Day 12

6/23/10

Today is we dock in Aswan. This is very far to the southern end of Egypt and it just gets hotter. Today we plan to visit the Aswan dams, Lake, Nasser, Philae temple, and Sondos Papyrus shop. First up is Philae temple. This temple used to be on Philae island before the island was flooded due to Lake Nasser's creation. The entire temple was moved to a new island and replaced exactly as it was before. The island was even modified to look the same as the other one. This temple is beautiful and delicate and feminine. Which makes sense as it is dedicated to the Chief female goddess Isis. We took a small boat to the island and back without grandma. She isn't feeling well and decided to stay behind today.

After Philae we drove to Sondos Papyrus factory. We had a quick tutorial on papyrus making. If I had simply soaked my papyrus fibres in water for six days I would have had much larger pieces to work with and I would have had more impressive samples for history fair. Oh well, too late now. I bought a painting of Anubis, and a painting of the Weighing of the Heart scene from the Book of the Dead. I'm going to need to get them framed when I get home. I also asked Karin and Mark to make a painting of Thoth be a graduation present to me and they agreed.

We were the first bus to the factory and the first to leave. Next is the two dams and Lake Nasser. Lake Nasser is huge, it is over 300 kilometers long. The other end is over three hours away drive by bus.

The water is beautiful and you can see what an unencumbered Nile looks like... until it hits the dam of course. It was so windy though. My skirt had a mind of its own.

Since we were the first to the dams, we were the first back to the ship. We have never been first, we are always last, but today we made it. We had lunch and a lazy afternoon until 4:00.

At 4:00 we have a falucca ride. (little sail boat) We kept rocking around enough that I stuck my hands in the water whenever we rocked to my side. There was a nice breeze and wonderful views of an island garden. It was nice.

We came back in time to get ready for dinner. But, before dinner we have the port talk and the U.S. vs Algeria soccer world cup match. Soccer is really big over here and you can't help but get involved yourself. So, the four of us went to the bar and watched their tv while drinking our usuals. Unfortunately we were pulled out for the port talk. But, part way through the bar tender and his friend ran out to tell us that the U.S. scored against Algeria. The match was over by the end of the port talk and the United States won. The Egyptians were as excited as we were because Algeria knocked Egypt out of the World Cup and there is bad blood between them.

After dinner there was a show in the lounge but we decided to skip it because we need to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to leave for Abu Simbel.

Our early night did not happen!! There is another boat docked next to us and they have a tv on their sun deck. The stupid german boat stayed up until one in the morning cheering and booing!! We got no sleep! I was so mad.

Tomorrow is the amazing trip to Abu Simbel, it is one of the highlights of the trip. Plenty to talk about tomorrow.