We took the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan to start our journey along the Nile on a 5 star cruise ship. Needless to say, the 1st class trains in Egypt are awful. (But still much better than the 2nd class wagons that had no lights, people piled on top of each other along the aisles and overflowing from the compartments!!!)
The boys were so cute carrying their back-packs! (They didn’t think it was so cute to be walking around with em though!)When we got to Aswan, of course we were not brought to the ship we booked; that would have been too simple. We were given some story about the ships being over-booked and being up-graded……. Ya right!!! Anyway, we had already paid, so we thought we’d make the best of it. I am not sure what the 5 stars were for, but we had a largish bath-tub on the upper deck disguised as a pool, a pretty comfortable room and all was good.
Our 5 star cruise ship, THE SERENADE!! We actually booked to go on the L'Aube du Nile...
Sound & Light Show @ Philae Temple
The walls of the temples were like giant size comic books. I believe this one told of the story of Horus taking revenge and defeating his uncle, the brother of Osiris for killing his father. In this pictoral, the evil brother was depicted in the form of a hippopotamus. He can also sometimes be drawn as a snake, donkey or.......em, I think crocodile.....
The walls are truely amazing. There are some that are medical journals (Enemas where already really big in those days), calendars etc....
It was a good thing that we decided to visit the temples with the cruise cos the temperature in Aswan, Edfu and Luxor was in the 60s. Yes, it is not imaginable……. We could hardly breath!! Anyway, there was only a Lebanese couple on their honeymoon and us in our group so the visits were nice. We did all the temples…… and all the temples pretty much morphed into one………. Since I am writing this more than 2 weeks post-motem, I can’t remember most of it anymore! There was the Temple of Philae (in honor of Isis), where we watched the astronomically over-priced and kitsch Sound & Light show, Kom omo (in honour of Sobek the evil crocodile God) and Horus, son of Isis, The valley of the kings, karnak temple, Nefretitit temple…………. It was all supremely interesting but I don't remember much of it.....
The sacred Scarab-beetle represents eternal life cos it is the only insect that is asexual (I think that is what it is when they have both male & female in the same body and are able to auto-reproduce.) This beetle was either in Luxor or Karnak but it is a very special beetle. Go around the beetle anti-clockwise : 3 times for luck, 5 times to be married, 7 times for children and 10 for money. Our little typical Sporean boys of course ran around the beetle 10 times!!!
The largest Obelix in the world - Temple of Karnak!!! (By Nephretiti, I think).
The famous Obelix in Paris was taken from the Temple of Luxor. There were actually 2 of matching obelix here. Mohammad Ali sent over one of em as a gift to France and you know what the stingy french sent to Egypt; a crappy clock that is now in the citidal in Cairo. haha.
@ Aswan Dam - the 2nd largest dam in the world after the one in Brazil (Don't ask me which one cos the guide couldn't remember...)
Anyway, the Dam was built with help from the Russians and this created the largest man-made lake, Lake Nasser. Thanks to the dam, the lands along the Nile are no longer as fertile as they used to be and the best......... they flooded AbuSimbel, Philae Temple and a bunch of other historic stuff. Unesco had to come and rescue the temples and move em to higher ground brick by brick.......... The things that we do to our environment in the name of development!!!
Boys sailing on the Felucca. My original plan was to sail the Nile on a Felucca. This would have meant 5 days on a boat with no toilets, no showers, no fans, no aircon and camping out under the stars............ I think it was a good thing we took the cruise considering how the kids took turns being violently ill that week. (Mixture of food poisoning, unbearably hot weather and the fly vomit from the week before??)
The 10 days at Ananda Camp were amazing; time just flew by. The boys had a great time playing with all the people at the camp; Isreali & Egyptian friends - selling sea-shells, painting, chopping up the fence for a science project, catching crabs, fish and digging huge man-size holes!!!! The camp was really isolated and Amr would take them to the gas station (22km away!!!) for a treat to buy ice-cream if they had been good............ haha!!!
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