New Cataract Aswan

The morning in Aswan was spent visiting some of the old and some of the new. We stopped at the High Dam which was built by Nasr and created the largest man-made lake in the world. This had both benefits and drawbacks. It creates so much electricity that Egypt imports much of it, and it saved thousands of people from famines. On the down side, it has submerged hundreds of temples and shrines and villages. A handful of these temples were rescued from the waters, but many lie beneath to this day...

Aswan. The head of Lake Nasser is in Aswan, this lake is the largest man made lake on the planet. It is about 500kms long and stores a massive of water. It's very interesting; search it on goggle, type in lake Nasser Egypt. The lake prevents flooding threw the whole of Egypt that used to occur in the past, it produces huge amount of power and it releases water for irrigation at a perfect rate. I felt a bit sick yesterday and spent day resting, James, Dad and Sebastian flew at 3am to Abul Simb...

Happy Birthday to meeeee! And what a birthday it was! If I had to think of any place to celebrate my 21st (or any birthday for that matter, Egypt would top the list! I highly recommend it!). So, how might you ask, was our night train? Eh. That's about how it was. Not too bad. I actually slept more than I expected to. One of the benefits of being short is that I could curl up and fit nicely into the chairs. Sure, I lost feeling in my legs, my butt and my back at various points during the night...

So a few things I've learned about traveling in Egypt: bring lots of change. I don't mean coins, I mean single dollar bills like you're going to the strip club. There is not much that cannot be had for "one yankee doodle dollar" in this here neck of the woods. Having Egyptian change is not a bad idea either (once again, not the coins but the smaller bills) since water and sodas and postcards and toilet paper (more on that later) can be bought for 1 to 5 to 10 to 20 Egyptian pounds. Their mone...

Hello again all. After some fast moves I'm now in Upper Egypt, more commonly known as sourthern Egypt these days, on the fertile banks of the Nile in Aswan in the hope of finding some warmer weather that my weary boday can really enjoy. So far it's very pleasant and living up to expectations I had from my pre-trip research, and in a month or two it would be very nice to be here indeed. We didn't arrive without a fight however - the boat ride across the Red Sea from Sharm to Hurghada was strai...

Monday pm - Fri.: After the Luxor balloon ride and breakfast, I boarded the St. George I cruise boat for a trip to Upper Egypt, up the Nile. Here's the irony in that statement... I was headed South, but they call N. Egypt "Lower Egypt" and S. Egypt "Upper Egypt", because the Nile is one of the few rivers that flows from South to North. It can get very confusing. So basically, boarded in Luxor in the North and headed South to the ultimate destination of Aswan. The brochures/internet pictures o...