One reason I chose the tour company I did and went to Egypt at the time we did is because it was during the time of the Abu Simbel Sun Festival. Abu Simbel consists of two temples carved into the sides of mountains in 1264BC down at the very southern tip of Egypt near the border with Sudan. Twice a year at the spring and autumn equinoxes the sun is positioned just right so that it illuminates the statues of three gods at the very interior of the temple.
Bright and early (4am) we were picked up from our hotel to take us to the airport where we boarded an Egyptair plane to fly from Cairo to Aswan.
It was only about an hour and a half flight.
We went directly to our hotel. This was the view of the Nile River we had out of our hotel window.
We went to see the High Dam of Aswan, which was the highest dam in the world when it was built across the Nile in the 1960's.
I tried to get an artsy picture with the flowering bush in front of the dam, which I think is much prettier than the view above.
Our next stop was at the Philae Temple, which was on an island. It had to be moved when the dam was built because the location where it was became underwater.
An impressive entry way.
Our tour guide pointed out and explained several of the hieroglyphics to us.
A nice photo spot.
I added this photo of the map to show how far we traveled from Cairo down to Aswan, and from there we rode all night about 190 miles on a small bus without a bathroom down to the temple of Abu Simbel. We were given a box breakfast/lunch to eat on the trip.
We got on our bus at 11:15pm and arrived at 4:15am and our first stop was to use the restrooms.
Then we got in line with thousands of other people from all over the world-not only Egyptians- to wait our turn to enter the temple.
The sunlight hitting the interior of the temple happened right at sunrise, which is why we had to be there so early.
We watched the sun rise over Lake Nasser as we waited to enter the temple.
Here's what it looked like as we were going towards the entrance,
and here's what the phenomenon looked like once we got inside.
It reminded me of going to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris with huge crowds of people all jostling and shoving, trying to get to the front to get the best view.
It was pretty crazy, so Kent and I didn't get any pictures of us by the statues. There were workers inside hustling everyone to keep them moving. I'm photo bombing Lissa and Jason's picture below.
The best view I got without lots of arms and phones in the picture.
Since we were close to the end of the line, we got back in line and went through the temple again after we'd been rushed through, and this is what the statues look like the rest of the year, illuminated with artificial lighting.
This was another room in the temple, covered with the ubiquitous hieroglyphics.
Some of the detail of the temple on the outside of the entrance.
It was a truly magnificent structure and we took tons of pictures. Unfortunately the sun was right in our eyes as we took pictures after most of the crowds had left. Our tour guide gave us some information about the
Beside the larger temple there was a smaller one to the right of it, dedicated to the wives of the Pharaoh. We went inside the smaller temple, too, and then our tour guide gave us some information about the temples and their significance. We spent about four hours at Abu Simbel.
The last three pictures represent the scenery we saw out the windows of our bus as we drove back up to Aswan.
It was some of the bleakest and most desolate landscape I've ever seen.
What I don't have pictures of are the speed bumps and the several security checkpoints we had to pass through on the road. It took us four hours to drive those 190 miles.
We'd been on a cramped bus without access to a bathroom for eight hours, and so almost everyone was pretty tired, hungry and cranky by the time we finally arrived back at our hotel. At the hotel we picked up our luggage and were taken to the cruise ship that would take us to different ports along the Nile River for the next three days.
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