Monday in Egypt: Aswan

Another coach met us at the train station in Aswan, and Waleed showed us around the city. Aswan has always been an important city, but since Nasser and Sadat built the High Dam here, the city has been crucial to the progress of the people of Egypt. The High Dam produces tons of electricity and regulates the Niles' spring floods. And it seems like a nice place. Not a cool place, though - today it is 44 degrees C (I'll wait while you convert that to F).

So in building the High Dam they created a big lake (Lake Nasser as Sadat called it). Unfortunately the ancient Egyptians chose to build their monuments and temples close to the Nile (why couldn't they just drag the wicked heavy stone blocks up to higher ground?) So when Lake Nasser filled, it would have covered many beautiful and ancient things. An aside: it took about 5 years from the completion of the dam until the lake was full - that's a long time! So Egypt (and UNESCO) moved these temples to places above the prospective water line - just in time. The first one we visited was Philae Temple, a nice big temple on an island. This one is huge, so it was cut up into many thousands of pieces. Then they brought them to a new island and reconstructed it there. You can tell that it isn't on the original site if you stand all the way in the inner chapel and look out - the road curves a little. As originally built, that was perfectly straight. The Egyptians were really good builders...








The temple has neat statues, carvings of gods and pharaoh and a little graffiti. But graffiti here isn't spray paint, it's stuff like "Napoleon was here" (yes, that Napoleon) and the exact difference in longitude and latitude of the temple from Paris. We hung out there and walked around for a bit. Unfortunately for all these sites, it is crazy hot. So we suffer through mostly, but I feel like we might hang out a little longer at places if it wasn't broiling. (Not that we are rushed by the tour at all; we are usually the last ones back on the bus, but we're usually back before the designated departure time because we can't stand the heat any more). Since the temple is on an island, we took a little motorboat each way from a dock in Aswan; along the way you can see where the old island is - there's a marker, no island anymore as it is underwater.





Napoleon grafitti:



From here we were close to the Aswan Dam. This is an old, old dam that they made, mostly for flood control. It's 1890s old. It is a very handsome and pretty large dam, but it's no High Dam. So we drove over Aswan Dam and went up to the High Dam (a couple miles apart). The High Dam is protected very securely by the Egyptian Army. The lake behind it runs back some 500km from the dam; the hydroelectric power coming from the turbines creates so much electricity that now, along with existing power plants, Egypt exports electricity to her neighbors. The drop in water level across the dam is something like 60 meters, it is quite a thick wall, and it spans a huge distance. Unfortunately there was no dam tour inside the dam, so I didn't get to have the rest of my dam questions answered or see the dam turbines. I guess next vacation is to the Hoover Dam...

Dam spillway:



Dam hydroelectric plant:



Dam lake:



But no Dam tour:



After a brief stop at the High Dam, we killed some time a shop that sells the "essence" of various plants, etc. Something where you squeeze a flower really hard and collect just the oils with the essence or life force of the flower. This goes back to pharaonic times. The Nubians that they were friends with would prepare these extracts for offerings to the gods. Not to be confused with the Nubians that they weren't friends with - they tried to kill them. It was a little hokey, but they did have tons of scents that were quite nice. When you mix them together in the right proportions you get many of the popular perfumes and colognes out there (CK1, Polo, Chanel no 5).

We still had a little time to kill before we could board our boat to Luxor, so we stopped at the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan. This obelisk was started back in ancient times, but ... never finished. Apparently the guys carving it up noticed a crack in the stone that would have prevented it from standing up for long. It is completely separated from the surrounding rock on every side but the bottom. If finished it would weigh about 1,160 tons (!) and supposedly was going to be a pair to the obelisk that now is called the Lateran Obelisk in Rome. (Maybe the size, shape and stone itself are very similar - I don't know) A note on obelisks: the ancient Egyptians carved 95 of these things out of solid granite, dragged them to the river, floated them down to their intended locations (having to wait until spring floods to make it over the cataract), dragged them back up from the river, dragged them up ramps and dropped them onto pedestals. 95! And there are 5 left in Egypt!!! All the others have been stolen and displayed elsewhere (England, France, Rome). It wasn't until the 1950s that Egyptians really put their foot down and made people stop stealing stuff, but now they really want it back. The obelisk was very neat to see - hopefully our pictures represent the scale of it well - but the granite quarry was ridiculously hot. You know how a parking lot gets really hot in the sun? Or how hot air blows in your face when you open the oven? Or the hottest days at the beach? Well from the parking lot through the quarry, the sun beat down on us, the rock radiated heat back up at us, and the wind blowing on us only made us more hot.





We got back in the (A/C) bus and headed for the cruise ship. It isn't nearly as big as the big cruise ships, but it's a good size. There are only 2 and a half decks of rooms, above us is a sun deck (sun being the important word) and down below are lounge and dining areas on another couple levels. Basically it feels like we have all the niceties of a cruise with minimal crowds. We checked in, had a quick shower (everyone stunk from not showering for the last couple days with the overnight train in between), and ate. Then we were supposed to go on a felucca ride. The felucca is the sailboat used back in ancient times to travel up and down the Nile. With minimal design changes (the fiberglass is a pretty new development over the last 5000 years), the boats look pretty much like they did back then. Unfortunately there was very little wind, so we spent 2 hours being towed by a motorboat and about 15 minutes sailing. We still got the picture and appreciated the views of the Nile. Getting back to the ship eventually, we were very happy to sit and relax for a good dinner before heading to bed, very exhausted.


What a felluca is supposed to do:



Us, getting a tow:



(All my facts and figures are from memory, I didn't write them down at the time. If you want to fact-check me, go ahead. Don't bother correcting me though - I don't care - I'm on vacation!)