temples and mini vans in Aswan
Some people seem to deal with heat OK, despite being 45 degrees they look fine, make-up and hair still in place and charging around the streets without seeming to notice the crazy heat. I am not one of those people. I spend my days in Egypt with my hair plastered to my face, I am constantly wet from sweating and have even redder than usual cheeks. Despite drinking 3 liters + a day I still feel extremely dehydrated a lot of the time. I am having a couple of cold showers a day just to cool down but their effect lasts for around 2 minutes before I am all sweaty again, I can’t have any skin touching, so I can’t rest my hand on my arm or cross my legs. At night I just lie spread out under my fan regretting not paying the extra $5 for air-conditioning.
But in saying that its still not impossible to do stuff and the hot weather keeps lots of tourists away so its easier to get buses and trains and have temples and ruins to yourself.
I arrived in Aswan around 2pm and spent about an hour trying to find this hotel, walking with my pack up and down the market was awful, but the time I found it after walking past it twice I was drenched in sweat and took a good couple of hours to recover. Aswan is set around the Nile and pretty much built on tourism. Walking down the corniche (along the Nile) means dealing with 100’s of offers of felucca (a traditional style boat) rides, horse and carriage rides, restaurants, shops and everything else. Walking through the bazaar (market) is worse, its like a gauntlet of men who start with trying to get you in their shop them move on to telling you they live alone and would you like to come home with them. Walking along the corniche turns out to be easier. It’s not all bad though, its not dangerous and you can ignore people, plus sometimes its funny because it is so ridiculous.
After spending the rest of the day relaxing and getting some food I went to bed early in preparation for a 3am start on a minibus tour to Abel Simbel. While its not difficult to travel independently in Egypt, to see lots of the sights you need to join day trips because they are often outside of the city. Minibus tours seemed to be designed to be as painful as possible, the seats have head rests which push your head forward and there is way to many people in the back. But you do what you have to and it is worth it at the end. plus for a $10 tour its hard to complain.
Abu Simbel was a 3 hour drive out of Aswan and really amazing, a huge temple that was actually moved from its original site because it was getting flooded, the temples were reconstructed exactly as they were including facing the sun the right way and everything. It was massive, and very impressive, plus my first chance to see hieroglyphics up close for the first time. And when we first arrived there weren’t too many people around which was cool. After spending a bit of time there we headed back towards town with a stop at the High Dam, probably the most unimpressive sight ever, it was just a dam, but I found out later a bit more of its huge significance to Egypt as it supplied power and controlled the Nile- which given that the Nile essentially controls Egypt makes it pretty significant . We also stopped and caught a boat over to a cool temple ruin on an island, by this time it was so hot you had to run from from shaded area to shaded area to avoid the sun. In the shade its not so bad, just the blinding sun it too much.
By the time I got back to the hotel we had been going for 12 hours so I grabbed some food and had a nap. I met a guy called Hugh on the tour who said he was doing a felucca trip to Luxor in 2 days time so I went and booked at the same place and then randomly ran into each other at dinner time. So we spent the following afternoon together over on one of the islands which has Nubian villages, Nubian’s are a local group of people who are different from Egyptians. It was very different over there and very quite, we wandered through tiny alleyways with houses and found a little cafe type thing where we had a rest and talked to the most laid back guy in the world who talked to us about the affect the dam has had on Nubian people. Later that evening we watched the sunset up in a park where we continued to be talked to by lovely but slightly annoying old men
“Do you like Egypt?”
” Yes, just too many people talk to us, we get no peace”
“ahh yes that can be bad when all you want to do is watch the sunset but…blah blah blah”
haha, it was kind of funny. After the sunsets loads more people come out and walk around, you see more women and people that aren’t just trying to sell you things so its kind of nice. Also food is so stupidly cheap. I can get a felafel sandwich for 1 EL, which is about 25 cents, also big cups of fruit in mango juice for 1.50 EL, things are cheap here. The funny thing is though is that the heat totally takes away my appetite and I have hardly been eating anything, usually one decent meal a day and a couple of snacks or juice. Its strange, I have never felt not hungry before. The difference in prices though are pretty crazy, like dinner at a local type place is around 5-10 EL, where if you go to a tourist place the same thing will be 30-40 EL. So it can be easy to spend a lot of money. One night I splashed out for seafood and it cost 35 EL which seemed ridiculous but then I realised that it was around $8 which is not so bad!
Tags: aswan, blogsherpa, Egypt, TRAVELS 2008
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Keep it up Arnika we love them. 6 degrees here sleet and rain.
Hi Arnika, Grandma here, as Grandad said above, we LOVE your Blog and travel vicariously with you, what an amazing journey you are on. Take care and know that we think of you every day, Hi to Jane from us must have been lovely meeting up with each other. Take care of yourself, lots of love from G/ma and G/dad. xxx.