‘Burr, burr, burr, burr’ It was 3am as Dan switched the alarm off. Dan woke Ev with a big birthday cuddle. Going to Abu Simbel wasn’t a bad way to spend your 28th birthday. We both felt one hundred times better and were looking forward to the day ahead. We packed our daypack with nibblies and water and headed downstairs where David, Nikki, Caleb, Connor and Alley were already waiting. It was also Connor’s 17th birthday as we wished him well. Nikki told us about the boat road and dinner and said it was probably for the best that we didn’t go as the heat, even at night, was close to unbearable.
Our bus arrived at 3:15am and we and hopped on. We each had an entire row to ourselves to the small bus and could comfortably stretch out. Our bus headed back to the bus depot so we could join a convoy of 30 other buses going to Abu Simbel. The Tourist Police are very protective of their treasured customers, and it certainly reinforces that this part of the world is not the safest. Once all of the buses arrived we headed off for our 3 hour journey east. The brand new roads felt they had more cracks and pot holes than the old sections and Dan had difficulty nodding off to sleep again. Ev slept most of the way. Much of the journey out of Aswan was surrounded by dirt and hardy plants. We also passed mining companies and a few low square buildings/houses. The drive went fairly quickly and it certainly was a lot cheaper than flying for 20 minutes for almost $1,000US.
When we arrived to the tourist spot there were already almost 100 huge buses. It seems we weren’t the only ones who wanted to view the sights before the heat set in. We purchased our tickets then walked around the back of the mountain and we took the long way down around another small hill along the river. We saw to our left some existing engraved pillars with the temple in the background. More amazing Egyptian carvings, but there was still more to come. We continued, then out of nowhere we saw the huge statues embedded in two mountains. You just can’t believe how huge they are until you see people standing next to them. Really, there is no way to describe the enormity of these statues.
We stood in awe from the outside for a few minutes.
We walked into the first temple and of course you couldn’t take photos!!! But anyway the first room had more reasonable sized statues of 10 metres standing at attention on each pillar. These statues were mummy figures and you can tell by their arms being crossed over the body and carrying staffs. They had masks like the masks on the sarcophaguses so that the body’s spirit could find the body when it returns.
Each pillar had different scenes of the King with various Gods for protection and favour. Moving slowly through the temple, we saw many scenes. The larger outer rooms are scenes of living such as hunting, animals and the King’s victories in battle and the smaller rooms are offering rooms of afterlife and burial ritual scenes. When there is one foot in front of the other it means that the scene depicted the king/people alive or is a scene of the King’s spirit. When the feet are together or lying down it is in a mummy form. The original colouring was still visible on the walls as well. It’s incredibly to see so much detail from 3000 years ago.
When it was originally built, the Egyptians positioned the temple so that twice a year, the sun would rise through the temple to the back room onto statues of four of their God’s: Ptah, Amun-Ra, Ramses II, and Ra.
As mentioned before photography was not allowed, but some tried. We saw a lady blatantly pull out her camera and use the flash and literally as soon as she took the photo a guy dressed as a tourist grabbed the camera and immediately left the small room into the main entrance and she pleaded for her camera back but he took it to another security person. Hoda told us yesterday that tourists caught taking photos may be fined up to 3,000EGP and are requested to delete photos and some times wipe the camera cards all together. We played it safe and took no photos, so as you can see we bought picture postcards.
The smaller temple was built for the King’s wives and he dedicated it to the God of love. This temple is smaller in comparison and like the other temple has large statues at the main entrance hall.
The Egyptians built the temples originally in the mountain close to the river. As Egyptologists observed the water levels rising, Egypt and other countries contributed financially in recreating the temples to higher ground where they are today. It was a huge delicate deconstruction and reconstruction process.
We were in the temples from 7:30 to 9:00am when the bus arrived to collect us. Sounds like plenty of time, but if there weren’t so many tourists we could have stayed longer. It made it very difficult to fully enjoy the magnificence of the place because we were pushed by people trying to stand in front of us all the time. Even still, we did enjoy the sights.
Food shopping (get ready for entertaining reading)
The rest of the afternoon we used the internet and slept. We had KFC for lunch. Ran into Hoda who asked us if we were going to dinner with her and the family. We both still weren’t feeling well so decided not to go to dinner. Wanted to go shopping to get supplies for the felucca. On the way to the shop we were asked by an elderly horse-drawn cab driver if we wanted a ride and we politely and repeatedly said “No” then he launched into the familiar vendor spiel. He eventually asked the most popular question an Egyptian vendor can ask a tourist “Where are you from?” to which Dan replied “From the moon”. He was irate with Dan’s response and started yelling in Arabic but we managed to hear “You’re a bad man. Go back to Africa” which was a little weird.
