News has been dominated by the ferry that went down last night between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Not looking good. It hasn't been a good year for accidents in Egypt - a bus rolled in January killing a bunch of Aussie policemen on vacation, and last week another bus crash killed a bunch of tourists from Hong Kong. Now this.
Notwithstanding, we did the quick in and out flight to Abu Simbel today on Egypt Air. See pic. Its pretty astounding - those stautes are about 30 yards tall. The four of them would sit overlooking the Nile, mostly to intimidate people coming up the Nile into Egypt's south that there was a seriously powerful king up ahead. Worked pretty well I imagine - its no mean feat. More recently, the whole temple structure (its cut into the mountain and extends back 50 yards into a number of rooms with carved reliefs, more statues and columns, mostly proclaiming Ramses II's greatness - he was not a modest man) was taken apart, moved to higher ground 200m above the original location and reassembled to beat the Lake Nasser flood waters from ther new dam. They did a great job - even recreated the original rock facades and landscape so that you can't tell at all.
Rest of the day was pretty relaxed; we head back to Cairo tomorrow
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