After a leisurely buffet breakfast at the hotel we met with our new local, guide, Mervat, and boarded a boat for our trip along the Nile to visit a Nubian village.

We arrived, scrambled up the bank and made our way through this lovely village to meet with a family who welcomed us into their home. We were made comfortable and immediately offered a 'hospitality drink' before being introduced to Nubian life.

It was lovely and cool inside this sandstone house, and it was much bigger than it looked from the outside with many rooms. It is the womans role to decorate and furnish the home and all the walls were beautifully decorated with paintings and all the furniture was hand made from palm sticks, with hand woven mats and covers. We were offered breakfast and I tried some bread dipped in black honey (molasses) which was very sweet.

We got our henna tattoos done in traditional Nubian style - these are black and quite a heavy design but very pretty.

A big surprise was being introduced to the family pets - crocodiles - kept in a cage at the front of the house. We got to hold the baby one and would have been allowed to touch the big ones if we had been brave enough. No - baby one is enough for me. I felt sorry for them as their cage wasn't very big and there wasn't a lot of water in it.

We were given a tour of the house which is very simple with very few possessions, but taking prime position in both the son's and the husbands bedrooms was a flat screen TV.

As we left the home we were greeted by two elderly women selling beads and hats and other little trinkets. The necklaces and crocheted mens hats were probably made by them, but the dolls they were selling more than likely coming from China. Of course they denied it saying "No Nubian dolls" and we haggled with them and bought a necklace each and paid for Linda to have her photo taken. And I bought a little hat to add to Rodney's collection.

We are having a major problem with money - everyone wants money for absolutely everything - take a photo of them they want money, they take a photo of you on your camera they want money, we need to tip them on top of what our guides are paying them, but neither of us have any small change. So we are having to do a bit of sharing between ourselves - I paid for the three tattoos at 20 pounds each, and Leader Linda paid for the necklace and hat I bought for 25. Now I owe her 5.

Linda had loaned me 50 pounds when we bought paintings by a local artist at breakfast this morning, so now I only owe her 30 pounds. Therefore tipping has been a huge problem, so Linda and I discussed it and decided to give Leader Linda 100 pounds each and let her take care of the tips as she has a small supply of the smaller notes and knows what and when it is appropriate to tip.

We had a ten minute walk through the village to the restaurant where we had lunch. We could have had a camel ride along the way but we had done that in Giza and decided that the walk would be good for us.

A black limousine (just a small one) came up behind us as we walked along the road, tooting for us to get out of the way. We stepped aside and they drove about fifty metres past us and pulled up outside a hotel. A man had got out and a woman was getting out just us we came up alongside. The driver had all her luggage in his hand, and she thumped him on the shoulder with her water bottle and handed that to him to carry as well. I didn't hear them speaking so don't know what nationality they were, but what an arrogant old cow she was. I so wanted to go and tell her so as well, but thought I'd better not start an international incident over a water bottle.

Our lunch was the most delicious meal we have had so far. Fresh lettuce and cucumber salad with a lovely lemon dressing, rice, and a combination of vegetables (peas, beans, zuchinni, eggplant and tomatoes) cooked in a tagine as well as chicken and kofta. All the meals have been delicious but we have been missing our vegetables and greens so we all really enjoyed this one.

It was then back onto our boat for the relaxing ride back along the Nile to our hotel, making arrangements to meet our guide and drivers at 3.00am tomorrow for the trip to Abu Simbel.