Cairo and Pyramids (Apr 18-21)

Finally after 2 weeks by the sea and exploring the Sinai peninsula we felt enough energy in our bones to step back into the hustle bustle world and with the reports we'd had from people about Cairo (22 million people and horrific adventures for pedestrians) we figured we should make sure we were ready first.


So a 9 hr bus ride later we were there and it was interesting to note our reactions. What a 'clean' modern city!....at least compared to our most freshest memories of cities (ie. India!). We're in a hotel downtown which is some 1940's eight story building that is running down and neglected, yet beautiful in its own way with hardwood floors, 12 ft ceilings, balcony, wall paper peeling off the walls, leaking plumbing etc. But hey, compared to a lot of the places in India...it was luxury.



'Downtown' here is big wide clean streets without trash, cows, and their you know what, skyscrapers...lots of shops and shopping etc...it practically feels like a we're in the 'western world' again. Here's a couple of photos, one from our hotel room balcony, another of us chomping down some delicicious shwarmas on the steet.

And about the traffic...heck it's veritably sane compared to India. It's true that here the traffic lights are irrelevant ( on flash cycle all the time), but there are police on every corner who seem to substitute for the lights and pedestrians simply cross whenever and wherever they want whenever the slightest gap in cars presents itself. Here at least it is only cars and they're all moving about the same speed which is in fact not too fast whereas in India it was every kind of vehicle imaginable, gas, human, animal powered all moving at different speeds and packed in with inches between them all and no police on any corners!.



One problem here though is that its a crappy place for being an independent (non-package tour) tourist. Lots' of people approaching you, almost always in the guise of being friendly and always with a hitch. We are becoming harder and more jaded all the time, kind of cranky everytime someone approaches you because you feel like such a target and no matter what you do you are fighting all the time from being exploited, right down to buying a bottle of water in the corner store. There is a real price, and then the special tourist price for everything. Its probably a sign that our travelling through these parts of the world should come to an end soon. For almost everything you buy or go to, you have to discuss, listen to their lies and arguments why you have to buy this now and at their price, and then finally walk away before the price comes even close to the real 'Egyptian price' and it is just getting to be too much work. The alternative is just to pay double for everything...something that you would do if you were here for 2 weeks but when you are travelling for 6 months you just can't afford to do that.

Also the system is rigged here in Egypt to extract the maximum amount of money from tourists and admission fees to most things are astronomical. To visit the 3 main pyramid sites around town cost us 160$ for transportation and admission fees and the English speaking guide we paid for had a lot of trouble with English and knew a lot less than what was written in the Lonely Planet book.

OK....sorry for dumping all that on you...what about the sights? Cairo is like so many old cities in this part of the world. Really 2 cities, an old one and a new one side by side. The new one is laid out in the last 100 yrs or so with wide streets in a grid wide sidewalks and Cairo in particular semi-European like architecture. It's kind of nice actually as described above. Then there is the old medieval city with tiny streets, bazaars, shops, mosques, old buildings etc. We've spent some time walking about each of them. In the old town we stopped in a mosque from the 900's and watched a group of men up front who were being instructed in how to recite the Koran. Here's just a snapshot of how many mosques there are in this city.





We were also chatted up by a young guy and invited to take some free literature on Islam. He was youngish, an engineer, loved this mosque and really genuine, mentioned how important it was for people to know about eachother as it is lack of knowledge that engenders fear and trouble. There was something quite moving about him. Since then we've been reading some of the booklets about the Islamic view of Jesus and women and why it is so much better and more correct than the Christian view. Not enough space here to go into it, but lots of misrepresentation and taking things out of context going on in those booklets....so much for promoting understanding!.

Day 3 was spent with the tour of the pyramids ranging from 10 to 35 kms south of town. At the furthest site in the AM we were the only ones there and had the opportunity to go inside the pyramid alone down (way down, the equivalent of perhaps 6 flights of stairs) into the burial chamber with 140m of stones on top of you. Of course all empty in there now but an eerie feeling thinking about some pharoah having been in there with all his 'stuff' for 4500 yrs. These pyramids are the oldest man made stone structures standing on earth and are older than the next oldest ones by a very long time and they are very large! One picture below is looking back up the shaft from the bottom of the burial chamber and the other is looking up into the A-frame of the 12 m ceiling inside the burial chamber.





The last stop of the day was the Giza pyramids the largest pair at 140m (what's that some 45 stories high?). They are definitely really crumbling on the outside, since their smooth hard limestone casings were pillaged in medieval times to make mosques and palaces so the exposed sandstone blocks are starting to wear. Some of the lesser pyramids are mounds of sand/gravel now. So we took the requisite camel ride, got the photo, endured the hassles of people trying to sell us a million things and then just sat and marvelled at what possessed these people to build these things 4500 yrs ago.




Today we booked out train ticket for overnight of Apr 22 in a sleeping cabin to Luxor 800kms south on the Nile which has an equally impressive set of temples and tombs...perhaps more so because down there they are all made of granite and so aren't susceptible to erosion as the limestone and sandstone is here.

So during the day tomorrow we intend to go visit the Coptic area of town, the Copts being those who converted to Christianity in the first few centuries AD and who now represent perhaps less than 10 percent of Egyptians.