I’m pretty sure it’s Thursday today. That means we leave Egypt tomorrow for Jordan. I can say we’ll be leaving relatively unscathed in a global political sense but drilling down, there has been a couple of tweaks health wise. Overall we’ve managed a resounding pass considering this place’s reputation but no perfect score unfortunately. Last Saturday I was what an old boss used to call half f…d and let go. 14 hours sleep fixed that. Today the child bride got a fit of the vapours which is what I understand ladies get in these hot climates if their corsets are too tight or something. The CB had ditched the corset for today but was still wearing her wobbly boots.
The temple of Philae on an island in Lake Nasser is dedicated to Isis the goddess of healing (amongst other things) ironically enough considering the CB’s fainting spell. Incidentally, this is the largest man-made lake in the world and sits behind the High Aswan Dam. The temple has accommodated religious activities from the Pharaonic era, the Greek era, the Roman era and the era of Christianity so there’s quite a celestial turf warfare going on there. So when the CB went all glassy eyed, started shaking and sliding down the wall we were leaning against I didn’t know if she needed a chocolatier or an exorcist. After a sugar hit, a wet hanky round the neck and 15 minutes of vigorous hat waiving to keep the temple air moving around her and the spirits at bay, she began to function again. So an easy afternoon today and we’ll skip the boat ride which’ll show us stuff we’ve already seen from the land.
Tomorrow’s another 4.00am start. For God’s sake, we’re supposed to be on vacation and these things are meant to be relaxing. This one’s been in the vein of “if it’s Thursday, this must be Belgium” as we charge from one temple to the next like a rampaging Alexander the Great. His generals poisoned him because he wanted to carry on conquering, whereas they wanted to smell the roses or whatever was growing in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, after a decade long rape and pillage tour of the middle east. So our tour guide had better tap the brakes occasionally.
It’s now tomorrow and we have seen our last Egyptian temple or temples actually. The two at Abu Simbel down near the Sudanese border are basically a “get a load of this” to travellers from the south who may not be conversant with the Egyptians’ ability to build humongous edifices, the message being, “If we can do that to a mountain, it doesn’t bear thinking about what we can do to you if you step out of line. And by the way, do you want to buy this worthless trinket for only $1.”
Three flights later we are in the departure area of Cairo Airport. Back when I was travelling every month it was very unusual for me to travel on an airline I hadn’t experienced before apart from one of the occasional pop-ups that did the Kaohsiung/Taipei run in Taiwan. There were numerous airlines doing that then, in anticipation of being able to expand across the strait to service big brother. So much for that and probably most of them no longer exist. I’m referring to Egypt Air here. I never had a reason to come to Egypt previously so never travelled on their airline. I’ve now done four flights with them with one more, to Amman later today. Hopefully the admin isn’t a reflection of the other important stuff vis-a-vis airlines. We flew from Abu Simbel to Aswan then on to Cairo today. Same plane and flight number with a short stop in Aswan. But we were given different boarding passes for each leg so despite staying on the plane, our seats changed. What a cluster f…k. Forty people.all trying to move one row back or across. It was like a geriatric game of Twister – not a pretty sight.