We crossed the street almost at the shop and another one ran after us yelling “Where are you going”. At first we thought he was the cabbies entourage but he seemed genuine (in his own forceful way). He told us that the shop would open after 9pm because of Ramadan so we said “Okay” and started walking back to the hotel. He ran off in the opposite direction but was obviously disappointed he couldn’t close the deal because he came back running to us pointing and waving in his direction indicating the nearest minimart. Feeling somewhat obliged, we followed him but once was saw they only sold soft drink we headed back. He followed us for a little while asking us what we actually want and pointed out the next nearest minimart and we waved him off and said no thanks. He shouted out to us “You’ll come back at 9pm” to remind us about the bigger shopping centre. As soon as he was out of earshot, we both said to each other “We are not coming back.” Still without food we decided to just head towards KFC for dinner as well, still a bit weary about Egyptian food. On the way we passed a couple of boys walking towards us smiling and waving. Thinking they were going to sell us something, we hesitantly said “Hi” and when Ev turned around she saw them skipping down the walkway. We felt bad because we’ve been on guard so much for most of the trip because of the vendors. It’s a shame because we do feel like interacting with the locals but it’s hard to know what motive they have. We took dinner back to the hotel and Ev fell asleep while Dan was writing the journal until about 11pm.
Dan recalled that Graham told us the bottle shop was a couple of doors up, so he jumped on Ev and dragged her out of bed to get some booze. We saw two men out the front who had just locked the shop and we stood out the front trying to read the signs. One of the men, who looked like a mafia boss, abruptly asked “What do you want?” and Dan said “Alcohol.” The guy asked “Beer, Whiskey...?” and Dan said “What have you got? Only if it’s not too much trouble.” ‘The Don’ spoke to the other guy in Arabic and told him to reopen the shop for us. He then grabbed Dan’s arm and pulled him inside the unlit stop to go up to the second floor and also gently pushed Ev inside. At this stage we knew there was no turning back, we had to buy something or there’d be trouble. The lights came on so we headed upstairs and were surprised by how much stock was in the big room. Dan ended up buying a 1Ltr Jim Beam for 150EGP = 25AUD. Well worth the risk of kidnapping. The men were happy with their sale and we quickly left.
Happy Birthday, Ev.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-ev/collections/72157624677997272
Our bus arrived at 3:15am and we and hopped on. We each had an entire row to ourselves to the small bus and could comfortably stretch out. Our bus headed back to the bus depot so we could join a convoy of 30 other buses going to Abu Simbel. The Tourist Police are very protective of their treasured customers, and it certainly reinforces that this part of the world is not the safest. Once all of the buses arrived we headed off for our 3 hour journey east. The brand new roads felt they had more cracks and pot holes than the old sections and Dan had difficulty nodding off to sleep again. Ev slept most of the way. Much of the journey out of Aswan was surrounded by dirt and hardy plants. We also passed mining companies and a few low square buildings/houses. The drive went fairly quickly and it certainly was a lot cheaper than flying for 20 minutes for almost $1,000US.
When we arrived to the tourist spot there were already almost 100 huge buses. It seems we weren’t the only ones who wanted to view the sights before the heat set in. We purchased our tickets then walked around the back of the mountain and we took the long way down around another small hill along the river. We saw to our left some existing engraved pillars with the temple in the background. More amazing Egyptian carvings, but there was still more to come. We continued, then out of nowhere we saw the huge statues embedded in two mountains. You just can’t believe how huge they are until you see people standing next to them. Really, there is no way to describe the enormity of these statues.
We stood in awe from the outside for a few minutes.
We walked into the first temple and of course you couldn’t take photos!!! But anyway the first room had more reasonable sized statues of 10 metres standing at attention on each pillar. These statues were mummy figures and you can tell by their arms being crossed over the body and carrying staffs. They had masks like the masks on the sarcophaguses so that the body’s spirit could find the body when it returns.
Each pillar had different scenes of the King with various Gods for protection and favour. Moving slowly through the temple, we saw many scenes. The larger outer rooms are scenes of living such as hunting, animals and the King’s victories in battle and the smaller rooms are offering rooms of afterlife and burial ritual scenes. When there is one foot in front of the other it means that the scene depicted the king/people alive or is a scene of the King’s spirit. When the feet are together or lying down it is in a mummy form. The original colouring was still visible on the walls as well. It’s incredibly to see so much detail from 3000 years ago.
