We then drove a couple of hours to the Red Sea where we farewelled Sandeep, Nathan and Khaled and boarded a ferry to Aqaba, Jordan. Watched a DVD on board about the amazing King of Jordan. He promotes himself as a real live action hero. A bit tubby for an action hero I thought.I met a Jordanian Muslim guy in the lobby while I was trying to get online and had a great conversation with him about spiritual stuff and the difference between religion and true relationship with God. Nice guy.
Sunday 24th February 2008
Drove to Mt Sinai today. 9 hours. We drove under the Suez canal. The canal is nearly 200kms long and joins the Mediterranean Sea and the Red sea. The amazing thing is that it was dug by hand and completed in 1869! Over 100,000 guys died building it. The opening celebration party that the Egyptian King put on cost so much money, he had to sell the canal rights to a French/British company to pay for it. Actually it was a 99 year lease but the Egyptian government got the rights back 12 years early ‘cause they needed the income to build the high dam. Their impatience caused a war which they won and the canal is one of the country’s major sources of income today. They also got the rest of the Sinai peninsula back as a result of the war which is where their oil is, so it was 2 birds with one stone. By the way, many years ago (can’t remember exactly) oil was $1 a barrel but the Egyptians came up with the idea that if they closed the canal it would force the price of oil up. It worked. Oil went to $40 and never went back down. We also stopped at Marah and Elim from Exodus 15 & 16 fame. There are still wells there whose brickwork dates back to 500BC but the wells themselves have been there much longer and are probably the same ones as the bible talks about. We also saw the sight of the Hebrews battle with the Amelekites. There’s a little shrine where they think Moses stood with his arms raised while Joshua fought down in the valley. This country is unbelievably arid. It’s amazing to see little oasis’s with Bedouins still living here. Tomorrow’s the big day – Climbing Mt Sinai.
Drove to Mt Sinai today. 9 hours. We drove under the Suez canal. The canal is nearly 200kms long and joins the Mediterranean Sea and the Red sea. The amazing thing is that it was dug by hand and completed in 1869! Over 100,000 guys died building it. The opening celebration party that the Egyptian King put on cost so much money, he had to sell the canal rights to a French/British company to pay for it. Actually it was a 99 year lease but the Egyptian government got the rights back 12 years early ‘cause they needed the income to build the high dam. Their impatience caused a war which they won and the canal is one of the country’s major sources of income today. They also got the rest of the Sinai peninsula back as a result of the war which is where their oil is, so it was 2 birds with one stone. By the way, many years ago (can’t remember exactly) oil was $1 a barrel but the Egyptians came up with the idea that if they closed the canal it would force the price of oil up. It worked. Oil went to $40 and never went back down. We also stopped at Marah and Elim from Exodus 15 & 16 fame. There are still wells there whose brickwork dates back to 500BC but the wells themselves have been there much longer and are probably the same ones as the bible talks about. We also saw the sight of the Hebrews battle with the Amelekites. There’s a little shrine where they think Moses stood with his arms raised while Joshua fought down in the valley. This country is unbelievably arid. It’s amazing to see little oasis’s with Bedouins still living here. Tomorrow’s the big day – Climbing Mt Sinai.
Saturday 23rd February 2008
Slept in. The rest of the tour went to the Cairo museum, papyrus, cotton and jewellery shops and the pyramids. We’d already seen those so we went to the museum in the afternoon after trying to post back home some of the stuff we’ve picked up along the way. The postage turned out to be WAY too expensive. The museum was totally cool though. You could easily get lost in there for a couple of days. Sooo many displays; mummies, sarcophaguses, ancient statues, and antiquities. King Tutankhamen’s display was absolutely spectacular! Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take any photos. Sorry.After last night’s lateness, we put the kids to bed early again ‘cause we’re up early in the morning.
Slept in. The rest of the tour went to the Cairo museum, papyrus, cotton and jewellery shops and the pyramids. We’d already seen those so we went to the museum in the afternoon after trying to post back home some of the stuff we’ve picked up along the way. The postage turned out to be WAY too expensive. The museum was totally cool though. You could easily get lost in there for a couple of days. Sooo many displays; mummies, sarcophaguses, ancient statues, and antiquities. King Tutankhamen’s display was absolutely spectacular! Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take any photos. Sorry.After last night’s lateness, we put the kids to bed early again ‘cause we’re up early in the morning.
