Cruising the Nile

Docked at Edfu this morning and had an interesting ride by horse and carriage to the Edfu temple - a skinny horse, a carriage??? Big wheels, not much tread, wobbly.... but we made it! Edfu temple to some was another wonderful temple to visit - there's been heaps of them! Back on the boat for another 6 hr cruise and then another temple stop but about here I started feeling unwell and from there had a 12 hr dose of the runs which laid me low for the rest of the day basically - This last temple tour I did not visit - turns out with my condition I would have needed a couple of toilet stops in quick turn so was more than happy to rest in our cabin!!

I have no idea why as I had nothing remotely out of the ordinary but just one of those things. One of our group had some 'Gastro-Stop' an amazing dose of medication which stopped everything straight up and after a day of half sleeping yesterday whilst not well and then a good night's sleep, I'm back and rearing ready to go again!

This morning we headed off by bus and saw both Lower Aswan Dam and the Aswan High Dam - I personally was a little taken aback thinking that this was supposed to be something really special however the Three Gorges Dam on The Yangtze River was much more spectacular than this - to Kemm and I, just a big dam. However looking at some of the diagrams and sketches of the dam and how it was built - yes it is quite a remarkable feat.

On from the dams to ANOTHER temple....mmmmm..... Although it was fun getting to this one by little boat - An old Egyptain boat at that - no life jackets or any sense of safety but that's how the whole place seems to run here. Back on mainland and a stop at an Essential Oils shop - absolutely beautiful perfume bases here - they are exported to all the "Chanel 5"s, Hugo Boss's etc all over the world.

Next stop a papyrus place showing us how papyrus is made and of course the shop!!! There's always a shop! At the end of any tourist area exit there is usually a row of small shops all touting for business - our group now stands at the ready - ready to 'run the gauntlet' as we say- it becomes heads down and tally ho - forward!!! No! no money, don't want, thank you - no, cheap price? Yes... no money, free???? yeah right... etc! A bit of fun but I guess that's how a lot of people make their living here.

Have just returned from an hours sailing in a local Feluca boat on the Nile just on sunset - absolutely delightful so of course took lots of photos. In the Aswan area at present there are 52!!! of these tourist boats we are on, all need to be no more than a certain width and height to enable them to fit into locks and under bridges. Each evening we line up 3 or 4 abreast and move through each boat until you reach shore. Very clever the way they are all setup and designed to allow for that.

Tomorrow we fly to Abu Simbel to see Ramses II temple (or something) then back up to Cairo for the evening.