When it was originally built, the Egyptians positioned the temple so that twice a year, the sun would rise through the temple to the back room onto statues of four of their God’s: Ptah, Amun-Ra, Ramses II, and Ra.
As mentioned before photography was not allowed, but some tried. We saw a lady blatantly pull out her camera and use the flash and literally as soon as she took the photo a guy dressed as a tourist grabbed the camera and immediately left the small room into the main entrance and she pleaded for her camera back but he took it to another security person. Hoda told us yesterday that tourists caught taking photos may be fined up to 3,000EGP and are requested to delete photos and some times wipe the camera cards all together. We played it safe and took no photos, so as you can see we bought picture postcards.
The smaller temple was built for the King’s wives and he dedicated it to the God of love. This temple is smaller in comparison and like the other temple has large statues at the main entrance hall.
The Egyptians built the temples originally in the mountain close to the river. As Egyptologists observed the water levels rising, Egypt and other countries contributed financially in recreating the temples to higher ground where they are today. It was a huge delicate deconstruction and reconstruction process.
We were in the temples from 7:30 to 9:00am when the bus arrived to collect us. Sounds like plenty of time, but if there weren’t so many tourists we could have stayed longer. It made it very difficult to fully enjoy the magnificence of the place because we were pushed by people trying to stand in front of us all the time. Even still, we did enjoy the sights.
Food shopping (get ready for entertaining reading)
The rest of the afternoon we used the internet and slept. We had KFC for lunch. Ran into Hoda who asked us if we were going to dinner with her and the family. We both still weren’t feeling well so decided not to go to dinner. Wanted to go shopping to get supplies for the felucca. On the way to the shop we were asked by an elderly horse-drawn cab driver if we wanted a ride and we politely and repeatedly said “No” then he launched into the familiar vendor spiel. He eventually asked the most popular question an Egyptian vendor can ask a tourist “Where are you from?” to which Dan replied “From the moon”. He was irate with Dan’s response and started yelling in Arabic but we managed to hear “You’re a bad man. Go back to Africa” which was a little weird.
We crossed the street almost at the shop and another one ran after us yelling “Where are you going”. At first we thought he was the cabbies entourage but he seemed genuine (in his own forceful way). He told us that the shop would open after 9pm because of Ramadan so we said “Okay” and started walking back to the hotel. He ran off in the opposite direction but was obviously disappointed he couldn’t close the deal because he came back running to us pointing and waving in his direction indicating the nearest minimart. Feeling somewhat obliged, we followed him but once was saw they only sold soft drink we headed back. He followed us for a little while asking us what we actually want and pointed out the next nearest minimart and we waved him off and said no thanks. He shouted out to us “You’ll come back at 9pm” to remind us about the bigger shopping centre. As soon as he was out of earshot, we both said to each other “We are not coming back.” Still without food we decided to just head towards KFC for dinner as well, still a bit weary about Egyptian food. On the way we passed a couple of boys walking towards us smiling and waving. Thinking they were going to sell us something, we hesitantly said “Hi” and when Ev turned around she saw them skipping down the walkway. We felt bad because we’ve been on guard so much for most of the trip because of the vendors. It’s a shame because we do feel like interacting with the locals but it’s hard to know what motive they have. We took dinner back to the hotel and Ev fell asleep while Dan was writing the journal until about 11pm.
Dan recalled that Graham told us the bottle shop was a couple of doors up, so he jumped on Ev and dragged her out of bed to get some booze. We saw two men out the front who had just locked the shop and we stood out the front trying to read the signs. One of the men, who looked like a mafia boss, abruptly asked “What do you want?” and Dan said “Alcohol.” The guy asked “Beer, Whiskey...?” and Dan said “What have you got? Only if it’s not too much trouble.” ‘The Don’ spoke to the other guy in Arabic and told him to reopen the shop for us. He then grabbed Dan’s arm and pulled him inside the unlit stop to go up to the second floor and also gently pushed Ev inside. At this stage we knew there was no turning back, we had to buy something or there’d be trouble. The lights came on so we headed upstairs and were surprised by how much stock was in the big room. Dan ended up buying a 1Ltr Jim Beam for 150EGP = 25AUD. Well worth the risk of kidnapping. The men were happy with their sale and we quickly left.
Happy Birthday, Ev.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-ev/collections/72157624677997272
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