Hey everyone. I know I haven't written in a while so this is going to be a longer blog than normal since I do not know how to write short blogs. Sorry. Ok, when we got back from our day of walking and getting nowhere, we met up with a Brit named David and an Italian named Mikela (I know I butchered her name, sorry)that were staying at the same hotel as us. We had heard about the Cairo Jazz Club and thought it would be fitting to go drink some Stellas and listen to some music other than the Koran. So us brave souls ventured out into the crazy mess of hecklers and shoppers at 11pm in search of a little fun. We decided that we could walk to the club because July 26th St. Was close to our hotel, but after a frantic, pulling out hair hour of fruitless searching, we came up with no Jazz club and a bunch of unhappy wannabe drunks. Eventually we surrendered to the crazy cab honking and hopped in a taxi with just a street number and a direction. After going farther than we could of walked, we found the Jazz club in the she-she part of town. Luckily it was open until 3am, giving us plenty of time to get a little tipsy. But at first we walked in and walked right back out because the beers were 24 Egyptian Pounds and everywhere else they are 8-10 pounds. Fancy club - high prices. We walked the street pouting for a bit before David said, "Ah fuck it, I'll buy you guys the first round. I just want to get wasted!" And this is how we found ourselves sitting at a table, listening to bad techo (no Jazz played at the Cairo Jazz Club except on Sunday for two hour only), and awaiting a pitcher of shots that would give each of us 7 shots. While David was in the happy "buying of drinks" mood he spotted the 33 hot pitcher on the menu and ordered it. I was already feeling the effects of the one beer since I hadn't really eaten all day, but hell, we hadn't been drunk yet. The pitcher came, not as impressive looking as I would have hoped, but the favorite was decent enough. We managed to drink our 7 shots each in less than an hour. David, poor guy got drunk, but for some reason us lite weights and the tiny meanie Mikela stayed relatively sober. Very odd. All and all it was a great night where we got to go out and enough ourselves with the company of English speakers. Just what we needed.
The next day we went to the Cairo museum in the morning (rather afternoon) and visited the 7 ugliest and saddest looking mummies for an extra $15USD. Everyone had told us we should pay and see the mummies when at the museum, but it was not worth it and I recommend you save your money and go shopping or get drunk with it instead. There were lots of other museums that we went to that had mummies as well and were free. The rest of the museum was filled with every sarcophagus that was ever found anywhere through out the world. There must have been over 200 stacked and placed throughout the joint. A few artifacts of jewelry, paintings, statues and stones managed to find a spot to sit between all the coffins. It was an ok museum, but not worth the hype it's giving and they could definitely use AC. It was hella hot!
We boarded a night train to Aswan at 10pm and froze to death for the 15 hour journey to our next location. At first the AC was a welcome surprise, but once your body cooled down it was sleeping in a comfortable position and shiver or roll yourself into a tight ball to keep warm and risk serious cramping. It took us 13 hours to realize we had sleeping bags, but then we were too lazy to get them down and use them. We're morons. The train rolled into the station at 2pm the next day where we were greeted by our "sheep" (us being the sheep) herder who brought us to yet another sterile hotel where we got annoying stares everytime we entered the lobby. The only redeeming part of the hotel was the fact that the nice couple, Val and Eric, that we had met in the Bawati desert were also staying there. We agreed to meet them later that evening for drinks. First we climbed into a van and headed to Aswan High Dam and Phile Temple. The High Dam was built in the 60's to control the Nile and help the economy. The only problem was the fact that the dam caused the water level to rise in certain parts of Aswan and destroyed numerous Egyptian Temples. There was a committee set up to save the temples, but as there were over 200 temples only the "pretty" ones managed to get relocated.
