Aswan

The gentleman in the long white robe between us in last night’s final photo is our Egyptian guide Khalid. There may have been some partying going on last evening. Finally I have a photo of our river boat, The Royal Princess.

This morning when we woke up we found ourselves in Aswan largest of the cities in southern Egypt. It was already 30° at 9:00 in the morning. Of course the city owes everything to the high Aswan Dam, finished in 1971.

The Nile, the longest river in the world at 6650 km flows north as the White Nile from Lake Victoria in Kenya, through Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan where it meets the Blue Nile from Ethiopia, before it arrives as one river in Egypt.

After breakfast we spent some time in the heat, but in the shade of the sundeck. We were absolutely by ourselves because all the Germans on board and most of our Canadians have gone off this morning to visit Abu Simbel which is a very very long bus ride that we did not want to take. This is what we missed and we don’t care.

When we returned to our room were greeted by another of the amazing towel sculptures that our cabin stewards leave us daily. Here is a collection starting with today’s crocodile.

After a slow morning we finally got into gear. We got our first good view of our river boat on the way to our feluca ride. The feluca is typically a two person sail boat but ours was big enough for our whole group.

Midstream we transferred to a motorboat that took us up river to a Nubian village. The West Bank of the Nile is what people think of when they think of classic Sahara desert with its flowing dunes of sand. To top it off there were numerous camel excursions walking along the river.

This is one of many villages that had to be transplanted when the Aswan dam was built. We first visited a house with a pet crocodile - tourist fodder.

Then we walked through the marketplace in the village to a school where we were taught both the Arabic and Nubian language by an actual teacher at the school.

The Arabic writing above is Dawn and William. Figure out which is which. Finally we returned too our boat as camels that we saw on rides along the Nile earlier were being led back through the village to their stalls.

It got dark fast as we passed the famous Cataract Hotel. Before we knew it our boat ride was over and we were back at our river boat just in time for dinner.