Philae Temple and Aswan High Dam

Someone was at the train station to pick us up and we walked the block or so to our hotel. We had a seat in the lobby and before we knew it, we had a refreshing hot hibiscus tea served to us. This is made from dried hibiscus petals and a bit of sugar.

Aswan Souq

We checked into our room and were marvelling at the bathroom/shower in our room. The shower reminded me of one in a holiday trailer. You close the door and the shower basically drenches everything in the room. Hey, no complaints here since we didn't have to go across the hall.

After a short rest, we headed off to the local market. This was different to Khan al-Khalili in Cairo as about every 4th shop had a variety of spices in huge baskets. Once again, every shop keeper was harassing us to come to them. We stopped at one and talked a bit about his spices. We wanted to purchase some pepper corns and some dried hibiscus. He grabbed a handful of petals and sent his shopboy off to make us some hibiscus tea to prove that his petals were the better type.

Sunset on the Nile

While drinking tea in his little shop, he shared with us some of the trials of daily life in Aswan. He said that since the recent terrorist attacks, there are even more policemen and even some plain-clothes cops. He claimed that every week, they take away people walking on the streets if they look like they don't belong. Anyhoo, we got down to talking business and we were pretty sure that we were getting ripped off. We bargained down some and should have walked away after his "final" offer. We were feeling guilty about the tea. We were walking away when he did lower his price to ours. Walking away, we were happy to have had the interesting conversation, but knew that he had still horribly overcharged us. Oh well, we're talking the difference of $5 to us...that $5 will probably go a lot farther for him than us anyway.

We stopped in at Biti Pizza which was highly recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook. It was delicious afterall. A quick rest and we were off for our afternoon touring.

A mini-bus picked us up and brought us out the Aswan High Dam. We only spent about 10 minutes outside looking over the sides of the dam and getting all of the information because it was seering hot! 45C!!!! This was built in the 70s to replace the smaller existing dam. They build the High Dam for a few reasons: the smaller dam didn't hold up to some of the Nile floods; it increased cultivable land by 30%, doubled Egypt's power supply as well as supplying power to Egypt, Sudan and some other nearby countries. As with all dams, it created a large artificial lake: Lake Nassar. It stretches for 510 km in length with a width of 5-35km.

The High Dam and Lake Nassar did come with drawbacks. For one, an entire population of people, the Nubians, had their land gobbled up by the lake. They have had to find new lands to live on and in the process, not all of them have been able to do well for themselves. Secondly, some temples and ruins needed to be moved. One of which is Philae Temple (details to follow). Third, after a typical flood, silt would have covered the fields providing it with the rich nourishment needed. Without the floods, they are using more and more artificial fertilizers which have wreaked havoc with the ecosytems along the Nile. What to do?

Back into the "AC" van (about as strong as a cold fart), we drove off to Philae Temple. This is one of the temples that had to be moved due to the creation of Lake Nassar. We took a little boat over to the island on which it was set. A young boy came onto the boat with a little bag of bracelets he had made. Oh, oh. Yeah, you can read between the lines. My name is Tamalyn Tardif and I am a bracelet-aholic! Hey, I made it a whole week without wearing one! After looking at each one very carefully, I decided upon a funky one made of sandalwood. It does smell so nice and clean. It reminds me of a bar of soap that we used to be able to buy in Canada. Can't remember the name. By the way, the bracelet was a whole $1.25 CDN.

Once at the island, we were awestruck. This temple was created during the Roman times. It was made for the Egyptian Goddess, Isis. She was the goddess of magic. Lucky for her. Wait until you hear this story. Keep in mind that these are legends and as our tour guide kept saying, "They were Gods afterall, they could do anything."

The abbreviated story of Isis is that she had 2 brothers and one sister. She married her brother Osiris although her other brother, Mut, had always loved her best and wanted to marry her. Alas, Mut had to settle for his other sister. Eventually, jealousy got the better of Mut and he killed Osiris. Osiris came back to life and created a son. Mut once again killed Osiris, but this time, he cut his brother up into 14 pieces and spread them out all over the land. Isis grew wings so she could fly around and pick up the pieces of her dead husband. She found all but one piece. Wanna guess which one? Come on...she never found the male organ (this is a G rated journal after all). He became the God of eternal life.

The temple was so beautiful. The only sad part is that when the Christians came to Egypt, they destroyed some of the hieroglyphs and statues because they wanted the people to only worship one God. I find it really sad that they felt they had to destroy parts. Anyway, there are signs of the "Coptic" (Egyptian Christian) church such as "Coptic Crosses". There was also a script written on a wall by Napoleon when he had a war with the Egyptians. It describes what happened in the most famous battle. Finally, all of these additions were then vandalised by the early Muslims.

Back to town for a quick walk along the Corniche (the road along the Nile) to find a spot to settle for a beer to watch the sun set over the hills of the Sahara and the Nile. As expected, we were hassled continually along the way by the felucca (traditional Egyptian sailboats) captains, the caleche (horse and buggy) drivers, taxi cabs and anyone else who wanted to "take our money". We were continually saying, "La shukran" (no thank you), but this was not enough often. Sometimes they would follow us, stand in our way or continue to tell us what a good price it would be. Grrrr. Not only was it hot, but we had to deal with them. Even so, we really tried to focus on the fact that we were walking along the Nile, the longest river in the world. It is truly beautiful.

We found a perfect spot on a floating restaurant. There was only one other table of people so we felt like it was just us, the Nile and the sun. Along with our Egyptian beer (Stella, not to be confused with Stella Artois) we were given a small bowl of chickpeas with some spices and half a mini-lime. At first we were hesitant (rinsed in clean water?), but we finally gave in. SO GOOD! The sunset was just perfect. As the sun settled behind the golden hills, the color reflected on the Nile was subtle, but pretty.

Back along the cornice, past the same guys, and would you believe that we had to deal with it all over again? Short memories? Persistent salesmen? White guys all look the same? Whatever it was: "la shukran".

We stopped at a restaurant for Egyptian pizza. The dough is more like a pastry dough. They put a layer of dough, the meat, another layer of dough, then the toppings and cheese. Gerald had a tuna pizza and I had the "luncheon". When I asked what luncheon was, the waiter made it sound like it was like a few different meats. It was very tasty and the crust was yummy. After a few bites, I wondered what my spicy meat could be. Gerald had a taste and figured out that it was SPAM. Yup, I had a Spam pizza and darn it, it was yummy. (Lynn: I almost asked, "Do y'all have some aerosol cheese?")

We quickly got organized and to bed early. Our tour the next day was to Abu Simbel: 3 hour drive South to see Ramses tomb on the edge of Lake Nassar. We were to get up at 2:30am, eat breakfast at 3am, leave at 3:30am, meet up with the Police Convoy at 4am and leave shortly thereafter. I kept repeating the "am" for effect. Are you getting an idea of just how early that is?