After breakfast everyone dropped their bags off to our room and we set off for the Great Pyramids of Giza. Our leader Ahmed explained a little of the history of the 30 dynasties of Pharaohs. We had a fantastic clear day for our visit. We started at the Great pyramid of Khufu where Ahmed explained a little about how the pyramids were built before setting off for the viewing platform where we got a group photo.
We then went on a 30 minute camel ride to view the pyramids from different vantage points.
During our free time we visited the solar boat museum. The boat was used in Pharaoh Khufu's funeral ceremony. We also walked around the second pyramid of Khafre. It still has part of the limestone covering at the top. It is absolutely amazing.
Next stop on the trip was the Sphinx. There is still restoration work going on so it has a bit of scafolding on the sides. David did the yoga pose the sphinx next to the real thing.
We stopped of for lunch at a local restaurant for lunch and headed off to the Egyptian Museum. Ahmed showed us many of the more interesting items. We saw the contents of Tutankhamun's burial chamber which included the amazing 11kg solid gold death mask and many other gold and precious stone pieces. We also paid the extra to see the royal mummies, most of which had been left partially unwrapped. We headed back to the hotel, had a few drinks in the rooftop bar before heading off to the overnight train to Aswan.
The train trip was enjoyable , we both had a good nights sleep in our 2 birth sleeper compartment. We had free time in our hotel until around 3pm. Our room has great views over the Nile. 
At 3pm we set off on a cruise of the Nile with a Nubian guide. We went to a Nubian beach where we could swim, it was very cold. David and I climbed to the top of the sand dune along with Shelly, where we had magnificent views over Aswan in front of us and the Sahara in the background.
We then set off past the Botanical Gardens on Kichener island on our way to a colourful Nubian village. We had dinner at the house of a local Nubian family and afterwards we danced and sang with them. We had a fantastic time.
We headed back to the hotel where Ahmed gave us a powerpoint presentation on Abu Simbel so we would get the most from our trip the next day.
We were woken at 2.45am so that we could make the convoy start time of 4am. We arrived at Abu Simbel at 7am. It was absolutely amazing. We couldn't stop taking photos.
It is amazing to think they moved these temples that were cut into the side of a mountain.
At 9am the convoy set off back to Aswan. Along the way we saw a few mirages. It was another amazing site, you could see a blue lake in the distance and the mountains reflecting into the lake, the thing is there was no lake!
We stopped along the way and caught a boat over the Agilkia Island which is now home to Philae temple. This is another temple that was submerged due to the building of the upper dam. We were allowed to take photos inside this temple so again we took many photos here.
We had free time this afternoon and went for a walk along the corniche where every 5 meters someone wanted us to take a ride in their feluca. We sat in a park and watched the sun set before heading off to the Souq (market) where David bought an Egyptian soccer shirt and flag for 60 Egyptain pounds (starting price 250).
No comments:
Post a Comment