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I led another expedition today, this time to the Nobles tombs on the West Bank. We left at 8am and went down to the motorboat port in front of McDonalds. As usual the price told to me by the guy on reception at the hotel was not the price and the motorboat operator wanted 10 EGP each! We managed to get away with a return fare of eight.
We got over there and had about three tombs unlocked for us, which was a bit pitiful considering how much we had to pay to go in. The guy unlocking the tombs tried to insist on doing a bit of guiding, but we all insisted repeatedly, that it wasn't necessary. I have to say, that it one thing that is good with travelling with a group of likeminded people in Egypt, there is always more than just me to say "No thank you".
Some of the tombs still had some remaining paint, which was amazing, considering most of them are from the Old Kingdom, the time the pyramids were built. The view from the tombs over Aswan was beautiful and it was interesting to look down the ramps, leading down to the Nile, after looking up and wanting to visit this place for so long.
We went into one tomb, the tomb of Harkhuf and looked at the single chamber, followed by a downward leading corridor, that seemed not to go anywhere. As our annoying friend was not around I decided to crawl down the long descending shaft, which went about 25m into the rock. Once at the bottom I cursed myself for not bringing my head torch at the passage curved down into the rock even further. Luckily Denise came down and joined me, there wasn't much further to go, but I knew if I had gone on by myself I may have fallen down a pit used to trap tomb robbers.
I did go in another tomb which had one of these pits and stopped just in time to stop myself falling down into it and breaking every bone in my body. I was the only one in there and Aaron and Denise joined me to see the ancient booby trap.
Siobhan and I hung around a bit longer and walked over the sand dunes in an attempt to find the monastery of St. Simian. We saw it from a distance out in the desert, but thought, it's probably further than it looks and we had already had a big day.
We all got the boat back to the East bank and had McDonalds for lunch, yet again. I spent the rest of the day in my lovely air conditioned room and on the internet, god bless civilisation.
Guy wanted to take us to the restaurant he had been too earlier, called Nubia house on Elephantine Island. I went along and we went and got the boat. To get there we had to walk through the Nubian Village and we saw this goat, which was the dopiest goat any of us had ever seen, and we've seen a lot of goats! It almost looked like it was wearing a wig, parted on the side and had a really silly expression on its face.
We reached Nubia house and were the only ones there, the man living there had a baby crocodile in a glass tank, which I thought was cute. We had dinner on the roof and watched the sunset over the west bank, which was magical. We had a great dinner and then went back to the hotel via the new Movenpick hotel. Guy, Kristel, Aaron and I decided to stick around and we had a few games of pool. Kristel and Aaron left and Guy and I just hung out enjoying the nice surroundings before getting the public ferry back to the hotel.
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