Day 8

Continuing on up the Nile we disembarked at a place called Edfu where, you guessed it, we visited another temple. This one was a little different. It was a newer design only some 300BC when Alexander The Great and his “Greeks” (really Macedonians) were in charge. This was a beautifully persevered Temple because it had been covered by sand for a long time.



After our stroll through the temple it was time for us all to run the gauntlet along the bazaar as we headed back to our bus. All of us are getting annoyed and tired of dealing with the haggling street vendors selling their wares. It would be more enjoyable if they let us alone to stroll through their stalls instead of being in our faces. Anyway we made it back to our boat, but before we boarded we decided to go into our “mate” Ahmed’s stall because he said he would give us a good price and he did offer me 25 camels for Anne, so I thought we could do a deal. The camels sounded pretty good!

As we were choosing our items and collecting them to “haggle” about the price we could hear this loud horn. It was coming from our boat. We had thought that the boat would still stay their till after lunch so we didn’t think it was a problem, however as we looked to our fellow boat people we realised that the loud horn was for us to get back on the boat and the crew was actually dismantling the gang plank. We collected our goods and haggled with our mate Ahmed down from 600 EP to 200 EP. He wasn’t too happy but we were happy to drop our bundle and jump on board, so 200 EP was better than a camel pat.

Safely on board we showed off our hard fought prises and prepared for lunch. After lunch we had our customary afternoon nap and prepared for yet another temple tour, the Kom-Ombo Temple. This temple is built on the shores of the Nile and so it has not been well preserved due to weathering and flooding.



It actually had been affected by a recent earthquake that caused some of the top sections to fall.



The interesting thing about this temple is that there is a sort of large well in the courtyard that is fed underground from the Nile and measurements are taken to confirm whether the water supply down stream would be good or poor. These water levels would confirm whether the people could be taxed at certain levels, meaning good seasons for high taxes and poor seasons for low taxes.

With the tour completed we walked back to our boat and prepared for our nights entertainment. We were the entertainment as we dressed in our Galibaos and walked and ate like an Egyptian.



Grant had bought a “cap” of sorts and together with his Galibao he actually reminded me of Colonel Gudafi from Libya. Very impressive. We finished off our day by sitting on the top deck and sailed under the Aswan Bridge which was lit up for us to take some snaps. As we passed I tried to jump up and touch the underside of the bridge. I wasn’t too far off touching it. Here is where we were to dock for the night and begin another early start.