Abu Simbel and Nubian Village!!

This was the day that we got to “sleep in” because our wake up call wasn’t until 7:00am.  We had to be down for breakfast by 7:30am where they had some more amazing food and another omelet bar.  We all boarded the bus and headed for the airport for our flight to Abu Simbel.  The flight left at 9:55am and lasted another 30 min.  It was definitely the coolest scenery to see from the plane because I had a window seat and we flew over all of the cataracts in the Nile.  With all the cataracts I saw why it would have been impossible to drive even though it was technically a pretty short distance.  We also flew over the Abu Simbel Temple (which was our destination there) as we were landing and it was amazing to see from the height of the plane.

The thing you have to understand about Abu Simbel is that it is actually in the middle of nowhere in the freaking Nubian desert like all the way at the bottom of Egypt.  I thought it was really hot in Luxor (114 degrees) and this was way hotter – it would probably scare me to actually know the degrees. (Anyone who cares to look up the temperature in Abu Simbel on Aug. 2nd I would love to know!)  Upon landing Egypt Air provided buses for our entire plane (mostly SAS people plus one small British tour group and one small Asian group) to the Abu Simbel Temple.  This was the largest temple I have ever seen – every other monument looked like nothing in comparison.  It was just absolutely HUGE!!  It was actually carved out of a mountain instead of being built from scratch so it was able to get such massive size.  And if its size wasn’t impressive enough, the temple had actually been moved in the 1930s because it was threatened by the Nile with everything (including the mountain) reconstructed.  In addition to the main temple, which was built by Ramses II, (obviously, he built all the huge things in Egypt), there was also a smaller temple on the side that was dedicated to his first wife, Nefertari.  This temple was cool because it had scenes of the queen on the inside which cannot be seen anywhere else because women weren’t very important.  The main temple has some of the most famous scenes from ancient Egypt with King Ramses II in battles and killing his enemies.  The entire temple only gets light 2 days out of the year when the sun hits the entrance perfectly.  The back of the temple has statues of Ramses II next to 3 other gods (because he pretty much thought he was a god) and the light hits it perfectly on those 2 days.  There is just enough light to illuminate Ramses and 2 of the gods, and the 3rd god is Pteh, god of darkness, so he is never illuminated – kind of creepy how it works like that!  After standing outside while our guide told us all about the temple (and feeling like I was literally melting away from the heat) we took a whole group picture which is probably my favorite one from the trip because I had such an amazingly fun group!  Then we had about 30 min to look around the inside of both the temples and then head back to the buses.  The same buses took everyone back to the plane where we took the exact same one (with the same crew, seats, and passengers) back to Aswan.

We had lunch at the hotel around 3:00pm and then had a few hours to relax before we all met at 6:00pm for our trip to the Nubian village.  This was the greatest adventure of the trip because the Nubians live more like you would think of in actual Africa.  It is the area in the very South of Egypt before hitting Sudan, so they have darker skin color and pretend like they are their own country even though they are part of Egypt.  We started off the trip by going on a small motor boat for about 30 min down the Nile.  We went through the first cataract which was cool because you can see water flowing in all different directions.  The area also has some of the most unique geographical features because there are several granite islands that have trees growing out of them which is a scientific mystery.  The ride was so fun because we were going through very hard to navigate areas and were so close to all the plants and stuff on the side.  It felt like I was on the Disney World Jungle Cruise ride in real life!

When we got to the village we went to the school first and had a short Arabic lesson to learn the numbers and alphabet (of course I don’t remember any of it).  The classroom was really tiny and was just a few benches with a small chalkboard in the front.  The teacher would say the letters and have us repeat them and then he would point to a letter and choose a person to say it but none of us every remembered so then he would come over and give us a little tap on the hand with his stick – it was really funny.  Then our guide told us a little bit more about the special Arabic letters that we don’t have and he wrote all or our names on the board in Arabic.

After our lesson we walked through the town a little where they totally just had free roaming camels everywhere and kids running around too.  Then we went into a home and all sat down while our guide told us information about Nubian culture.  Meanwhile, the Nubians brought out food and drinks for us – we were a little nervous about eating the food but Muhammad assured us that it was safe.  They served bread pieces with 3 kinds of spreads. The first was made from sheep milk and was really salty and I didn’t really like it.  The second one was made from sugar cane and was like a syrup/molasses sort of and it was really yummy.  I don’t remember what he said the third one was made out of but it was really interesting because it had a sort of flaky consistency but tasted like peanut butter.  I only ate a little bit of each because I didn’t really want to chance getting sick, but I wanted to make sure I tried everything.  They also had drinks for us and I had a glass of a traditional Egyptian juice which is supposedly like a hibiscus juice.  It wasn’t my favorite juice but it was interesting.  I also had a cup of Egyptian tea which was so delicious!  It was a little stronger than normal tea that I have ever made and had some amazing flavors in it or something.

Then they brought out the house pet for all of us to see – a crocodile!!  It was a baby crocodile named Horus but it was still pretty big (maybe about 2.5 feet).  They said that each house usually has about 2-3 crocodiles and I’m pretty sure they raise them and eat them when they get big enough.  We all got to take turns holding Horus and taking pictures.  It was still kind of scary because there was nothing around his mouth to keep from biting anyone.  Sometimes he got a little irritated from the flashes and the Nubian guy would take him because he would start thrashing a little.  He was strong enough to keep the croc under control though.  As our guide said, they keep the crocs as pets but we shouldn’t play with them like they are dogs or we might lose a finger!

Then we were able to get henna tattoos from one of the girls.  She had a bunch of pages of designs for us to choose from and I got a flowery design on my left wrist and the eye of Horus (the god not the crocodile) on my right ankle.  The eye of Horus means that I have protection from all the gods which is why it was a symbol often in king’s jewelry and stuff.  By then it was time to leave and take our boat back down the Nile to the hotel.  It was dark when we left (around 8:30pm) so the trip on the boat was really cool.  We al went up and sat on the roof of the boat and like looked at the pretty stars and talked about how we were all sad that it was our last night in Egypt and that we had the best trip ever!

When we got back to the hotel we had a special dinner in the Egyptian restaurant for our last night in Egypt.  There was an outdoor buffet with grilling and some more Egyptian style food with kabobs, special sausages, and couscous.  There was also the usual pasta, potatoes, and of course loads of desserts.  There was a traditional show going on at the restaurant while we were eating with guys playing music and getting people up dancing sort of like the felucca ride from the day before.  We went up to be at 10:00pm and then Ocean’s Twelve was on one of the movie channels so I watched that and wrote in my journal for the day.  We got a bright and early wake-up call at 5:00am the next day for our flight back to Cairo.