Luxor to Aswan

Luxor to Edfu

Last night we sailed from Luxor to Edfu. We were surprised when we docked that the streets were filled with people celebrating Ramadan.

One of the things you see everywhere in Jordan and Egypt are minaret towers. They are the towers that contain speakers that the muezzins use to call the Muslims to prayer. Many times they are part of a mosque but they can also be standalone and every 500 metres opart. In Cairo they have connected the towers to a single sound

system. When we were up early for our balloon ride we heard the 3:30 am call for prayers. It is quite loud.

We woke to another day of cloudless blue sunshine. The high today will be 45 degrees. We head out at 7 AM to see the Temple of Horus. At least it is a little cooler. It seems all the Nile boats like to do the same thing as the Temple was extremely crowded. Our transportation to get there was another new experience - a horse and buggy ride. Every tourist is in them and it is a horse traffic jam at the Temple.

The Horus Temple was built during a time when the Greeks were in power but they still built the Temples in Egyptian style to keep the Egyptians happy. The Horus Temple is considered the best preserved Temple in Egypt and is known for its huge Pylons or outside gate walls. Inside the pylons are stairs that the priests could climb to open the gigantic gates. You can see holes in the wall of the pylons that allows air and light into the staircases. Every wall surface is covered in Hieroglyphics. Our guide George suggested that one wall is the first cartoon story. If you start at one end of the wall the hieroglyphics start the story and as you move along the wall the story

characters are repeated with the next action they are taking.

The other interesting thing to note about the Temple is that the walls are built on an angle that if you continued outward the angle would eventually form a pyramid. The tip of the pyramid would match the centre point of the main altar and furthest most point at the other end of Temple. Everything is built in perfect proportion. Amazing.

We returned to the ship for a 9 AM sailing to Kom Ombo. It is actually too hot to sit outside even with the breeze of the river.

We arrived around 4 pm to Kom Ombo to see this Temple. It is a small port and the cruise boats are stacked 4 deep. The Temple is right at the port and we can walk to it. Good thing as the temperature is around 45. Finding shade is of utmost importance. The Temple is unusual in that itis a duplicate Temple, built to honour 2 gods. Sobek,

the crocodile god and Horus, the falcon-headed god. One side is replicated on the other side. After the Temple, we visited the Crocodile Museum where they had several mummified crocodiles.

The ship sailed on to Aswan and arrived before dinner. When we were leaving Kom Ombo the ships had to sometimes move out to let another ship out. I have decided that I could idle my car as much as I would like and never match the pollution coming out of one of the ships we saw. It was spewing black diesel soot out at an incredible rate. The sunset was darkened by its soot. To think about it travelling constantly up and down the Nile like that was sickening. And that pollution isn’t even on anyone’s radar. Thankfully our ship didn’t have any apparent exhaust issues and the back of the ship was clean.

Our evening entertainment was an Egyptian night. We were asked to dress as Egyptians. Karen bought a long flowing dress made of Egyptian cotton. Geoff decided to wear a linen shirt he had brought with him. Our dinner was outside on the upper deck. They had prepared a large variety of Egyptian style food and had a BBQ going. It was hot but still fun to eat outside.

After dinner, we went back to the lounge where we danced and had some fun dance games. Lots of laughs that evening.

Then off to bed early as we had another 7 AM trip planned.