Egyptian sunset at the cataracts…

Photo by Galen C. Dalrymple, copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved.

If you have seen the new version of Death on the Nile, starring Kenneth Brannagh and Gal Gadot, you may recall them docking at the Old Cataract Hotel on the banks of the Nile. Part of the movie is shot at the hotel. It is a very famous old hotel and have been featured in numerous movied.

When we were in Egypt, we went to the Old Cataract Hotel where we had high tea sitting outside along the Nile. It was fun, but the best part was taking photos there as the sun was going down.

At this point in its course, the Nile isn’t very wide. It’s not a big river compared to the Amazon or others that are world-famous, but it probably has sustained life far longer.

The cataracts are nothing more than rapids – think of a change in the elevation of the river that makes the water move more quickly. They weren’t pronounced, but what made it special was the setting, the time of day, and the boats moving through the scene.

I shot this image looking almost directly into the sun, with it partially shielded by the trees on the left of the image. It made for interesting sun rays which I thought were intriguing. While most of the pictures I have shared and will continue to share are of the Egyptian antiquities and temples, this one has none of that unless you count the Nile, the barren desert hills in the distance, and the relentless presence of the same sun that shone on the Pharaoh’s so long ago!

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the German military tested its powerful new air force—the Luftwaffe—on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain.

Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared non-belligerence in the conflict. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days.

The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica aroused world opinion and became a symbol of fascist brutality. Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the bombing innovations developed by the Nazis at Guernica, and by the war’s end, in 1945, millions of innocent civilians had perished under Allied and Axis air raids. – The History Channel

TRIVA FOR TODAY: The seagulls in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” (1963) were fed a mixture of wheat and whisky so they would stand around and not fly too much.