We're told the temperature is 35 degrees today. Funny how that's starting to feel cool.

I changed my mind. If it's 35 degrees in Abu Simbel it does bit feel cool. It was a pretty short trip from Aswan. We got off the plane and went straight to the site of the two temples. Obviously most of the plane was here for the same reason because we all got onto buses and headed out. Fortunately we only had to share a guide with Maureen and Rob and another Asian couple.

The temples are magnificent. The statues of the temple dedicated to Ramses II are not the best preserved of all the ones we've seen but the sheer size of the more than makes up for it. Going inside, the painting and carvings were better preserved because it had all been filled by sand until about two hundred years ago.

The roofs of the storage rooms inside are quite low and you can feel the pressure of the mountain on top of you, despite it not being the original mountain. Only by the outline of the blocks can you tell it's not in it's original position. The most holy room in the temple, the one with the statues in it only sees sun in two days if the year and since they moved the temple that day has changed to one day later.

There is a lot of graffiti on the statues dating back to the 1800 from all the explorers who found the site and excavated it. They've left their names and dates behind. When you think about it the graffiti is almost as historic as the temples themselves.

The other temple at the site is dedicated to Ramses II's wife Nefertary. She was only one of his wives but she was his favorite. She was the one who invented the perfume Secret of the Desert that I got at the perfumery yesterday. Her temple is much smaller but I think it's more beautiful than the bigger one of Ramses.

The flight back to Aswan is pretty rough. Lots of turbulence. Also I'm starving. We forgot to get lunch at the airport and as we won't be getting off the plane in Aswan we won't get the chance to grab something until Cairo.

It certainly took a while to get our luggage. I think we must have been waiting at least three quarters of an hour. While we were waiting Abe and Katherine flew in on a later flight. They hadn't gone down to Abu Simbel so they got to sleep in on the boat. I was so hungry. We drove through the city on the way to the hotel and it was really interesting to see the life in the city. The last few times we drove through Cairo we were either exhausted from our flight or exhausted from the early start. We passed a few of the sites that we are going to see tomorrow. We are staying in the same hotel as last time. We got a different room this time, one with a better view of the pool area.

We had dinner in the dinning room which was very nice except for the time it took for us to get our meals and the decor. Rather than being Egyptian the area has a distinctly Fijian or island feel to it. Strange to come all the way over here to see something so common at home.