The Nile
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2007
1
5
15
Trip End
Nov 18, 2007
Aswan,
Egypt
Saturday, November 3, 2007
After lunch we toured around Elephantine Island which has a variety of ruins from ancient egyptian/Nubian times and had this wonderful old Nubian man talk us through the tour. His family goes way back and actually had one of the islands taken from his family before he was born by a British general Kitchener. It's now called Kitcheners Island and is open to the public. He had wonderful history to tell and was so proud to share it. He was also quite knowledgable about other countries and whenever he asked where you were from, he was always able to spout off different facts, names, etc no matter what country you mentioned [we have Australians, a Belgian, New Zealander, another American, and a couple from Tasmania which I guess is actually considered part of Australia - who knew?]. When talking to Kev, he asked if we still had Gloria Gaynor as a singer. LOL. He loved her song "I Will Survive." Again, LOL. He also rattled off some of his favorite American actors - Marlon Brando in Godfather, Sidney Poitier, and Denzel Washington. Very fun to talk to.
After our tour, we stopped briefly at a beach to hit some restrooms and take a dip in the Nile if you so chose to... We went up to our calves. Much colder than you think it would be, but it is the early part of winter. Nevertheless, we have officially been in the Nile! A camel ride to St. Simeon Monastery ruins in the great desert followed. Ummm, neither one of us feels the need to ride another camel again if we can avoid it. It was fun, but no need to do it again. Kevs camel was a bit spirited and cranky, all the more fun.
And finally, we visited a Nubian house and looked at Wedding photos and a video of the Wedding of our host - J.J. He explained the Nubian tradition of weddings - they cover two days and have between 2500-3000 guests for the actual wedding on the second night. Nubian tradition is that the groom must visit every home of six different Nubian villages as well as his own and invite them to the wedding. Yikes. So, that is why so many show up. He said that if everyone came it would be around 20000 people.
We have a very early morning tomorrow - 3:30am. We are going to Abu Simbel which is close to the Sudan border so the Egyptian govt requires all tourists to travel in a sort of guarded caravan to get there. Not looking forward to waking up.
Well, unfortunately, Kev has a sore throat [think it might be aggravated from all of the smoke and what not] so best be off to get some meds at the pharmacy. They wanted to give me paracetamol and some other things so I stopped in here to look it up on the internet before buying. All is fine as it turns out paracetamol is Acetaminophen.
Will write again soon.
Comments
Wow-- what great adventures
It's sounds wonderful-- all except the boob part that is:) Hope Kev is feeling better. We're thinking about you. Love, Mom and Dad