We flew to Abu Simbel and back to Aswan today, the site of two magnificent temples. The one with these four colossal statues is the Temple of Ramses II. The entire site was moved across the Nile and to higher ground between 1964-68 when the High Dam at Aswan was opened. An impressive feat if engineering, but not nearly as impressive as the design and execution of the temples more than three thousand years ago.
This is Salah, our guide, who is a real prince of a man. All of us are deeply appreciative of his vast knowledge of Egypt, both ancient and modern, and his great skill and patience in knowing how to decode it for us.
It was about 40C (100F) but the grandeur of the site and the breeze off the Nile made it bearable. Still, we were all dripping while Salah (sans chapeau) and other Egyptians remained dry and unaffected.
In the spirit of ‘less is sometimes more,’ we are all happy to lounge about on the boat doing little this afternoon.
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