was relocated, the archaeologists decided to leave it as they found it, with the head on the ground.
Inside were more statues and incredible carvings over all the walls, depicting Rameses II in the battle of Kadesh.
Off the sides of the temple were smaller rooms, each showing all the various offerings made to the different gods. Some of them looked decidedly like milkshakes with straws! Who knows, maybe they were…!
At the back end of the temple were four smaller seated statues, of Ra-Horakhty, Rameses, Amun-Ra, and Ptah. Twice a year, on 22 October and 22 February, the sun reaches all the way through the temple to the back wall, and lights up all the gods except Ptah, who was connected with the land of the dead and therefore remained in the dark.
Something we noticed was the amount of graffiti carved into the statues. A heinous act, it was nonetheless its own historical event.
The second temple at Abu Simbel was dedicated to Rameses’ wife Nefertari. She was uncommonly represented as the same height as the king; most queens would normally not come past their knees.
Once again, the inside had incredible carvings and paintings, including many of the cow-headed goddess Hathor, to whom the temple was also dedicated.
We got back to our van at 9:30am, which was the time to leave, but then we were all kept waiting another 20 minutes for one of our passengers.
“Will the boat leave without us?” a worried Alex asked.
“No, of course not!” we replied.
However, when we got back to Aswan, both Dan and I were rather concerned when we couldn’t see our boat berthed by the pier. Our driver assured us it was there…we now just had to walk through four other boats to get to it!
It was an ingenious idea really. All the boats were rectangles, and they would berth hard up against each other, with their doors perfectly lined up. This meant guests always had access to the shore, but it also meant that when one boat was needing to leave, there was quite a bit of manoeuvring to do to reposition everyone.
We had our buffet lunch, and this time we became acquainted with our table mates, Michael and Connie. They had moved from China to New Zealand about 20 years ago, and lived in Auckland!
We got underway not long after we’d returned, and travelled up the Nile until we got to Kom Ombo Temple around 5:30pm. It was still just as hot then as it had been earlier in the day, so we were a little glad when our tour guide arrived late. This unfortunately meant we had just under an hour to see everything, and we did feel quite rushed.
Kom Ombo temple was constructed in the Ptolemaic dynasty during 180-47BC and was unusual in its design, in that it was completely symmetrical, with one half dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, and the other half to Horus the elder.
One particularly incredible feature was the carved calendar. The Egyptian year was split into three seasons, each four months long, and each month contained 30 days. The dates were marked with one line for one, two lines for two, three, and so on, ten was a horseshoe, and it carried on thus until 29, then it changed to a word for ‘finish’; there was no word or number for 30. Beside each date were other symbols that dictated what offerings were to be made to which god.
Another wall had depictions of all the medical tools in use, as well as images of two goddesses using birthing chairs.
The original colours that had been painted in the temple, were still visible at the top of some of the columns. It, and every other temple we’ve seen, must have looked stunningly beautiful when they were first created.
At the end of our rushed trip through the temple grounds, we went to a crocodile museum, where we saw quite a number of mummified Nile crocodiles of various sizes. (Incidentally, there’s no more crocodiles in the Nile, as they were relocated to Lake Nassar when the dam was built).
We boarded our boat again and over the course of the night, made our way to Edfu, arriving sometime just before 11pm. At least we only had a 5am start tomorrow, so could get an extra hour sleep.
Day 337 - 24 May ‘24 - Edfu to Luxor. Before we went to bed, Dan and I decided it would be better for the kids to skip the temple visit, and stay asleep. They agreed, so long as they got to go on a horse and carriage ride another time.
The ride in mention was our method of transportation from the boat to Edfu temple, which we did at 5:15am. Personally, I would have preferred to walk, rather than force a starving horse to pull a carriage in the 28°C heat.
All 300 horses at the pier and temple were starving, with their ‘hip’ bones sticking out at horribly sharp angles, and their rib cages clearly visible.
And they had no water.
“You need to think of it more like the money we’re paying for this will get them some food,” Dan tried to reason, when I said I really didn’t want to travel back to the boat by carriage.
