Aswan, Egypt, Africa

Today started with our “wake up” call at 7:45am from the train. I hesitate to call it a wake up call because neither one of us actually got any sleep, but regardless, we were now up and getting “breakfast” in bed. Again, I hesitate to call it breakfast because it was a dinner roll, a pastry and an orange juice, but it got us moving anyway. There were no shower facilities on the train, so we all did whatever washing we could with baby wipes and things like that, and then tried to mask our stenches with deoderant and cologne. Luckily we all smelled bad, so it was tough to distinguish where smells were coming from.

We got off the train at about 9am and got on a bus heading over to the cruise ship. Our ship is called the M/S Nile Sapphire. We were just able to drop off our bags at the ships because our cabins were not prepared yet, which also meant that we still couldn’t shower. Awesome!

We left our bags on the boat and took the bus over to the red granite quarry where we saw the Unfinished Obelisk. After seeing the Egyptian museum, pyramids and Sphinx yesterday, it’s tough to see why this piece of rock is on the tour at all. It is a giant obelisk that was unfinished because they cracked it right down the middle when they were carving it. So they left it in the quarry, and it’s still there today. Not too exciting, but it was damn hot! The temperature reached about 110*F (44*C) today.

We left there and took a drive over the Old Dam of Aswan and then to the High Dam of Aswan. We got a few pictures, but everyone was really just keen to get back on the boat to shower. We headed back to the boat and checked into our rooms. I was expecting a cabin resembling the one we had on the train, but I was pleasantly amazed! It was like a proper hotel room! Two double beds, a 32″ flat screen tv and a good size bathroom. It was perfect! Plus, we had hot water for a shower, so we were all happy travelers.

We all met in the lobby to head off on our Felucca ride, which is on old Egyptian sail boat. We took it down the Nile (north) and went to a botanical garden on an island in the middle of the Nile. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of trees that had been brought there, and also interesting to see how many stray cats there were. There were tons! We got back in the boat to head to the town center of Aswan and on our way we had a visitor. It was a small child floating down the Nile on what looked like a boogie board. He would hang on to the side of these tourist boats and sing songs to make money. Amazing considering he was only about 6 years old!

We went through the town center where we were able to find booze (YAY!) and walk through the shops. It was a pain in the neck being hassled every fifteen feet, so I was happy to get the heck out of there and back on the boat. We had a nice dinner and watched a show of a Whirling Dirvish and a belly dancer. Neither was very good, but it was a good time to start drinking. We were civilized and went to bed at 12am as we had an early morning wake up call of 2:15am. Pictures to come in a few days…