Even although me and the island got off on the wrong foot I hold no grudges. I stayed at the Mango Guest House for three nights, mind you it should have been five nights as I mentioned before. But the two days were really adequate to see what I wanted to see within Aswan, next time I’ll fly to Abu Simbel because I think that the drive will be quite unbearable after having travelled to Luxor today.

I went to see the Unfinished Obelisk which is still stuck in place within the quarry in Aswan. When you see the size of this thing lying down, where you are able to walk to length of it, it is really hard to imagine how the hell they got the others from here to the river Nile and then onto wherever it needed to go. The other thing to take into consideration is that this was done maybe four thousand years ago when the tools and equipment were very different to what is available today. Even with today’s equipment it would take a colossal effort to remove said obelisk from its position and get it to the Nile. Did these clever Egyptians have some fancy gadgets that we are unaware of? Did they have that anti gravity machine that many folk have spoken about?

After here I headed to the Philae Temple, which had to be moved and rebuilt when the Aswan dam was built back in the 60’s. It’s a huge structure and to think that it was taken apart and then rebuilt in its new place high above the water line. My first experience of an Egyptian temple up close and personal was really good but there was no wow factor with this one, however when you stop and study the walls that are covered in hieroglyphs and to see the detail and accuracy of each cartouche which are repeated over and over again, then the disbelief of what you are looking at sets in. It’s as if they had used a stone 3D printer and just printed a few hundred copies which are identical. So far I’ve only seen the bare stone but these once used to have colour and I’m really looking forward to seeing them in all their glory.

Staying on the island was a great choice, because it was so quiet there. There are no cars and the pace of life and the air quality is so much better than in the other side of that short ferry ride to the mainland.

The guys that run the guest house were very helpful and looked after every request. The room was small but comfortable, however I’m hoping that tonight I’ll be able to have a better sleep because I’m hoping that I won’t here the Cockerell crowing in the wee small hours.