Temples, Mickey Mouse and pipes

At 3.15am when the alarm went off, I was wondering whose stupid idea this was.  But I trudged like a zombie out to meet the group and we all hopped into a van.  It is a three hour drive through the dessert to see Abu Simbel and it is done in convoy with an escort from the police.  This conjured up images in my mind of a line of vehicles moving in an orderly line through the dessert with an armoured car (perhaps a tank?) at each end and dust flying as we drove past dangers unknown.   In reality, a policeman gets in to the first and last vehicle and off everyone goes on the nicely tarsealed road, overtaking at will, driving on the wrong side of road as it takes their fancy.  There are no dangers unknown, the convoy is in case someone breaks down so that help can be provided immediately and passengers off loaded to one of the bigger buses.  With seven of us in the van, we were able to spread out a bit and I dozed for much of the trip occasionally surfacing to look at the dessert and catch the sunrise.

We arrived at Abu Simbel at 7am and it was already quite hot as we sat outside the main temple while Mohammed gave us an explanation of the temples (he's not allowed to do that inside).  The detailed carving of the four huge statues perched on thrones outside the temple is amazing and the inside is covered in carved pictures of various scenes, many of which relate to making offerings and mythological stories. 

The temple was constructed by Ramsses II and the second for his beloved wife Nefertari who died at a young age just when the temple was completed.  Old Ramsses II continued to the ripe old age of 92 and had about 50 wives and nearly 200 children.  These were up there with some of the best temples I've seen on this trip - especially as they are not in their original site.  The damming of the Nile meant that these and about 20 other archaeological sites were in danger of being drowned.  In the 1960s they were moved to protect them in a complex operation.  Abu Simbel and the Philae temple (which I will get to later) were the biggest ones that were moved.

It was then back in the van by 10am for the convoy back to Aswan.  The Philae temple is just out of Aswan so we stopped there on the way back.  Entrance is 12 Egyptian pounds but the funny thing is that it is on an island  and the price of the boat is not included in the ticket.  The Philae temple was moved from another island and took 10 years.  The temple of for Isis so that she could visit her dead husband Osiris as his mother had taken his body on the back of a crocodile to a nearby island so that he could have some peace and quiet.

There was time for a swim and a greek salad by the pool at the hotel before we were back in the boat to find our camel ride.  Cathy and I had a camel ride in Morocco and it was not that pleasant (especially as Cathy's camel had a mind of it's own and kept taking off).  The ride in Giza was mostly just hot.  So goodness knows why I was doing this again.  But it was quite nice.  It was a slow walk through the dessert in the early evening to see the sunset.  The others were on camels called Ramsess, and Moon and the like.  I was on Mickey Mouse.

We then had a nice dinner at a restaurant on the Nile followed by a sheesha pipe (we tried mint - yuck, apple - nice, pmiceach - nice, and cherry - ho hum).