Aswan and Abu Simbel

Day one
Not the best nights sleep in the world, but not the worst. We arrived in Aswan around 9 am and went straight to our accommodation, Keylany Hotel. It was noticeable just from the short walk there that Aswan was a much cleaner and nicer place than Cairo. We walked through a lovely souq, much wider and easier to navigate, it was quiet first thing in the morning, shop owners were out cleaning their shop fronts and the streets were also being washed down.

We took a Feluccia water taxi over to Elephantine Island, which sits in the middle of the Nile just North of the first Cataract. We wandered through he Nubian villages of Koti and Siou, there were children and animals running about everywhere. The houses were made with red dirt binding them together and they were painted in bright colours.

We were looking for a cafe called Baba Dool, which came highly rated in the Lonely Planet, we had mint tea in what we thought was it, only to find it round the next corner. Once we found the correct one, we agreed with what the Lonely Planet had to say about it. It was a very colourfully Nubian decorated house with lots of verandas and rooms, in a beautiful location overlooking the Nile and Kitchener’s Island. We had lunch and sat drinking coffee, watching feluccias sail past for hours, we saw a young boy paddle by on what could be described as a surfboard, he was singing his heart out!

Day two
2:30 am start today, the minibus picked us up at 3am for the three hour drive to Abu Simbel. We had a couple of hours to look round the very impressive Great Template of Ramses II and the temple of Hathor, once you see them it is hard to believe they were lost to the world under shifting sands, only to be found in 1813 by the Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burkckhardt and then later moved, piece by piece to their current location to avoid being lost underwater when the new dam was built to stop the Nile valley from flooding.

Once back to Aswan, we spent the afternoon sitting on the roof terrace of our hotel relaxing in then sun, more like falling asleep after the early start that morning! Our hotel was lovely, very clean and the owners were very helpful, giving us recommendations of tour guides and things to do. Our stay included breakfast, which was served on the roof terrace overlooking Aswan’s rooftops all the way to the Nile.