Qena

Another VERY EARLY morning that involved transportation! And this one is now a high point of this adventure. We met the bus, which took us to the pier, to meet the small boat, to travel to the west bank of the Nile, to meet the small bus which took us the field in the middle of farmland. And there we watched about 20 hot air balloons being filled. We climbed into ours (a large basket holding about 24 people) and were up to view the Nile, the sunrise, the fields and the other balloons. Spectacular! We were in the air for about 40 minutes and eventually landed not too far from the launch point (pilot directing the vans and ground crew to our location by cellphone). Once out we began the short walk out of the field to the vans only to see, very suddenly right in front of us, the wall of a small house collapse into the road (I believe the bottom was undermined by irrigation water and the wall simply slid down the front of the house into a heap of mud bricks). No one was hurt – the ground crew was quick to be sure that both all the tourists/ground crew and all the family in the house were okay and to very quickly hustle us away (I guess in case more might fall down) but still quite a disturbing scene.

So, after that exciting (!) morning, we listened to a presentation about the Nile and various geographical areas of Egypt and enjoyed cruising towards Qena.

Then, off to the Dendera Temple complex, which honors the goddess Hathor. Beautiful! A welcome dinner with “Meet the Staff” and a chance to chat with other cruisers (only 48 total) was delightful, as was the long night’s sleep.