Day Eight: Abu Simbel

April 25th, 2008

We were to meet our guide in the lobby of the Sunboat IV at 7 the next morning for transport to the airport. This meant getting up painfully early to eat breakfast, an adventure in unhappiness for yours truly because I had not slept the night before. Every time I began to fall asleep my throat closed shut, I started to choke, and I woke myself back up. The Cough was becoming an entity in its own right. So breakfast that morning was a miserable affair but I was determined to make the best of it since we were in Egypt, after all, and I did my best to muffle or hold back the spasms because the alternative was to put every other traveler there to worrying about the possibility that they too could catch Tuberculosis. (I didn't really have TB, but it definitely sounded like it). Over the course of our last few days in egypt I sucked on enough cough drops to build a scale model of the Temple of Karnak.

I had actually seen, just before lunch the previous day, the boat doctor. It was a bit like being Emily Dickinson, (I remember hearing once that Emily refused to let a doctor examine her closely and instead had him wait outside in the hall while she, in her room, walked past the open doorway, across his field of view - besides, she had a Newfoundland dog - what's not to identify with?), the doctor stood in front of me without touching me in any way and asked me a series of questions very seriously which I answered a great deal less seriously, but honestly at least. Then he went away and brought me back a bottle of cough syrup. It didn't really work though. Not against The Cough. So on that following morning, when we were due to travel by airplane to Abu Simbel, I sounded like a plague carrier.

In light of this, we were lucky in our mode of travel - because the only thing loud enough to drown out the sound of my Plague Monkeyhood was the Petroleum Air Service Dash 7.


Incidentally - please visit their website so you can view their logo because it is hilarious. Their motto appears to be "Looking for Accuracy" which, in retrospect, scares the crap out of me. Did they lose it somewhere???

The flight was memorable because I don't think I drew a single untortured breath throughout the whole of it, and also because it was the most turbulent flight I can recall in my lifetime. I hung grimly onto the armrests of my seat, when I wasn't covering my mouth to cough, and reflected upon the likelihood of my surviving the experience. I imagine everyone else on the flight was preoccupied with worrying about whether or not I was contagious. I made a great show of constantly washing my hands with disinfectant. *laughing*

And then we arrived in Abu Simbel. After a brief, albeit directionless, prayer of thanksgiving for my life to whatever god would hear me, we all trooped onto a bus to convoy out to the temple.

Some background - the temple of Abu Simbel was (no surprises here) built by Ramses the Great, Ramses II. It is in fact two temples, one for himself, and one for his wife Nefertari. And like so many other temples, it was flooded by the construction of the High Dam at Aswan, and the formation of Lake Nasser. (Which, incidentally, is freaking freaking freaking HUGE. The lake, I mean. HUGE.) So, like Philae Temple, Unesco came in and moved the temple at Abu Simbel to high ground. But unlike Philae, this involved even MORE terraforming of the new location - because the temple at Abu Simbel was built into a mountainside. So Unesco had to build a new mountain. Yeah, I'm not kidding. Madness.

Although we were further south than we'd ever been before in Egypt, this temple complex felt cooler than the others we'd visited. Situated RIGHT on the banks of Lake Nasser, the air was moist and the breeze off the water was delicious.

Delirious with exhaustion and cough drops, I wait for our egyptologist to explain the temple to us.

The Great or larger temple...the small figures at the very top are baboons greeting the rising sun. Baboons were important in egyptian mythology - they were another form of the god Thoth, and also involved with the journey of the dead through the afterlife. Because baboons are in the habit of screeching at daybreak, the ancient Egyptians believed they worshipped the sun.

The figure of Ra-Harakhty stands above the entrance. The temple was dedicated to him - the form of Horus combined with Ra - god of the morning sun.

You don't really realize how huge it is until you look at the people standing in front of it...

The broken statue lost his head during an earthquake in 27 b.c. It lies by his feet.

The statues are all of Ramses II, with various of his wives, sons, and daughters standing at his side...

While beneath his feet are chained the enemies of Egypt (in this case the Nubians I think)

Photographs were forbidden inside the temple but there is a very cool collection of four statues at the very back - and on two days out of the year a beam of sunlight strikes through the temple to touch three of the four statues in turn. The only statue it does not touch is the statue of the god of darkness, Ptah. The other three statues are of Amun-Re, Ramses II and Ra-Harakhty - to whom the temple was dedicated.

The Lesser or smaller temple was built in honor of his wife, Nefertari - it is significant that she is depicted as large as the Pharoah in her statues here - virtually unheard of. It was dedicated to Hathor.

The temple facade is composed of several statues of both Ramses and Nefertari

I am an inveterate bunny-ear giver. I make no apologies.

