Photos taken by our wanderers are NOT being posted because they have yet to encounter any location where digital images could be affordably transmitted! Likely we will wait to return, pool our phots and put albums of the best ones up later.

Steav's return to writing also means that Bill C. is back to typing these marvelous messages into his Blackberry (while sailing on the Fellucca). This is definitely one time when Bill's detail-orientation and "all thumbs" skills are to the readers' absolute advantage!!

Back to the blog (by Steav)....I don't know what day it is but I will by the time this entry is done. I never meant for this to be a daily diary but with the sensory overload, blogging almost seems trite.

Monday we hired a taxi for the whole day: Giza, Saqqar, and Dashur. When they decided the Giza Pyramids were the 7th Wonder of the Ancient World, they (whoever "they" are) obviously didn't check out Saqqar. Time and tourism probably have something to do with it, too, but Giza is like visiting the Statue of Liberty and Saqqar is like visiting the Museum of Natural History. The Step Pyramid plus the extensive temple and tomb areas around Saqqar are so full of information and beauty and ancient intrigue as to make the Giza Pyramids plain in comparison. Saqqar is the "Grandfather of the Pyramids" and Dashur is the "Father".

The Step Pyramid (Saqqar) was the first attempt by Hotep to turn previous "wooden" temple structures into stone. The Black Pyramid (Dashur) was the next generation by creating a smooth sided pyramid. It was an impressive disaster structurally . . . but the designer, Hotep, learned from the mistake and gave birth to the Bent Pyramid. Another mistake but not a disaster. The angle of the sides (54 degrees) was too steep to support the structure so they reduced the angle about half way up to 47 degrees and continued building successfully. The change in angle gives the pyramid its curious lopsided or "Bent" shape.

The Red Pyramid was the final design and it succeeded wonderfully as the prototype of the "Great Pyramids" but is outstandingly great all by itself. For me (Steav) this was the goal of the whole trip: Saqqar and Dashur . . . it was more than expected. Our legs were, collectively, shot by the end of the day when we did our ascent and descent into the Red Pyramid but the pleasure far outweighed the pain.

Monday night: train to Aswan (12.5 hours). We arrived early Tuesday afternoon and checked into the Nubinile Hotel which was under renovation. The fumes and cement dust were only trumped by the lack of running water and the toilets that did not flush when there was water. Egyptian pizza tasted really good (but possibly led to touchy tummies for some of us).

Wednesday: up at 2:30 AM for showers (the water works during the night? Go figure) and for our departure with the convoy military escort to Abu Simbel (3.5 hours travel but well worth it). We all now want to find and watch a NGS special on how they moved it to rescue it from the impending Lake Nasser in the 1960s. At that time, it was deconstructed and reconstructed at its present site. This place is a treasure of heiroglyphs and carvings of Ramses II: a certain vanity is hard to miss.

We stopped at the Phylae Temple enroute back to Aswan (another rescued site from the Aswan Dam project and much later in history from Abu Simbel). The Greek influence is obvious and striking.

Our stop to see the High Dam (it looks like a dam) completed a 5000 year journey covered in a single day. And that day was Wednesday...I'm getting my sense of time back.

Wednesday night was an amazing change of pace: a motorboat ride to the western shore, a camel ride to a Nubian Village followed by dinner and dancing: Nubian style! It felt like being part of a NGS special all by itself.

That brings us to Thursday when we boarded our Nubian Fellucca to sail north to Luxor (north = down the Nile: it flows north).

Stephan and Omar are captain, crew, cook and evening entertainers: just as nice as anyone could be. The day sailing was a welcome respite from travelling by everything else (camels and walking included). Beached the Fellucca in the evening for dinner, campfire, more singing and dancing (Bill Bates danced!). We sang the longest version of "she'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" I've ever heard...20 minutes? It was great fun!

And it's Friday: we are back a la Fallucca bound for a small village to check out the camel market and a meal of camel meat....I wonder if it tastes like chicken....