Egypt: October 2004 Archives

Happy Halloween!
I started this entry on Friday but never finished it. Right now we're waiting to get picked up and taken to the camp. We're still adjusting to the heat and other differences, but we're fine and excited to get to the camp, meet people, and stay in one place for a month!

10-29
Our first full day in Ghana--we're still in that "where are we?" kind of fog, but doing well. We changed hotels this morning since the one we finally found last night was too expensive. (We didn't even consider the possibility of hotels actually being full--we haven't experienced that anywhere yet and didn't expect it here either.) This afternoon the clouds rolled in really quickly and it poured for about an hour--the sound was nice to take a nap to.
But back to Cairo now...

10-26
On our way to the museum Tuesday morning a guy tried to stop us saying that the museum was closed for Ramadan and invited us to "wait" at his papyrus factory. The scenario was straight out of our guidebook, and we kindly declined. Once inside the museum we decided on the PDA electronic guide to help make sense of what we were seeing. It was fun to use, but a little disappointing except in the Mummy room where it gave a lot of details about each mummy. The Tutankhamen exhibit was also very impressive, but the ground level seemed more like a warehouse then a museum.

That afternoon we headed out into Islamic Cairo and the bazaar area. It was about 4:30, getting close to sunset. The streets were full and loud--people selling bread, juice and tea and bringing out huge trays of food to rows of tables set out on the street. Others just spread out carpets on the pavement by their shop. As it got closer to sunset the anticipation in the air grew as people sat staring at their food. Finally, the call sounded and then complete silence. The streets cleared of everbody except for the white tourists. After about 20 minutes the bussle returned, but this time with a sense of relief or satisfaction.

10-27
We decided to do the pyramids without a tour, and to take the bus instead of a taxi. I have to admit I felt a bit anxious about it at first, after reading in tour books and other people's accounts (like this blog entry I found) about all the hassles, bargaining, and scams that can be involved with this. But we'd been studying up on our arabic numbers, knew which bus to take, and I felt excited as we set out.

As we were crossing the street to the bus station, a guy greeted us and told us he was just getting off from work and headed back home to Giza. We talked with him some more as we headed to the buses. He told us it was much faster and cheaper to take a mini bus (like the tro-tros here) instead of the big bus we had planned to take. We hesitated for a moment, but then decided to go for it (just based on a good feeling I guess). We paid the pound fare for the two of us (less than 20 cents) and continued our conversation with Hamedy. We felt perfectly safe but alternated a few times between trust and doubt in terms of what his intentions were. He and Michael talked casually about computers (Hamedy was studying computer programming), but Michael froze up a bit when Hamedy started talking about the special "Egyptian Viagra" perfume. I think he got the hint that we weren't interested, and the conversation went back in a different direction.

Hamedy insisted on paying when we had to switch mini buses. He then said he wanted to invite us to his house to meet his wife and drink some tea, then he would show us the entrance to the pyramids and tell us what he knew. We felt safe and decided to just go for it. We sat at in his living room for about an hour, drinking tea and discussing the pyramids, politics, religion and other things. We told him we wanted to do a camel ride around the pyramids so he walked us over to an area away from the entrance where horse and camel guides hung out, told us the price that he as an Egyptian would pay, and said he'd help us bargain a bit. In the middle of discussing this with Hamedy, Adel and his two camels came walking down the street as if on cue (I later found out Michael was a little suspicious of how easy and well-timed this seemed). But with his laid back, joking personality, Adel quickly put us at ease.

We agreed on a price of 180 pounds ($30) for the both of us for two hours. After saying our goodbyes to Hamedy (truly just a friendly person!), we hopped on our camels and were off (but not before Michael accidently kicked my camel in the head as he was trying to get on!). By entering the pyramids from the back with Adel (who had to slip the guards a bit of an "unoffical entrance fee") we got to avoid the bus loads of tourists, the KFC and Pizza Hut right at the entrance, and all the hawkers trying to sell little plastic pyramids. Coming in from the desert side felt pretty magical--we could see the pyramids peeking up from behind the little dunes, the vast desert surrounding us, and the huge city sprawled under a cloud of smog to the other side.

Adel was a great guide--he explained some of the history of the pyramids and how they were built. We also got to chat with him about changes in the Bedouin lifestyle. At one point he told us that Bedouin people traditionally honeymoon for 1 year--maybe we're Bedouin at heart!

In a happy daze, we said goodbye to Adel and explored the pyramids closer by foot. We ran into lots of people offering us horse rides, camel rides, and cold drinks, but suddenly we actually enjoyed these exchanges. We found that when we smile and maybe joke a bit it all becomes relaxed and fun. We met another camel guide named Jamal who offered Michael 6,000 camels for me. After a bit of deliberation he decided to keep me.

On the bus ride back into the city we practiced reading arabic numbers off of license plates and talked about how lucky and happy we felt about our pyramid experience--none of it would have happened if we'd taken the "easy" way in a tour or taxi. We felt a kind of release, like we'd been opened up to Egypt and its culture.

We rested up a bit at the hotel before we set out for a night of the opposite--an easy night of playing tourist on a dinner cruise on the nile. It was all set up through our hotel, so we hopped in taxis with 3 Belgians and Sam, who works at Luna. We got a good table right by the band and they started up shortly after we got there. The first performance was excellent--the guy whirled around for about 30 minutes doing different kinds of tricks with his skirt and scarves, a bit like a whirling dervish maybe. Then came the belly dancer and her two male sidekicks. This show ended up being a bit humorous--it looked like they were just making it up as they went, and the belly dancer was chewing gum and kept pulling down her skirt. We had fun though--the dinner was pretty good (though we equally enjoyed Kushari dinner the previous night for about $1.50) and we got to talk to Sam a bit. He's married to a woman from Hong Kong and might be there when we're in China so hopefully we can meet up!

10-28
Our study of arabic numbers payed off when we spotted the right bus to the airport from across the square and were able to run and hop on. We had good and relatively empty flight to Accra and met four Canadian nursing students who've been working in Accra and were able to give us some good tips for the city.

(it says posted by Michael, but actually it's Megan--don't know how to change that right now!)

Well, we've arrived safe and sound in Cairo after a 1 hour delay with our plane. It appears some parts fell off and they had to go back to the terminal and tape them back on. But seriously, all we understood from the captain was something about a technical problem and going back to retrieve something. When a panicking passenger behind us asked a flight attendant what was wrong the conversation went something like this:

Panicking Woman: "What is the problem?"
Flight Attendant: "ehhh..."
Woman: "A technical problem?"
Attendant: "ehhhh......yes....We go back now...and....ehhhh....make plane safe."

But we still really enjoyed the flight because the plane was basically empty, they served good food and the flight attendants were friendly.

Upon landing, they stopped me at Immagration for some reason and we waited about 20 minutes before they called us back and asked me if I was really who I said I was. Thankfully, they ended up letting us through.

Some of our first impressions of Cairo:

- People hanging out of buses and running to jump on them without the bus stopping
- Lots and lots of honking and crazy traffic
- Red lights and traffic signals mean nothing
- We're learning the art of dodging cars as we dash across the street
- It's hard to tell who's just being friendly and who's being friendly to get something out of us
- Everyone is happy to see the sun go down because they can finally eat something (it's Ramadan)

We found a great place to stay called Hotel Luna. It's clean, comfortable and cheap. Tomorrow we're planning to go to the Egyptian Museum and Wednesday we'll do the pyramids.