Friday 22nd February 2008
Off the big boat and on to a little boat, for a ride up the Nile to a Nubian village past the Aga Khan mausoleum. Aga Khan only died relatively recently. He was a rich Muslim guy whose European doctor told him the sand here at Aswan would relieve his rheumatism, which evidently worked so he wanted to be buried here, fair enough. There were kids in tiny homemade boats that paddled up to our boat and hung alongside singing in several different languages for money. Dangerous busking!!!
Off the big boat and on to a little boat, for a ride up the Nile to a Nubian village past the Aga Khan mausoleum. Aga Khan only died relatively recently. He was a rich Muslim guy whose European doctor told him the sand here at Aswan would relieve his rheumatism, which evidently worked so he wanted to be buried here, fair enough. There were kids in tiny homemade boats that paddled up to our boat and hung alongside singing in several different languages for money. Dangerous busking!!!
Nubia is where Africa meets Egypt. The people are more African looking and the drums, jewellery and culture are also more African than Egyptian. They took us to a little house which had about 15 baskets hanging from the ceiling inside. Apparently the base of the basket had a dish of perfume and some bird seed in it and doves would come and sit there so when a visitor came through the front door the dove would be disturbed and fly off over the head of the visitor through the door and the perfume would be sprinkled from its wings onto the visitor. They also had a tank in the middle of the room with about 8 baby crocodiles in it (There are no more crocodiles in the Nile any more since they built the dams, but these guys are trying to rectify that). Maddi & Mahalia got henna tattoos on their hands and we headed to the other end of the village to a Nubian school where we learned to count to 10 in Arabic. I was incessantly harassed by the most persistent woman on the planet for the entire walk trying to sell me a little hat.
In the afternoon we visited the 2 dams. The Aswan dam was built by the British about 100 years ago, but the Egyptians built the “High dam” in the 60’s 10 kms up river from the Aswan dam to control the flow of the Nile. No more floods, no more drought. It created the largest man made lake in the world, 500kms long and 66kms wide at its widest point. It flooded 2000 ancient monuments. Only 3 were saved, Abu Simbel, and Philae and a small one I can’t remember. We then visited Philae Temple which was flooded after the British built the 1st dam in the early 20th century but they saved it 70 years later by building a wall around it under water, then pumping the water out, creating a kind of huge dry well in the middle of the lake. Then they cut it into 26,000 pieces and moved it to dry land on a nearby island. The whole process took 8 years and was completed in 1981. UN..BE..LEEV..A..BLE!!! This temple was originally designed from the same design as Solomon’s temple.
Next item on today’s agenda: a Felucca ride at sunset. A felucca is a traditional Nile river sailing boat. Very peaceful way to end the day. We sailed past the Aga Khan mausoleum again and were inspired to do some singing of our own by the boys in the little dinghies. We had dinner in the same Nubian restaurant that we ate at last Monday where we were entertained by a traditional Nubian dancer who took a shining to Elijah (How unusual! Everywhere we’ve gone, from India to Egypt, people have wanted to adopt Elijah as their king, and he’s loving it!).Our Flight back to Cairo didn’t leave till 10.30. Late night, bed by 2.30am.
Thursday 21st February 2008
We ventured off the boat and started the day on a horse and carriage for a ride to Edfo, the most well preserved temple in the world. (The driver of the horse that Mum and I were on kept saying ‘Ferrari?’ but Mum said no because otherwise he would’ve hit the horse and made it go fast... little did we know that Dad, Mahalia and Elijah were having the same problem on their horse. The horse drivers were very mean).
We ventured off the boat and started the day on a horse and carriage for a ride to Edfo, the most well preserved temple in the world. (The driver of the horse that Mum and I were on kept saying ‘Ferrari?’ but Mum said no because otherwise he would’ve hit the horse and made it go fast... little did we know that Dad, Mahalia and Elijah were having the same problem on their horse. The horse drivers were very mean).
The temple was amazing how well kept it was. All the colours and carvings were still visible. We toured through the temple for a couple of hours, but it was so big you could have stayed there all day!
When we arrived tiredly back on the boat, we cruised up the Nile to Kom Ombo, the only place in Egypt where they worship Crocodile gods. It even had mummified Crocodiles inside. On the temple there were Hieroglyphics of medical instruments and medicines. They say that the temple was once used for a hospital.
A mummified Crocodile
We three kids stayed behind on the boat with ‘G’ and Moreen. They are nuns that were on the tour. We sat on the sun deck and had ice-cream and checked out the street venders with binoculars! Had a ball laughing with every sentence. They’re awesome. We had a great time. When everyone else arrived back Dad had a massage on the boat, we had dinner and went to bed. Maddi*If Moreen and ‘G’ are reading this... I miss you guys already!!!
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