Day 81 - Abu Simbel Temple, Egypt

Today we woke up at 3:50am, we were taking a bus at 4:15am to get to Abu Simbel Temple, close to the Sudan border.

The drive takes 3-4 hours to get there roughly (remember to adjust for Egyptian time). The Accomadation had sorted breakfast packs for us to take that were a very interesting mix of foods that should of been chilled, but weren’t. We stuck to eating the bread and didn’t touch the cheeses, yogurt or the selection of meats no one recognised.

We arrived in-front of Abu Simbel Temple at 9:15am, Mohamed explained that during the reign of Egyptian King Ramses II, he built the Temple at Abu Simbel to intimidate his enemies and seat himself amongst the gods.
He also had a second temple constructed for his favourite wife, Queen Nefertari. It took 20 years to carve these temples into the mountain.

Prior to 1964 these temples used to be 60metres lower than its current position. Thanks to the Great Dam project the temples were going to be submerged in water and lost. Egypt asked UNESCO for help and 50 countries came to the aid of Egypt and financed the moving of the temples. The structures were cut into logistical pieces of up to 20tonne blocks, transported and stored. They made sure they took the front of the whole mountain and had to recreate this on the new site.
They reposition the temples exactly directing the same way and put the jigsaw that was back together. They then made a concrete dome behind & over the temples, and covered it with sand and rocks to replicate the hill it was carved into previously.

The only down side to these temples was the amount of tourists here, it had no order and the tombs were very hot and not enjoyable with the amount of people there. Coming out of the tombs the 40 degrees outside felt cold!

After an hour and a half of checking the temples we headed back to the bus, unlike a gift shop you need to exit through a market. This is where Katie got called a yellow haired girl and then I got asked how many camels would I sell her for! I asked Mohamed and a camel goes for 1500USD so would need a lot to recoup the trip so far!

We drove back to Aswan which turned into a near 5 hour drive. Once back at the hotel we went to find some food, google maps sent Katie, our new NZ friends Kelsey and Pip and I to a falafel place that didn’t exist where it said. Later that night we found it further up the road but we figured ordering would of been interesting! We ended up getting McDonalds as it was too hot and none of us knew Arabic to try anywhere else!
This McDonald’s was a treat though as there was no screens to order from, no McCafe and the McFlurrys used the old school McFlurry mixer!! Also if you order a McFlurry, they serve it to you after your meal!

We went back to the Accomadation and had a swim in the pool with a beer, in the hot weather it was bliss!

For dinner Mohamed took us to a local eatery which we had to walk through the local Bazaar to get too.
Again at dinner Katie got asked her name by the waiter and he asked no one else’s… it’s the blond hair!
Dinner was a a Kofte Kebab, I tried to order the stuffed Pigeon but they had none unfortunately.Read more