Friday, October 27, 2006
24/10 Very early start this morning
Out on tour at 6am. Just light. But nice and cool. Back on board 10am by the time the day was heating up. We visited Valley of the Kings and Queen Hatshepsut's Temple (remember Hot Chicken Soup). The VAlley of the Kings was a perfect experience to understand what I saw before at the Cairo Museum and Giza Pyramids. We saw 3 tombs all beautifully decorated with relives and painted. These tombs are 3 millenia old and yet the colours of blue, red and gold are as strong today as then. Interesting that these royal colours were also used by the French Court and they had no idea there awas sucha thing as an Egyptian tomb. They also bot hdepicted the night sky on their ceilings with dark blue backgrounds and gold stars in very similar styles.
Today is the first of the 3 day festival celebrating the end of Ramadan. Like a cross between New Year and Christmas. All the children have the time off school and we saw many others today (public holiday) all in their best clothes sitting in parks, shade, on the river bank; enjoying the shade and breeze and time with family. The girls look particularly beautifulin red and tourquise and gold and green. Bright against their dark hair and skin. There was a huge party in every home last night and our guide came in this morning with his sunglasses on - he'd not been to bed...It is the most important festival of the year. We are having a gala dinner tonight on the boat but with European food (funny but hey who cares...)
The sky this morning when we were out at the Temples was as blue as home (no pollution). That incredible contrast between earth and sky is back. We've arrived at the Esna Lock and waiting our turn. The traders are back - in their row boats, grabbing hold of the ship and riding along side in its wake (like bike riders do to buses in road traffic). They throw wares up and you throw them back or throw $ down.
I've learned more about Egyptian life since leaving Cairo as now with tour guide - and Mohammad seems a very honest and open guide - he is very well trained and intelligent - studing for his masters so he can teach tour guiding at uni. Anyway, it seems Egyptians used to have big families but they have realised you can't afford to advance your kids if you have more than 2-3 so, like the west, the educated and middle classes are having smaller families. Average annual wage is 4-6000EP (about AUD$1-1500). They can't more than survuve on this. In the last 5 years wages have remained constant but costs have escalated. Tourism is huge but badly effected by terrorism. They are just seeing a recovery after last years London bombs.
We are passing through mainly farm land. They grow sugar cane, bananas, cabbages, corn. Sugar is harvested manually after they tie groups of stalks together into bundles to stop them falling over as their roots dry out. Other crops are used in rotation to spell the sugar paddocks. They have canals that take water from the Nile to fields, then smaller irrigation ditches take water to paddocks and the yflood irrigate . Very manual and inefficient but cheap. The government regulates how much water is released from the high dam into the Nile and then into the main canal. Unless the water level is a certain height, it won't gravity feed into the paddocks - simple way to control water use by farmers.
Buildings ar eoften not finished here. Thereinforcing stell sits up above the top floor level as if there is another floor to be added. It seems there are two reasons for this. Families build another floor as generations marry and stay with the main family unit - this keeps costs down - rent is very expensive. And there is a tax on buildings completion, sot hey stay 'incomplete'. Inside will be lovely and outside looks like a construction site.
Out on tour at 6am. Just light. But nice and cool. Back on board 10am by the time the day was heating up. We visited Valley of the Kings and Queen Hatshepsut's Temple (remember Hot Chicken Soup). The VAlley of the Kings was a perfect experience to understand what I saw before at the Cairo Museum and Giza Pyramids. We saw 3 tombs all beautifully decorated with relives and painted. These tombs are 3 millenia old and yet the colours of blue, red and gold are as strong today as then. Interesting that these royal colours were also used by the French Court and they had no idea there awas sucha thing as an Egyptian tomb. They also bot hdepicted the night sky on their ceilings with dark blue backgrounds and gold stars in very similar styles.
Today is the first of the 3 day festival celebrating the end of Ramadan. Like a cross between New Year and Christmas. All the children have the time off school and we saw many others today (public holiday) all in their best clothes sitting in parks, shade, on the river bank; enjoying the shade and breeze and time with family. The girls look particularly beautifulin red and tourquise and gold and green. Bright against their dark hair and skin. There was a huge party in every home last night and our guide came in this morning with his sunglasses on - he'd not been to bed...It is the most important festival of the year. We are having a gala dinner tonight on the boat but with European food (funny but hey who cares...)
The sky this morning when we were out at the Temples was as blue as home (no pollution). That incredible contrast between earth and sky is back. We've arrived at the Esna Lock and waiting our turn. The traders are back - in their row boats, grabbing hold of the ship and riding along side in its wake (like bike riders do to buses in road traffic). They throw wares up and you throw them back or throw $ down.
I've learned more about Egyptian life since leaving Cairo as now with tour guide - and Mohammad seems a very honest and open guide - he is very well trained and intelligent - studing for his masters so he can teach tour guiding at uni. Anyway, it seems Egyptians used to have big families but they have realised you can't afford to advance your kids if you have more than 2-3 so, like the west, the educated and middle classes are having smaller families. Average annual wage is 4-6000EP (about AUD$1-1500). They can't more than survuve on this. In the last 5 years wages have remained constant but costs have escalated. Tourism is huge but badly effected by terrorism. They are just seeing a recovery after last years London bombs.
We are passing through mainly farm land. They grow sugar cane, bananas, cabbages, corn. Sugar is harvested manually after they tie groups of stalks together into bundles to stop them falling over as their roots dry out. Other crops are used in rotation to spell the sugar paddocks. They have canals that take water from the Nile to fields, then smaller irrigation ditches take water to paddocks and the yflood irrigate . Very manual and inefficient but cheap. The government regulates how much water is released from the high dam into the Nile and then into the main canal. Unless the water level is a certain height, it won't gravity feed into the paddocks - simple way to control water use by farmers.
Buildings ar eoften not finished here. Thereinforcing stell sits up above the top floor level as if there is another floor to be added. It seems there are two reasons for this. Families build another floor as generations marry and stay with the main family unit - this keeps costs down - rent is very expensive. And there is a tax on buildings completion, sot hey stay 'incomplete'. Inside will be lovely and outside looks like a construction site.
# posted by The Essence of Good Taste @ 4:06 PM 
