| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper, United States |
| Submission Date: 04 February 2005 |
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Web had to get up at 2:30 AM for our 5 AM flight to Aswan. On the way to the airport we drove past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a monument of the 1973 war. It also contains a memorial to Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in the viewing stand across the street from the Tomb. Seen in the middle of the night, it is an even more solemn site than it would be during the day.
At the airport, they xrayed our luggage, but did let us pass the film around. We arrived in Aswan about 6:15 AM but had to wait a while before the luggage was retrieved. I used the rest room at the airport--clean than I expected, but strictly B.Y.O.T.P.
We got to the hotel about 7:15 AM after having to wait for the ferry to Elephantine Island, where our hotel was. Our rooms weren't ready so we had breakfast and then sat around the lobby. I dozed off a bit. Finally at 10:45 we got our room (we were the last to get ours) so we quickly changed for our 11 AM lunch. We needed to eat that early so we could be back at the airport for our 1:40 PM flight to Abu Simbel.
Or rather, so we could be back at the airport to wait two extra hours for the 1:40 flight to leave at 3:40. That's the sort of thing that one does in many Third World countries these days, since the airlines seem to show up the worst of the problems. (Even in developed countries, the airlines are the major source of dissatisfaction for travelers.)
So we and hundreds of flies sat around the airport talking, sleeping, reading Tom's second hundred postcards he was sending, and flying. Unfortunately, it was only the flies who were flying. We did get refreshments--a bottle of warm soda. I had Life, which turned out to be red cream soda. We also had a bottle mineral water which had been frozen, so we had ice water for the first time in days.
Finally around 3:30, amidst much pushing and shoving--it was open seating and there were a large number of pushy Italian tourists who would cut in front of you in line--we boarded the plane. The pilot made the forty-minute flight in twenty minutes (pedal to the metal, as they say). From the Abu Simbel airport it was just a short bus ride to the temples. By flying later, it was a little cooler when we arrived.
We walked along the top of a ridge overlooking Lake Nasser. We found out later that this ridge formed the top of the mountain that the temples had been built in originally.
There are two temples, the larger being the better known and more photographed. The guide gave us some explanation of the figures on the outside of the temple, including the four colossi of Rameses II (again!) and the baboon frieze above them. Then we went inside the temple (the larger one) and the guide started to explain the carvings inside. These were lit by electric lights--for the first two minutes. Then they had a power failure. Luckily Tom had brought a powerful flashlight and the guide used that. It wasn't quite as good, but it saved the day. There were also several other groups to contend with, so it was all rather hectic. Walking back to the buses things had quieted down somewhat and it was possible to get some feeling of majesty and serenity there.
Back by the buses were the vendors. On the way in I had seen a plaster Anubis that I thought Mark might be interested in, so I pointed it out to him. He asked, 'How much?' The dealer said, '75 [pounds],' or about $30. Mark offered ten pounds. They settled on thirteen pounds and a pen, though after taking the thirteen, the dealer asked for one more before handing over the statue. When I went to pull the money out of his hand, he relented.
Other people bought things, but they seemed to think half off was a good price.
Then back to the airport where we waited for the plane, but only about fifteen minutes to a half hour, and back to Aswan, getting to the hotel about 7:35 PM. At this point we discovered that in cleaning the bathroom they had flooded the room. The water was gone, but the carpet was still wet and my small suitcase and its contents were also wet. Luckily the only things in it were dirty laundry, old t-shirts, and a sweater. (Actually I also had sanitary napkins, but fortunately they were in a zippered rubberized bag.) So I hung the stuff up to dry and at 8:20 we met Tom for dinner in the nightclub.
Dinner was good but not great. Mark and I had what was billed as rack of lamb, but someone else later said was spur. To me it looked like three lamb chops each. I had cream of chicken soup with almonds to start. The desserts seemed typically rubbery, at least Mark's Charlotte Royale. My Creme Caramel (a.k.a. flan) was not bad.
