Abu Simbel

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Trip Start May 13, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 26, 2008 Next
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  Abu Simbel, Egypt
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

We got a wake up call this morning bright and early this morning at 6am and ate some yummy breakfast before getting on a bus for the Aswan airport. We decided to go on this extra excursion our first night in Egypt as it involves an airplane ride to the otherwise inaccessible site of the temple of Ramses II and the Temple of Nefertiri. It was really special because the entire site had to be physically moved to escape the flooding waters from the Nile after it was dammed creating Lake Nassir, the largest man-made lake in the world! The dam was built to protect the Nubians (native african villigers who actually have black skin as opposed to the more Egyptian looking brown skin) whose villages would be destroyed by the flooding of the Nile that came from the heavy rains in the North comming down the river and spilling over. One of our friends, Larissa who had lighter black skin was often called out to as "Ahhh Nubian" as we were called out as "Ahhh Shakira." Didn't make much sense to us as last time we checked we're not Colombian.

So the site was pretty amazing and well preserved. Shiriff told us how it was a world project to save this temple from the Lake. NESCO world organization decided to cut it up and number the pieces to move it to a safe location. We could see the cuts up close but from far away it looked perfect. The seated stautues of Ramses were carved right into the mountain face and the entire inside of the temple was ornately decorated with hyroglyphics on every surface. It was pretty amazing and was aligned with the sun on the soltice to shine on the face of Ramses in the inner-most chamber 2 times a year as the sun rose. Pretty amazing that they could do that 3000 years ago!

The other temple next to Ramses was the temple of Nefertiri, the only Egyptian temple ever erected for a woman. It was decorated as well and we really enjoyed walking through it. It really just blew our minds how old these temples really were and how advanced the egyptian civilization was. We had time to walk around and then caught a bus back to the Abu Simbil airport to depart back to Aswan.

Back on the boat, they kept lunch out late for us (it was about 3pm by the time we got back). We had most of the afternoon to relax before seeing Kom-Ombo Temple. We caught some sun on the top deck of the boat and waded a bit in the
pool while we were served tea and biscuits at about 4:30pm. The boat makes a special stop there en route to Luxor before passing Edfu which we will do tomorrow. Kom-Ombo Temple was a cool, very well preserved temple that was built in honor of the crocadile so they would be protected from them. The place where it was built was notorious for having large numbers of crocks because it was one of the warmer areas of the Nile. It was also one of the first medical facilities and the hyroglyphics showed the Imhotep the architect who was well respected for building many temples and also pictured many of the medical and pharmaceutical devices that were used then. (Imhotep was not actually evil as he was dipicted in the Mummy.)
 
We got back on the boat in time for dinner and our much anticipated Egyptian Night. We caught some sun on the top deck of the boat and waded a bit in the pool while we were served tea and biscuits at about 4:30pm. Dinner was great again as usual before we doned our Egyptian belly-dancing costumes and had our Contiki Egyptian Night!! Jenn wore a green belly-dancing skirt and Jill had a white one both with silver beads and coins for the jingle effect. We had some drinks and played some crazy Egyptian Games. The boat hands joined in by playing the drums and other traditional instuments for authentic music and they taught us the tradtional dance. It was much like the Jewish dancing you see at Bar Mitsvas and stuff where we danced in a circle and came together and shouted "HEY" in the middle. We had fun. The other games seemed more juvenile like wrap the Mummy with TP, hot potato, freeze dance and musical chairs but with spoons. At the end when we had all started to get a little bored, we got to just dance a bit and chill out on the top deck. Our guide encouraged us to sleep out on deck under the stars because the following day was just a day on the boat to realax. We gathered our alcohol and played some games before grabbing sweats and the blankets off our beds and curling up in sunchairs on the top deck. We woke up with the sunrise only about 2 hours later and moved down to our beds just as we were passing Edfu.

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