A first-person travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting Day 5 (final day) of a Nile River cruise. They visit the temple of Kom Ombo (including a description of the holy of holies and priest tunnels), tour a crocodile museum where ~300 mummified crocodiles (and eggs/babies) were found, experience a strong dust storm while returning to the boat, and move into a panoramic suite for the final cruise to Aswan. The video also contrasts the benefits of their smaller cruise ship compared with larger vessels.
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Good morning. Today is our fifth and final day of our cruise and we have just arrived in the city of Camombo.
Nailed it, first try.
See you next time. Good morning. This is our fifth and final day of our cruise and we have just arrived in the city of it. Touch. As usual, people are trying to sell us.
This is a big city. It's not like a little village like we've been stopping in.
Our first stop today is the temple of Komumbo.
Once again, our group is pretty much the only group here. It's crazy.
This place is amaz.
One of the most fascinating things about this temple is it is the only full ancient Egyptian calendar that they have. There's different months in different temples, but this is the whole year. And what's super crazy is they even have leap year figured out 4,000 years ago. So it's basically a year divided into three parts. Planting, harvest, and something else.
So I'm currently standing inside of what would have been the holy of holies in the temple. And the most interesting part about this is that this used to actually be two walls that I would have been standing between. And then this great right here is a stand secret tunnel that led up in between the walls. And they say that the priests would actually trick the pharaohs and they would talk to them like the pharaohs were hearing from God. So they would crawl through the tunnel, get in between the walls and then they would be like, pharaoh, the priest is a very good man, you should give him more money. So they say the priests could have actually had more control of the kingdom than the pharaohs because the pharaohs listened to the gods who were actually the priests inside of the walls.
Next we are going to probably what I was most curious, excited about on the itinerary, it is the crocodile museum. They found 300 mummified crocodiles around here. And another exciting news, a dust storm is brewing. I'm getting a little sand in my mouth as I talk. It's very windy, it's getting very cloudy, so could be an exciting afternoon.
The ancient Egyptians had a crocodile God and they associated him with like strength and power. So all the pharaohs loved the crocodiles and I guess that's why they mummified them all. And it's insane how well preserved they are. Like all of these crocodiles look like they died a week ago and have just been sitting out in the sun. Like you can still see all of their little claws and their teeth and their scales. They even have mummified eggs and little tiny baby crocodile. Just crazy.
After seeing all of those mummified crocodiles, it's made me a little nervous to swim in the Nile again. They told us that they haven't seen one on this side of the dam since 1992, which is basically my whole life. So they talked me into swimming. But I don't know. After seeing all those massive animals mummified that came from this river, not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.
We're heading back to the boat now. The wind is blowing so hard, but it's so hot, it's almost like burning your skin. And the dust storm is here, and you can barely even see across the river. This is crazy. They said that this is kind of how the weather gets when a dust storm blows up. Like, you just get this really intense wind and heat. Not something I would prefer, but, like, it's cool to experience experience once.
It's like the clouds are holding in all the heat.
That's exactly what it feels like. It feels like you're in a sauna.
We have some exciting news. The couple that was staying in the panoramic suite on this boat moved out a day early. And guess who got to move in their suite. Look at all the space we have. Check out our new view all the way across the front of the boat. This is especially exciting because the dust storm is still happening and we just set sail, so it's extra windy and dusty outside. So we get to sit in here and still have a view in the ac.
So excited. Sam.
The good thing about having the panoramic suite is that you can just step right outside your window and then you kind of have your own private balcony. It's not, like, designed to be one, but we've made it into one.
We just spent our final afternoon cruising down the Nile. We're about to arrive in Aswan, which marks the end of our cruise tomorrow morning.
Getting home. Everybody knows we love river cruises for multiple reasons. One of the really cool things about this cruise is the size of our boat and the kind of boat we have. It's really enabled us to go to some really cool sites. We passed all these massive cruise ships with hundreds of people on them, and they can't stop at half the place that that we stopped. I feel like we've really gotten to experience River Nile life and you just.
Be stuck around a lot of people the whole time as well. Even though the air conditioning on those big boats might have been nice at times, I definitely prefer the smaller ship.
And now we get to Mark cruise down the Nile off of our bucket list.
We've heard that the important ancient Egyptian people were actually pretty pudgy. But all of their carvings are really skinny people. And this is the first time I've seen one with a little pudge. That's funny. You know, you've been in the Nile too long. When your camera has a layer of.
Dust, I don't think the camera's ever going to be the same. This is what happens after a few days in Egypt. You can barely even see the screen. Definitely can't see through that thing anymore.
