I can't believe they expect us to get up at 2am!! to leave for our day trip to Abu Simbel. This is one of the sightseeing trips that was part of the package we booked from Cairo and one of the trips we were looking forward to the most. But at 2am it's not looking too exciting :P
We leave the hotel just before 3am and race over to the convoy starting point where we see all the other buses and coaches that are doing the same trip today (there are loads). There's just enough going on to keep us awake as we get moved around from one spot to another but after about half an hour of messing around, we set off and can finally catch up with some much-needed sleep.
We reach Abu Simbel by 7am but the sun's pretty much already burning at full capacity - (which immediately puts smiles on our faces as we'd just been told rumors of snow in London.)
As you enter the site, you have to walk around part of the mountain that holds Ramses II's Sun Temple (aka The Great Temple). The mountain is actually man made! Just like the Isis Temple on Philae island, the rising water level had threatened the Sun Temple and neighboring Hathor Temple (aka The Small Temple) so they had to be moved in the 1960's. Just have a look at the photos to see what a ridiculously big task this was! There is some really interesting history about these temples (why they were built, how they were moved, etc) and what a megalomaniac Ramses II was, but frankly you'll probably only want to know about it if/when you come here.
When you get to the front of the Temples it is an awe inspiring view. How did they build these enormous things into the mountains? Aliens???(Another interesting fact: twice a year the sun shines directly into the entrance of the temple and illuminates a statue of Ramses, which is about 20m inside the mountain. More amazing, they got this to happen on the date of Ramses Birthday and on the date of his coronation!) We were there the day after this phenomenon, bummer to miss it by one day. They said about 10,000 people showed up.
We spent a good couple of hours admiring the temples from inside and out, but then had to get back to Aswan.
Once back in Aswan, we immediately get transferred to our cruise, which is to be our home for the next couple of days. The boat is actually pretty good (Rich is impressed as it's his first cruise - Alicia, not so much) and has a sun deck with swimming pool which is cool. Although we were told we were in a big rush to get on board, it turns out we don't set off for at least another hour. Regardless, once we're on our way it's a really good feeling to be cruising down the Nile, beer in hand, with the sun setting across the desert sands.
