The first day we decided to drive around to some small downs nearby. The proprietor of our hotel was very enthusiastic about this idea and gave us lots of recommendations. There are two small lakes in the area and some of the views are supposed to be great.
We got off to a late start and stopped at a restaurant in Castel Gandolfo that he recommended.
Great view, but as I've found in other restaurants with great views, the food left something to be desired.
View across the lakeClose up of the town, Rocca di Papa, across the lakeRough map of our route
We didn't find much in Nemi so we continued to Rocca di Pappa. At one point the road did a spiral to gain altitude, which was interesting, but we didn't get a picture.
Ancient Romans used to build no more than seven stories, a tradition that is often kept today, because who wants to climb more than seven flights of stairs to get home?We found a church with a cemetery on the side of the hill. Almost every tomb had fresh flowers.
We kept going up hill until we were forced to go down a very narrow road. It was so narrow I was worried we'd scrape the side view mirrors. The picture it is already widening in the picture below.
Approaching a church on a hillAlternate view of church we were approaching down the steep hill
We found a spot to park on the street. We saw it was pay parking and you had to buy a ticket at the pay station, so we went to pay. For some reason Yanmei took a photo of that. I thought it said €0.80/hr, so I put in two Euro to be safe, but I must have misunderstood something because it gave me a ticket good until 9:30am the next day.
As I was doing this a young girl ran up to us and said something in Italian. Yanmei asked if she wanted to help us and if she spoke English. She said “no” and ran off. I went back to the car to put the ticket there and a local polizia was already standing at my car writing. I showed him my paid ticket and he let me off, lol. Maybe that was what the girl was telling us. Anyway that polizia was diligent, later I saw him standing beside a spot as a guy was trying to parallel park into it, ready to start writing as soon as he finished.
Yanmei with a couple of kids in the park
Finally we headed back to our room where we could watch the sun set over Rome.
The whole purpose of coming to Aswan was not to see the dam, but to visit the Temple of Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is 280km further south of Aswan, near the Sudan border. To get there you need to take a car. There are two tourist convoys across the desert per day from Aswan to Abu Simbel, and they have police escort for safety. The first convoy leaves at 4am to beat the heat of the day. The second convoy leaves at 11am. I wanted to take the first convoy so we'd be back by 1pm or so, but Yanmei didn't want to wake up that early, so we scheduled for the second convoy.
The second convoy is less popular, and was low season, so they didn't want to send a police car. Instead they asked us if the police officer could ride in our car. I'd read about this possibility online so I agreed, although I'm not sure what would have happened if I said no. I felt like they were asking as a courtesy. The policeman rode in the front seat with Yanmei and I in the back. He had a compact sub machine gun, after googling it later I think it was a Heckler & Koch UMP with folding stock. Most of the police seem to have AK-47s, but this was much easier to travel with in a car.
Road to Abu Simbel
We left Aswan through a checkpoint and headed towards Abu Simbel. Our driver Usama told us we were the lead car in a three car convoy. The road goes away from Lake Nasser so we were surrounded by desert. I've read that Aswan is the third driest town in the world with less than 1 millimeter of rain per year, but at least they have the Nile. Out in the desert there is nothing. It isn't like the Arizona desert where there are scattered cactuses and hardy plants. In the Egyptian Sahara there is nothing but sand and stone, not one single weed or anything.
Yanmei in the SaharaMirage in the desert
Finally we arrived at Abu Simbel. We let the policeman out at a checkpoint. At this point Yanmei finally noticed he had a gun and became nervous. We continued to the Temple. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the convoy because we were the only car to arrive there.
The driver told us to be back by 3:45pm. After three hours in the car we wanted to use the bathroom. Yanmei rushed off ahead to use it. After using it, of course there was a guy who wanted to be tipped. Unfortunately I had no small change. After arguing for a while I asked if he had change, he only had chinese money so I assumed Yanmei had tipped him, I said I'd come back later. I started looking around for Yanmei. Suddenly she came running downtown the path shouting “David! David!”. I could see she was frightened. She'd gone back up to the car, and it was gone, so she started thinking I was kidnapped and she was abandoned. So she was pretty glad to see me. 😉
Once again we had the place to ourselves. There were not even many vendors to bother us. The Temple itself is pretty spectacular. It was build by the pharaoh Ramses II as a temple to himself in about 1264 BC. There is also a smaller one built for his wife Nefertari.
Four statues of Ramses, 20m tallTemple to Nefertari with 4 statues of Ramses and 2 of Nefertari
No pictures allowed inside, but you can see a bit of the interior
Inside are various inscriptions depicting Ramses II winning battles and being treated as an equal by the gods. The ceilings are high and it is very spacious. There were no photos inside and they were pretty strict because they wanted to sell us pictures of the inside.
The temples were completely buried in sand and lost until rediscovered in 1817. Unfortunately some explorers or travelers carved graffiti into the stone, you can see some dates in the 1800s.
The other interesting thing is both temples were actually moved in the 1960s. Originally they were on the bank of the Nile and they would have been flooded by Lake Nasser when the Aswan dam was built, so they moved them back and up 200m from the original location. That must have been a massive project. The broken statue occurred from an earthquake in 27BC, not the relocation effort.
Lake Nasser near the temples
Finally we returned to our car for the trip back to Aswan. No policeman ride with us this time, instead we seemed to be giving a ride to some random guy. Anyway the trip was uneventful. We did get to see sunset in the desert, but it was remarkably dull with no real colors.
We’re in Hawaii so we had to go to the beach. Neither of us really like lounging or suntanning, so we just walked around. It really is lovely with the colors of the water, the other islands visible in the distance, etc. Too crowded though.
After lunch we headed to Haleakala National Park. Haleakala is the dormant volcano that formed most of Maui. Our goal was to catch the sunset from the peak. It was pretty overcast so we were worried it would be a bust, but we managed to get above most of the clouds. The main crater is 7 miles long and 2.5 wide.
Then up to the summit to wait for the sunset. There was a cool effect with the sun shining through the clouds.
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