Esna & Edfu – December 2010

Esna – The Temple of Khnum

On this leg of the journey we were able to view rural life in Egypt.  Rural life in Egypt is interesting because very little has changed in 4,000 years yet you still see signs of modern life in the villages and towns.  In the town of Esna, located on the western bank of the Nile, we were able to see farmers bring their goods to town on horse and cart buggies.  It was remarkable how these farmers traveled on the same roads as the big tourist buses.  While in Esna we visited the Temple of Khnum, a Greco-Roman structure.  Over thousands of years this area was buried with silt and mud from Nile flooding.  The modern town of Esna was built on top of these ruins.  They began excavating the area in the 1860s.  So far they have only cleared one part of the temple and it is still a work in progress.  

 

Edfu – The Temple of Horus

This is the temple where Horus, the falcon god, fought a battle with his uncle Seth after he murdered Osiris, Horus’s father.  

On this day of the trip I got really sick.  I had been feeling sick for a few days and it was getting worse.  I could feel a respiratory infection developing.  At breakfast my friends traveling with me all offered me medicine from their traveling emergency kits to make me feel better.  I ended up trying zinc tablets first in the form of some zinc cough drops.  Then about an hour later my friends offered me some antibiotics.  I knew it was getting bad so I took the antibiotics and then I was out the door on the way to my next adventure at The Temple of Horus.  

As we stood listening to our tour guide’s lesson about the temple I started to feel very sick.  I was nauseous and my mouth was watering terribly.  I was starting to panic.  How could I be sick here?  My skin started to hurt and I could feel the fever, which made me feel worse since it was already very warm out.  Finally I couldn’t hold it anymore and I went and vomited in the corner of temple grounds.  I was mortified!!!  I looked around and no one saw that I was sick, I had wandered to a spot where the group couldn’t see me.  I watered down the area with my bottled water and I went back to the group.  When I walked back to the group I saw my friend Bridget staring at me.  I thought for sure she knew and I was really embarrassed.  I drank a lot of water as I stood there listening to my tour guide and my stomach started to feel better, but I still felt like I had a horrible respiratory infection and I was weak.  When we entered the temple there was an area you could sit and wait.  So I sat while the group continued on.  When my friends came back they were surprised I hadn’t gone on the tour because they didn’t know I was sick.  Then I felt even more embarrassed because I had to tell them how I’ve joined the club of horrible American tourists who act inappropriately while visiting foreign lands, yep I upchucked at a sacred ancient temple.  Bucket list – check.

We all joked after the tour that I was so sick I was turning blue.0
My hands were just blue from some paper I was holding.

After the tour was done we took a break and returned to the Nile cruise ship, or the ship of death as I thought of it.  I felt like the boat was trying to kill me, with the tainted food, bad air, and dirty water everywhere I looked I thought for sure the boat would be the end of me.  I still wasn’t feeling well so I took the afternoon off from touring to nap and spend quiet time in my room.  While in my room I used my iPhone to Google the antibiotic I took that morning as well as my symptoms to see if I could figure out how to medicate myself.  I found out the reason I was so sick was because I was having a reaction between the zinc, the antibiotic and all the orange juice I had drank that morning.  Turns out the acid is a big problem when mixing those ingredients and that is what made me sick at the temple.  So I decided to get some rest and if I felt sick the next day I would ask the tour guide to take me to a pharmacy or call a doctor so I could get some antibiotics.