Today we were woken up with a wake-up call at 3:45 am and went down for 4:30 am to meet our group we climbed aboard a minibus which would drive us to the temple of Abu Simbel luckily I managed to get the back row of the bus so I was able to fully lie down and sleep.
The drive took three hours with a quick pee break in the middle where I bought tomatoes crisps which tasted close to South African Simba. In the last hour of our journey, Mayer told us about the temple and its history including how it also had been moved too due to the new dam.
We arrived at around 8:30 am and went to the temple where we were practically the only people there, Mayer you’re told us they usually get 15,000 people a day, and that this was extremely rare and lucky (thanks covid) that we were the only ones. We took a few photos outside before heading inside to see giant statues of Rameses the second and beautiful painted scenes, after visiting the temple we were able to also visit the smaller temple he had built for his wife.
Finally, we visited the visitor centre to see pictures of the construction before getting back onto the bus for another three hours back. just before arriving in Aswan we stopped by a government-owned shop where they told us about scented oils and explained how they worked, we went into a room where they showed us all the different types of oils and we were able to smell and learn about their benefits. After trying various oils we were offered a five minute back massage so all the boys went into one room and all the girls into another, and one at a time we got a back massage with oil said they had just shown us.
After this, we headed back to our hotel where I took a nap. At six we left the hotel to get dinner in a boat by the Nile, I got a Tagine which was quite delicious, finally, after a long day, we headed back to the hotel to sleep.