Abu Simbel!

This was a long day,. as we were up at 5 a.m. to catch a flight to Abu Simbel. Of course, the flight was delayed, which meant our time at the temples of Ramses II and Nefertari would be shorter--except that our team talked to the airline, and they agreed to delay the return flight to allow us more time!

Gotta love a tourist economy.

The temples at Abu Simbel are amazing, but what is even more amazing is that they were moved, lock, stock and barrel, from a lower location to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser back in the 1960's. It was a real feat of engineering, and received world-wide support. If you look carefully at some of these photos, you can see the lines where they sliced through the rock to make smaller pieces that they then moved and reassembled up above the lake.

The largest temple is by Ramses II, and features four gigantic images of Ramses on the front. He also includes his own image on all of the columns in his temple, which tower over visitors. And the inner sanctum has four seated gods, one of which, never sees the sun--being a god of the underworld.

The smaller temple Ramses II built for his beloved favorite wife, Nefertari. She got four statues of him next to two statue of her...ahem.

She appears in two forms, the more attractive version on the front of the temple, and then a less attractive face on the columns inside.

Kom Ombo temple complex.

After we caught our flight back to Aswan, we managed to fit in a quick visit to the temple at Kom Ombo at sunset.

This is apparently a popular stop for all the cruise ships, as this was the one place that was jam-packed during our visit. Ahmed gave us the rundown on the temple (Greek, as you can see the figures have tummies, something never seen on Egyptian temples!) and let us explore the crocodile museum--complete with croc mummies.

By the time we got back to the ship, the sun had set, and we were sailing on the NIle. And I managed to catch a dim image of the comet as it made an appearance despite the Saharan dust in the air.

Like I said, a long day, but a memorable one!