We will be attending the February 2022 solar event (god willing!).

April 16, 2022

WELL. I feel like I just dodged a serious bullet!

I happened to be up super late, which is very unusual for me anymore, and it crossed my mind to look and see if hotels were available in Abu Simbel yet.

Apparently, between me buying tickets and looking just last week and today, they were all almost completely sold out. OF EVERYTHING. Airbnb sans one apartment with a 1 star review in another language that when translated roughly equaled them telling us it’s a scam or tricky or something along those lines. I think they were just charged more, but had a place to sleep, which is what I was panicking about.

I mean, how can we be at a sunrise event if we aren’t sleeping the town? I’d say middle of the night travel, but apparently private drivers don’t go between Aswan and Abu Simbel at certain times and I did not want to risk missing the reason we are going on this trip for this specific day!

I was pretty tempted to book it anyway and risk it, as the sites I looked at said everything was completely booked already.

But then I tried Kayak.com and saw that Orbitz had something at a hotel in town, and booking.com had an apartment.

The apartment wouldn’t let me book for two adults and two children in a three twin bed room.

Initially, I believed there was only one room left (I’m half asleep and took a sleeping pill before this panic attack ensued, y’all.) at the hotel (I’m not going to name names because stalkers, ya know? I mean ya just never know. Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe it’s all the true crime podcasts. Maybe it’s the sleeping pill. Maybe it’s all of the above.)

I was planning on booking this only room left and begging for a rollout bed or two. I figured that at a hotel, instead of at someone’s property, I could bribe someone into letting my two kids cram into our room with us.

Then my poor, sleepy brain finally realized I could book two rooms! DUH. Problem solved!

I just paid more for these two rooms on one night than I’ll probably spend on hotels for a week in Luxor but I don’t care right now.

I didn’t blow it. Our plan to be there for this even on that day in that year that we’ve been dreaming of doing for years and years.

SO MUCH RELIEF.

What can be learned from this? If you want to go to a solar festival at Abu Simbel (One in February, one in October), make sure you book as soon as they’re available and preferably not under the influence of anything, especially not over the counter sleeping meds.

I’m going to go to bed now. Zzzz