Day 10

By morning we were packed and ready to leave Aswan and our boat. Our first stop was the Aswan Airport for the 30min plane flight south to Abu Simble. There was another group onboard our ship also going to Abu Simble but by bus taking 3 hours there and back. They were the German Group. We only occasionally spoke and said hello to each other and certainly never mentioned the war.

Aswan Airport like Luxor Airport is a military base with commercial flights so the security is a bit more obvious. As we got off the bus I heard a huge rumble and looked up to see 2 fighter jets scrambling west over the Sahara Desert. That is one noise I just can’t get enough of.

Another safe landing at Abu Simble (another military base) and we jumped on the bus headed for the temple.

This was another temple that had to be relocated due to the dammed water. They had to cut it piece by piece from the original mountain and then make a replica mountain to provide the exact same appearance, even to the detail of crumbled rocks at the base of the sitting statues. These were also impressive, the left temple of Ramses 2 and the smaller temple of his wife next to it.

Back to the airport for our trip “home” to Cairo via Aswan. Cairo from the air is unbelievable. This was our second look at the sprawling metropolis. There are no houses to speak of, just rows and rows of apartment blocks sprouting out of desert sand with chunks of green in places and connected with never ending traffic. . That way he delays payment of taxes for the building, but this leaves the place looking unsightly and disorganised. Some apartment blocks are yet to be finished and don’t get completed until the owner is ready.



The city looks better from the air than on the ground. From the air it looks like an organised city, but from the ground its disorganised chaos, with traffic noise, bustling people and unsightly and dirty buildings and streets. That’s Cairo.



We booked into the Hotel Ramses Hilton, just up the road from our first hotel in Cairo. We refreshed and ventured onto the streets in search of food. Across the small side street we entered a multi level building in search of the Gracie Restaurant that we were told catered to Egyptian cuisine even though it had an Italian name. Well what a surprise it only served Italian food. Anyway it was reasonable and good food with great waiters who allowed us to sing the Australian and Canadian national anthems. We had 2 Canadians with us. Gillian a teacher principal (who looks like Whoopi Goldberg) and her travelling companion Jaqui, a Canadian Customs Border Officer.

We retired for the day looking forward to our sleep-in as the rest of the group had an early start to visit 2 mosques and the Greek Coptic quarter of Cairo, which we had already done on our first stop in Cairo. We were to meet up with our group at midday at the Cairo Museum the next day.