A story of love and hate: Felucca Trip, Kom Ombo and Edfu (27 - 29 July 2008)
Ask anyone who has been to Egypt - your trip is not complete if you did not cruise down the Nile River. Organising our trip was an easy and painless affair: we met with Captain Nemo, referred to us by the Aswan Tourist Information Centre; told him where we wanted to go and agreed on a price. Simple as that. So we were looking forward to three blissful days of floating down the Nile on a felucca.
A felucca is a traditional Egyptian sailing boat. Accept for swimming, it’s as close as one can get to the river.
On the day of departure, we met up with Captain Nemo who introduced us to the two captains who we would spend the following three days with. Captains Ramadan and Amada did not only have the task of managing the sailing down the river, but also had to cook for us. In the end they also turned out to be our personal onboard entertainment.
We set sail around 11:00 and it was immediately clear that this sailing business is purely recreational - if you need to get somewhere in a hurry, a felucca is NOT the right choice of transport. The river flowed in a South-North direction and the wind (only present from around 11:00am) was from the West, which meant that we had to sail diagonally across the river, from one side to the other and back. But the slow progress added to the tranquillity of the experience. Another addition to the peacefulness was the fact that there was not motor - no noise, only the sail flapping in the wind, water against the boat, the birds and here and there shouts from villages on the river bank. The scenery was strange, but beautiful: a massive river wrapped in palm trees and crops and a never-ending desert beyond the little bit of green.
The felucca itself was big enough for eight people - there was a small area where the captains prepared our food and the rest of the deck was converted into a HUGE bed with big pillows. We spent the three days relaxing on the pillows, reading, swimming or stopping at some of the offshore villages to get a peak of the local life. Our captains prepared delicious local food including falafel, bread, salad, pasta and mouth-watering fruits. Before we left Aswan, we asked the captain to buy some beer for us, so we could enjoy a cold-one at sunset. Well, it was only kind of cold - Eon created a ‘beer cooling device’ with our laundry line that kept the beer in the river
On the first night, we stopped over at a village to enjoy dinner with captain Ramadan’s family. It was a simple affair, but we kind of felt like celebrities. Dinner was served under the stars on a grass mat. The children from all over the village came to see the foreigners. They all sat with wide eyes and watched us eat. One little boy, the youngest of the lot, were terrified of us. He was frantic every time I moved slightly closer to him and he lost it when I had to squeeze past him to go to the toilet - all to the other children’s delight!
The second night was also entertaining, but on a different level. Turned out that Captain Hamada loves riddles and he tried to catch us out with every new puzzle. He loved the riddles we challenged him with, laughing with delight when he finally gets the answer (we mostly had to give him the answers). He topped the night off with his ‘Egyptian’ puzzle - he tied Eon’s wrists together with one piece of string, hooked another piece of string through Eon’s ‘loop’ of string and arms and tied the ends to my wrists and said: “try to get separated from each other”. It was hilarious! We were climbing over each other, under each other, falling over, crawling on the floor, but we could not solve the puzzle. And the longer we tried, the louder the captains laughed. There was a simple solution, but I am not giving it away - we first have to entertain our friends and family with it back home.
We arrived in Kom Ombo on the last morning. A few more days would have been great, but we had to bid the felucca and the captains farewell. It was back to the heat, the endless, unbearable heat.
Kom Ombo’s claim to fame is its temple. So we did a quick visit to the temple, just in time to beat the millions of tourists on the massive luxury cruisers. The temple was not very impressive, but the hypostyle hall looked somewhat mysterious as the morning sun broke through the many pillars.
The captains organised a ‘lift’ to for us to Luxor - an ‘aircon’ minibus with some other people. We were told that we had to pay 40 Pounds per person if we were only four people, if there were more the price would drop. The driver turned out to be an absolute arse: when we asked about the price (because we were 14 passengers), he blew his top and threatened to take our luggage off his minibus. I told him to calm down and not to scream at me. That seemed to relax him a bit, but very soon after he was back to his obnoxious ways. I tried to ignore him, but Eon was livid when the driver did his little act of “take off their luggage” on Eon’s request for the aircon to be switched on. When the driver insisted that we pay him in full (even though we were not even halfway through the trip), Eon lost it, shoved the money into his face and told him: “You are a bad person! A very bad person!”
In the end, we did a two hour minibus ride to Edfu with no aircon and from Edfu another two hours to Luxor. Edfu’s Temple of Horus did not get the full respect and time it actually deserved, because we were so hot after the non-aircon minibus episode. The last thing we wanted to do was walk around in the 40+ degrees looking at another temple. We did a quick round of photo shoots and ran for a little shade.
Arriving in Luxor, the driver did his rounds to drop all the passengers off at their respective hotels. Of course, he did his best to convince some of the people to stay at specific hotels. Luckily for us, there was another couple who wanted to go to the same hotel as us - otherwise, we are sure the driver would have dropped us at the dumpster (he really hated us). Would you believe that he had the audacity to try and claim commission from our hotel, commission which we would have to pay?! No way!! We told the hotel owner that we refused to pay for it, loud enough for the driver to hear.
The hotel owner asked me to go with him to look at the room, not Eon because ‘he was not in a good enough mood to view the room’ (the owner’s words). A good observation, I’d say The room was okay and we decided to stay there because it was very cheap and the breakfast included Cornflakes!! What luxury….
Click on the image below to view the gallery for the Felucca Trip, Kom Ombo and Edfu: