Arrival in Cairo

Trip Start Aug 25, 2008
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Trip End Sep 15, 2008

Flag of Egypt  ,
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Well, there was a reason why the flights only cost 300 return - it was a red-eye journey in every sense of the word. Left the house at 1:30am on the 25th and had pretty much no sleep till about 12pm the next day. Cairo is loud, polluted and huge.

Flying in the city looks more like a computer-generated texture stuck in the middle of the desert rather than anything real. The thousands of almost identical high-rise blocks in drab sandy-brown bristle all over the urban sprawl, and the pyramids looked dark and mysterious with the sun behind them casting a shadow through the smog... Yeah, the smog - Cairo is probably second only to Beijing in the air pollution stakes. The streets are rammed full of old fiats and skodas to whom lanes don't mean anything, and who may or may not screech to a stop for you as you cross the road, their tyres leaving thick black marks like boot polish on the hot tarmac.

From the moment we touched down at the airport we were, quite predictably, besieged by taxi touts. Having been in China we thought it couldn't be that much of a challenge not knowing the language, but Arabic numbers make things way more difficult - try catching the right bus from the airport, for example, if you only have the number and a very vague idea of where it should go!

It took a good 2-3 hours of demoralising trek around downtown Cairo in 40o heat to find a decent place to stay, whilst (obviously) getting harassed constantly by more touts. The worst part is that they try to guilt-trip you into thinking you are the one being rude to them - we had one guy following us for the best part of an hour (we just took random turns to try to throw him off) who said "Hey, man, look at me - I'm a human being, you know!". The Sphinx
The Sphinx
 When we eventually lost him he muttered something about all us "Americans" being arrogant. Bastard. Fortunately many Egyptians who try to make conversation in the street are just genuinely being friendly (we even had some army officers come chat to us on the metro), and even those who are trying to sell you something know when to take a hint!

Yesterday we checked out the Egyptain Museum, which had some pretty impressive stuff, but I guess there's only so many priceless artifacts you can see in a day. After that we had coffee and a sheesha and decided to take the metro down to the coptic part of Cairo (the ancient Christian district). Unfortunately everything was closed, but it was still pretty interesting to wonder down the side alleys and shoot some pictures. Because there were no tourists we didn't get hassled at all around there, which was a nice change. We still don't quite have the hang of ordering food but so far a diet of falafels and shwarma with the occasional ridiculously greasy fiteer hasn't done much harm.

Got up crazy-early this morning (6:30am, so I only had about 4hrs sleep) to see the pyramids at Giza. Again it was a bit of a mission getting there by metro and taxi, plus it didn't help that the driver tried to direct us to some dodgy camel rental shop, causing us to miss the entrance and trapse around the walled complex for about half an hour, getting constantly offered horse and camel rides. Some rich Saudis were there with their bright yellow hummers, and they seemed to be chasing each other up and down the strip on horseback, spraying each other with some kind of soapy foam (I don't get what that was about...).

Finally we got in and had a wonder around the Sphynx and the Great Pyramid. It was interesting and all, and I don't regret seeing them, but I suppose when you've seen so many pictures of the monuments they never seem quite as impressive as you'd expect in real life. It didn't help that the air was so polluted you could hardly see the damn things from 100m away (you can see how bad the air was from the pictures).

We caught a packed bus back into downtown Cairo and took the metro to the bus station to book tickets to Dahab. The bus leaves at 12:15am, which means we'll get there bloody early in the morning, but it's better than arriving in the middle of the night without a hostel booking. I'll be glad to leave Cairo for somewhere a bit more quiet and relaxing where you don't get hassled all of the time and you don't feel like you're constantly poisoning yourself by breathing the air! I still have a lot of time to kill before the bus goes, so I'm just sat in an internet cafe checking my email - annoyingly my card reader seems to be overheating or something, so I can't upload any pictures. Next update will be from Dahab...
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