Phile Temple is one of the Temples that was saved. A group of specialist spent 4 years cutting the Temple dedicated to the Goddess Isis into little bitty pieces and relocating it to higher ground. It's pretty amazing when you think about it because when we looked at the old ruins you would never have guessed that they hadn't stood where they were for their whole life. Phile Temple is on a small island with a columsaide courtyard before a vast, multi-room shrine. It has beautiful images of the goddess Isis and some other Gods on the walls along with Hieroglyphics depicting the priest rites and the story of the Goddess.
Unfortunately a lot of the pictures have been destroyed by evil little Christians who didn't want people praying to Pagan Gods. Evil bastards. They ended up desecrating almost all the famous temples and even used a few as trash burning rooms. (sorry if you're Christian. I only blame the B.C. Christians though)
The journey ended at 6pm giving us a half hour to freshen up and then head out with Val and Eric to Isis Hotel for drinks with their friend's, Apple and Matt. We walked to the ferry (because Isis Hotel is on it's own island in the Nile)which turned out to be a longer journey than expected since the hotel wasn't as close as we had guessed. Oh well, what's a nice walk in 90 degree heat? At least it ended with a semi-cold Stella and a pretty sunset. Matt and Apple turned out to be a very sweet couple from Canadian who were smart enough to book their own travel and tours, hence why they were staying at a hotel on an island and we were in a run down building. We chatted away the night and left around 10pm because Robby and I had to be up at 2:45 am to catch a van to Abu Simble. Yeah, sleep is just a wishful idea. We were all starving (Val, Eric, Robby and I) so a giant pizza was devouered before we finally passed out at 12:30am.
The lovely shrilling phone woke us a few hours later letting us know it was time to head out. We lazily clamored into our van and drove a few miles to sit in a caravan of other vans and buses going to Abu Simble. Apparently everyone has to go in a military convoy to the ruins and so we sat around for 25 groups to show up. It sucked because we could have slept another hour at least for all the sitting we did. When they were finally ready to take off, our van broke and the 8 of us got pushed into an already over crowded bus. Robby and I lucked out and got the only two real seats remaining while everyone else had to sit in a fake aısle seat. I got stuck as shotgun, but it wasn;t so bad because I had tons of room and the driver was nice. I slept the whole three hours to the Temple.
We were all kicked out of the van and given two hours to see the Temple before the convoy left (with or without you). Abu Simble is two Temples, both built by the ever egocentric Ramese II. He ruled for 67 years and built about 100's of temples. Most of them honoring his as a god or depicting him honoring a God. He was a zealous man who had 200 children with 73 wives (scary enough, four of them were his daughters)and couldn't get enough of himself. The funny thing was, he's about 5 feet tall. If he were around today I think someone would have just hit him on the head if he told them to bow down to him. I know I would have.
Anyhow, Abu Simble's smaller temple is dedicated to Nefertari and Hathor, the Goddess that sort of represents life and the sky. Ramese's built 6 statues out front of the Temple with 3 of them depicting his wife, Nefertari, as the Goddess Hathor and the other three with Ramese's image. This is one of the only temples dedicated to a woman. The Egyptians were a very patriarchal society.
The great temple of Abu Simble is Ramese's masterpieces. 4 colossal statues of the pharaoh adorn the entrance of the Temple supposively dedicated to the God Ra (sun god), but most of the hieroglyphics show Ramese's as the focus. There are a few rooms dedicated to the transformation of Ramese II from mere moral into a full fledged God. Told you he was full of himself.
The Temple was beautiful, but the kicker was the fact that when we turned the corner to the Temple I spotted a Jib and, yep, there was a film crew, but not just any film crew, the Holy Family film crew. I don't know if you remember me mentioning the fake walls at Umm Qays and Petra in Jordan, but it is the same film being made at Abu Simble. It was like we were always one step behind the film crew, there to see their damage, but not them. Then we caught up with them. Quite ironic I thought. They were filming some scene in front of the entrance to Ramese's Temple, but they weren't allowed to impede the tourist so every couple of second the poor director would have to yell "cut" because some random person wandered into frame. It's a great way to waste money and film.
