Aswan - Day 1

We had two long weekends way back in April. The first weekend we went to Aswan, in Upper Egypt (really south of here - v. confusing). We almost didn't go - we're in money-saving mode for summer expenses as well as our car in Venezuela, but we decided that we really needed to go to Aswan before leaving Egypt. I am SO glad we did! Aswan is what I THOUGHT Egypt would be like. It is MUCH easier to imagine ancient Egypt there than it is in Cairo. We had a really fun experience and got hassled much less than we did in Luxor last year. We have friends who each have their own Aswan stories, and many of them didn't like it as much as we did, but we thought Aswan was pretty, had nice weather (but it would be hot HOT HOTTTTT in summer), and was much cleaner than Cairo and Luxor.

We arrived late at night and were met at the airport by the manager of our hotel. We stayed at a place called the Memnon Hotel, which we found on Trip Advisor. It was a budget hotel, for sure. I think we paid $29 a night there, and that included breakfast each day. We had our own bathroom, three beds, a wonderful air conditioner, and this view:

We were really happy with the hotel and the friendly people there. Our first morning we walked until we found the public ferry and rode it with the local Nubians across the Nile to Elephantine Island. We wanted to look around and see what was there. Turns out, not much that we were interested in! I wanted to see the Nilometer, but it was located around the other side of the island, and we decided to skip the Nubian village and museum. We walked around a bit, got invited to visit several Nubian homes, and then waited for the ferry to pick us up. It was HOT.

From Elephantine we could see the Old Cataract Hotel, which is featured in the Agatha Christie novel Death on the Nile. We wanted to stay there, but it's closed for renovation till 2012.

While we waited for the ferry, Luke played in the shade.


Later we hired a driver to take us around to see several sights in Aswan. The first was the unfinished obelisk. We climbed stairs through the quarries of red granite to get to it. It was mostly finished but abandoned because of cracking. I was right up next to it before I realized it was even there!



After the obelisk, the driver took us to the Aswan High Dam, which was built to stop the annual flooding of the Nile, generate electricity, and allow for crop irrigation. Building the dam also created Lake Nasser, which is behind Jason and Luke in this picture.


Then we went to the Temple of Philae, which was probably my favorite part of the trip. It was just amazing. It used to be located near the Low Dam, but when the High Dam was built, the whole temple complex was relocated to its present location, about 1/2 km away. It's on an island in the middle of the Nile, and you have to take a boat to get there. The water taxi is not included in the price of admission, so you have to negotiate with the boatmen for a good price. We knew what the guidebook said we should pay, but the boatmen were trying to get ten times that from each person who approached them. We joined up randomly with a group of Spanish people bargaining for their ride. We conducted business in English, Spanish, and Arabic simultaneously, and Jason and I both thought that 4-5 minute exchange was one of our favorite moments in Egypt. It was so cool to speak and understand both Spanish and Arabic and get what we needed!

Anyway, we rode out to Philae on a little motor boat past all these little islands. There is nothing like these in Luxor or Cairo. One book I read said that Elephantine Island got its name because the rocks in the river looked like elephants bathing. Don't know if that's true or not...


We passed this boat on its way back from the temple. Check out the Bob Marley flag.


Approaching the island:
When we got off the boat, this was one of the first things we saw. SO impressive.


The temple complex is just huge, and I feel like we could spend weeks in there looking at everything, but honestly, I get heiroglyphics overload really quickly! This was just so neat because the images were so huge. We haven't seen anything like it.

This is Trajan's Kiosk - a temple built by Roman Emperor Trajan. It supposedly had a roof originally.


I loved the view through it to the Nile. It was so peaceful there.


There was graffiti everywhere in the temples in Aswan, written in English, Latin, and other languages. Most had dates in the 1800s.



This looked distinctly non-Egyptian to me.


There were lots of carvings of people with ONLY FOUR TOES, LOST fans! FOUR TOES! (I know, I know, you probably just can't see the big toe on this one...but I was looking for clues EVERYWHERE!)



I've included this picture here with Jason standing right up under those gods and goddesses so you can get the scale - they don't look so big in the picture above, but they are ENORMOUS.


Luke had fun until he started running through the temple shouting and got put in time out...


He perked up in time for the ride home, though. This time we went around the other side of the island, past Trajan's Kiosk.


That was a lot for our first day there! We had dinner in the hotel - Jason ran out and found some local food (yes, nasty) for us - and we all fell asleep pretty early. It was a good first day.