Egypt

Summation of Cairo: one huge dirty brown city where everyone wants your money . . . but at least they're very friendly about it! Thursday we got into Cairo about 10:30 or so. The hostel was supposed to have a driver waiting for us when we got there, but there was no driver. We were in a building adjacent to the airport using their wifi to get a phone number or address for the hostel and a guy approached us and asked if we needed a taxi. So that ended up working our alright.

The hostel ended up being on the 7th floor of an old building. And the room they were going to give us didn’t have a/c and Egypt is HOT, so the guys opted for a hostel on the 3rd floor of the same building that did have ac. The guy that runs it has been pretty helpful, although I think his helpfulness has cost us a bit more than we would have paid otherwise. But whatever. The exchange rate is about .17 on the dollar, so getting overcharged normally only translates to a dollar or two. We went to a shop a few doors down that he took us to and learned about oils extracted from flowers that they have here that are used for perfume and since they don’t have alcohol its stronger and supposedly lasts longer. Allen and I both bought a bit. Later we realized we probably got a bit taken advantage of . . . in the bazaar they were selling it a lot cheaper. A guy showed us how they make papyrus and then of course tried to sell us some, but we didn’t buy any of that. Everyone in Cairo seems to speak at least a few words of English . . . we got a lot of “What country?” or “Where are you from?” etc. People are pretty friendly though. The hard part is knowing whether or not they’re just being friendly or if they’re trying to work an angle for money.

Thursday afternoon we went to the Egyptian National Museum and saw a whole lot of mummies and tombs and statues and the like. The most interesting thing in there was King Tut’s mask. Big gold mask with each facial feature carved out. Unfortunately they don’t allow pics, but its pretty well known so I think just about everyone has seen a picture of it.

After a few hours in there we walked over to the Nile and over a bridge on it and stuff. Big dirty river. The traffic here is CRAZY. South America had its own brand of crazy traffic. Its similar here, but different too. There are something like 18 million people in Cairo and so there are ALWAYS tons of people milling about and cars all over. People literally dart out into traffic and the drivers just swerve slightly to miss them. No one pays attention to lanes and people are constantly on their horns as a way of communicating. They pass each other in the same lane and just give a couple toots on the horn to elt them know they’re coming. Its pretty crazy. In taxis it almost felt like we were in a video game, dodging pedestrians and other cars and stuff.

Today, Friday, was pyramid day. The hostel guy lined up a car and driver for us for the day and we went out to Giza to see the pyramids. We ended up paying to have camels take us around them and so we were on camels for several hours. It was pretty fun – those camels are TALL! A lot taller than being on a horse. The pyramids are huge. It was neat to see them. The guys from the camel gave me a Bedouin head dress thing to wear so I wore that all over by the pyramids . . . I think it actually kept me cooler. We saw the tombs and the sphinx and the 3 big pyramids and then the driver drove us around Cairo some. We saw the citadel and a big mosque and some of the Islamic area and then called it a day.

You can tell the guide had done this many times . . . when we got to the "panoramic spot" he put me in the spot, put my hand on my hip, held my hand up just right and took this before I even knew what we were doing! He took all of these actually. Not bad other than being slightly crooked. Good job Soloman.







We found this street restaurant place that makes these schwarmas that are delicious, so we’ve been eating those for the couple days we’ve been here. They’re pretty cheap too, which is nice. There’s a bakery right by our hostel that we’ve been frequenting for breakfast and stuff, so we’ve gotten to try a few different things.

Cairo is pretty much a big dirty city. So many people and the whole thing is brown. So brown. Tomorrow we head to Jordan. Hard to believe I only have one week left. Time is flying for sure.

With the painfully slow internet we've been getting, pics take forever to upload, so thats all I'm doing for Egypt. The pyramids were the most interesting part anyway.