We cast off early, well about 8am I guess so not really that early, while we were all having breakfast on the upper deck. Breakfast was a simple affair abut after the excesses from the day before it was probably just as well. Late morning we finally pulled into Gebel Silsila
Gebel Silsila
Gebel Silsila turned out to be an old sandstone quarry that was used from about the 18 century (possibly before) up until Roman times. There is a small temple there which is interesting to see but certainly no where near the standard of the temples that we’d seen to date. The quarries were interesting since you could still see the markings where the giant sandstone bricks were chiselled from the the rock face and small man made little caves that the workers apparently used to sleep in, or so we were told. One such small cave we were led into to find two big rectangular holes that we stared at rather blankly until it was explained that mummies were dug up from that spot. Somehow that made those holes in the ground a little more interesting.
All up we managed to spend over an hour wandering around that quarry. It was a little hard to believe that we’d spent that much time at such a simple place but somehow it was interesting.
On return to the boat we sailed for a few more hours before pulling into a mostly deserted strip of sand. Apparently the chef intended to cook us a BBQ that night for dinner. It wasn’t long though before two felucca’s also pulled in and the peace was destroyed since they seemed to be in party mode. I was inclined to join them but we were asked by the captain not to since he didn’t want any of them on his boat. The other’s seemed disinclined to mingle as well, probably due to the disruption of the peace and the raucous nature of the passengers of the other boats. I will admit that a few of them were a little over the top but most of them seemed nice enough.
It turned out to be a rather quiet night as not long after nightfall they started running out of steam. Sunburn, beer and heat will tend to have that effect.
