At 3am this morning we joined a convoy of around 50 buses to be escorted by the Egyptian Tourist Police to Abu Simbel. There were buses of all shapes and sizes making the almost 4 hour journey which is done twice a day with the assistance of the Police. Our tour guide had arranged a nice big bus for us today so we all had at least two seats each and we bought our pillows so could could sprawl out, get comfy and hopefully get some sleep as it would still be dark until we arrived. I got lucky and had the whole back seat but it didnt really help me in getting some sleep.
We arrived around 7am. The sun was just starting to come up and with a predicted top of 45, it was already starting to get warm. We had to be back and ready to leave with the convoy at 9am so we started the short walk to the temples straight away.
This place is amazing!! Its the temples of Ramses and his wife and what is equally amazing is that this is not the original place they were built it.
When the High Dam was constructed, the original temples had been flooded so they Govt of Egypt had the temples moved and re-allocated to where they are today. Judging from the size of the temples and the exact directions they had to face, this would not have been an easy task. You can go inside both of the temples however once again no photo's are allowed. Basically the rooms inside are covered wall to wall with carvings and hyroglyphics.
From here we rejoined the convoy and returned to our boat for an afternoon of leisure (sleeping, eating, drinking etc)
while the boat started its cruise towards Luxor. At 8pm we stopped at Kom Ombo Temple for a quick look before returning to the boat and discovering the "towel men" had struck again...Our boat will be continuing on to Luxor through the night.
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