Aswan & Luxor

Aswan is all the way in Upper Egypt where some pretty cool tombs and temples are located. We took the 12h train ride(took 20 hours....go gravol!) down the nile.

Egyptian Cartouches. The circle cross is 'life key' while the bird represents kiki :)



Philae Temple. Former island in the nile river. Isis goddess. Once the high damn was built the temple was almost lost in the nile. UNESCO decided to move the whole thing! thank god...er goddess



More vandalism!



Spaceship or Amon-Ra. Not sure what I saw.



Luxor temple



Also within were remains of Coptic churches and a mosque.



Nice lighting

More scribbles

We took a felucca rice along the nile for 3 days. All meals were cooked onboard by a fellow who had been fasting for 30 days (Ramadan). Kinda felt bad for the poor guy!

Joe took care of the group. A good sailor. He kept calling me 'Canada Dry'!


Columbian drug lord.

This one just stood there. Tourists would take pictures and another guy would then jump out and ask for baksheesh.

Ramses II temple at Abu-Simbel. Carved right out of the mountain face.

Egypt. Great sites to see, unfortunately this comes at a price and I'm not talking about the 25 plus enterance tickets. This country seemed, at most points, like one big toursit trap. The Aswan -Luxor cooridor, accessible via police escorted convoy ensures minimal repeat of kidnappings (like the ones which occured earlier this month involving German tourists). The proximity to the Sudanese border also makes this mode of transportation like a bit of insuarnce against any possible tourist problems occurring. The result is a massive onsalught of prepackaged tourist trap routines and scams. I've been here 5 days and I've been introduced to over two dozen routines! some quite funny! The good news is they all use similar catch lines so it becomes easier after a while. This makes it tougher to open up to the locals because your always thinking 'is this guy working my wallet right now?' Annoying but still worth the ride.

Chris was inspired. 5th element styles!



Next Stop: Damascus, Syria