Lake Nasser, Egypt Our group left the ship by motorboat this morning to visit the Wadi El Sebua temple. Getting on and off the boat requires going down a foot-wide ramp with a pole held by two young sailors that served as a railing. Not for the faint of heart. You don’t want to fall in and meet one of those Lake Nasser crocodiles.
We saw three temples on this trip. Two glorified our man Ramses II, and celebrated his becoming a god. The Nubians were properly warned.
The first was the temple of Wadi al Sebua, meaning the “Valley of the Lions.” It features a combination of built stone blocks and an inner rock-cut sanctuary carved directly into the bedrock, along with a hypostyle hall supported by pillars.
It was built primarily by Ramses II and dedicated to the sun god and the deified Ramses II himself. Never can have too much advertising.
The second was less decorated, and the third, al Maharraqa was an unfinished Roman monument to Isis and Serapis, with a variety of Coptic, Greek and Roman graffiti.
We are of course seeing these temples after they were moved from lower ground, to a lovely hilltop setting. Amazing how they did that.
The panorama was beautiful, even though it did involve getting back into the motorboat by walking the gang-plank again. I personally found it terrifying,
can’t stand heights either, you’d think they would have a better way to get on and off, I guess people with mobility issues or wheelchairs are out of luck.
You have to have the balance of a monkey to survive here. There is zero accommodation for anyone with mobility issues. Handrails are rare, and many steps are short and broken. I had to depend on the kindness of strangers to get up and down. Don fared slightly better, as he had his cane, but he was always bringing up the rear. The four or five tourists in wheelchairs we’ve seen must just come for the atmosphere.
atmosphere, jejeje
Actually I didn’t see the photo of the gang plank originally, and thought you meant a ladder straight up the side of a 20 story high cruise ship. But still, plenty of scope for accidents in this horizontal thing!