It took us half a day of calm breathing after our challenging arrival to Aswan before we were ready to explore. Settled comfortably at the Ekadolli Nubian Guesthouse, we started hatching plans to make the most of what this sleepy resort town had to offer. Planning and coordinating took a little extra effort because the backpackers was located outside of town and while the rooftop offered a picturesque vista of the Nile and the Old Dam, the surrounding village was an old Nubian village, leaving us confused throughout our stay as many people we encountered had Arabic vocabularies as large as our own due to Nubian being their first and only language.
Arranging a tour guide to start our second day in Aswan seemed a safe bet and so we set off relatively early to explore the Temple of Philae on Philae Island. The boat ride out to the island was very peaceful in the mid-morning sunshine, but despite this, the scene was a little bit depressing. Only 3 or 4 boats were operating with more than 1,000 tied up along the shoreline. Prior to the Arab Spring, all those boats would have been jam packed with tourists. Our guide opted to leave Church mid service when he heard we wanted a tour and was very happy to be working after not having had a job for several months. We definitely benefited on pricing for most of our time in Aswan because the supply of tourist were few and demand for our dollars was desperate. He did a fantastic job walking us through the Philae Temple and explaining a myriad of small details we could have never picked up on our own. Additionally he was smart, funny, engaging and spoke some of the best English we had encountered in a while. For more tours like this, check out their website.
Probably the most impressive part of the Philae Temple is that the whole thing was 75% underwater after the British completed the first dam (Old Dam) in 1902. Philae was destined to be completely submerged with the construction of the new dam (High Dam) which started in 1960. With the help from the US, EU and other assorted countries, the entire temple, even the submerged parts, were dismantled into 47,000 pieces and then reassembled on a different island. It is a fascinating story of engineering and determination to preserve a site from the Ptolemaic Period.
In Luxor, we stayed at the top rated Nefertiti Hotel, which in addition to being in our budget had a great restaurant downstairs and a rooftop lounge for breakfast, lunch, dinner, evening shisha or games of Scrabble. The nighttime view from the rooftop while crushing Ross at Scrabble again was particularly beautiful. The tourist sites in Luxor were also fun. The Luxor Temple was practically across the street so it was an easy morning of exploring. Luxor Temple was also remarkable for how few foreign tourists we encountered. In fact, the Egyptians visiting started asking to take pictures with us. Either dirty sweaty pan-African journeying backpackers are the new celebrity or foreign tourists really were a rare commodity.
Three kilometers straight north on the “Spinx Road” from the Luxor temple lies the Karnak Temple. We thought it would be an easy walk but our superior navigation skills led us on a 4 km detour through the midday heat. We arrived at the ticket office exhausted with the first symptoms of dehydration. Karnak temple grounds are more than 60 acres built by 30 different Egyptian Pharoes. It’s simply too large to see everything we told ourselves as we recovered from our arrival hike in the air conditioned entrance hall. We pushed through for another hour of walking around the grounds and it was well worth it.
After finishing Karnak, our hubris about walking in the heat was diminished enough to negotiate with taxis out front. It wasn’t a long trip but the best price came from an old man who offered us a ride in his Ferrari. It wasn’t the fastest Ferrari I’ve seen but we arrived back to the hotel refreshed from sitting down with wind on our faces.
The next day we toured the Valley of the Kings. This is an amazing group of tombs, including King Tut, that are burrowed into the rocky hillsides across from the main city of Luxor. It was HOT again but well worth the hike to see these ancient sights.
I forgot to mention how we got 215 km from Aswan to Luxor with broken Bubbles. Tune in next time.
Joburg to Scotland 