This morning around 4AM we set sail for Kom Ombo. How do I know? Well it was in our program and due to jetlag I was already up. You could hear the engines fire up and rumble but it was soothing and gentle.
First stop was Kom Ombo which was famous for the most well preserved calendar in all of Egypt. We also got to learn more about Horus, Isis and Osiris from our tour guide, Ahmed El-Prince. It makes me wish I studied Egyptian history a bit more before my trip! An interesting fact we learned is that the Egyptians had a 60% accurate way or finding out if a woman was going to have a boy or a girl. When a pregnant woman peed on a bucket of wheat and barley if the wheat grew first it was a girl and if the barley grew first it was a boy. Neat huh? After 45 minutes of free time to explore and take pictures, we ended our Kom Ombo trip with a visit to the crocodile museum where you can see life size mummified crocodiles. They even had baby crocodiles no bigger than a quarter mummified. Truly amazing to see what the ancient Egyptians were able to accomplish.
When we arrived we started with a horse carriage ride to the Temple of Edfu. When we got into the horse carriage, you could immediately see the effect the lack of tourism has on this tourist dependent community. The horse was literally skin and bones. The coat wasn't shiny and it was matted and dirty. You could tell the horse was starving and not in good condition. It broke my heart to see the horse carriage driver whip the horse to go faster or pull on the bit to make it stop when he saw me trying to take a picture. I knew no matter how much money I gave as tip to the driver, it would not go to the poor horse. Being a pet owner, it just makes me want to cry to see an animal suffer and that no one cares about it's well being. If that ever happened to my Asscher, I hope and pray whoever did that would go to jail for animal cruelty. Call me naive to say that the people of Edfu had to worry about feeding themselves before their animals but if their income depends on tourists, they should spend more money to feed these poor animals. 90% of the stores were closed and most of the local people were just in the town center with their horse carriages near the market waiting. There weren't even people at cafes drinking coffee or smoking a hookah.
Thirty minutes later we were at the Temple Edfu but before we were allowed to leave we were once again bombarded by vendors trying to sell us tunics. I started a trend by buying one, then two and the rest of the group followed suite. Lol.
We got back to the boat just in time for tea time on the rooftop as we had a sunset sail to Esna before a late dinner.
