This is my travel diary of my trip to Egypt. It contains in detail my memories of what I did and saw.

Thursday October 29, 2015

Egypt: Day 8, Part 1 – Aswan Sunrise

I awoke in the middle of the night around 1 AM. I was cold sleeping on top of the covers, and the bed was just too stiff. So I stood in the corridor looking out the window at the small towns and villages that we passed. I spied a few people walking the streets and watched them as the train moved past. After a while I returned to bed. Elizabeth also got up and in my tired state I couldn’t remember if she had returned or not, so I remember locking and unlocking the door before I realized she was back above me. Somehow I fell asleep.

I don’t recall what time we woke up, but we got changed and looked out at the scenery while we waited for the man to raise our beds back up and serve us breakfast. While we waited we looked out at the small towns of Esna and Edfu, the Nile and farmland.

When breakfast came it was mostly carbs. I ended up giving up and eating cheetos and other gas store snacks for breakfast. I did order Orange Juice, as that is my go-to drink when I’m not feeling well while traveling. But it was disgusting. It was like tang faux orange soda, with Mandarin orange chunks in it. Now I hate pulpy juice, and this was just bad. So I didn’t touch it. It seemed like forever before the man came to take away our food and trays…and when he did it splashed the nearly full juice all over Elizabeth and her things! And then he disappeared and didn’t bring her a towel or anything. You would have thought in America, they would have tried to help right away, AND they likely would have comped the drink. Nope. Much later when he arrived with some tissues he was quick to remind me I owed him 11 EGP.

But his blunders weren’t over. When we arrived in Aswan, he was helping everyone get their bags across the gap and onto the train platform. When my turn came, he reached for the bag…seemed to think better of it and just…walked away. I was already in mid “hand the bag” motion, and ended up falling out on top of my bag and onto the platform. It hurt like hell, the guy didn’t even seem concerned. I tried to hide my aggravation with him and limped over to the group. We then headed to our hotel to checkin.

The view from the hotel was gorgeous, overlooking the Nile. I was sad that we were only spending one night in this hotel. A few of us decided to go see the Unfinished Obelisk, while the others decided to rest at the hotel or explore Aswan. We hailed a Taxi and headed to the Obelisk. Mikel had warned that only diehard Ancient Egypt fans would like this. And we seemed like we were the only ones there.

After getting our tickets we watched a short movie which actually was incredibly helpful. I didn’t know there were graffiti drawings done by the workers here, so that was a fun “I Spy” game we tried to play as we walked around the site. As I said, no one was there.

We took photos and made a circuit around the Obelisk so we could see it from all sides. I had seen in past photos that people walked on top of it, and a few of us went over the “fencing” and onto the obelisk. I went all the way up to see the crack. A Spanish guide started shouting at me, I ignored him until the guards all came running. Apparently he was trying to say it was slippery and I could hurt myself, but as soon as I was off the Obelisk the guards didn’t care where we were.

A close up of the crack that made this obelisk unusable.

We could have gone to higher ground, but at the time didn’t know there was more to see there. Instead we went back around to try to see the lower area (which we later found blocked sadly.) We then saw a huge set of stairs. The others started walking up it, but I didn’t want to aggravate my legs (and I wanted to avoid the guards that I could see in case I’d get in trouble for walking on the Obelisk).

Reeds. I took this photo as it reminded me of a scene in BBC’s Egypt, a great documentary.

It was around the time we told the Taxi driver to pick us up, so the others abandon their attempt at climbing all the stairs and we headed outside. A handful of souvenir sellers near the exit eyed us hungrily but we pressed on quickly. We found our driver right where he said he’d be and he took us back to the hotel.

aswan_pool

I was starving but I also wanted to go visit the pool as it was right on the edge of the nile. I figured we could order food poolside and still have time to get ready for the afternoon. Boy were we wrong! Firstly, the pool’s ladder’s had grates removed, so we couldn’t easily get in/out. Plus the water was extremely cold (great for the hot weather but I’m a baby so it took a while for me to get in.) We had ordered food and drinks and it seemed to have taken 2 hours for our food to arrive. (We almost had to head instead to get ready for dinner before the food came! Horrible service.) You could tell when things were busy back in the day they would have had a swim up bar/restaurant…but now we were left to our own devices.

felucca_chasedown

While the endless waiting for our lunch continued, I looked out over the Nile and took photos. A passing Felucca far off in the distance saw me, and chased me down begging for me to ride in his boat. I had to retreat back to my lounge to get away from him, and even then his nearby sail lingered hungry for tourist dollars.

aswanboat1

aswanboat2

Beyond that little excitement, I mainly just read my book, The Martian, and relaxed. I knew this would be the only day I’d have for a while that wouldn’t be extremely busy. After the lackluster food arrived and we ate it hurriedly, we went back to the room to change to get ready for dinner at a Nubian household.