Day 41 Aswan
Tuesday January 15th, 2008
I am up early this morning – 5am and work on the blog entries.
This morning we must put our luggage outside our doors as we depart. We are to visit the Aswan Dam as well the unfinished oblisk in a quarry before flying back to Cairo.
We are taking dinner at the hotel – opting out of the optional belly dancing dinner.
It is hard to believe we have been on the road for 41 days.
I have not had any news of regarding the house or anything else for that matter – again time is warping it has only been 3 days since the email from Art and Elaine yet it seems to be over a year ago.
In Cairo I plan on getting internet access.
Another busy day ahead of us and tomorrow is looking large in my mind – Giza, The Sphinx and the Egyptian museum.
I am having some difficulty putting all of the detail into the blogs regarding the sites we have visited. I think I will need to go back over the entries I have created and add details – soon hopefully before they are forgotten. Perhaps tonight.
I just spent a few minutes working on finances – previously I had run a report showing that we were already considerably over budget – this morning when checking the parameters I realized that I was double booking some of the expenses – a 20k error. I was so relieved I woke up Pam and told her about it -I did not realize how much pressure that had been adding to us – I think even Aria was sensing the pressure as she seemed to be worried about sending anything. I am so glad as if I had not discovered that error I was quite worried about the remainder of our trip – I feel so much better ad I think Pam does too – I cannot wait to tell Aria so she can stop worrying. Whoohoo!!!
The morning starts out with breakfast followed by felucca ride on the lake between the Old Aswan dam and the High Dam. We see Elephantine Island, named for the rocks that indeed look like elephants. We see the hotel where Agatha Christie would come to write and many famous people have visited.
From there to Philae temple one of many temples that were disassembled and moved to save them from the rising waters after the High Damn was built. A modern engineering miracle. The temple is reached by a boat and is the setting is very picturesque.
The area we are visiting is mainly populated by Nubian's – they were displaced by the rising waters and were moved by the Egyptian government.
From here we visit the High Dam on the way to the Airport. The Aswan Airport is a military base – there was one plane - ours – but in the distance you can see sand covered bunkers where they keep military aircraft.
We land in Cairo and are shuttled to our hotel the Sofitel Le Sphinx – on the way I get my first glimbse of the Pyramids of Giza. Except for being incredibly tired tomorrow cannot arrive fast enough.