Abu Simbel

245am wake up call. Where are the happy people you ask?

After the hullabaloo the mandatory driving convoy is nothing more than a bunch of buses going the same route. It may have been a more potent showing in recent times with security issues but there was nothing of the sort on our trip.
Got to the temple and walked around before heading back into town.

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Aswan

Made our way to Aswan via the train and walked around the rest of the day familiarizing ourselves with the scenery. Shifted across the river to the small island and snaked our way through the small village and its scenery.

Royalty

Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens. The stories/legends that these murals tell are fascinating as is the fact that these works have retained their natural colour in spite of the ravages of time and weather.
Here as throughout there was more of the endless pressuring to buy
what are objects of true craftsmanship from all the stores and shops.

Old School Sunset Cruise on the Nile

In the evening did the sunset cruise felucca.Went to one of the lake isles to see how food and water wells are set up traditionally whilst being forced to down pounds of banana that are readily available on the banana isle.

 At night through observation and more bargaining finally worked our way down to local prices for the cane juice that was available on the streets. That being sorted out I drank buckets
full. Jeanna preferred the carob juice

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the wells and the oven

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Company and sunset

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Temple March

Kharnak and luxor temple. Very grand and magnificent as you would have expected.
In between had a rest and refueled with some water and the most expensive iced tea ever.
Another lesson learned on this day,complete payment in full before product is opened as
price goes up exponentially and arbitrarily!

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The ongoing theme is developing where taxi drivers call me brother and say 'look same colour'
and then still charge ridiculous prices. So I have to remind them that such familiarity
should translate to cheaper prices not higher ones!

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Which way to Luxor?

Our taxi driver from hurghada, as chance would have it, had never actually been to Luxor.
This fact was evident once he started asking for directions a couple hours in. Good thing
the three of us passengers (Singaporean Tyrone joined us to share the ride) had our eyes on
the signs so we could point him properly in the right direction.
With night falling it could have been trickier but we did make it into Luxor.
The lack of elevators makes some of these walk up hostels a lot of planned exercise trips.

The Democratic Process at Sea

As it became more (or less) evident that these sightings were not going to materialize there was voting on whether we should stay or keep on moving. There was a recent ferry sinking years ago which was thought to be a good dive but others understandably (especially the locals) don't go around that area as it's all still too raw a scar.
So we voted moved and moved some more. Got to a school/college/herd? of dolphins and everyone enjoyed that. Fresh off the ultimate dolphin experience in New Zealand we focused on the rich wildlife around with stone fish, scorpion fish etc in abundance.

Worked our way back to the coast to finish up the week which didn't happen as it was supposed to but was still a good experience for us.