Egypt - page 4 - Cruising the Nile

This is our 100-year-old, 75' dahabiya, with a captain, crew of 3, a cook & assistant, and an Egyptologist guide.

We slept downstairs and spent the rest of the time on the top deck, playing dominoes as the scenery slid by.
Since everyone in Egypt plays dominoes, the crew liked to take turns giving advice to one of us.

The dahabiya has a fore sail and an aft sail.

If the winds weren't strong enough, this tug pulled us.  Note the huge ship in the background.
Russ dubbed them "float-tels."  Believe it or not, a Nile cruise costs the same in a floattel as on our dahabiya.

You see things from a boat that you would never see from shore, like these mosaics under the bridge.

Most buildings in Egypt have rebar showing on top even though people are living in them.
By being unfinished, the building is not taxable.  Note the erosion of the older-style mud brick buildings.

As we approached the locks, the floattels slowed and were approached by vendors in rowboats,
who threw their wares with impeccable accuracy to tourists on the top deck!

If the tourists didn't want to pay the price, they threw the merchandise back, not always as accurately.
I think this particular package landed in the Nile.

We shared our lock with a floattel.

Two women doing their wash.  People keep their home and business areas very clean, but piles of trash accumulate in the common areas, like along the riverbank here.

These two young water buffalo wanted to play.  They tried to butt heads, but their ropes were too short.  
They also tried to come over to see our boat.  I never knew that the larger farm animals were so playful.

The Nile was pretty clean upstream of Cairo.  I saw the Captain drink Nile water, but we stuck to bottled.

If the Edfu Temple looks familiar, you may have seen sketches done by artists traveling with Napoleon in 1798-9.

To give you an idea of the scale we're talking about, here's Russ vs Edfu.

It was nice to see that not all the tourists are foreigners.

More locals enjoying their awesome heritage, or maybe a good joke: "Where do mummies go for a swim?"

I had quite a case of "Egyptian-monument neck" most of the time, to accompany "Egyptian-desert nose",
a description of whose symptoms I will spare you.

Starting with the man whose arms are raised (top line) and moving right, the inscriptions read 1,333,331.
I forgot to ask our Egyptologist 1,333,331 of what? But the jar symbol following it could mean beer or wine.

Apparently the ancient Egyptians invented Riverdance moves.

The Temple of Edfu is dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god.

Sorry for the blurry image, but I tried to snap a photo of the men hanging onto the back of the bus in Edfu.

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