At 9:30 in the morning we climbed back into our van and headed back to Aswan. More car sleeping and I was ready for the day at noon. We found some food and headed out to explore the city. We spent a few minutes asking locals where the ferry to the other side of the Nile was and eventually found it on our own. Kind of hard to miss a wooden lean to with lots of locals sitting around next to the water. We paid our whomping 13 cents to board the boat and sailed to the Tombs of the Nobles. Of course we were the only idiots stupid enough to venture out in the high noon heat to climb a 100 stairs just to look at some dead peoples grave sites, but hey, no one ever said we were bright. At least we gave the poor Bedouin inside the Tombs something to do.
We got a semi-guided tour of the ruins because the Bedouin essentially had to come with us to explore the caves since he held the keys to the locked gates. After the third tomb, the Bedouin got brave and started to point out certain hieroglyphics on the wall like "boat" and "man". Hey, it's the effort that counts, right? I enjoyed the tombs immensively, well until our bottle of 100 degree water ran out and my mouth felt like I'd smoke 20 joints. It was so dry I could have grown cactus. Robby and I looked like red beets basking in the sun. Sweat dripped from every pore. I just wanted to climb down the damn hill and get water, cold water. One simple goal that made us rush through the rest of the tombs and sit on a ferry waiting to cross to the side with ice coolers. The bottom of the hill only had more water hot enough to make tea, so I opted to wait a bit longer.
On the ferry we sat next to a family that first had the grandma's scolding us for wearing shorts and tanks and then had everyone else curious about our henna-ed hands. You'd think in a country that uses henna in all kinds of rituals, most of the people would know what it looks like on the skin. Guess not. It was a kind of cool interaction with the towns people.
I managed to find water (which was downed in about 3 seconds) and later that day we headed to the Aswan Museum. Now Cairo Museum gets all the glory for being the Egyptian Museum, but Aswan clearly is the winner in what a museum should be. It was Air conditioned, everything was neatly laid out with descriptions, there were proper docents walking around and telling you where to go, and there was a clear order to the lay out of the items. We spent two hours learning about how they moved all the temples in the 60's (from the flood of the High Dam), about the temples that are under water because they didn't get saved, about the Nubian people (Egyptian Bedouins), and the introduction of Christian, Roman and Islamic influence in Aswan. Quite a nice day.
The next day we went on a morning felucca (a big sail boat basically) ride to Kitchener Island and Elephanie Island. Apple and Matt ended up on our tour which was nice because we had people to talk to. Kitchener Island turned out to be a giant Botanical Garden of mostly trees. I think I saw three flowers, but there were tons of cats. We watched an idiot kid get bit by one of the "cute" kitty's because his family obviously didn't take the "animals in Egypt may have rabies" warning seriously. The best part of the İsland was when we sat down to look out at the Nile, a guy climbing a nearby rock turned on a switch and a waterfall poured forth from the rock. Magic!
Elephanie Island is home to a very sad museum where the one lone mummy head even looks bored. It's basically five small rooms with dust cases housing random objects like a necklace or spare head. A few broken pieces of hieroglyphic stones are sitting on the floor waiting to be kicked by the klutzy tourist. Our docents herded us into the rooms as if we would get lost without their assistance. Robby and I found ourselves herded to another building out more as artifacts when we tried to get to the ruin city. Yeah it's great to be a sheep.
Eventually we stopped listening to the docents and we found the entrance to the ruins of more than 20 different temples. When the ruins were discovered most of the Temples were broken and destroyed. Some very smart (or crazy) people pieced the broken pieces together and recreated the temples. You walked through a Temple and a wall would be made out of plaster with random bits of real stone thrown in. The real stones had drawings on them that the recreators extended to the plaster stones. They were trying to recreate the temple, including the images. I just thought it looked funny to have real drawings and then sketches coming off from the real. We wandered around for a bit and then the tour ended.
