Breakfast was cool! We haven't really been talking about the meals but I felt that I had to mention something about it because in the freshly cooked food area they were making omelettes and pancakes! We had one of each :) We only wanted omelettes but we had made friends with one of the chefs (Fares) and he was working in the cooking area so he decided that we needed to have one of each.
After breakfast we went and sat up in the lounge area on the sun deck and read, blogged, chatted with the others in the group and enjoyed the scenary. We could see why the Pharoahs were inspired to build pyramids because all around us were the tops of mountains. Mina informed us that Lake Nasser is 500 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide as well as 140 metres deep. All the mountain ranges we saw were those that had not been submerged when the lake was created which meant that they were huge and that there were hundreds of mountain ranges in the lake.
At 11 the ship stopped near Kasr Ibrim, an old fortress that sat atop a mountain that saw the last of the Egyptian Culture as Christianity swept through the country, became a church for the christians before the Muslim religion began to spread and then became a mosque and a meeting area for trading before it was destroyed by natural events. When we sailed past Kasr Ibrim, we were nearly level with it but Mina informed us that before the construction of the High Dam, Kasr Ibrim stood on a mountain about 80 metres high.
We had a bit of a swim and then went down for lunch. After lunch the ship stopped for an on shore excursion. To get from the ship to the temples, we had to get onto little motor boats that ferried us to the shore. There was a make shift gangway of two planks to get from the motor boat to the shore and a handrail that consisted of a long thick piece of wood held besides the planks by two guys from the boat. It was pretty awesome.
We visited the temples of Amada, Derr and the tomb of Penout (the viceroy of Nubia). All these places had been relocated from their original sites due to the High Dam and had been placed nearby each other. Although it was the afternoon it was still fairly hot but it was nice to stroll casually through the desert between each of the sites. Some people took camels to get from site to site but we chose to walk. Once we finished we got back on the motor boat and were ferried back to the ship.
The rest of the afternoon was very casual. We hung out in our room reading and blogging until 5:00 pm when we went and met Mina in the lounge bar so that he could show us a movie on the rescuing of Egypts monuments. The movie was very cool. It showed how they built a barrier around the temples of Abu Simbel and broke the temple into hundreds of giant pieces to relocate it 60 metres higher and how they reassembled it and rebuilt the mountain around the temples. It also showed the rescue of some of the other temples that we had visited, although not in so much detail, and gave a detailed account of the saving of Philae temple which was already flooded due to the construction of the first Aswan dam.
The movie was followed by cocktails in the lounge bar with the manager of the ship. It was all very swish. The manager introduced himself and gave us information about the El Khayam and introduced his chief staff on the ship. He also invited us all to a tour of the ship the next day to visit the kitchen and the bridge and said that he might even let us steer the ship! There were alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails. We stuck to the non-alcoholic fruity cocktails which were delicious and disappeared within minutes.
After the cocktails was dinner in the restaurant. Mina informed us that we had a 7:20 am start in the morning to visit Wadi El Saboua so after dinner we retired to the room (we're such nannas) to read and blog before getting an early night.
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