Friday we had a flight to Aswan for the next leg of our journey. Egypt is going to be busy for us, lots of stuff to see and not much time to rest. We got to the domestic terminal at the airport, but we couldn't figure out where to get our boarding passes. Finally we asked someone and they told us we had to go through security first, then we could get our boarding passes. Strange, but turned out to be correct. Anyway it was only a one hour twenty minute flight to Aswan airport.
We needed to take a taxi to our hotel. We were booked at Sofitel Legend Old Cataract hotel. We went outside (much hotter in Aswan by the way) to look for a taxi, but there were no taxis, only guys with cars. Of course we were approached right away. I told the first guy Sofitel and he said “Sofitel Old Cataract?” so I knew he knew it. Then Yanmei asked “How much?” and he said “How much do you want to pay?”. We didn't like that so we moved on.
Eventually we settled on a guy who actually had the word “taxi” stenciled on the side of his car. The car was an old Peugeot with no meter, no AC, and the speedometer was broken too. He basically spoke no English but I told him Sofitel several times and he nodded. After driving for a while Yanmei started to get nervous. I was too, but tried not to show it. We were in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of some random guy who didn't speak English. Yanmei said I should have had someone from the hotel meet us at the airport. Good idea, too bad I didn't think of that ahead of time.
I took out my phone and searched for the hotel on Google maps. I found we were on the major road heading towards the hotel, so it looked good. Then we got to the intersection where he was supposed to turn left, and he turned right! We tried telling him he was going the wrong way, even showed him the map on my phone, but he didn't understand. He said “Sofitel downtown”. We passed the train station and I wanted to get out there and call the hotel to send someone, but he kept going. We ended up going down this little alleyway, weaving around donkey carts before stopping in front of a dilapidated building and he said “Sofitel”. I looked at the sign and it said “Safa Hotel”. Oh, sounds like Sofitel. Yanmei was freaking out a bit, saying “no, no, no, we are in a five star hotel!” Finally I told him “Sofitel Legend Old Cataract”, and he understood, he said “Oh, Old Cataract.” So he took us back out and to the correct place. Phew!
After that mini adventure we checked into the hotel and had a late lunch at the hotel cafe before relaxing in our room. The hotel is quite nice, and we had a suite overlooking the Nile. The bathroom was bigger than one of the rooms we stayed at in Taiwan.
We both ended up falling asleep. I woke up around 7:30pm, which is shortly after sunset, but it was still sweltering outside. We decided just to stay in the room and relax for the evening.
-David
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