Local Experience Necessary?

Looking for the local experience in Egypt?

Greg and I recommend the public bus from Aswan to Abu Simbel. Many tourists set up one day tours to see the two temples at Abu Simbel on Lake Nasser either by quick set of round trip flights or the micro busses that leave at 4 am from Aswan and return late morning. We opted for the public bus, which technically only takes 4 tourists per bus, but that’s not enforced – which is good since we didn’t want to put Cici in the cargo holdJ We planned on taking the 11:30 am bus and got to the bus station just at 11:30 am to find out that there is no 11:30 am bus, only an 8 am bus and a 5 pm bus. Bummer, that would mean we would miss the sound and light show at the temple that night, but we forged ahead and purchased tix for the 5 pm bus. We headed to a nearby café to eat some lunch and have some down time. After a while we took a taxi to the other side of town to check out the Nubian Museum (Nubi is the word for Gold and Nubia is that southern area where gold was found) for an hour before returning to the bus station an hour before the departure time, as advised by the locals.

The photo is Connor sitting in the Ticket window at the bus station. The gent to the left of the window is our bus driver - he took a shine to Connor. He gave him the nickel tour of the bus station before we left.

At first we only bought 2 tickets for the adults and were considering the half price kids ticket for Gavin (based on his age). But when we realized that meant that he wouldn’t get a seat for the 4 hour bus ride, we coughed up the money for seats for Gavin and for Connor. Each $5 fare was completely worth it, since the bus completely filled up. The bus came complete with a Bollywood movie subtitled into Arabic that featured an Indian version of Al Pacino and the boys’ (including Greg) favorite part, the finale with a man-eating crocodile. [If anyone knows the name of this movie let us know!] The route is basically along Lake Nasser through the desert. It was neat to see the road slicing through the sand dunes and our shadow shooting across the stretching sand. There was one rest stop where we stayed about half an hour. Ever change a dirty diaper in the desert in the dark behind a pile of construction equipment?? Check that one off the list for us.

Here's a weird scene from out of the bus window - looks like a mash up of Epcot Center and Tatooine.