Motorboat Trip Through the Cataracts

We are getting a little tired of tours featuring tombs, ruins and temples, so we decided to do something a little different with our Dutch friends, Marit and Chris. We found out that we could easily rent a motorboat with a driver to take us further up the Nile through an area known as the Cataract.

Pook, our landlady, kindly arranged to have a motorboat ready to pick us up at 10:30 a.m. It cost us less than $15 an hour and we could stop wherever and whenever we wanted to. What a deal. We started out by going around Elephantine Island, watching young boys on surfboards, singing the Macarena song while hitching rides on the sides of tourist boats. They will do anything for a buck, or a quarter.

Once again we saw the tombs of the nobles but this time from the river. The ramps that the sarcophagi were pulled up on to the tombs, were clearly visible.

Aswan’s botanical garden is located on a nearby island. Until 1916, it was the property of a Lord Kitchener who was a commander of the British forces. He had a passion for beautiful palms and plants and transformed the whole island into a botanical garden. We asked our driver to drop us off at the entrance and then pick us up at the other end of the island.

The island covers 6.8 hectares or 16 acres and is full of plants from the Far East, India and parts of Africa. Because of the plants and the island’s location, it is full of birds, and vendors. Of course, you can’t visit any part of Egypt without the usual and somewhat annoying vendors asking, “Where you from?” and “What is your name?” before starting the sales pitch. We just try to ignore them.

We got back into our boat and continued on into the cataract area.

Upstream from the island, the Nile is ‘interrupted’ for about 5 km by different sizes and shapes of granite blocks. Before the dam was built, the river used to rush through these blocks throwing up “high plumes of spray in a deafening roar”. That was the way that travellers in the 1800’s used to describe it. Now the cataracts look much different and the boulders are high and dry, creating little islands in the river. It was a very pretty.

Before we turned to go back to Aswan, we stopped at a little, colourful Nubian village and did a walkabout. The Nubian houses are painted with bright colours, the floors are covered with sand, and the domed houses have lots of windows and an open roof. This island’s livelihood depends on tourists so upon disembarkment, we were greeted by little boys playing drums and singing and hoping for money. As we walked further into the village, we passed riverside restaurants and lots of stalls selling clothes, spices, handmade cotton scarves and trinkets made in Egypt. It wasn’t what we expected to see but it is what it is.

We went into a primary school where a teacher, for a tip, demonstrated teaching a lesson. We were the students. He taught us how to say the numbers from 1 - 10. I’m afraid that we didn’t do very well with our pronunciation or remembering the words. Chris was asked to recite the Arabic numbers from one to ten. An impossible task! So he had to go to the front, put his hands in the air and was lightly ‘spanked’ with a ruler by the teacher every time he mispronounced a word.

In general, the Nubians seem friendly and hospitable. They usually welcome people by offering them a cup of hot tea, either Egyptian tea (Hibiscus tea or Karkade) or Kenyan tea and it is considered rude to refuse. Time is different here.

Just an aside - most of the people we met had teeth that were in very bad shape. I don’t think that they ever brush them. The dentists’ sole job is to pull teeth.

After our visit, we boarded the boat and headed back down the river to Aswan. We asked to be let off at the old Cataract hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote her famous book “Death on the Nile”. Our boat trip lasted 2 1/2 hours and it was a perfect way to spend a few peaceful hours.

From there, we walked through the non tourist area of Aswan (thanks Chris for the tour, lol ) to the granite quarry where an unfinished obelisk is located. More about that in the next footprint.

At the end of our little trip, we felt that we had done enough so we took a taxi back to ferry docks, crossed the river and had lunch once again at the Bob Marley restaurant.Читать далее