Egypt – Aswan Attractions – Tuesday 8 May

After being woken up by the stupid tour man last night I fortunately fell straight back to sleep – I’m terribly lucky that I can sleep so easily. I haven’t had any problems the while time we’re been away with the wild animals roaming around and the disrupted wake and sleep times the moment I lay my head on the pillow I’m snoozing.

Anyways, we wake up and have breakfast on the boat again and then its off on our tour of Aswan. Its even hotter today than it has been travelling down the Nile. The heat is killing me! Not as bad as last time I was here, but then maybe I’ve acclimatised a little. I cope better at home during the summer these days and I guess 6 months here living by the desert might have got me a bit better in the heat.

First stop on our Aswan tour is the Unfinished Obelisk. It’s carved into the granite. Its weighs an estimated 1168 tons and would have been the single heaviest piece of stone ever fashioned. Unfortunately there was a flaw in the stone and it split during its carving so the stonemason abandoned it where he started carving it.

Next we drive to the High Dam. It’s fairly impressive and there are massive posters on the walls showing how it was constructed. Aidan took loads of photos to show dad. The construction of the high dam created Lake Nasser the world’s largest artificial lake. All the effort to build the dam were worth it – its construction increased cultivatable land in Egypt by 30% and the hydroelectric station doubled Egypt’s power supply.

Next stop is Philae Island. We got on a boat – they are like little sail boats, but powered by little unreliable outboard motors. Maggie, Colin, Aidan and I all settled into the boat and we were on our way to the island. About half way there our boat conked out! Luckily there were loads on boats going back and forth and our captain yelled to one of his friends who came over to us. I thought we were going to have to transfer to the other boat but they tied them together and the one that still worked towed us to the island…

We got to the island and toured the Isis temple complex. This is one of my favourite temples because Isis is the goddess of magic. The temples quite spread out, but it was just so hot we couldn’t really appreciate it. We basically ducked from shade to shade checking out what we could see from the shady spots. Wael gave us the spiel about the temple, it was under water for 6 months of the year while they we building the high dam. Then when the dam was nearly completed Unesco did a rescue bid and took it apart and moved it (took them 8 years between 1972-1980). They moved it 20 meters higher up onto a different island.

Tonight was our last night on the boat. This is where we parted ways with Maggie. She’s off on the rest of her adventure at some ungodly hour in the morning.

Its been a good cruise ship, but would have been much better with a younger (English speaking) group of passengers and/or a decent bar! The pool was lovely, the deck was spacious and it wasn’t over crowded, but I think we’d have had more fun on a busier tour group.