Reaching for Africa
We have been on the continent of Africa for over five days now and don’t realize it. Africa is a big continent, but at least it’s very well defined unlike Asia or Europe. You know where it starts and ends. But the reality of Africa is that it’s separated into at least two Africas. The first is North Africa, of which we are in a subsection referred to as the Levant. And then there is sub-Saharan Africa, which is, as its name implies, that portion of Africa, which lies below the Sahara desert. Our trip is intended to be in North Africa and specifically the Levant. But today, as the boat docks here in Aswan, we are boarding a van to drive us south to Abu Simbel. I’m sure there will be a lot to learn and to say about it. Unfortunately, Mike woke up with a continuation of a nagging earache and decided to stay back and have a doctor from Aswan come to the boat and diagnose his ear problem. We asked him if he would like us to stay and Mellisa immediately responded for him and said no, no we’re going without him and he’ll be fine. So off we went.
Abu Simbel is about 3 1/2 hour drive south of us from where we docked at 7:30 AM in Aswan. Mahmood had arranged another van for us (this is his home turf) and it was waiting dutifully outside. While Mike awaited his visiting doctor, the three of us and Mahmood headed South through the busy streets of Aswan across a narrow bridge to the West Bank and very quickly passed the high dam of Aswan, and into the long, dusty desert that extends for thousands of miles to the West. I know the van was comfortable enough, especially for only four of us, but I will note that this journey required two drivers. I don’t think it really was a two-man job, but a combination of the Egyptian full employment act and the risks of crossing the desert with two western women made it necessary. One drove us out and the other drove us home. I suppose the security of having only one person to guide us into the desert might be considered dangerous. The cruise ship had packed box lunches for us all, so we took those under our arm, boarded the van and headed out.
After two hours of nothing but desert, we stopped for a break at a small roadside Café. I’m not sure that either desert roadside Café in the Mojave desert, or in death Valley is any nicer than the one here in the Sahara heading to Abu Simbel, but it still seemed like the scene from the Star Wars cantina with some pretty interesting characters. Another hour and a bit and we found ourselves in Abu Simbel, driving through security chicanes and checkpoints. Egyptian security seems to be on high alert down here probably because of the importance of the dam to the national economy and also probably because of some prior history of terrorism. We are, after all, only about 50 km from the Sudan border, and Sudan always strikes me as a place that I’d rather not be. That’s not based on any firsthand knowledge, but general knowledge of traveling the developing world.
From the parking lot of Abu Simbel, we walked downhill to the visitor center where Mahmood used the models in the open air center to explain to us the process by which both the Ramses II and the Nefertari temples were removed and relocated 500 meters higher up the mountain in the 1960s to accommodate the rising waters of Lake Nassar, the resulting reservoir created by the Aswan Dam. It was quite an undertaking, and took the Egyptian Antiquities Authority almost 5 years to accomplish by cutting up the two temples, both of which went deeply set into the mountain side at the base, and restoring them at a higher level under the dome of a man-made hill to mimic the original setting of the temples down below.
Then much to my pleasure, we boarded a golf cart that took us down the path around to the front of the temples at the side of the lake. Standing on the flat gravel plane in front of these two massive temples, one of which rises, 40 m, and the other, which rises some 20 m, is a sight to behold. If I hadn’t know that they had been moved, I never would’ve guessed it because the Egyptian Antiquities Authority seems to have done a fine job of replicating their original condition. Mahmood told us he thought that 90% of the people who come to Aswan carry-on to see Abu Simbel. You wouldn’t have known it from the day of our visi Of all of the temples and tombs we visited this week, Abu Simbel, was the one with the least people in attendance. It was actually pretty much empty and devoid of people, and the best evidence of that was that every time we stopped to take a picture we had a clear view of whatever we were trying to capture because there simply were no other people around. Having now spent the week in southern Egypt seeing one temple and tomb after another, I’m not sure I know how to describe the magnificence of the Abu Simbel temple, but I will say that it was worth every minute of the 7 hours of driving that we had to endure to get there and back from Aswan. Mahmood was not allowed into the temples. I’m supposing that’s because guides just create too much of a flow problem if they’re standing there, explaining things inside the temple to their clients, so he sat out in the shade. Kim, Melissa and I wandered through both the Ramses II temple and the Nefertari temple and noted that the Ramses temple is exactly twice the size of the Nefertari temple although neither of them lack for extreme beauty. Rather than think that Ramses was a cad for only building a half size temple for Nefertari, I believe the more appropriate thought here is thayt he built a temple for Nefertari in a remote place in the deep south of Egypt the Far south of the domain he ruled, for no reason other than his respect for his wife. These temples were built less as honorific places and more to perform specific functions so that the local high priests could carry-on with their community activities, and that there would be storage space inside the temples for the local treasury and other important items that were needed in the south. What that means is that the Nefertari temple was purely optional, and yet Ramses still built this for his wife much like a man in modern society, might be sure to take his wife a long business trip out of respect for her, and love for her companionship.
After taking all of the appropriate photographs, we headed over to the gift shop down by Lake Nasser and waited for our golf cart driver to come down to meet us at the appointed time of pick up. We had pre-paid the golf cart driver to take us down and pick us up and taking us back to the visitor center. Imagine our surprise given our pre-payment, and the fact that they were so few visitors to Abu Simbel that day, when he arrived with one of the four available seats, already occupied by a large older British woman. It was as though it hadn’t occurred to him that he agreed to pick the four of us up. We wondered what to do until Kim stopped off of the hillside and of course I told Mahmood to follow her.. In the meantime, the British woman in the back never thought twice about the inconvenience she was creating for us, and we continued on up the hill while Kim and Mahmood walked up. When we dismounted, I was quite mad at the dispatcher for having allowed this to happen. Mad in these things translates into an unwillingness to give out what would otherwise have been a very generous tip. He didn’t seem to understand why this would bother me so much and the cart driver did turn around and go back down the hill to pick up Kim and Mahmood. They had already walked more than halfway up. But he quickly got the idea when I sort of walked off in the direction of the visitor center, clearly stuffing my hand back in my pocket with no bills forthcoming for the baksheesh he would otherwise have expected. While we wound our way through this seemingly endless souvenir Souk, through which one is required to travel to get to the parking lot, both Kim and Mahmood tried to convince me that not tipping the man was a bad idea. I relented and gave Mahmmooik a smaller than I had expected to give tip but by that time the man was nowhere to be found and we left it to Mahmood to sort this out with him. the next time he found himself in Abu Simbel.
We got back in the van and all lounged our way back to Aswan, stopping at the same Star Wars cantina for a bathroom break and cool drink. The biggest attraction we saw in the desert was the miles of desert mirage that hung on the horizon, reminding us that the Sahara is vast, hot and lonely. We were only a few miles away from moving from the Levant down into sub-Saharan Africa and yet today was not about reaching for Africa, but rather finishing our tour of the wondrous Nile. Tomorrow we fly back up to civilization in Cairo and then on to Jordan on Sunday. We will instead reach north in the Levantine provinces of Petra and Wadi Rum.