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Popular General Tips | Miscellaneous General Tips Tips | All Tips (44)  | |  |  | Practicalities for visiting Abu Simbel | Tip Rating:    |  |  | |  |
Some practical tips for visiting Abu Simbel:
1) Foreigners are not allowed to go on their own - you have to join the early morning convoy which starts at an ungodly 4 am. Buses will normally pick you up at your hotel at around 3:30 am. Independent travelers may book their trips with travel agencies in Aswan, many of them along Corniche el-Nil. You could also inquire at your hotel if they could help you out . Many of these hotels will, in any case, give you unsolicted offers. The going rate is USD 20 as of May 2007.
2) Advise your hotel that you are doing the Abu Simbel tour a day earlier - so they could pack a breakfast box for you. It's not much (toast, butter and jelly, hard boiled egg), but keeps the hunger pangs away during the long trip. Alternatively, you could bring your own food, but the breakfast box is usually covered by your room rate.
3) Bring protective clothing and sun screen - very important especially during the hotter spring and summer months. The trip begins at dawn and finishes early (convoy leaves Abu Simbel at 10 am), but the sun could still burn your skin.
4) If you don't want to pay for the excessively overpriced drinks at Abu Simbel (can of Coke costs about USD 2) - no choice, you're in the middle of nowhere - you can always bring your own drinks. Leave a Comment
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| | | | If you have to skip something, skip the dam! | Tip Rating: | | | | |
The very first thing our tour did after landing in Aswan, was to visit the Aswan High Dam. If you have time for it, be sure to stop by, but if your schedule is booked and you're looking to skip things, skip the dam. There wasn't a lot to see unless you are impressed with dams. :) There were two displays like the one shown and other than that, you could just take pictures from the dam. Also, the vendor didn't have any water at the refreshment stand, so be sure and bring your own water! He did have soft drinks and the Sprite was good, but it wasn't water!
I was very interested to hear the statistics of how many artifacts they lost when they dammed up the river... I believe our guide said there were about 80 artifacts/historical sites they had to try and save at the time the dam was built, but they were only able to find the funding to save 17 of those! Leave a Comment
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While we were in Egypt the Muslim community were in the middle of Ramadan. We had heard that it could cause problems with our tour or that we may not get to eat because of Ramadan but really we didn't have any problems at all because of it.
The locals did seem to go a bit crazy around 4:30 - 5:30 pm when they ALL seemed to be on the road travelling home or to where ever they would eat their "break-fast" but it didn't affect us too much. We also found a lot of locals eating in the streets and enjoying each others company. It was nice to see!!!
A couple of nights we also joined our tour guide (a local Egyptian) for his "break-fast" meal... :) Leave a Comment
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