We got our wake up call at 5am this morning, then I went down for a breakfast omelette, while Darren opted to get a shower instead of breakfast, then we met up in the lobby at 6. We had to walk through about 6 or 7 cruise ships to get to the dock, as they were all lined up next to each other and ours was on the end. They were all empty too, apart from a few security guards sleeping on the floor. It's crazy that there used to be so many cruise ships on the Nile, b...

Today we opted to skip the optional temples that we could stop at, and instead had an epic sleep in! We woke and went back to sleep a few times, then got a call from Ramzy letting us know that lunch would be served at 2pm. So we got up for lunch, which was again delicious, then went up to the top deck for some glorious sunshine (have to get as much of this as we can, before we head back into European winter!). We hung out up there with Sophie and Steve, just watc...

So we received our wake up call at 3am this morning, got ready, grabbed our pillows and met everyone in the lobby before heading out to the van. We drove just down the road where we met a bunch of policemen who were organising our convoy that morning. A polceman joined us in our van and we started on the three hour trip to Abu Simbel. The journey was very slightly better with pillows on board, but still ridiculously bumpy enough for us to get hardly any sleep. I ...

After a few rest stops here and there (and some disgusting toilets!) we woke up to the van stopped and a whole lot of men outside (some with guns) all yelling at each other! Apparently we had stopped to find some petrol, and ended up having to buy some on the black market! So Ramzy and our driver were out negotiating with them for a while, then when they got back in we drove down some creepy streets where there was a pack of possibly stray dogs hanging around and...

I woke up at 7:45 this morning only because I needed the toilet, and realised we never got our 7:30 wake up call!! So I woke Darren and we got up, packed and went downstairs for breakfast. Breakfast was a very disappointing mix of meats, cheeses, stale bread, stale cereal and too-strong black tea. When we told Ramzy about our lack of wake up call, he went and asked reception, and apparently they said our phone didn't work and the bellman was just about to go wake...