We left Kom Ombo at 4am and went to Edfu. This is one of the reasons I like traveling by ship, the ship can sail while you sleep and eat, allowing you to arrive rested and ready to go.

Edfu Temple is dedicated to the god Horus. This temple was used as a refuge by the locals when the Romans banned the old religion and non-Christian worship. Living in the temple, the fires covered the ceilings with soot, covering most paintings. Later it was abandoned and filled and covered with sand. Locals built their houses on top of the sand covering the temple.

Today started with a visit to Philae Island which has the Temple of Isis. This temple was mostly built during the last dynasty, the Ptolemies. The temple was flooded in 1902 when the British built the Aswan low dam to grow more Egyptian cotton. It was moved from underwater to a higher island in the late 60s along with other structures that would be flooded by the high dam. Much of the colorful paint deteriorated while it was underwater. Philae is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today we got up early for a three-hour bus ride to Abu Simbel a temple complex built by Ramses II (Ramses the Great) at the southern border of Egypt during his reign. Abu Simbel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We got up early for a 5:30am breakfast at the hotel before a slow drive to the airport (Cairo traffic is horrible) for a one-hour flight to Aswan in the south of Egypt. It took longer to drive to the airport than to fly to Aswan.

Saqqara is outside Cairo on the west side of the Nile. Here we visited the step pyramid of Djoser and the tomb of a high official in the sixth dynasty Kagemni. The pyramid complex and Memphis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the morning we visited two mosques in historic Cairo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Al-Rifa’i Mosque and the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan.

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities opened in 1902. It is packed full now as more discoveries have been added over the years. There is a new museum under construction by the pyramids in Giza, it will have much more room for displaying artifacts.

We moved over to the downtown Cairo tour hotel today. Cairo traffic earned its reputation. It seems that the horn is required equipment on a vehicle driving here. Lane lines are suggestions that are taken somewhat lightly. It took 90 minutes to go the 13 miles from the airport to the hotel. We took Uber, it was around $8 for the ride. Our driver was a flight attendant that had recently been laid off when his airline went under. He had been hired by Egypt Air, but was waiting for his training class to start before he could fly. His English was excellent.

This was our last day in the park. We had stayed overnight in Terlingua on the west side of the park, so drove the Ross Maxwell drive back through the park to leave through Persimon Gap on the north side of the park.

We stopped to hike at the Lower Burro Mesa Pour-off trail and the Grapevine Hills trail on the way out.

Ross Maxwell scenic drive is the road to the western part of the park.

Like yesterday, today is going to be a lot lighter on hiking.