Heading South

I'm in a small room with computers on a side street in Aswan with the smell of incense and a VERY loud speaker calling everyone to prayer. Bailey has her hands over my ears cause she knows loudness is bad for my over sensitive Menieres ears. We rode an overnight train from 10PM to 11:30 AM last night all the way down to the southernmost town of Aswan. Except for the old man behind me snoring a bit, the trip was pretty uneventful. I woke up to a sun rising over bright green fields along the Nile, with peasants cutting the harvest by hand. There were hardly any cars, just mostly donkeys and bicycles and horse drawn carts. It looked so peaceful. I saw school children walking down dirt roads. It looked like they had a very long way to walk. The people wore long robes that flowed in the morning breeze. I stared out the window for hours like this, watching palm trees and little estuaries pass by. One of my best mornings ever.

Now,we're along the Nile River and there are felucca sailboats everywhere and large riverboats for the busses of tourists. Today was basically spent walking around and arranging our plans for the next few days. We finally met (or I should say we were found by) Captain Ayoub, a 33 year old felucca sailor who flies a Bob Marley flag on his boat. He took us out to the boat and we hung out for an hour or so, sipping hibiscus tea and watching the sun set over the sand dunes and riverside reeds. We decided to make a deal with him and we'll be leaving the day after tomorrow for a 2 night, 3 day cruise downriver, stopping occasionally to make a fire on the bank or take a swim. I'm looking forward to doing nothing after the last few crazy Cairo days of walking through the maze of streetvendors and cars and people. Tomorrow, we are going to Abu Simbel, where we'll visit the temple carved out of a mountain by Ramses II. It's 3 hours away from here, so we leave at 3:30 AM. Going to go eat now and then off to bed.