Day 9

We woke up this morning with our boat docked at Aswan. A more beautiful and greener part of the Nile. Our day trip started with a visit to a red granite quarry where we were shown how the early stonemasons cut the large sections of rock to various shapes including an obelisque. One such example of an obelisque had been left at the site as there were imperfections in it that meant the large piece of stone could not be used.

The process was carried out by making wedge incisions into the rock using a harder rock type and cracking the perforations. A process such as this could take around 8 months to prepare a large obelisque section.



After our visit to the quarry we went to yet another temple. This one was located on an island called Philae.



The temple had been relocated from another site as they had flooded the valley that it was situated in following the construction of the first Aswan Dam. This was done piece by piece with over 320,000 pieces in this jigsaw puzzle.



To get to this temple we had to go by small boats with the locals providing the craft and having some of their “traders” on board to sell the odd trinket. Ian and Linda always love to haggle.



After this little ferry ride we visited the High Aswan Dam. A huge undertaking that supplies 75% of Egypt’s power. It also holds a lot of water. I wasn’t able to get a dam picture.

When we arrived back out our boat Grant and I had decided that we should maintain our tradition of whenever we are on the African continent its hair cut time. So off we went looking for the local barber. And we found one, a fellow called Ramadan (yeah like the religious event). Well after haggling we got down to a 20LE hair cut for each of us.



As an additional treatment at no extra charge we were given the “threading” treatment. Its where Mr Ramadan cuts some cotton thread, makes a sort of triangle by holding it in both hands and with his teeth and goes about plucking the hairs from your ears, eyebrows and face. We didn’t go for the nasal hairs this time. Believe me I could go for a full body treatment.



After our beauty treatment we were booked to go on a Felucca ride. What is a “Felucca’ you might ask. Well it’s the Egyptian equivalent of a river going yacht. They are actually graceful and can ride like the wind.



This was to be our last day on the boat as tomorrow we were off to Abu Simble. It was a bit sad leaving the MS Nile Sapphire, but we hadn’t seen a temple for a while so we packed up our bags and made ready for the flight south.