The day began at 3am. The drive to Abu Simbel was about 2 - 2 1/2 hours and you had to go in a military convey with a police guard..... interesting! Very fast driving with alot of overtaking that would not have met the NZ idea of having 100m clear road at the end. You could only visit the site in the morning and while there was a later convey it meant that the site would be crowded and apparently the site was best seen as the sun rose.
The site was made up of two temples. One build by and to honour Ramses II and featured alot of huge statutes of Ramses in the Osiris pose - ie Ramses thought of him self as a god!
But he was kind enough to also build a temple in honour of his favourite wife (Nefertari)! Yes he had many wives ( and over 100 childern, many of whom he out lived!) The wife's temple was not a big or impressive but it was still quite a remarkable feat to build and a remarkable feat to move for modern man as well.
Both temples were carved out of the mountainside and the main temple was designed so that the sun light would highlight an important altar/ group of statues in the heart of the temple twice a year, once on Ramses II birthday and....... I can't remember the other time.... But anyway when it was moved in the 1960's the people in charge got the placement slightly wrong so now the light hit that part a day later.... proving that maybe we have not come as far as we think!
On arrival back as Aswan we were booked into a really nice hotel for the afternoon so we could relax and prepare for the overnight train back to Cairo. The less said about that the better!! But no I did not sleep for the 10 hour journey and while the train left on time ( a rare thing indeed in Egypt) we arrived late into Cairo. But our guide was pretty relaxed about everything and decided that we should still do all the day events even though it meant that we would not finish until around 7 and he was meant to have the afternoon off!
The first place on the Cairo adventure was the oldest mosque - Ibn Tulun Mosque.
Built in the 9th century this mosque is one of the few that will allow women in and it was really quite beautiful and peaceful considering that it is found in the heart of Crazy Cairo ( don't get me started aon the insane driving here! Road rules, lanes and lights seem to have no meaning for these people!) After the mosque we visited two old villa that have been turned into museum. They both featured a range of things from the Ottoman period (17th century) While there were different areas for men and women it seen that the women had the best areas, objects and views of the city.
After so much looking at stuff we headed for a very late lunch at our tour guides favourite place - apparently his dad used to take him there when he was a kid. It was all very authentic food and very tasty. Our last Cairo stop was the famous Khan al-Khalili Bazaar. Hundreds of tiny shops squeezed into very small alleyways where you can buy everything from spices to gold to cloth. And of course all the shop keeper try to get you to buy in their shop and constantly talk to you. As many of you know that is not something that I am overly fond of but by this stage of the tour I had befriended Georgie, a 15 year old Australian girl travelling with her family and she LOVED that whole bartering thing and was actually very good at it. We developed a wee code for when I wanted stuff and she just took over! I probably still paid too much for stuff but it was fun to watch Georgie do her thing!
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