“Or, they could just not use horses,” I pointed out.
“Hmm,” came the reply.
(If our tour operator Monty asks how it was, I will tell him what I think, that’s for sure).
When we arrived at the temple, we had to join a queue and wait for 20 minutes for the gates to open at 6am. The 5:15am start time became clear, as the queue quickly got bigger.
Edfu temple took almost 180 years to build, and was completed in 57BC. It is the most complete temple in Egypt, and stands 36m high.
Once again, the carvings were incredibly detailed; in fact, I stopped taking pictures halfway through because there were too many things to take pictures of!
The upper half of all the carvings had been completely defaced under the edict of Theodosius I, who, in 391AD, banned non-Christian worship. Fortunately, the lower half had been hidden by sand and Nile silt, and remained unscathed.
Evidence of the colours used for decorating the walls, was on a few columns and ceilings, including one room where a small bat colony had taken up residence!
Our tour guide this time wasn’t as good as the others - he talked very quickly, which made him hard to understand, and also moved us through the complex very quickly, then left us alone while he sat in the cafeteria for half an hour.
By the time we got to take photos, the crowds of people had multiplied, and the empty scenes we would have had earlier, were now annoyingly filled with others.
It was a pretty impressive complex to look at given its size, and I’m sure Alex and Abi would have liked to see it, since it was almost entirely complete and not like the ruins we’d seen previously. However, when we returned to the boat and I called them at 7:45am, it was a still-asleep Alex who answered the phone - I felt bad for waking them to tell them it was time for breakfast!
Our boat left Edfu while we were finishing our breakfast, and then we went back to our separate rooms - Alex and Abi to read their kindles/play Nintendo, and Dan and I to go to sleep!
At 11am we approached the Esna Gates, a rather large lock system. The first gate comprised a wall that spanned the width of the Nile, with just a small slipway at one side that would barely fit one of the cruise boats. The second gate was an actual lock that had two lanes, and each one was big enough to fit two of our cruise boats in end-to-end.
Between the first gate and the lock, all the cruise boats were being harangued by sellers on skiffs, rowing as hard as they could to remain at the prow. They would shout and call and then throw up some garment or tablecloth or towel, despite protestations from us passengers on the top deck. Eventually, after throwing back four separate items, one of the ladies decided to keep one. The people on the boat were not at all happy about that. Served them right! They should have stopped throwing them up. I mean, how were they expecting to be paid?!
At lunch, Connie was at the table by herself. She told us that Michael was not at all well, and had spent the day on the toilet. We noticed there were a few people not at lunch, so hopefully it wasn’t something that was going around.
Our boat kept motoring along until we reached Luxor around 3pm, where we tied up next to another boat. There went our view!
Another hour later and we felt the boat shudder as another one berthed on our other side.
“And there goes the kids’ view too!”
Oh well, we’d get to see Luxor over the next couple of days.
We all spent the rest of the day in our respective rooms, just relaxing and keeping out of the 45°C heat. There was a pool on the sun deck that we had originally thought of going in, but since everyone on board was effectively a captive, it didn’t take long for the water to look green and murky. Never mind.
Michael had recovered enough to join us for dinner, which was great, and we all enjoyed our last dinner together. Both he and Connie had been wonderful tablemates, and had given us a whole lot of tips for travelling around China. We even got to try some of their delicious Chinese spicy carrots. We will definitely keep in touch!
That evening, our tour guide for tomorrow met us, a French man, and his sister - we would all be on the hot air balloon tomorrow, as well as on the same tour around Luxor. We did get one piece of good news; the hot air balloon time had been moved from 4am to 5:45am, so we could get more sleep. Yay!
We had tried to have an early night, but what with meeting the tour guy, then paying for our drinks, then tucking the kids in (and discovering Abigail hadn’t packed her rucksack like she had been told), we didn’t get to bed until after 10pm.
It had been lovely cruising up the Nile, seeing different sights out the window as we chugged along, and it was a shame it ended. I would definitely do another river cruise somewhere!
But maybe not in this kind of heat…
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