And I'm not going to apologize for this either. Although I have NO idea what I'm doing.

Looking back towards the Great temple, past the Lesser...

After Abu Simbel we boarded the bus again, which took us to lunch at this fabulous Nubian restaurant/home hotel thingy. It was awesome. One of the great tragedies of the modern era I think is the drowning of Nubia - Lake Nasser now covers an entire people's homeland. If anyone is interested in learning more about this, evidently this book is quite poignant.

The nubians either moved on their own ahead of the floodwaters, or were moved by the government to new houses built for them in Kom Ombo...but they can never go home.

Some few have remained on the edges of the lake - starting over. The name of the restaurant and hotel was Eskaleh and it was FABULOUS.

They grow their own crops for the restaurant and also operate a hotel! Anyone who visits Abu Simbel ought to stay there, it's beyond charming. I wish we had.

And the food was DELICIOUS

Their contact information if anyone would like it is:

Eskaleh
Nubian Traditional House
Fikry Kachif
email: eskaleh@tele2.ch
Mob: 0020 012 368 0521
Home: 0020 097 3401288
Fax: 0020 097 3401143

After lunch, which I managed through extreme force of willpower NOT to cough violently through, we departed once again for the dreaded PAS flight back to Aswan, to transfer to another flight back to Cairo.

There are no pictures of this because I think we'd all like to forget it ever happened.

Once back in Cairo we retreated to our hotel for some R&R. Around 10 p.m. I called my mother in the states to let her know we were still alive (in my case, barely) and to check in on the dogs. During our conversation she suddenly said, "Oh my god you are SICK! Have you seen a doctor??" I told her about the guy on the boat. "That's not good enough Vanessa call the doctor right now." Since immediately after hanging up I had a coughing fit so bad I threw up, meekly I obeyed. Mother knows best. The hotel has a doctor on call, who basically does room service, so we let the concierge know that we needed him and within a half hour he arrived. He was a bit more hands on than the previous doctor, and checked my pulse and listened to my heart beat and breathing while asking all the important questions. Then he pronounced judgment.

I had "an organism." This immediately put me in mind of Alien and I worried that something was going to come bursting out of my chest. Since we were leaving in two days there wasn't time to do a throat culture and figure out what bacteria was causing all the trouble, so he determined that I was to undergo a course of broad spectrum antibiotics...but because my throat was so very swollen (as evidenced by my inability to sleep due to choking the night before) he thought the first order of business ought to be a dose of anti-inflammatory. Delivered by shot.

"Okay," I thought. "No problem." I rolled up my sleeve. He had been fiddling in his medical bag and getting out a plastic-wrapped sharp (to my relief) and a fresh bottle of the anti-inflammatory but when he turned around and saw my exposed shoulder he shook his head.

"No no. In the...hip..."

Oh. My. God. I'm in a predominantly Muslim country where I have to make sure my shoulders and knees and everything in between is completely covered and now all of a sudden this guy wants me to drop trou? I mean I think we all know that "hip" is just a polite way of saying "bend over lady..."

My sudden squeamishness took me by surprise. As anyone who went to college with me knows, embarrassment regarding my body just isn't a hang up I have. I've dropped trou for much less than medical necessity, (believe me!), so why was I suddenly turning into some kind of missish, prim little...it was ridiculous. But I've never felt so awkward in my entire life. I blame Egypt. You can't spend 8 days in a country where the kneecap is considered sensual/sensational without it rubbing off on you a little bit.

Shyly I exposed the area needed and averted my eyes as the gigantic needle did its thing.

Then he rattled off a long list of medications I would be taking, along with the frequency and dosages. The antibiotic, an mucolytic, a cough suppressant/anti-inflammatory, (amen!), some other random drug I can't quite remember, and a slow-release vitamin C capsule.

This I expected. He then ALSO offered advice regarding the lifestyle I should lead while I was ill, which I did not expect. It was very much East meets West, medically. I was to avoid all foods and experiences which could be considered allergy inducing - for ANYONE not just myself. So I was supposed to avoid strawberries, dairy, flowers...if anyone could ever react allergically to it, I was not to have it. This sucked because one of the most delicious things in the world is the strawberry juice the hotel served. *sigh* No hot or cold food or beverages, room temperature only. I was to avoid all extremes of temperature, so I was supposed to take great care when getting out of bed in the morning and in and out of showers etc. I felt this doctor and I had a special connection, after the shot he'd given me in my rear, so I slavishly obeyed his dictates.

The medication came, and I was delirious enough with lack of sleep to find the packaging of the vitamin c supplement hilarious - (it read "C Retard" in huge letters). Then, thanks to the cough suppressant and the anti-inflammatory I slept for the first time in two days. Hurrah.

The next morning we would be touring Old Cairo.