Egypt Part I : Dec. 12 - 20

Aswan: Friday Dec. 16, 2005

Our agent from Castle tours was waiting outside our train car as we arrived the next morning, sign in hand. The trip down to Upper Egypt had been wonderful and very restful. We were raring to go for another day of touring.

We arrived around 10:00 (only slightly late) and were immediately driven to our home for the next 3 nights the Nile cruiser, the Etoile du Nile III. This was to be our first experience on a cruise boat (as small as it was) and it started out wonderfully. The boat accommodates approximately 100 people but given the season it was only running 1/3 full. We were quickly checked into our rooms and after unpacking we left the kids to do some homework and headed out to walk the town of Aswan.

Aswan was a small and quiet place compared to Cairo and we wished we had more time to explore the town itself. As it was we ended up doing some hard bargaining on a street corner to secure 4 drinks for 8 Egyptian Pounds (Slightly under $2 Cdn). Then it was back to the boat to meet up with our guide for the next couple of days and to have lunch.

Lunch was a feast; so much for losing any weight in Egypt. Clearly this will have to wait. Sierra was a big hit with the all male boat crew again, and walked away from lunch with still more offers of marriage. It is getting more and more clear however, that she is very uncomfortable with all the attention she is getting being the only young girl on these trips.

After lunch it was time to meet up with our guide, Suki and our driver for our afternoon tours. First stop was the old granite quarry from where the large monoliths were carved. We saw how the ancient Egyptians used hot bricks to flatten out a large piece of stone and then chisel out the block. The huge block (often several hundreds of feet long) was then sledded down to the Nile and onto several boats or barges parked in parallel to carry it down the river to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. It would be inscribed upon arrival. The archeologists learned a great deal from how things were done by the one remaining and broken obelisk that is still in the quarry. It had fractured half way through the cutting process. As Brennan pointed out it would have been a bad day for the slave that broke that baby!

Leaving the quarry we were off up the Nile to the South and over the old Aswan Dam that was built around the turn of the century. Our destination however was another 10km past and was the Aswan High dam constructed in the early 1970’s for power and to regulate flooding. The dam required Russian engineers to design it and much Russian sponsorship throughout the construction as the tensions between the western world and Egypt were strained at the time. The dam itself is a huge thing. It was a combination of sand, gravel, and concrete that is much broader than North American Dams of similar size. It lacks the steep drop off downstream and instead has a very sloped side. All very interesting to an engineer but the rest of the team were keen to push onto our next destination.

Next up on the temple platter was Philae Temple. We had to cross back over the Old Aswan dam and through another set of armed security. Once in the parking lot we negotiated the obligatory bazaar of merchants and made our way down to the boat docks. The Philae Temple was one of the temples relocated with the construction of the dams and the increase in water levels. It is now on an island and accessible by tourist boats hired out from Nubian workers.

Once on the island we spent a good hour and a half learning about the Temples of Upper Egypt and the family trees of the various gods and pharaohs. The hieroglyphics in these temples were also much younger and of a more vibrant and complicated style relative to the older ones we had previously seen. The temple itself had also been constructed and added onto more recently by the Ptolemys which came after the time of Alexander the Great in 300BC. This date was almost yesterday by Egyptian standards.

It was getting dark by the time we left, almost catching the last boat off the island. We returned to our cruise ship just in time for another fabulous meal and an early bed. Tomorrow was a special day and it was going to start early. Very early.( NEXT PAGE )