Part III - Edfu - Esna

Day 2:
Listening to: The sound of table tennis

We had plans to visit Edfu temple at 6.30am this morning, but decided against it. I was very cold through the night and hadn't slept for the noise of the engine of our boat and the boat moored next door. Actually glad we didnt as we found out that while Edfu is an amazing awesome place, by the time you got there, queued and fought the hassle of the touts, you had 30 minutes to see such a massive site with approximately 2,000 other people. Did I mention why we hate tour groups already?

Maybe next time - when we can do it by ourselves, although moving into Luxor is getting harder to travel independently due to having to travel in Police escorted convoys. We have two armed guards on our boat (every boat) one up front and one down back. It's all supposedly for our protection due to an Islamist insurgency in the mid 90's where more than a thousand deaths occured. Mostly police, but tourists were caught up in the attacks also. It can severely disrupt travel in this region and time at sites is restricted due to the convoys etc. We're inclined to think it makes us more of a target as any terrorists will know when a whole heap of foreigners will be at any given time. But for now we just have to roll with it and hope it doesn't interfere with our travel plans too much.

We're sitting on the deck, soaking up the sun and the Nile while writing in our diaries and really it's just magick!! And while it's only a 2 1/2 star boat, it's a step up from where we've been staying and we're cruising the Nile for crissake!! Can't get much better than that. It's basically a felucca with more space and facilities which makes for a much more pleasant trip :)