Day 5 started at 4 AM, because we had to travel by car for 3 hours to Abu Simbel to see the amazing temples of Ramses II and his most loved wife Nefertari – this is what I was looking for since the beginning of our trip!

So we met with Halim at 3.30 AM when a car was waiting for us. We had to get to the meeting point with all the other tourist buses where we would start our trip with a convoy of police and militaries who would be at the beginning, middle and end of the queue of buses. They write the number of each car and on the way to the temple they check all the buses/cars. At the beginning, of course, they check each car and bus for explosives. We didn’t sleep a lot, but we couldn’t sleep in the car as it wasn’t very convenient for more than half an hour. We arrived around 7 AM at the temple. As Halim told us, Ramesses II rules Egypt for 67 year, he had 96 sons and 60 daughters. Queen Nefertari was his favourite wife and she was Nubian, so he chose Nubia to build his temple and hers too. He built 6 or 7 temples in Nubia. Unfortunately when they built the second dam, the Nubian village was flooded. They could only safely move away around 24 temples before the water came in. There are still many tombs and temples left under the water of lake Nasser.

The temple of Ramesses and Nefertari was moved for 4 years by engineers and all this costed 40 mln Egyptian pounds. The temple is just Stunning!!! They say that twice a year the sun goes in and shines over the statues of Ramesses and Amon Ra (the sun god), and Ra-Harakhty (god of the rising sun), leaving Ptah (god of the underworld and darkness) in the dark. The days are the coronation day of the king and his birthday.

So, here’s THE Temple:

Halim offered us one more excursion which really worth it the money – seeing the Nubian village, including one of the most beautiful botanical gardens, the restricted area, a place to swim in the river where the water is so clean and then visiting the actual village with a living crocodile “meeting” included, sadly the crocodiles were not so friendly, so we had a chance to hold only a month old baby. I recommend this excursion to anyone who goes in Aswan, it’s worth it so much! All this on a sailing boat!

The botanical garden was full of exotic trees and palms, flowers and there’s a stunning view to a “sand mountain”, i.e. desert with some tombs on top of it. We were attraction to the Egyptian kids, by the way, they ask you for your name and if you stop to answer then you’ve got tens of kids around you in no time. Cute kids though, but they’re making pictures of you and this was very strange for me.

Then we went to the place to swim, but I didn’t, because it was too windy and I would’ve freeze after that. Finally we were in the Nubian village where we saw the most important building – school, prayers room, school for adults,  mosque and playground for the kids, we had a quick Arabic alphabet and numbers lesson with a nice teacher and then we went to the house of a local man Ahmed who has crocodiles as pets in his house We saw the crocodiles and smoked shisha and had some local bread with sauces and halva and we hold a baby crocodile, around 3 weeks old.

I really recommend you this excursion, I didn’t regret going there for minute!