Throughout dinner a four-piece band was playing--a *bad* four- piece band. They were doing such traditional Egyptian melodies as 'Tequila' and 'Strangers in the Night.' At 10 PM the show started, with Nubian musicians and dancers. The music was obviously influenced more by Africa than by the Middle East and had a lot of energy and a good beat ('it has a good beat; you can dance to it'). The women were covered up even more than in the first show, with only their faces and hands exposed, but it was perfect for this and no one expressed any disappointment over it, though there were some who didn't like the music. (What do they know?) But the three of us loved it. This was followed by a belly dancer who was (according to Tom) a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Throughout dinner we talked about traveling, tours, Travcoa, and the other people on this tour (catty, catty!). We concluded that traveling was great, tours were okay but geared mostly toward older and less adventurous people, Travcoa was not very good, and the other tourists in our group ranged from acceptable to truly awful. (One man claimed he had never seen any good plays in New York, but that Oklahoma City had really great theatre. I thought Frank, a San Franciscan and a New York/London theatre-goer was going to die!) Travcoa has a good reputation but so far we've been disappointed in several things (like having us spend a morning in a hotel lobby). Tom seemed surprised that our tour manager spoke no Arabic. Given how much she claims to love Egypt, this is surprising. Finally about 11 the warm-up band came back, our signal to leave and go to sleep after a very long day.
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After an extremely boring breakfast I changed some money, then sat around writing and talking until 10:30 when we transferred to our boat, the Oberoi Shehrayar. Since our cabins wouldn't be ready until noon, we dropped off our bags and went out to walk around the souk/bazaar in town.
Along the waterfront were a lot of tourist shops. We bought some postcards and a necklace there, then walked back a block or so from the water. This seemed a lot less tourist-oriented. Yes, there were t-shirt and galabeya shops, but there were also shops selling spices, pots, underwear, and other everyday items. We watched a man turn his donkey cart around in the narrow alley and another one carrying a live goat on his shoulders. And contrary to everything I had read, it was not particularly dirty or smelly. It was very dusty, of course, but you do not need to carry a handkerchief soaked in cologne as one person suggested.
We returned to the boat, had lunch, then boarded the bus for our afternoon tour. We started by crossing the Aswan Low Dam, whose top forms part of the road from the airport, then drove to the High Dam. The High Dam was built between 1960 and 1971 with the help of the Soviets after the United States put some unacceptable conditions on our aid (probably having to do with Israel). I mentioned earlier the plus and minus sides of the dam, but another minus is that basically the entire land of Nubia was submerged and 100,000 people relocated. Whether they feel the trade-off was fair is a question to ponder.
Next was the Temple of Philae, which was also relocated because of Lake Nasser, to a higher island. The temple was originally on the site of the dinner that Set gave Osiris when he tricked him into the coffin. It is also where the head of Osiris is supposed to be buried. All this was explained with various tour members getting to be the various gods and goddesses. I got to be Isis, Mark was Set, and one of the men of the gay couple was chosen to be Osiris, so when the guide said that Osiris was the god of fertility, this got a good laugh from everyone, though the guide may have been puzzled. The Temple of Philae, dedicated to Isis, was vandalized by early Christians who found many of the figures to be too pagan (though not all--one wonders what criteria they used). Luckily they only plastered over many of them, but some of the larger ones were chiseled out. The plaster at least can be removed. (By the way, the island the temple is now on is Agilkia. The temple dates from the Ptolemaic period.)
We returned by boat to the bus which we found after some confusion. The guide had told us the number of the bus, but it turned out to be in Egyptian numerals! We then rushed to the Northern Quarries, getting there five minutes before closing time to see the Unfinished Obelisk. This is an obelisk that cracked as it was being cut out of the rock. It would have weighed 1100 tons, but now serves only to show how the quarrying was done since the only marks on it are from quarrying. I had expected something vertical, but it's more like a ten-degree angle from the horizontal.
Then back to the ship to write until dinner. Dinner was an egg and vegetable cold appetizer, chicken piccata, black-eyed salad, potatoes, vegetables, peach melba, and coffee. It was not very good. Red Oak Diner makes better chicken piccata.
After dinner was the captain's cocktail party, which the captain did not attend. The bar had the disco lights going and disco music, but no one was dancing. Gradually people started drifting out, but Tom, Mark, and I decided we had to uphold the honor of the United States and outlast the Italians. It was touch and go, but then Tom mentioned the Fibonacci numbers, which got Mark going and we were the last to leave, at 11 or so.
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This morning was mostly devoted to a felucca ride. A felucca is a sailboat with a particular type of sail that I can't really describe very well, but you've seen pictures of them on the Nile. In order to make this seem more worthwhile, we made two stops. One was on Kitchener's Island at the botanical gardens. This would have a pleasant stroll were it not for all the vendors of necklaces, who carried their wares on their arms and seemed to jump out from behind the bushes to badger every tourist they saw. Actually they didn't meerly *seem* to jump out from behind the bushes, they *did* jump out from behind the bushes. These were the most numerous and persistent vendors so far.
For the first part of the felucca ride we had to tack against the wind, which meant someone had to keep switching from one side to the other to keep the boat from tipping over. For much of the time this was Mark, but eventually he did get to sit on the low side. |
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