Nightingales on the Nile

We endured the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. We met four co-passengers from Austria, India, Mexico and the US. The guy from the US is going to the Bull Run in Pamplona. The train seemed to stop every hour or so. The kids slept well but I didn't, so much. I was glad to check in at the hotel this morning and have a quick shower to feel rehumanised. All good!

Our guide for today was Achmed. He was very helpful and answered a lot of questions about what it's like being a young Muslim in Egypt. This conversations started after I saw a guard from the Temple Philae washing his face on the banks of the Nile. Achmed explained that he was carrying out a purification process that Muslims - male and female - do five times per day. We had lots of questions:
If you want to marry a woman who wears the full face cover, how do you know what she looks like before you marry her?
Are you allowed to date casually?
What about all the teens who wear really cute tops and jeans with a head scarf and flesh-coloured skivvy under their tshirt?
Is all food halal in Egypt?
Great stuff!

This morning we went to look first at a granite quarry and saw Hatshepsut's unfinished obelisk. One of the few female pharoahs, she wanted an obelisk that was bigger than anyone else's. I guess she felt she had to prove something. Unfortunately the stone developed cracks and couldn't be used. The rose granite is beautiful.

Next we went to the High Aswan Dam. This was very impressive but I'm not going to include details. The Nasser Lake though, formed in the sixties when the dam was constructed, is the largest artificially made dam in the world - 500 km long! What impressed us though is that there are still crocodiles in it! The guide said some of them are huge - up to 9 meters long! Fun.

Then we went to the Temple of Philae - so beautiful, and covered in hieroglyphics. What's interesting is that it used to be about two hundred meters away, on Philae Island, but, like many Nubian villages, when the dam was made, the ground was flooded, so it was taken apart and put back together again on higher ground nearby. Achmed pointed out that it doesn't quite line up any more the way it used to, but it's quite amazing. The story is very complicated and I'm not repeating it, but it's important to know that it was built in a greek style, but a greek pharoah, and it has been used as a christian church and it's been a campsite for French soldier. Both of these groups did a fair amount of damage - defacing hieroglyphs, carving their own stuff over the top. Sad. There is a special room at the back, covered in carved pictures and hieroglyphics, where only the pharaoh and the high priest can go. And us, of course! On the wall, there is a large image of Isis breastfeeding her son Horus. Her face has been dug out - the only hole in the wall. It is now in a church in Italy, since someone thought there was a connection between Isis and Mary.

I think the highlight for all of us was the felucca ride - a beautiful sail boat that took us around the islands in the middle of the Nile, below the dams. The water is so clean and clear here - Achmed filled an old water bottle to show us how clear it is. He said locals drink it, but we shouldn't, of course. Our tummies are a little too wimpy for this challenge:) I know mine is. The kids lay on the -whatever you call the front bit of the boat - and it was incredibly relaxing and beautiful. The water was blue, the sky was brilliant, and the dessert was a stark contrast on the western side of the Nile. Amazing. We absolutely can't wait to sleep on the felucca tomorrow night, under the stars. Apparently the night sky here is brilliant. Our guide Achmed said we can swim too, next to the boat. He promised me there hasn't been a crocodile sighting in forty years, beyond the Nasser Lake. The only downside will be that there is no loo on the felucca. It will pull up to the shore and we'll have to run behind a bush! Doesn't matter - we can't wait.

Our last cultural highlight of the day was McDonalds. Yes. McDonalds. We had great Egyptian food yesterday, and we're eating it again tonight, so we thought we should check out an the Egyptian triple arches. I had a McArabia! It's like a pita bread with grilled chicken and salad - delicious. Rachel and Hugo said their burgers were great. They were huge! Our guide said that McDonalds hasn't been too successful with the locals - their own food is too good, but the tourists like it. Achmed told us all about how Nubian culture and food is a bit different from the rest of Egypt. Both he and the hotel desk guy said Cairo was a terrible place and they could never live there.

One last tidbit - on the felucca I asked Achmed if he knew of the movie Murder on the Nile. He pointed out the hotel in which Agatha Christie stayed while she wrote it! This led into an interesting discussion about King Farouq, whose palace had been turned into the hotel Agatha Christie stayed in. Apparently when Egypt became a republic he had the choice of staying and being an ordinary citizen or taking some of his riches and living elsewhere. He moved to Italy. Our guide said that some of the older people say it was better when the king was in charge. He had a good welfare system for the poor, the Egyptian dollar was very strong, and life was easier.

It has been very hot today, but no worse than a January day in Brisbane. It's not remotely humid - it's very dry and very sunny. This is supposed to be the off off off season, most people coming in winter, but it's been fantastic weather so far. Cairo was very mild, and it's been fine down here, even thought the temperature regularly gets over 40 in the summer. Touch wood the weather continues as it has. Achmed says it rains for five minutes once a year here:) Coming now means that nowhere is crowded - there are some other tourists, but we have not had to wait in any queues - it's been great!

I'm having flashbacks to childhood fantasies of Arabian Nights adventures:)