2/3/05
We arrived in Cairo from London at night, 11 PM, and the differences to our known western world started to appear even before we got through the immigration. The chauffeurs, with their signs, are the first thing you see after you get off the plane, it was surprising that they were in between the plane and the immigration line.
In the luggage pick up area, it gets worse; there are travel agents trying to convince you to change your plans and go to the hotels suggested by them, that are 'cheaper and better'. After a couple of 'no's', we took a cab to the youth hostel.
The ride was an adventure by itself: no seat belts, traffic lights are completely ignored and the lane marks on the streets seem to be for decoration only. They drive wherever they find room on the road . And they honk, my god, how much they honk! It seems that the horn is the most used feature in the cars, and there is also sometimes a reply and a counter reply, it is almost a dialog. On the way to the hostel we saw many nice illuminated mosques and when we got there we were happy to find a very big and clean room waiting for us. Just before going to bed we scheduled with the hostel reception a trip to the pyramids for the next day.
3/3/05
The day started with a breakfast (two pieces of bread, a boiled egg and a tea) and, right after it, we were introduced to our private cab driver for the day that would take us all over the places in Cairo and outside of Cairo. We left around 9 AM.
If we found the traffic to be shocking on the arrival night, during the day light that sensation was just amplified with the people trying to cross the street. They don't wait for the green light, since the cars won't stop anyway. So, they get among the mass of cars and slowly go forward lane by lane from one side of the street to the other, risking their lives as in a video-game. And, of course, sometimes they don't make it. Indeed, we saw a dead women laying in the middle of the street, covered with blood, that just got runover by a car. It created a whole mess, but people kept driving aside the body. Anyway, let's talk about nicer things. The driver, Ibrahim, took us first to Sakkarah which is around 80 km south-west of Cairo. To get there we first crossed the suburb of Cairo which looks like a giant project. It was sad to see that the people are living in buildings that are not finished. They seem to build the roof whenever they can and then the next person squats the new roof slowly adding walls, an eventually a roof, to allow a new comer to squat and so on... Along the river, we saw women walking carrying huge baskets on their head. Once out of the city, on both side of the roads, we could see barefoot people working in the very very green fields, others riding donkeys or camels. Some were sitting on the top of a stack of grass on the top of the donkey. The further out of the city, the more people were wearing the traditional clothes.
After crossing these fantastic scenaries, we finally arrived in Sakkarah where remain two step pyramids (the most famous is Zoser, 59m high), some columns and walls of a temple.
There we also visited a tomb of one of the pharaoh from the earliest dynasty. There an Egyptian guy started to guide us even without asking if we wanted a guide, with lousy information and in a poor English. We tried to run away from him to enjoy the visit. When we came out, he was hassling other people and as soon he saw us he ask for bakshish (tip in Arabic). During all that time Ibrahim was waiting for us in his car. He took us then to Memphis which was the first capital of Egypt. To get there we crossed again interesting places. There were little shops along the street, butcheries with huge uncovered pieces of raw meat (whole legs) hanging outside, in the sun and the dust. Lots of people were just sitting along the road, barefoot and dirty. In the Memphis Museum there isn't much to see besides 2 huge nice statues of Ramses II. There again, hasslers were walking around, annoying people trying to sell them souvenirs. They only way to get rid of them is to be rude, if you politely say no they will still insist. It is so unpleasant.
Then we went back towards the city to see the famous pyramids.
The landscape on the way was awesome. There is a beautiful contrast between the shiny green from the trees and fields along the river and the yellow from the sands in the background.
Ibrahim took us to a little shop where they offered us the usual "hospitality" tea. in fact, it is common practice in the Arabic countries to negotiate the prices while sharing a tea. No matter what, we knew that we would get ripped of, so we might as well get ripped of the least possible. He was offering two kinds of camel rides around the pyramids, a long and a short one. After the negotiation we got a 'discount' on the price and according to our salesman we had the big tour for for the discounted price of the small one.
The ride was fun, we had a camel each, our guide was on a horse and a poor boy walked almost all the way pulling our camels, since we didn't have a 'Camel Driving License' and had no idea on how to control the animal.
All around the Giza pyramids site there are high fences. Since we got our tour in the black market, we went into the site by a backdoor where the fences had been knock down. A few meters from the entrance point there are official guards waiting for the bribe. Our guide paid the guards and everything was fine. The guide was an attraction apart, he was not exactly an expert in Egyptian history but very funny. He explained to us the three reasons why the pyramids were built: 1 For the king not to be forgotten; 2 To be a tomb for the king; 3 And to give jobs to millions of Egyptians in tourism. According to him, everything was already planned by the kings of the old time.
We went all the way to the pyramids but he was always careful not to be caught.
Giza is a site with the three big famous pyramids:
Kheops, built with 2.5 millions blocs of stones in 2650 BC and 137m high and 3 other small pyramids close to it; Khephien is the pyramid in the middle, 136m high and it is called the sun of Kheops; Mykerinos is the smaller of the three, 62m high. Couple of meters down is the Sphinx.
Our tour guide let us of the camels, so that we could go and touch the pyramids if wanted.
Before going home we asked to Ibrahim to take us to the Citadel, but when we got there it wasn't worth getting in because of the time left for the visit, so we just looked at it from the outside before going home.
3/4/05
The second day in Egypt was also thrilling, we didn't want to hire a cab for the whole day because the things we planed to see were all in the city. Four subway stations away from our hostel is the Coptic Cairo, a small neighborhood with churches, mosques and synagogs. There, we visited 2 places, a Greek orthodox church, Mari Guirguis and a mosque, d'Amr Ibn Al Ass, said to be the oldest mosque in the whole Africa, around 900 year old.
