Louis des Landes
Louis des Landes

Mumblings of a Space focused Software Engineer

Adelaide, Australia
admin@psykar.com

Cruising down the Nile

May 30, 2010

The first day of actual cruising we apparently left Aswan around 5am. I was asleep and it was quiet enough I didn't even notice until I woke up and heard a strange rushing sound. Look out the window to see water rushing past. Our cabin is actually right at water level, so standing up in our cabin has the rivers water at about waist height. We were up at 8am to visit another temple, at a town we pulled up at around 9am. It's terrible because even though this was earlier today I can't even recall the name of the town.
The temple was a dual temple, with two final chambers, each dedicated to a different god. It was built during the greco-roman era, as there were a couple of pictures which had cleopatora, the last pharoh of egypt, depicted upon them. What was most fascinating however, was the 'calendar' of offerings. One wall, although partially missing, depicted each day in a row, with a list of which offerings should be left on that day of the year. One row might read, 'day one of the 3rd month of the harvest season, leave this offering. The Egyptian calendar had 12 months in a year, in 3 seasons, flood, harvest, sowing.
Back on the Melodie, after a few games of chess with Robert, a german from another gecko tour on the boat with us, and we were off to another temple, a little further down the Nile at Kofu (spelling may be wrong?). This one is the best preserved temple in Egypt, because it was buried entirely in sand, so much so that over 400 houses had to be relocated to unbury it- they had literally been built over the top. I am now a little annoyed because I just went to check the photos from it... and my camera has mysteriously lost them =( I did upload some earlier today, but without internet access at the minute I can't check if they ended up there or not. Fingers crossed, as seeing a fully intact temple facade, roof and everything was very impressive. Was also quite cute seeing a feral cat roaming around the temple with two little kittens trailing after it.
Later in the night we had a party in traditional egyptian robes. I had found mine at the bazaar in Aswan earlier, and probably paid way more than I should have. I bargained down from 140 to 70 pounds, but he did agree way too quickly. It didn't even fit properly anyway :P After some games we ended up chilling on the roof with some drinks and some music till the small hours.
Sunday morning and no wake up call! Funnily enough I got up at around 830 anyway, and had some breakfast, then watched the ship go through one of the locks in a dam. Now just chilling on the roof again playing some uno and chatting away. Later today we're off to Karnac temple, a collection of temples near Luxor.