Day 2 of a Nile river cruise with Nate and Kara Buchanan. The hosts describe sailing the Nile, visiting tombs cut into a mountainside, and touring a well-preserved temple (Edfu) including a perfume laboratory with hieroglyphic recipes. Kara explains that much of Egypt is lush only along the Nile due to historic annual flooding that stopped after the Aswan dam. The vlog mentions the temple's build date (52 BC), its rediscovery in 1860, and a 40-year excavation; artifacts like a perfume bottle containing lotus flowers were reportedly still scented.
Chapters
Good morning.
Got a bad view this morning, huh.
Sam?
It is day two on our Nile river cruise. We spent about an hour sailing up the Nile this morning, and now we're at our first stop.
Not off to the smoothest start this morning, Kara's crossing from one boat to the next and dropped her winds cap in the Nile, and it was all hands on deck. Everybody was swimming in the water, trying to find it.
Casual camel on our walk.
Camels, puppies.
Hello.
Hello.
How are you? How are you?
One thing I find really fascinating in Egypt so far is you're either in super lush green lands or complete desert. And we learned that that's because for thousands of years, the Nile would overflow onto the land once a year, and it would fertilize all the land along the river. And then they built a dam in Aswan so it doesn't overflow anymore. But things only grow where it used to overflow, and everything past that doesn't. It's a very defined line.
Our first stop of the morning. Ancient tombs carved into the side of this mountain.
Because then they decided, how many squares for the head, how many squares for the body? And if you look at these figures, it feels like the human molds.
But the actual technical that they.
So we just finished learning a ton about hieroglyphics, how you can read them, and it's just absolutely crazy how much we can know about people's lives that lived 4,000 years ago just from some pictures.
Yeah. And one of the carvings had a guy bringing his wife flowers, like a bouquet of flowers. And it's just so funny to know how long that's been around. Like, thousands of years. Men have been bringing their wives flowers.
Also, there's graffiti on the walls from the 1800s, which is crazy. Like, that would be history in the US and here it's graffiti.
All right, now back to the boat.
We're putting the sails out for the first time, and I'm so excited. This.
The crazy thing is this boat that we're on right now actually doesn't have a motor. All of yesterday, it was too windy to sell, and so we were being pulled by a tugboat.
But not anymore.
They're massive.
So fascinating.
It seems like every time we go on a sailboat, we never use sails, so we get really excited anytime the sails come out.
The one time they put the sails out on a boat that we were on, there was a thunderstorm, like a flash thunderstorm, and we almost tipped it over, and it was really scary.
Hopefully not today. The skies are Looking pretty blue.
We've just arrived in the town of epu and now we are taking the local transportation to what we've been told is one of the most well preserved temples in all of E.
With you. Okay. Hi. You're like a queen. What is your name?
No, baby, not yet.
Wow.
He's letting me drive. All right.
You can take a nap. You can take a nap.
Wow. Lot of work.
Number five.
Number number five. This is the Edu temple and it is without a doubt the coolest temple that we've been to since we've been in Egypt. It's massive, tons of intricate carvings, but there's not supposed to be any filming, so I'm sure I won't be able to do it justice.
Trying to keep it low key so we don't have to pay somebody to keep our camera. Slash, put our camera away. This temple was built in 52 BC, so it's basically brand spanking new compared to some of the other things that we've seen. But it was under the sand for thousands of years before they found it in 1860. And it took them 40 years to dig it all out.
But that's why it's so well preserved.
And there's all these little rooms and it still has a roof, so you can really feel what it was like.
It's incredible.
Okay.
This is the single flower specio. So the first one is jasmine, lotus, papyrus, you know, different ones.
These are all perfume recipes. This was the perfume laboratory of this temple. And watch this. I can read hieroglyphic numbers. You read it from top to bottom. I know what the numbers look like, but I don't know what the symbols are. So wait, where'd it go? Where's that one that I can't read? Hold on.
Here. So this is 10 and marks are 1. So it's 11. And then I know that this means water. So it was 11 drops of water and then this. So this would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 drops of something else. I don't see any markers, but it's pretty cool. And when they found this temple, there was a bottle, a perfume, and they opened it up and it had lotus flowers in it and it still smelled good.
That's cool.
It's insane that we're here visiting these. I've said incredible too many times these places and there's just so few tourists. It's like the perfect time to be in Egypt.
And now we're going to get back on our horse and carriage to take us back to our boat.
Hello.
Nobody's touched this mud brick wall for 2,400 years.
Outstanding. As Egyptians, they were good builders.
Seriously, we're putting the sales down for the first time. And I've down up themselves. Go up? Yeah, but they were already. They were up and now they're out.
