14th May 2006
We had another very nice lunch, and I had a swim and a sunbake. At this time the boat had started its journey down the Nile. I lay on the sun lounger in the glorious heat watching the Egyptian scenery go by. I then went and had a bit of a lie down, to catch up from the early morning wake up. When I woke up, I could hear people yelling and went up onto the deck to see what was happening. As I walked out onto the deck, I noticed that we were in the Esna Lock waiting for the water level to change. While we were waiting, I noticed something very strange was happening. Souvenir hawkers had rowed themselves up to the ship and were hurling their wares on board. The idea was to bargain over the side with them, it was hilarious. Especially, the fact that they all knew who I was, I was hysterically laughing hearing “Kristina, Kristina….!” or as they yelled at my mother “Lady, Lady! You got my Kaftan!” My mother was really good at it and managed to get a beach towel and a tablecloth. She threw the towel back overboard and it landed in the Nile and then demanded a price reduction because it was wet. It was a hysterical, absolutely mental experience that I managed to get a really cool Nefertiti beach towel out of. I later found out that a member of staff had gone ashore, thus the reason all the villagers in boats knew who I was.
We had dinner and went to a cocktail party on the top deck. After the party I sat on the deck of the ship which had now docked at the small, charming town of Edfu. I looked out onto its streets, which were dimly lit, with a shanty looking bazaar on the shore of the Nile. Horse drawn buggy’s trotted past, and the locals gazed up enquiringly at the boat, as if inspecting their next boat load of customers.