Part 3: Blast from the past... Egyptian Adventure with AC....

Well on this day we left Cairo for Abu Simbel. Jeep and suitcases were packed and ready for our 7am flight. Original plan was to leave my place at 4am to drop off the Jeep at the dealer so it could be flatbeded to Sinai to meet us later, but at the last minute I decided I would have them pick it up at my house... We did not want to wake up so early and they wanted to rip me off on an oil change... Wanted more $ then what I would have paid for an oil change on my M3 (Very expensive oil and BMW service $/hr)...


So we arrived at the airport in Abu Simbel and had a little hang up, our driver never showed up. Turns out he was too tired so he never came. I ended up hiring a private driver out side the airport; the travel agency later tried to play off that this driver was the original driver... Yea sure..

Abu Simbel is on the southern end of Egypt, just 80km away from the border of Sudan.

We got to our lodging, The Eskaleh Nubian Ecolodge around noon and the next event we had planned was to go see the Abu Simbel Light and Sound show at night.

So in the mean time we decided to go on a boat tour of Lake Nasser. I did not have my camera so again ill borrow some of Angelina's pics ;)

Lake Nasser is the largest man made lake in the world and was formed when the Nile River was dammed at Aswan. When the river was dammed many temples in the area were flooded, just a few like Abu Simbel were saved.

In the evening we went to the Abu Simbel Light and Sound Show, which by the way is the best one of them all! We convinced the captain to drop us off at Abu Simbel instead of going to the hotel and then going by car to Abu Simbel.... Only down side was no camera... Oh well, good reason to go back!

The next day we visited Abu Simbel in the morning before making the 3hr drive to Aswan....

Once we arrived in Aswan we visited the site of the Unfinished Obelisk. Its basically the largest obelisk but they ran into a problem... It cracked while they were still carving it out in the quarry.

After we visited the Aswan High Dam.

In the afternoon we visited the island temple of Philae which is one of the temples saved by UNESCO when the Aswan dams were built. One of my favorites!

One of the few trash cans in all of Egypt!

 Angelina said we had to be creative with our pictures... So.... jajaj :)

We went back to the mainland and went to one of the perfume museums (AKA: stores)....

Stay tuned for picture of the Light and Sound Show from the temple of Philae!!

New URL: www.AdventuresOfAEGS.com !

Part 2: Blast from the past... Egyptian Adventure with AC....

So, as I was saying... We headed south of Cairo to Al Fayoum. Here is a map to give you an idea. From where the blue line gets close to the lake to the X is about 60miles. So its a HUGE lake!

Before arriving at the ruins we stopped a couple times to snap some pics and admire the view...

Next we arrived at the temple of Dimeh al-Siba. "Dimeh al-Siba, Dimeh of the Lions, was a Ptolemaic city believed to be founded by Ptolemy II in the third century BC, on a site that shows evidence of habitation from the Neolithic period. Today, it is more isolated, but during ptolemaic times it was at the shore of the much larger lake, situated at the edge of Moeris Bay and the beginning of the caravan routes into the Western Desert." "The ruins of Dimeh al-Siba contain the two temples, houses, underground chambers, streets and ten meter high walls that are sometimes up to five meters thick. The walls themselves are a testament to the survivability of mudbrick in the desert environment. The ground is strewn with debris. An uncountable number of shards cover the entire temple mound. They are all over the place. One can even find, we are told, ancient fish hooks, pottery and coins."

I did not take down my photo camera so ill share some of Angelina's fotos....

After the temple we went back around the lake and went to into Wadi El-Rayan Protectorate. Protectorates are the Egyptian version of a National Park. But in this case they allow oil drilling, an ice factory and farming... 

As you can see in the map above there are two lakes with natural springs. Between the two lakes there is enough of a elevation change that you have the largest waterfall in all of Egypt! Plan is to try and go kiteboarding on the southern lake... We will see!

After visiting the lakes we drove about 45 minutes towards the desert horizon to a very unique place, to the extent its a UNESCO World Heritage Site! A whale cemetery in the middle of the desert! Yup... This whole region was under water thousands of years ago. Thats why you find fish and sea shell fossils all over the place... 

This archaeological site is the most important in the world related to proving that whales evolved from land mammals.  The fossils show whales with "well developed five-fingered flippers on the forelimbs and the unexpected presence of hind legs, feet, and toes, not known previously in any archaeoceti." 

From here we headed back towards the lakes to give Angelina her first taste of off-roading up, down and around the mountains surrounding the lakes! Videos will have to be posted later....

I vaguely remember a rap video being filmed after this picture... jaja

After the sunset we headed back towards Cairo... We still had to pack the Jeep before it got flat-bedded to the Sinai Peninsula and pack our suit cases for the next 9 nights!