Abu Simbel and The Camel Incident

After a rather late night flying to Aswan, a beautiful little resort town, we were up bright and early for a flight to Abu Simbel.  There we were privileged to see the Temple of Ramses II and the Temple of his favorite wife, Nefertary.  These two  temples had to be moved back from the Nile River after they built the high dam and created Lake Nasser.  This was to reduce the damage caused by the flooding of the Nile River four months out of the year!  Some very skilled engineers cut each temple into blocks, marked them according to their position, and then re-assembled them on higher ground.  There was already some damage to the structure from the flooding and from a huge earthquake that occurred a couple thousand years ago.  This was the first of our "Indiana Jones" adventures when for severl days we were climbing in and out of tombs and temples.  We truly felt like explorers and even though there had been others before us the feeling was like we had discovered them ourselves.  Unlocking history and secrets from the past was great fun and we frequently overwhelmed our Egyptologist with our questions and observations.  Both temples had beautiful hieroglyphs and even though some had lost their colors others were brilliantly colored and covered in gold!  There were huge statues guarding the way and when you went behind the statues you would find the smaller rooms that were so carefully and beautifully decorated.  The alters!  The carvings!!  The art!!  A miracle they had survived for thousands of years!!  We had to be careful with picture taking as flash from the cameras of thousands of visitors every year is damaging the color on the hieroglyphs so we took what we could and then bought the postcards that went with the temples.  It was a lovely morning and then we caught a flight back to Aswan.

We hd barely knocked the dust off of ourselves when it was time to visit St. Simon Monastery.   I thought I would dress up a little for the occasion and wore a skirt.  We were also visiting a Nubian Village on Elephantin Island and then the Nubian Museum in town.  We took a little boat over to the island where the monastery was and we made another discovery....we were going up the mountain by CAMEL!!!!  We were totally unprepared for this and did not receive any instruction o how to do this.  I wanted to interview the camels and find the cleanest, sweetest one, preferring two humps where I could securely ride in between them but those camels do not live in Egypt (or the Middle East for that matter!).  Camels smell really bad and I wondered why they didn't give them a bath before we got there as we re woman after all AND nurses.  Next thing I know some strong guy has PICKED ME UP and just put me on a camel!!!  Then they whacked her on the bum to make her stand up!  Now sitting on a camel in the process of standing up is a tricky one.  When the camel stands up the front parts you are supposed to lean back.  When she is standing up the hind parts you lean forward.  This is supposed to help you keep from being pitched out of the saddle.  There are no stirrups so no place to put your feet.  If your legs are long enough (mine are not) you can wrap one around the saddle horn or rest your feet at the base of the camel's neck.  Mine were pretty much sticking straight from both sides :( So up the mountain we proceed.  Another thing about camels is they move both legs on one side then both legs on the other.  It is a very jostling sort of ride!  and the saddle sits on top of the hump and it isn't all that comfortable either!  Anyway my handler kept telling me to relax (how can I relax when I constantly feel like I am a moment away from falling off the beast!).  After  a little while I could relax a bit and just move with the camel...well as much as I could when I realized the path was about two feet wide and camel looked about 3-4 feet wide and how were we going to manage this!?!  We made it up to the monastery and it was great to see something from the early Christian church that was an active monastery for almost 1000 years.  We explored and imagined what life there would be like.  Then it was the end of the day and we had to come back down the mountain.......by CAMEL!  Now the camels were tired as they had been hauling people up and down to the monastery all day!  My handler would flick his whip at her and she would trot for a little while then stop.  He did it again and same thing.  He then really gave her a flick and she took off.  I asked him to please not make my camel mad before we got down from the mountain.  My camel was sweet but Shelly's camel growled a lot at her handler.  We had to recover a bit before we could decide it was a good experience!!  Camel definitely was not going to be our preferred mode of travel!  The trip to the Nubian Village was postponed as it was so late but we still went to the Nubian Museum that evening.  I NEVER tired of looking at all of the discoveries and learning the meaning of it all!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Christine xx