Aswan, Egypt

The day we left Istanbul was the first day on this trip that Jeff and I were in travelers purgatory.  I woke up with a nasty case of some sort of travelers’ bug with results out of both ends.  But I sucked it up, put on my pack, puked into a plastic bag at metro station during a transfer we had to make, and checked into our flight.  We flew Turkish Airlines to Cairo, which is the last airline in existence that still feeds all of its passengers.  Instead of eating my oh-so-delicious in flight meal, I spent my time in the lavatory which was luckily only two rows behind us.  We got into Cairo and had missed our connecting flight to Aswan.  No problem we’ll just go to the ticket counter and Egypt Air will help us out… Egypt Air is not in the customer service business.  The first counter told us we need to print off our electronic ticket before they could help us.  The second counter across the airport was a bit more helpful and did get us seats on the 5 o’clock flight out.  Proceed to the check-in counter were we witness a yelling match between a tour guide, trying to check his ‘people’ in for their flight, and the counter representative.  The representative closed his counter in order to fully engage in the yelling match.  Unfortunately, we don’t speak Arabic so we could only imagine what the fight was about.  We get checked in and head towards our gate only to soon realize that the flight has been delayed.  In fact when looking at the Egypt Air departure board, every Egypt Air flight is blinking ‘delayed’.  So we settle into some seats (near the bathroom) and waited for them to call our flight.  As it gets closer to our delayed departure time, I wander up to the desk and ask what is going on.  They were pretty much already boarding our flight, hadn’t made any announcements, the screen above the desk was labeled for a different flight and destination, and we almost missed it.  But we got on-board and made it to Aswan. We only needed to collect our bags and get a taxi to the hotel.  Our bags arrived on the belt, but when we go to get a taxi, two guys get into a fight about who will get our fare.  One takes my bag and starts walking over to his car while the other is running ahead of him slamming the trunk closed.  There’s more Arabic yelling, peppered with “Its no problem friend” and “I’m number one taxi, you come with me.”  I had to grab my bag, yell at him to let go, and ended up getting a very nice taxi driver got us to our hotel.

The next day, I’m still feeling a little weak, but rally to take a ferry over to Elephanitine Island and explore the ruins there.  There are also two small Nubian villages there that were very rustic.  Jeff and I pay our entrance fee and would have liked to just wander around the ruins by ourselves, but we have a tourist police man and a ‘guide’ follow us all over.  After about a half hour, Jeff tells them that we’re fine and would like to be left alone.  Then comes the awkward baksheesh (tip) time.  The ‘guide’ wants more money, what about the tourist police guy, and of course we don’t have small change only bigger bills.  This our first run in with the baksheesh and it is nowhere near our last.    Little kids will run up to you on the street yelling “Baksheesh? Baksheesh?” 

We plan a trip Abu Simbel temple the next day and arrange to have a minibus pick us up.  We head out to dinner and then wander a little bit around the bazaar.  On our way back, Jeff (who secretly thought I was a wussy the day before), has to vomit in a plastic bag.  He got the exact same bug I did and we had to postpone our trip to the temple. 

We spent the next day mostly recovering from our illness at the hotel but did take a sun set felucca boat ride on the Nile which was very nice and relaxing (minus the baksheesh time at the end).  We woke up at 02:30 to catch our mini bus to Abu Simbel.  The bus picks people up from several different hotels and then lines up for the 4 am convoy out into the desert.  It was a 3 hour bumpy ride out to the temple, but it was well worth it. Abu Simbel and the close-by Temple of Hathor were amazing.  There are four huge statues of Ramses II stationed outside the temple.  We spent two hours at this site and then it was back on the minibus.  The bus also stopped at the temple of Philae which we had to take a water taxi too. 

We were dropped off at our hotel (after giving the driver baksheesh), grabbed something to eat, and got on the train to Luxor.  The ticket counter won’t sell tickets to tourists, so you just get on the train and buy a ticket on board.  Its very weird, but we  made it Luxor, no problem my friends.

Sunset felucca ride

Inside one of the temples

Abu Simbel temple