Nov 04 – Philae Temple, High Dam and Botanical Gardens

Photos from our early morning cruising. 

Interesting store name...passed it on the drive to the boat dock.

Busy day with lots of stuff to see.  Our first stop is the Philae Temple.  However, to get there we had to take a small boat as the temple is on an island.  And the area around the dock was crazy.  An absolute zoo.  There were dozens of boats jockeying for position.  Khalid had ours already reserved and his Nubian friend (we are now in the Nubian portion of Egypt) greeted us at the bus and helped get us to the boat.  It was a bit of a bumper boat experience.

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Video of "bumper" boats
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The Philae Temple was rescued from the rising waters of Lake Nassar when the High Dam was built across the Nile.  A hill was leveled off and the entire temple complex moved.  There are several temples here with the oldest dating to 370 BCE.

First stop was the forecourt with its long colonnade of columns.

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Video inside Philae Temple
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We also visited the Temple of Isis

The Temple of Trajan

The Temple of Hathor

And Hadrian’s Gate (we’ve seen those everywhere…that man traveled a lot).

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More Philae Temple
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We also saw a number of cats wandering the grounds.  Khalide said that they were Egyptian cats (as in a breed).  These are also called Maus and are one of the most ancient cat breeds.  It is believed that they are direct descendants of the cats that feature so prominently in ancient Egypt.

 

Then it was back on the boat for the ride back to the dock.  On the dock were a lot of vendors with all the usual touristy souvenirs for sale.  Colorful but we didn’t buy anything.

Then it was off to drive across the Low dam (nice views), 

where we saw what we think were the Nile Cataracts.

A drive through the Nubian Desert.

We stopped to on top of the High Dam.  From the looks of the up stream and down stream water levels it doesn’t look like there was a big drop. 

Lake Nassar is huge though and is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world.  It stretches nearly 300 miles well down into Sudan (where it is called Lake Nubia).

This "Lotus Flower" monument is to commemorate Egyptian/Russian friendship.  The Russians helped build the dam. 

After lunch on the boat in Aswan we boarded a felucca (a masted, Egyptian boat)...

and sailed around an island to the Botanical Gardens.  These were started by British Lord Horatio Kitchener in the late 19^th century when he was the commander of the Egyptian Army.

It would have been a lovely walk but during the first half we were met every few feet by a vendor wanting to sell us something.  Bit annoying.  But the gardens were lovely and it was a nice change of pace from all the ruins.

Joan and Joyce got their photographs taken holding a slightly bigger than small Nile crocodile.  Apparently, people around here keep them as pets until they get too big to handle.  Then they release them into the river.

From a distance we saw camel riders high on a ridge.

There were a lot of birds around the island and on the river.

Views from the island.

We had interesting views of the town of Aswan from the river.

We took the Feluccas back and enjoyed a quiet rest of the day. 

Throughout our cruise the housekeeping staff has been keeping us entertained with their towel art.  The last day we had quite a start when we walked into the room and it looked like someone was in our bed (the paper on the face was of mask of Tutankhaten.