Egypt - First Stop..... Aswan!

Initially Shane & I thought we would have our first white Xmas but the cold is tooo miserable so we grabbed our packs and headed to Egypt for some sun and culture with a few friends! We headed out on Friday the 21st and went straight to Aswan (via Prague and Cairo.... absolute mission!) We had a few delays on the way there that meant we need to race for the plane to catch connecting flights and we were lucky enough that there were a couple of English women who were ok about us cutting in line... twice... well Jase and Richie didn’t really give them a whole lot of choice in the matter... whoops! I am sure that we were the highlight of their flight!

Anyway we got to Aswan early in the morning and were surprised to find that it was cold! Yep we needed our jeans and jackets! We left the airport and had our first experience of driving in Egypt, this involved bargaining for a taxi which had seen better days... having our packs chucked on the roof rack without any tie downs and hoping that they were still there when we got to the hotel (they were), racing through the streets and getting our first taste of the non existent road rules... it would appear that many of the things that we consider fundamental road rules are more like 'guidelines' for the Egyptians, such as lights are an unnecessary feature and road markings are an indication only - 2 lanes means that 4 or 5 cars can definitely fit side by side!

Anyway we arrived at our hotel and proceeded to hit a number of the tourist attractions… we wandered down the waterfront and within seconds were descended on by Felucca 'Captains' and heard the cry that would haunt us for the rest of the trip .... 'Mister Mister, you want to ride in my Felucca? - I give you good price!' This had to be done though and so we jumped on a Felucca and headed out to the tombs on the west bank.

There is an area here which has a number of tombs and an old watch tower located at the top, we climbed up the stairs and were shown around by a 'guide' (I use this term loosely) for a small baksheesh (tip) - he took us into our first tombs though and it was quite amazing to see paintings and carvings that have survived for thousands of years. That night we decided to go to the sound and light show at the Philae Temple which is a temple dedicated to Isis (one of the main Egyptian gods) and is on a small island below the old dam, the temple was impressive but the sound and light show was pretty bad - we all had to do our best not to laugh at the commentary as it was cheese like you wouldn’t believe! The actual experience in getting there and the people we encountered that night was definitely the highlight! The boys decided to pick up a few beers on the way and our dodgy taxi drivers (we had a driver and navigator) took us to an off licence that was ridiculously cheap but required you to show your passport in order to buy beer - different but we found out that this was because Muslim people are not allowed to purchase alcohol. Anyway after stocking up our driver took us to the temple, this was the craziest ride ever - not only was he swigging on a hip flask of straight vodka as we drove but he was constantly puffing on a joint and was flying through the traffic while chatting away to us in the back .... Bizarre stuff!

When we arrived we had an hour wait before the show started and we were descended on by kids trying to sell us all manner of postcards and maps - this proved to be incredibly entertaining as we watched Jase take the hardened 5 year old Egyptian kid on and started negotiating in Spanish! The problem was he spoke about 5 languages and his Spanish (not to mention the other languages) was potentially a little better than Jase and Richie’s! Anyway he managed to talk us out of some of our money and sell Jase and Paula maps on the Nile. We had a point though where cultures collided and I gave him some chewing gum without thinking - I had a pack of Airwaves which if you have had them are incredibly strong and clear out the sinuses something wicked - he saw me chewing and I gave him a piece of gum, the poor kid started jumping around with his mouth open as if he was on fire! This quickly attracted the tourist police who are ever present and they wanted to find out what we had done to this kid - they became concerned that we might have given him some sort of alcohol, our young friend refused to spit out the gum and managed to work through the airwave flavour although he was a little weary of me after that.

The next day we headed to the High Dam which is where Lake Nasser feeds into the Nile. This structure is enormous and as we were travelling with a group of engineers Paula and I managed to find out a number of interesting facts and details about the structure. One thing that was amazing was the amount of money that was sunk into the project by international bodies to remove the temples and historical sites and place them outside of the dam so that they were not destroyed during construction. Literally millions and millions of £££'s were used to make this happen.

The same day we visited the site of the unfinished Obelisk’s, this was an experience as the 'tour guide' (again a loose term) was carrying a machine gun - we felt a little compelled to tip well! He was a little strange and took a liking to Paula especially ... he ended up trying to negotiate with Shane to spend some 'time' with his two wives - yuck! Needless to say we stuck pretty close to the boys at that site! Anyway we were shown around the complex which had a huge obelisk that had been worked on for years by hand until it cracked the wrong way and was discarded - whoops! The Egyptians were pretty smart though they would do things like plant a tree in a hole in the rock and water it until it grew big enough to split the rock using its root system.... very clever and very patient!

After leaving there we visited the Botanical Gardens, to get there we caught a water taxi over to Elephantine Island and raced through a Nubian village to the other side of the island, this was cool! We wandered through these small alleyways/ streets dodging goats, small children and women in full burkah’s as we worked our way across the other side of the island. The way in which these people live blew my mind and we couldn’t help but take heaps of photos of what we were seeing! From the other side of the island we jumped on another motor boat and landed at the botanical gardens - this was a bit of a let down although I did get propositioned by a man from Luxor who wanted to show me the 'highlights' of his home town... not backwards in coming forwards these Egyptian men... Paula and I soon got over this I have to say! It would appear that blonde hair and fairer skin makes you an instant movie star / target - we were getting a lot of comments from both men and woman and I was bombarded on the public ferry on the way back to the east bank with requests for photos with groups of Egyptian women... we couldn’t always understand the comments being made but Paula and I chose to believe that they were only saying nice things!

On our final night in Aswan we headed down to the market and had a look at the wares! This was a lot of fun and there was heaps of interesting things (and a lot of junk) to wander through! Paula and I received numerous marriage offers and the boys were constantly trying to trade us for camels - what they were intending on doing with the herds of camels that we were worth we don’t know!

Next Stop.... Luxor - home of the Valley of the Kings!