Egypt – Horus at Edfu and Kom Ombo Temples – Monday 7 May

Today was practically a sleep in because we didn’t have to be up until 7am – ahh the luxury :)

This morning we started the day by visiting the Temple of Horus at Edfu. This is one of my favourite templates in Upper Egypt. Its really well persevered and is dedicated to Horus – the falcon god.

Its massive and you walk through a kinda ruined bit then into an open area and can see the walls of the temple. There are two stone falcons guarding the door – ones pretty broken – off its pedestal with chunks missing, but the other one is still nearly whole.

Inside there are loads of hieroglyphics and paintings on the wall and there are few cool areas where a ‘skylight’ of sorts means rays of sunlight stream into the template. Because if all the dust and crap in the air the sun streams in like light saver beams into the dusty rooms. Aidan and I got some cool photos of each other standing in the sunbeams next to 2000 year old carvings etc.

We spent a fair bit of time at Edfu. Weal gave us the standard tape recorder like spiel and then we were free to wander around. I just wish it wasn’t so bloody hot. It hard to enjoy the temples when you feel like your baking from the inside out!

After Edfu it was back to the boat and more time by the pool. About 11am the boat started moving u the Nile again. Its pretty cool to lay on the deck of the boat and watch the banks of the Nile float past.

Later in the afternoon we stopped again – this time at Kom Ombo temple. When I came last time we stopped at this one at night but this time we arrived about 4pm so saw it in full streaming sunlight.

Kom Ombo temple is all about the crocodiles. They have crocodile mummies in one of the temple rooms. Its pretty impressive, it also has a stone calendar. Unfortunately the calendar had a massive line up of people waiting to see it and Aidan and I decided it wasn’t worth lining up for a photo – we just look at it over the heads of the people crowding around.

It’s been too damn hot to really enjoy the temples. We try and go from shade to shade but sometimes you just have to stand in the sun to see whichever 200 year old relic Weal is talking about. After about 30 minutes at Kom Ombo we decided we were over it and headed back to the boat. Aidan and I went back to our cabin and Aidan got some cool photos out the window of the street stall. Its such a riot of colour. It was a nice safe way to see all the stuff and we were thinking how good it would be to send out a ‘shopper’ and communicate by 2 way radio. We could see all the people being harassed and all the pressure sales it was nice not to have to bother about it. We did see a few things that looked good (while the sales people were trying to press them on other poor punters) but decided it wasn’t worth the pain and anguish of going back out of the boat to the stalls.

Kom Ombo done its back sailing down the Nile. As normal for this trip I was tucked up in bed by 10pm fast asleep. At 11:20pm we arrived in Aswan and the Aswan guide rang Colin’s room (which was suppose to be mine) and Colin whento speak to him but he needed to speak to me to confirm our activities in Aswan. So Colin had to come and knock on our door. I got up in my pj’s with my hair everywhere and put my jacket on to go talk to this bloody tool.

I was so annoyed. It was the middle of the night … well I guess it was only 11:20pm and if the boat had had a decent bar then we’d probably still have been up, but I was asleep. I think the guide got the message for how annoyed I was. He was carrying on about he had to meet us the moment the boat arrived or he’d get in trouble for not having done his job properly blah blah blah. I said what if the boat had arrived at 2am – would he still have woken me up. Ridiculous. Its all because these crazy people sleep all day and are up all night. I understand that part of that is based on the weather – its easier to do stuff at night when its cooler, but we’re tourist and tourists don’t stay up all night and sleep all day.

What was worse was that the stuff he had to tell me didn’t impact us really at all. Just that we’d be picked up in the morning to be taken on our tour of Aswan and then we’d stay another night on the boat and then stay the night at a hotel. Completely useless and certainly not worth waking me up and making me ‘angry girl!’