My Adventures started out with Chris, Stanley and I taking the overnight train from Giza to Aswan… it was soo much fun, we had two connecting cabins, since we paid for a single and a double room… it was so much fun, we go onto the train and the Steward for our Car was really nice, and no matter how many time we would talk to him in Arabic he would always answer us in English, but he did understand us so that is a good thing!!! We were served a nice Dinner of Beef, or I think it was beef, and rice and other good stuff, and then once that was done, he came in and put down the beds… but you see, I was excited to be 21 and on a Train with a Club Car, so we traveled down to that car, 7 cars away from our car since we were in car 1… and once there we all ordered drinks, I got myself a nice Rum and Coke… yum… well I ended up having two of them, since well I could… even though he did not check ID's, it is nice to know that I can go to a bar in Virginia and order drinks once I get home!!! After our drinking experience where I was signing and being obnoxious since they were playing some 90’s classic songs, like Barbie Girl, and Mambo #5, we decided it was time to sleep… when we woke up we still had a little time to go before Breakfast, and Aswan so we talked and chatted it up…Breakfast was the traditional Egyptian fare of Bread, Cheese and Jam… our trays had 4 different breads on it…When we finally got to Aswan we started adventuring, 
which is the best term to describe what happened to us...In Aswan, and we got here around 10 am this morning on our overnight train, which surprisingly I slept well on, but the other two did not sleep as well as I did…When we left the train station, we were waiting in line for our tickets to go from Aswan to Luxor, and well we found out that all the terminals were not able to print tickets, meaning the system was down, so we decided that maybe we would come back later and try again… after that we meet our Taxi Driver, Walid, he was really nice actually. We started the day by adventuring to Philae, which is this temple on an island that is dedicated
to Horus and Isis, it was AMAZING… I loved ever second that we were on the island, it was funny because of course I got a lot of attention because I was female and fair skinned… I must have a magnet for Egyptian Men, haha… anyway, while we were at Philae, one of the Tourism Police pulled us aside and showed us this cool cubby hole in the temple where people use to come and go from the island, and from his broken English and my broken Arabic I think it might have been the equivalent to a baptismal font, but I don’t know… it was cool… after that the Tourism Police officer was nice enough to take our picture, and when he did he put his Beret on my head and took a picture, it is not on my camera, but it was HILARIOUS, I was laughing…To get to and from Philae, we had to take these water taxis, ours was Captianed by a Nubian Man, I forgot his name, but I do remember it was called Barlo, which was pretty easy to remember because it sounds like Barlow… Anyway, while on the water taxi, he started talking about his very large family and how he lives on this one island in Aswan, where I assume a lot of Nubians lived… After we got off the water taxi, and started to head towards
Walid and his taxi, we were early so we decided to look around at the stores right near the Boat entrance, well this one guy was talking about how this one dress item was 5 pounds, well I got excited because I thought he was talking Egyptian Pounds, but it turns out he was talking British Pounds… well I did not have any of those, but I had him interested in me, and he wanted me to buy it, so he placed it in my hands, which is almost the equivalent of purchasing it in Egypt, especially for these men who sell things to tourists… so I was cornered, but I fought him so much about it, and I was trying to push the garment back into his hands… it was a nice garment though… so with me fighting him, he kept on dropping his price… finally I got him to about 60 pounds (Egyptian of Course) even though he was asking for about 120 pounds… So I bought it…After Philae and my shopping experience there, Walid had told us on the way in about these Bazaars that lined the road that all the tourists go to, so I asked to go to one of the Perfume ones, since well I know that is one thing that Momma
had asked for… so he took us to one of them… it was this nice place, and I ended up spending about 360 pounds on scents and presents… (Mommy I found your present!!!) But it was all totally worth it I think… I was spending money hard core that day, but I am also splitting the cost with two other people, and they own me some money now anyway…After the Perfume place, we went to this nice restaurant called El Masry, meaning the Egyptian, they had some nice food, and it was soo good, and there was a lot of it as well… It was worth the 20 Dollars for our entire meal… haha… I love the price of Food here in Egypt!
After the Restaurant, Walid had been nice enough to try to go to the train station and try to get us our tickets to Luxor, since we are only spending the day in Aswan… but he told us that his friend who is a manager at the train station told him that the computers are down in the Train station, but they should be working later… well it is Egypt…. So he them took us to see the High Dam and Lake Nasser… and OMG Lake Nasser was the most amazing Blue you had ever seen, it was so nice, I sincerely wished I had a swim suit right there that I could put on and go swimming… haha… well he them took us down this one road, and then we had this amazing view of the power plant part of the High Dam… surprisingly it was pretty cool to look at and hear the power going through the power lines… I always enjoy that sound… After this he then took us this weird back way back into Aswan and to what we thought was just going to be a nice Felucca ride on the Nile… man was I wrong…
Our adventure started out with us crossing the Nile and going to Elephantine Island, which is
ok, but we were hot and tired and really just wanted to relax and enjoy a Felucca ride… well we were told by the people to get off the boat, and to walk up to this summit, where we meet the Chief of the Nubian Village that existed on Elephantine Island, and we were told that we are going to do a walking tour of the island, when we asked how much the tour was going to cost, the Chief said 20 pound per person, but we did not have to pay if we were unhappy, he is Nubian no Egyptian… whatever that means… pretty much he guilt tripped us hard core… so we walked this Nubian Village, which was actually pretty cool, but it was hard to enjoy because we were tired and hot… and I was getting cranky… go figure…anyway, at the end he invited us into a Nubian House where we could have soda and get Henna but well we were running low on money and we wanted to make sure we had enough to pay our taxi driver Walid as well as being able to pay for the Taxi from the Train station to out Hotel in Luxor… so we declined… after that we climbed into this Felucca, but this was a traditional Felucca, not the motorized ones that exist in Cairo, 
but the one that had a sail…Well it turned out that the wind was against us, when we set sail from Elephantine island, we sat, and turned in circles as our driver was trying to find a wind that would take us up the river… Finally one of the motorized boat took hold of us and dragged us up the river, once he let go of us we sailed back and forth up the river, culminating with us spending 15 minutes just sailing back and forth across the Nile not really going anywhere… it was sorta boring, until Stanley pulled out his Walkman phone, and we played some music which entertained our Felucca drivers to no end, they were enjoying the music way too much it was entertaining… Finally we got turned around and we headed towards the dock and when I called Walid he told me yet again the train station computers were down… so once we got off the Felucca he took us to this coffee shop near the train station where he knew the proprietor, and well we sat down and waited as Walid took our money and tried to purchase our train tickets… while we were sitting there all the Egyptian men took the opportunity to compliment me in Spanish, Russian, and one other Language before they talked to me in English or Arabic…
Finally Walid came back saying that he had this had written ticket and that would be fine we had seats… so it was time to leave and head to the train, so when I tried to pay for our drinks which was three bottle waters and a Coca Cola, they wanted to charge me 32 pounds… I looked at them shocked and made sure I heard the price right, I started to talk to them in Arabic telling them how Bottle Waters were maybe 4 to 5 pounds in Cairo, and I was not going to pay more than that… so I handed them a 20 pound note and walked away… they started to talk to Walid and he told them that I spoke Arabic and I was not stupid… they were shocked because a Women stood up to them and would not pay them the price they asked, as well as yelling at them in Arabic… I feel so strong and empowered… it was Hilarious… That was one of the Highlights of this trip for me so far!!!
These pictures don't even begin to cover all that I saw in just one day... if you want to see more you will have to ask me when I have my computer in front of me and I will show you the 192 pictures that I took in Aswan alone... I was tourist happy!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment