More Guest Photography

(At the Aswan Dam)

The Guest Photographer has sent me some more of her ten million pictures from our cruise. She's trying to show me up, picture-wise.

Not too much of a challenge. Now, if I mislabel, please excuse. My memory has smooshed many of the cruise events into one big day with a few naps (and more than a few meals) in between temple visits.

Here we have boats at night - the river was constantly packed with cruise ships. At some docking places, we had to walk through the lobbies of four or even five ships to reach shore, great fun for the nosy. On the right, we have our Nubian motorboat pilot. It wasn't nearly cold enough for all those layers, in my opinion, but winter means different things to different climates.


Here are some sort of headless statues, and ancient fishies presumably being offered to hungry ancient gods.



Here I am in some of the ten million temples we visited. Yes, that is a 4 thousand year old column and, yes, I'm sitting on it. I'd do it again.


When the cruise boats are waiting to cross the lock and continue along their merry ways, they are surrounded by rowboat vendors. No, they are not selling rowboats. They sell teeshirts and towels and galibeya. The vendors toss their wares on board (uninvited, of course) then start demanding "My money!" and bargaining with tourists on board ("Are you England? Are you from English?"). They are very trusting to assume that the items will be returned, but I guess when they can get 100 pounds for two towels, it's worth the risk.

The Guest Photographer was fascinated with their oar-type-things, which are basically planks of wood without blade and without whatever the boating parlance is for the indentation before the blade. They seem to manage, but it is hard to understand how.


Here is Luxor Temple, which we visited at night. Like many sites, it was a wee bit crowded. The lights look really beautiful in these pictures, and there's even a bit of moon! GP sure has steady hands to get these photos unblurry!

Now that I think on it, the third image might be Kom Umbo.


This is the Valley of the Kings. The ticket allows for visits to three tombs out of the many, and to get around you must hike through this nothing valley. There was one tomb to which visitors had to climb over a mountain, but I didn't bother. I know my dad would have loved the challenge, but I was working on four hours' sleep in two days and all I wanted to do was sit down, perhaps on a Disneyland style train tour of the sites.

Unfortunately, no such train exists within the Valley walls (although one such train carried us from the visitor center, up this wimpy hill and to the gate).


Here I am in Philae. I am really jumping around, chronology-wise, which would drive the GP crazy. But this is my blog and I have the power! I am master of this window space! Hear me stand in silence staring into the distance!