Monday, 22nd Jan, 2007

From Aswan to Egypt/Sudan Ferry

We rode about 12 miles down to the ferry landing. The boat was lots of fun! I took a trillion pictures of the mobs of people loading the boat. It took about 7 hours to load. No kidding! For a long time, I was sitting on the upper deck, under the overhanging dinghy (for shade). Slowly, it became more and more crowded. People were looking for space to sit, so eventually, an Egyptian man sat next to me. He was very friendly, though we couldn't talk much. I kept snapping pictures, as the boat became more and more overloaded, then I'd show him the picture, and we had good chuckles together. That went on for hours. At one point, I thought to myself, "Chances are good that the boat won't sink. But if it does, guess we're all dead. Oh well." There was that cute little dinghy, which would have carried about 20 of us, but at that point, there were about 200 of us on board. So, everybody would've scrambled for the dinghy, making it sink too. Ha.

The boat trip was fun - an overnighter. We on the tour had cabins. This wasn't like a luxury cruise or anything. Each cabin had one bunkbed, attached to the wall, that's it. But it did make for a very nice night's sleep. The next morning, we woke up to see ... hmmm, forgot it's name ... but a really neat ancient temple and tomb site. The site is famous because, when they decided to build the damn, the whole site, which was over 3,000 years old, was going to be submerged by the rising lake. Archaologists and nifty people from all over the world came to the rescue. Within month, as the lake was rising, they had (in the nick of time, apparently), managed to carefully saw apart, and relocate the tombs and temple several hundred meters higher, so that they would be preserved and not drown. Abu Simbul! That's the name of the site.

-------------------- TODAY ---------------- TOTAL
Cycled -------------- 18 km (11.5 mi) ------- 833 km (510.5 mi)
Sagged ------------- 0 ---------------------- 165 km (108.5 mi)
Total --------------- 18 km (11.5 mi) -------- 998 km (619 mi)
In saddle ----------- 1 hr 10 min ------------ 45 hrs 57 min
Ascended ----------- 330 feet --------------- 8,142 feet