Adventures Before Headin' To Hurghada

Bright and early, at 4:30 a.m. Leah and I loaded into a very crowded van and began the 3.5 hour ride to Abu Simbel to see the Ramses and Nefertiti temples. These are spectacular, and it's even more amazing when you think about the fact that they've been moved from there original location. Carefully cut into pieces and then reconstructed here at Abu Simbel.

When the High Dam was built, to prevent the annual Nile overflowing, Lake Nassar was created, putting a bunch of old stuff underwater. These two temples were saved by being relocated to this spot.



Fortunately, I was able to sleep most of the ride, and caught a lovely sunrise just in time to entertain myself with some shadow puppet theater on the inside van wall. Here's one of my better attempts.

When we arrived at the temple compound, we parked in a huge, empty lot. Our driver said we were lucky because that morning there were about a third of the tourists that are usually there. He sent us on our way, to meet back at the van in a couple hours. We had quite a way to walk, past the restroom pavilion, through many stalls selling souveniers and trinkets, and then past a coffee shop (or "cofe" shop as the sign advertised) and finally around to the ticket office. Leah and I excitedly whipped out our "Residence" status passports for our discount price.

Anyway, after another long walk around some very uninteresting mountains of sand, we arrived at this point, were you are able to get a look at both entrances to the temples. The boring sand mounds I mentioned, it turns out, are the man-made constructions that house the relocated temples. A hollow dome of sorts was constructed around the temple, then sand was poured over the top, and the ancient entrance added to the front. I read this from a book that I bought from one of those many stalls I mentioned above. I paid about three times what it was worth, but the guys selling the stuff there seemed like they could use the cash.

As a side note, these past few weeks have me trying to absorb the idea that I am considered wealthy by Egyptain standards. It's not an idea that I am used to, since my entire adult life has been spent living from pay check to pay check, with no savings, and always in debt... And yet here, I have met people that personalize what it means to really squeeze by financially... they work for slave wages, for about 50 dollars a month they are expected to put in over 70 hours a wk. And they are happy to have these jobs. I spend 50 LE on a meal here and it's nothing to me, where as to them, it's probablly enough to feed their family for a week.

Alright, back to the temple tours. They were amazing! Really! The scale is hard to grasp, unless you're standing there in front of the monstrous statues... I was sneaky and broke the only rule on the hand written sign just outside the entrance, no photos inside the temple. I didn't use flash, and I DID buy their horrible postcards, cira 1967, so I figured taking a few pictures wouldn't hurt. Especially when I saw other tourists actually TOUCHING the freakin walls! Morons. Although I guess when you see "John was here 1855" carved next to a heiroglyphic, nothing seems sacred.

Ok, sorry for all the tangencies... I really wanted a few shots of the inside to give a sense of scale. The postcards don't show the people milling about, and that's the images I like to remember.... so here they are for your illegal viewing pleasure.




















Look, there's Leah again!


















and here's one of the inner chambers. It was quite dark, and a bit creepy.... until a group of twenty people with matching yellow hats filed into the room.











This poor dude to the left of the entrance suffered some damage after, i think i remember reading, an earthquake? well, however it happened, his head is now on the ground at his feet. It does help though, to see how big they really are.





















...and then it was back into the van for the rest of our day trip: the Philae Temple, where we had caught the light show the night before, and the Aswan dam, which was quite anti-climatic.

But that's a story for next time.
:) bye for now!