Our day started a little later this morning, and Dalia and our driver met us at the hotel at 10am. We had another really full on day - with the first stop being the Egyptian Museum - reached after a hair raising drive through Cairo. The traffic here is much more congested than at Giza, but still the vehicles share the road with people and animals. There are lots of police around, and there are security checks everywhere we go and our handbags are xrayed at every place, we have to go through scanners and guards and dogs inspect the vehicle before we are allowed to drive into the car park. It had rained heavily overnight so there was a lot of water lying about and Dalia showed us pictures on her phone of flooding in Alexandria and Giza.

Dalia is an archaeologist and she spent two hours showing us the most impressive and most important of the 120,000 exhibits in the Egyptian Museum, before leaving us to wander on our own for half an hour. Not enough time to see much, but Linda and I went in to see the mummies.

Dalia took us to lunch at another fabulous restaurant, this time on a boat moored on the Nile. The food was delicious, and we scoffed our way through a selection of salads (breads and dips) thinking this was a nice light lunch, only to have them bring out the main course of meat and rice - lamb, chicken and beef and finished off with cassata icecream. We really didn't need all this food, and in fact I was starting to feel a little squiffy from all the meat we are eating. At the end of each meal we make little pita pockets with all the left overs and give them to the homeless and hungry people out on the street.

It was then on to the Citadel - and here, half way through Dalia's presentation I started to feel dreadful - crampy gut and felt like I was going to faint. I said I needed to sit down, and Dalia rushed and got a chair for me to sit in whilst she continued her talk. On the way out I had an urgent need of a loo - and Dalia got permission for me to go to one. What a mission that was - I was ushered into a squatty, and struggled there, feeling extremely faint and not knowing if I was going to chuck as well, whilst balancing and trying not to get my clothes in the water on the floor. Murphy's law - as I came out Linda spotted a proper loo right next door. Too late now.

Dalia escorted me back to the entrance and asked to have the van brought up. I insisted I would be able to walk down all those stairs - but she was much more insistent than me and argued with the tourist police saying she had a very sick woman here. One of the Muslim women was fussing over me and putting perfume on a tissue for me to smell so I wouldn't faint.

At one point of Dalia's argument I heard her say New Zealand government - and suddenly the policeman was on his radio demanding that the van be brought up to the entrance of the Citadel.

As Dalia helped me into the van she said, "act very very sick now and when we get to the police check point." I asked what she had said to the police and she told me she had told the policeman she would ring the NZ embassy if he didn't get the van immediately. OMG Dalia - talk about overkill - but she said "No, these men have to learn to listen to me." Like I said she is a very assertive young woman.

From here we were driven to the railway station to catch the overnight train to Aswan. We had about a three hour wait for the train, but you never know how long it is going to take to get anywhere so the drivers always allow lots of time. The original guy who met me at the airport was there to assist us onto the train and he had found a space in a little cafe for us to wait with all our luggage.

A couple of trains came and left in the time we were sitting there drinking tea, and then all of sudden he rushed in and said 'hurry hurry this is your train' and we had to rush and pay for our cups of tea, give a tip to the waiter and get our luggage onto the train, and then proceeded to wait about fifteen minutes before we departed.

By this time it was just after 8pm and a short time later we were presented with our dinner. The other girls said it was quite delicious, but I just had a little of the rice. It was good - and I asked Leader Linda what the brown bits were and she told me they were fried noodles. Very tasty and washed down with the cup of black tea which was offered.

Ten minutes later the steward came back wanting money for the tea. A trick I have to get used to - It happened at dinner the other day - we ordered water and then Dalia suggested we might like soft drinks so we all ordered juice and then had to pay 25 pound ($4.70) Sneaky.

The steward came back and put the bunks down and we all settled down quite quickly. Very hard beds and a long night for me with several trips to the bathroom (I recall doing this on the train trip on my VUDA Adventure in Vietnam)

I didn't get much sleep and was quite pleased to arrive in Aswan where we were met by yet another local guide who drove us to the wharf to catch a ferry across to the hotel Movenpick on the island. Very luxurious.