Day 3 Aswan

Tuesday March 22^nd.

We arrived in Aswan by 10:30, whereupon I said goodbye to Christian, my Peruvian friend and went straight to our hotel. Our rooms weren't ready so we decided to go to the Nubian Museum today rather than tomorrow. This museum documents the history of the Nubian people who have lived in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. They had lived through the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations that have all sought to conquer them. What I found most interesting was the section that was dedicated to the world wide effort lead by UNESCO to save and move a number of ancient sites before they were flooded by the building of the High Dam (which was built after the Aswan Dam and further up river, when it was realized that the Aswan wasn't enough to control the flooding of the Nile). Abu Simbel is one of these temples that was dismantled and moved out of the way of the new man made lake. We are going there tomorrow.

Then we came back to our hotel, checked in and had a couple of hours to relax and clean up. This hotel is much nicer than the one in Cairo, cleaner, newer, with a large wide screen TV, an internet cable and two interesting features: I have a great view of the Nile from my balcony and in my room, I have a glass window in the shower so I can see into the bedroom. Very interesting for a conservative country!

At 3:00 we gathered again in the lobby and headed down to the harbour to catch a boat for a tour of this part of the Nile and around the Elephantine Island. We landed on the island where we could climb a large sand dune for a better view of the river and Aswan city. The colours here are striking, with the blue water, the beige sand and the green trees. After staying up there for awhile we headed down to the boat again and relaxed at a coffee/tourist cafe there. They had a tank with three two foot long Nile crocodiles.

Just after sunset we went back across the river to have dinner at a typical Nubian family home. It was a delicious meal with lentil soup, rice, fried chicken and fish, a tomato and vegetable sauce and another dish of okra and tomatoes. Afterwards we were told about the Nubian culture and told we would hear more in the next couple of days as we sail on his felucca sailing boat and have a home-stay visit as his sister's house. Then it was back to our hotel again to get a good night's sleep for an early morning tomorrow.