May 7, 2007

Woke up on the train about an hour before we were due to arrive at Aswan to be served breakfast in our compartment. We arrived in Aswan shortly after 8am—it was already noticeably hotter than Cairo. We know it was over a hundred over the next few days—no flashing bank thermometers and no 10pm news—so we don’t have numbers. We are so data oriented, it is really strange to not access those things at a second. Leaving the train we were to look for our tour guide, Moustafa. He will be assigned to us for the next 3 days, on the boat and at all the stops, arranging all the transportation at each location—crazy concept. Egyptian tour guides are licensed and you seem them all over the place with small groups like us three or with large bus groups. He took us to an air conditioned van and we started our Aswan tour.