An hour later we found ourselves on a larger felucca with 6 other people and two guides getting ready to sail to Kom Ombo over the net two days. Our boat mates were a crazy Spaniard - Duan, a brother/sister dueo - Kristin and Ken, a British couple - Ian and Rose, and a Hippie - Paul. Everyone got along extremely well, but Rose and Ian mostly kept to themselves. We had all thought that we would be sailing for two days straight, but it turned out to be a total of maybe 4 hours over the 2 days. We spent the first day (well afternoon since we started the journey at 3pm) sailing back and forth between the two sides of the Nile since the winds were bad and a police boat was in the vicinity. Apparently our booked felucca ride was an illegal felucca ride. The captain asked us all to lie and say were only on a day trip if the cops were to talk to us. Great way to start out our trip. We chilled on the giant mattress deck reading and watching the waves. Duan somehow didn't realize what he was getting himself into and so he didn't bring anything to do on the whole trip. Us and the other family dueo tried to give him books, Suduko and a drawing book, but he didn't want any of them. He opted to sleep and explore the places that we landed. We eventually made it 2 miles up stream, where we camped. The place was pretty but essentially a sand dune with Nubian villages around the edge. Not really a wonderful place for girls to find a seceded place to pee. We waited until night time.
The following day we headed out early but made it all of a mile before lazily floating for a while. After another felucca beached at a small inlet, we followed suit. Two hours later there were four felucca's chilling at a small Nubian village. Our crew watched the small Nubian kids herding their donkeys and bulls while the Brits and Aussies of the other boats swam in the dysentery infected water of the Nile. One of the Brits from another Felucca told us they were even drinking the Nile water. Can anyone spot the morons? I mean, swimming is one thing (the water did look awfully inviting and semi-clear), but drinking the water?
We left after our 2hr (cough), 4 hr stay at the island and sailed another 2 miles to camp for the night a 100 yards from a Nubian village ferry dock. Everyone decided to venture into town after dinner for chocolate and soda. RObby and I made the mistake of getting hoho's and a twinkie. There was no chocolate and we were craving sugar. Yeah, whoever said that twinkies will out live the roaches was sorely mistaken. It was disgusting, but the donkey we feed it to enjoyed it. We all went for a walk with turned into a spectacle for the villagers. Like they've never seen white people before or something. Duan managed to convince the town boys to find a soccer ball and what started as a small game of soccer, us vs the 10 yr olds, turned into a huge event where about 50 or so people cheered us on and the teenagers decided to get rough. We ended up calling it quits after 2 hours and a score of 1-2 the Nubians. Our felucca guys were probably wondering where the hell went, or maybe not because they were stoned most of the time. When we said we had to leave all the boys followed us out of town trying to get us to come play again and then they went pyscho and turned into little molesters. Every 6-22 year tried to feel up all the girls. Even me bending a kids arm backwards and Robby socking one, wasn't a deterrent. After Duan chased a pervert who grabbed Kristin's boob, an adult finally stepped in an told the little fuckers to go home. Geez, you try and have a fun little game of soccer and end up the main attraction to a village of oppressed sexual adolescents. We quickly hurried back to the felucca and stayed there the rest of the night.
At 6am I awoke to the felucca sailing away from the dock. What the hell? We sailed across the Nile to the local ferry dock and I was awake by the time we got there because it's really creppy to open your eyes and have leering men staring down at you. I guess this was our captain's way of a wake up call. Also, I really had to pee, but we were of course docked at the ferry dock where there is lots of open space and stupid guys. Thank felucca captain, thanks!
We climbed into a truck at 7:30am and drove to meet a bus that would take us to Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple and then Luxor. Kom Ombo is supposed to be the Temple in the best shape. It was dedicated to Horus (the Guard against Evil God) and Sobek (the God of alligators). They split the temple, each getting their own equal sides. Edfu is a big temple dedicated to Horus.
We arrived in Luxor and found ourselves at a very posh hotel with a couple bellhops, a security guard at the door, and pool.
I'll continue this later because I have a killer migrain and feel like I'm going to puke. Sorry. More to come later.
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