Day 9: Sept 5 Intermezzo Egyptian River Life, Pretty Pictures not much substance

What a wonderful boat trip we had today along the Nile. We saw so many birds and Finally got to see my Egyptian ibis. What I have decided to do with this post is to simply post pictures of our ride along the Nile. It was a lovely respite from all the activity and I saw many water buffalo, and birds and so I will post pictures of things I thought were pretty or interesting. (Skip on to the next post if you would rather see more of the highlighted tourist sights.)

We were headed for a Nubian village, but on the way there were many exciting sights. Instead of our usual vehicle we took a smaller decorated craft like the one below.

We passed villages...

...and water buffalo...

and loads of wading and feeding birds.

By now I had become accustomed to the herons and egrets which fed along there banks and was in pursuit of the much rarer ibis.

Here are some Egyptian geese like the ones we saw in the painting at the Egyptian museum.

I'm not sure what these are and I can't find much information about the water birds of Egypt. I guess they could be some kind of plover.

We saw lots of egrets and herons.

The tan bird above may be a juvenile purple heron!

And of course there were also ducks.

The herons came in a variety of colors. This squacco heron is especially lovely in his tan coat.

Everyone was hungry this morning.

This is the kind of boat we were traveling on.

and luckily not this kind.

And here was a ship of the desert. It looks to me like she could use a little more breakfast.

I feel bad for that camel. I think it has tried to escape. They have hobbled it by tying its front legs together.

It was a very picturesque journey.

Here we are on our little boat.

There was good business going up and down this part of the Nile.

I guess breakfast was over and it was now bath time.

We passed historic sites.

and continued on toward the village watched by the local avian population.

I love the colors in this shot. It almost looks like a painting instead of a photograph.

We saw many of these gray herons.

Every place with rocks likes to point out at least one formation that looks like an elephant.

It was pretty exciting to get a good view of this striated kingfisher.

This is a sand piper of some kind.

And then there it was - a beautiful glossy ibis!

There's a little coot in that shot too!

This looks like a bittern that got herself a nice breakfast.

We could see the Nubian village approaching on our left. It was colorful and picturesque.

Others were headed that direction too.