The church was interesting because it had lots of pilgrims kissing the images of Saint George killing the dragon. The majority were not tourists. For the mosque it was a little bit different. To get in, we had to take our shoes off and Angie had to be completely covered. Within a few meters in the mosque somebody again came along already explaining the whole history without our request, since we couldn't get rid of him we listened and learned that although this is considered the oldest mosque in Africa most of what we saw was built in the last 50 years.
On the way out we had to tip the voluntary guide and to get our shoes back, but at this time Angie was already prepared and gave them 5 Egyptians pound each. They made sure we knew they were very unhappy with the tip. The Citadel was the program of the afternoon. Since there is no subway stop close to there, we took a cab. The first two cabs we stopped just couldn't understand where we wanted to go and left. The third one pretended he had understood and Angie even negotiated the price of the ride. But few meters away, he stopped the car, got off and went to the sidewalk to get an English speaker that came by and translated to the driver where we wanted to go :D. We finally got to the Citadel, a site built between 1.176 and 1.182.
Inside, there is the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, the Palace d'El Gawhara, an Army Museum which we didn't visit for two reasons: the subject wasn't really appealing to us and they didn't want me to go in with my camera, I would either have to leave it with them or pay for the camera to get in. Well, we left to see the inyards of the Citadel. Here also there were not many western tourists and that is maybe the reason why so many kids were staring at us. Most of the kids waved to us as we wandered in the Citadel, many passed by and repeated the same question - Hello, what is your name? .Two girls, around 12 years old, even asked Angie's autograph. The Citadel is at the top of a hill where from you have a magnificent view of Cairo.
The city is filled up with mosques with its minarets raising up to the sky.
Enough of Citadel, we left to visit the famous souk (bazaar), Khan Al Khalili, existing since the 14th century. This is another thing not to be missed in Cairo. It is a labyrinth made of little corridors with thousands of little shops selling all kinds of souvenirs to the tourists.
We walked all over the place and indeed two guys asked me how many camels I wanted trying to trade Angie. At the end of the day we went back to the hotel. By 9 PM we left the hotel for a trip by train to Luxor, 670 Km south of Cairo, in a 10h night ride.
3/5/05
After a night of bad sleep in the train, we got to Luxor where we watched the huge sunrise from the train. The sun seemed bigger from here. The train crossed miles and miles of fields where we observed again the contrast of the dry yellow desert background and the green fields at margins of the Nile river, and all that during sunrise. Luxor was the Capital of Egypt during the new Empire, from 1567 to 1085 BC, and was named Ouaset.
There, no major problems, everything was arranged by our hostel. Somebody was waiting for us at the train station and from there,all we had to do was to enjoy the visits. Luxor is different from Cairo in terms of tourists. Here there were thousands of tourists, buses and buses everywhere. We were part of a small group of 10 people in a minibus. Our guide took us first to the Valley of the Kings, where the tomb of Tut Ankh Amon (1352 BC) and its amazing treasures were discovered by Howard Carter, only recently, in 1932. It also houses the tomb of Ramses III, VI, Amenhotep II, Seti I and many others. From there we went to the temple of Hopchetsuh and then to the two Colossal Statues.
We made a stop for lunch in a nice restaurant. After lunch we met another group and a different guide, Mohamed. We visited the Karnak and Luxor Temple. These places are just amazing. It is impressive when you look to the gigantic pillars standing for over 3000 thousand years in a such complex construction for the time.
Moreover, there are the walls, fully decorated with thousands of stories of rituals, wars, gods, ceremonies, etc. And these walls were colored before,but only in a few spots the paint remained. So many things to see that could keep you busy for a very very long time.
Unfortunately we had only one day to see all that. At the end of the tour in Luxor, Mohamed, stayed with us, just hanging around in the temple, chit-chat, pictures of the group and e-mail exchanges, very nice.
Even when we went back to the hotel he still stayed around and we told him our experiences in Cairo and when we asked him where we could buy fruits to take with us in the train going back to Cairo, he promptly asked what we would like to have and he went outside to buy it at no cost at all, that was a pleasant and a very good surprise for us, coming from Cairo, where everybody was just trying to get our money. An Arabic couple that was part of the afternoon visit paid us a Egyptian beer,very refreshing by the way, and told us that when you speak Arabic the entrance fees to the different site is much cheaper. For example,they paid 2 LE for something that other tourist pay 20 LE. But even though,they were surprise by the Egyptian mentality and people tried to rip them off too. At 9 PM we were back in the train, going to Cairo.
3/10/05
Back in Cairo there was no nice sunrise or landscapes, just the chaotic stressing gray huge city (around 20 millions of people). We went back to the hostel and slept the whole morning to catch up. After lunch we went to the Egyptian Museum, with more than 250.000 items: mummies, sarcophagus and the unbelievable treasures of Tut Ankh Amon. I will not describe it here as you can easily find it on the Internet. Although the museum is very rich in content, it is very poor in information. It seems that to really enjoy the Egyptian Museum, you have to hire a guide. Few pieces have explanation and many many statues are just laid out in the rooms, sometimes just with a title and many times with nothing. So you look but don't know when or why some of the items are there. Out of the museum, we walked around Cairo and stopped by a Egyptian fast-food house. We had Koshiry, a kind of mix of pastas and chickpeas and other things that I'm not sure what they were, but it was really good and really really cheap, 2.5 Egyptian pounds, around $0.50.
In almost every street you have cafes where people are sitting around a narguile (huka),relaxing, and so the air is filled with a mixture of gasoline smell and raspberry or apple smell from the smoke of the hukas.
We went back pretty early to the hostel to organize our stuff. FYI, the hostel cost us 6.20 dollars per night per person with breakfast included in a double room. In a dorm room it is even cheaper. Next morning we took a flight to London.
