Craig's Photos - Train and Aswan Part Two

The temples were always "staffed" by guys in their long flowing robes, called gallabiyahs. I think their real purpose was to keep tourists from doing any damage and to yell at anyone who climbed a wall or wandered somewhere off limits. If that was their real purpose, what they actually did was to drag tourists to areas, point out some camera angle or obscure aspect of the building, then demand a tip. If you did so much as make eye contact with them they'd demand a tip. If they were in one of your pictures...tip. And usually whatever you give them isn't enough, it doesn't matter how much you give them. This is a side temple built by Trajan. Note that Craig has shifted his pose, appropriately, from Egyptian to Roman.

We traveled to the Philae Temple by motorboat and then continued on to our later stops.

Similar to our Southeast Asia trip, the guides would always suggest we stop at a shop or a "factory" to learn a craft and buy something expensive. The formula was generally fixed...welcome to the place, have a welcome drink, give a lengthy explanation of how hard it is to make whatever, look around and pick out something you like, then the boss tells you the price. Always unbelievably high. Nancy and Craig bought some nice stone vases at this place (shh....Craig bought it for a present).

Here we are at the unfinished oblisk which f it had been completed, would hav ben the biggest in the world. I guess the Egyptians learned nowt to try making them this long, as this one cracked in two places in the process of being carved.

Here Nancy relaxes in the shade on the motor boat, striking her best top model pose.

This is a view to the western shore of the Nile. The desert starts almost immediately. A few camels thrown in for a reminder we are in Egypt.

This is a falucca, an Egyptian sailboat.

Later in the day we stopped at Kitchner Island, filled to the brim with trees and plants from all over the world, accented by a variety of birds. This ibis was not happy to play with Craig, and some of its friends left white deposits on his arm.

The size of the boat doesn't matter, the captain always seems to be a bit of a character.

As we cruise the two "helpers" on board relax on the roof. When we pulled into port to see a small museum, these two engaged in a bit of a sumo wrestling match on the roof, with one of them ending up being thrown into the river.

Jacob poses on the roof. He refused to jump off, even though we assured him the height was less than the O'Hatnick dock.