We have now arrived in Aswan and are going to try to get our Sudanese visa's. We are assured that this is the place to do it, however in the last day or so Ruth has had word that there has been a rule change - so all plans are on hold until we have our visas. We all went to the Sudan Embassy this morning at 10am and by 1pm we were still waiting for news. Poor Ruth spent the morning drinking endless cups of tea being told ten different things. We all sat on the gutter opposite the embassy waiting for the decision. We finally got to submit our applications at 3pm but not our passports or money... which did not bode well. They said to come back in 3 days and we would get our visa's so fingers crossed it all goes to plan.

As luck would have it we are in town for one of two occassions when you can witness sun rise at Abu Simbel, so we booked a tour and got picked up at midnight from our hotel for the 3 hour drive to the temple where we waited for the sun to rise and saw it hit the three gods at the rear of the temple. We had to drive on a military road with numerous check points so all vehicles driving out there always drive in armed convoy, thankfully our tour leader 'Turkey' refused to let them put an armed guard on our bus. There were a lot of police about just casually flinging their machine guns over their shoulders - we just hoped that they all had their safety switches on.

Abu Simbel is 2 temples which are related to the Nubian people. In the 1960s a dam was built near Aswan which flooded all the ground the Nubian people lived on. Egypt and UNESCO decided to move the temple 250 metres up the bank of the new dam to preserve it. It took 6 years and it was cut into blocks for the move. It is rather amazing as you can barely see where they cut it up and effectively stuck it back together. In the past up to 3000 people have come for the sunrise ceremony, however today there was only about 1000. You can really see that tourism is suffering as there is a gross lack of tourists everywhere and the market stall owners are desperate for you to look at their goods. It is hugely obvious that they are just not making sales and suffering.

We ended up being out for about 11 hours, so when we got back to the hotel it was showers and a nap. At 2pm we headed off on a boat ride to a traditional Nubian village and had a traditional dinner. We stopped on the way at a beach on the banks of the Nile however it was far too cold to swim. At the house where we had dinner we got to walk around a traditional house and see how the Nubian's live. Their houses are based around an open courtyard and they even had beds on the roof for sleeping in summer. Once dinner was done we were also able to get henna tattoo's for the bargain price of £2! I got a flowery design on my foot just to add a little something African. The family even had 2 small crocodiles which they caught when they were very young. They grow them for up to 5 years and then kill and eat them - they don't name them as they don't consider them pets, but as a lucky charm for the house.