My Name is (Fel)luca

We are currently further up (south) the Nile. After that horrid 2:30AM wake-up call we flew down to Abu Simbel to see the temple of Ramses II and Hathor, dedicated to Ramses II's favorite wife (of 5), Queen Nefertari. Afterwards we flew into Aswan, the southern most Egyptian city, maybe about 200km north of Sudan.















Some sites in Aswan:

Aswan High Dam--the old Aswan Dam couldn't control the flooding (although it initially contributed immensely to make the land cultivable). The High Dam is huge, containing 18 times the amount of material used to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. There were a lot of international politics involved in the building of the High Dam, which I won't get into, but the Soviet Union ended up funding it. The water that has been dammed up is now the largest artificial lake in the world (Lake Nassar), over 500km in length. No one swims in this lake--probably due to a combination of gianormous crocodiles and bad, bad disease causing microbes in the water.















We ended our visit in Aswan with a felucca (traditional canvas sail boat) ride on the Nile to nowhere. It was quite pleasant cruising around for an hour.


I should also mention that we picked up two travel companions for this part of our trip: Frank and Jeanette, an octogenarian couple from Florida by way of NJ. They are quite nice, but nowhere near spry. AT ALL.