The next morning we got woken at the horrific hour of 4:45am for the morning prayer ritual (similar to that in Istanbul though at least they waited until a slightly more tolerable 6am) - video here. All of Thursday was to be spent cruising along the Nile in a felucca and doing various activities around that, but much like every other day so far it proved to be another random and confusing one hehe. A felucca is a traditional wooden sailing boat used particularly along the Nile in Luxor and Aswan* further south (which would have been great to visit also but we just couldn't fit it in to the week). I had organised this all-day felucca excursion online a few weeks in advance, however after discussing it with the owner of our hostel (Mia, Australian chick living in Luxor for two years now) we found we could get the same thing for about half the price. It turns out this isn't uncommon - booking excursions online is generally not worth it, you're likely to get a far better price by booking either through your accommodation or a local travel agent. So, plans were changed at the last minute and we cancelled our original booking to go instead with a close friend of Mia's husband (an Egyptian whom she met in Germany, much like I met my American girlfriend in Santorini - it's a global world we live in hehe). Above is our felucca, very Bob Marley themed.
* Interesting fact about Aswan by the way: it's one of the driest inhabited places in the world. Until early 2001, the last rainfall there had occured seven years earlier, and until early 2010, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on May 13, 2006. Settlements in that region generally do not bother to roof all of the rooms in their houses.
