Cairo: Part 1

where do i even begin about my adventure in Egypt...

it was just mind-blowingly awesome!

you know when you've dreamed of going to a place for so long and imagined it in your mind so cleary that often you're disappointed..

cairo and the pyramids were everything i thought they'd be and more.
(though the sphinx though was a little on the tiny side in comparison of the pyramids in the background.)

set off for my adventure on wednesday afternoon, escaping the daily grind early and catching the 5pm train down to london town,
before heading off to the airport bright and early for my flight where check in started at 7am on thursday... (nothing like an early start to an adventure.)

which started the moment i got onto the plane...

flying for the first time with BMI, never head much about them, but they were the cheapest and only company with a direct flight from the uk into cario itself.
i was expecting something like jetstar, it was similar however food and drinks were complimentary..

bargin i thought... that was until it arrived...

lunch was served at 10am, of thai beef with rice... it was literally uneadible... brown mush... and smelt less than appealing..

on the plate was also a sweet- an almond covered in a date, then covered in chocolate... which in theory sounds interesting but possibly eadible? no.. better leave that one just for decoration!
there was however a slice of cheese and a cracker!
so the flight itself was uneventful, i think i slept a fair bit of it

we arived into Cairo international airport just after 4pm (local time) it took like 90mins just to get off the ground in heathrow... crazy

the views on the trip were pretty cool too, flew over paris, the swiss alps, and greece... some delightful scenery to be seen from above... nothing like snow covered mountains through the clouds...

and my first views as we were coming into land in cairo were of sand sand sand.,..
just how i'd have imagined it'd be!

out on the ground you could see that the planes were separtated by lines of palm trees...

very cool

as we disembarked from the plane were where ushered into buses and then bused over to the main terminal, to go through immigration and customs...

i didn't have a visa before i left, and was slightly aprehensive to say the least that i should believe one of my contikI tour mates that i could get one at the airport... but after reading my lonely planet, i knew exactly what to do. (sometimes they can be useful)

we entered the customs area, where there were about 20 men waiting with signs for people... none for me... everyone ran for the line up, i saw a tour guide directing his people to a little botth to the side, so i followed! needless to say in 3 mins i was armed with m first egyptian visa! yay! $15 USD

headed through immigratioin, where they spoke little english, but got through ok, and headed over to the luggage carosel to await my bag..
which arrived in due course.. from there headed through the gates out to the arrivals lounge to look for my transfer to the hostel which i'd organised... ( i was looking forward to being one of those people with their name on a sign... but looks as i might no one was holding up a sign with my name on it... mmmm)

after wandering around for a good 30mins and having no luck i tried to call the hostel, but got this bizarre buzzing sound on the phone, then was told the number i was calling was barred.. helpful....

so i just hung around the arrivals area in hope that the driver would arrive...
i was approached by this nicely dressed egyptian man offering his services of a limo...
(the lonely planet is pretty spot on about it's scams etc...)

ended up being cornnered and conned by the very same, but by that point i was over waiting..

his name was Ebrahim, who within 30 seconds had given me all his phone numbers.. and offered to take me to 3 or so other hotels, that would be just as good as the one i was after... ummm no thanks!

as we were walking to his car, we were passing all these other taxis, which looked official, they had taxi written on them and phone numbers too, then he points at his car the "limo" and says this my limo...

first thought was oh shite...

mabe it was due to the large skull and crossbones on the side of the car, and the fact that there was nothing written on it to even suggest that it might be a limo! let alone anything resembling a taxi...

in i hopped, too late to turn back now!

seems seatbelts aren't all that common over here...

so there i was sitting in the back of a limo bouncing around as my driver negociated peak hour traffic, with 10 lanes of cars, in what was meant to be 4 actual lanes...

i sent a text to yaniss saying that if i didn't call him within that hour i was murdered somewhere! lol and held on for dear life..

he randomly stopped at one stage to ask for directions... though he stopped in the middle of a busy roundabout (literally) jumped out and left me in the running car, and ran into a shop to get directions... leaving me with with cars flying and honking in all directions..

but after awhile we found my hostel Sara Inn Hostel, and we parted ways... 120 LE, (totally over priced but i was just thankful i got there in one piece..

the hostel itself was less than 3 pounds a night...

which had me thinking it couldn't be all that good!

the whole you get what you pay for

it was on the 7th floor, and i got to catch this delightful lift up to the top, which had no door... slightly scary, but when in egypt...

at reception i was introduced to the owner as he tried to convince me i wanted to hire his driver for the following day etc... ended up being shown my room, got upgraded to a double room for some bizarre reason...
i think since i missed my driver (which supposedly was waiting for me at 4, and considering i'd told them my flight landed at 415... he'd left without me... they'd assumed i wasn't coming hence the other room...

the hostel is actually fairly nice considering it's so cheap...

nothing like ashtrays in the rooms to make you want to smoke, and cigarette burns in the blankets..

the bathrooms were my first introduction to the egyptian ways,.. with the toilet being right under the shower...

rather interesting... and the whole not being able to flush the toilet paper...

think about how hard it is not to throw it in the toilet... it's second nature to throw it in... but seems the plumbing system over here just isn't built to cope with it, so in the bin it goes...

didn't really get up to much as there was no one around to play with, and i wasn't all that comfortable with the whole wandering around town on my ownsome at this time of night...

especially not really knowing where anything was, so i just headed to bed.

Friday

Awoken to the sound of horns blearing... they seem to use their horns rather than their brakes here and the sounds of prayer..

so it can get rather noisey to say the least.

the smog was in thick and fast when you looked out the window. like a giant cloud hovering over the city.

decided to forgo breakfast and headed downstairs to await my chariot for the nile and splendors tour i booked myself on...

got talking to this american man who was also waiting for someone to ome pick him up, he as off for a 12 day tour all over...

booked my tour from hostel world, with pack2egypt. a company under on the go it seems, got picked up just before 8am, was the first person picked up (it's becoming a habit to be travel alone with men...

headed over to the mariott, now that's what i call a hotel... nothing like my 3 pound a night one... picked up 2 americans who have been living in moscow, and have escaped for a week of sun, it was then on to pick up the last of our traveling companions for the day another two americans, these ones living in Berlin...

and we were off..

first stop this morning was at Memphis

which is located about 24 km south of cairo and is a tiny little village, that once many years ago was the capital of egypt.

not much remains of the city these days.

we were taken to the memphis museum (30LE) an open air museum and built around the fallen colosal statue of Ramses II. (they found the statue and build the building around it...)

the statue itself was huge, and amazed me with the amount of detail that was on it, from finger nails to skin creases, and it looked so life like...

Everything in the museum had something to do with ramses II or Amenhotep II,

they also had these towering statues of Ramses II which once adorned the temples of Nubian.

It was here we also got our first introduction to the way of selling things in egypt...
with people running after you if you so much as glance at a possible souvineer...

Back on the bus (mini van) and off down the road to Saqqara, a mere 3kms down the road...

Saqqara is the cemetery of ancient memphis, and is huge, being an active burial ground for 3500 years or so, it's no wonder that it covers a 7km stretch along the edge of the western dessert. This whole area is only a fairly recent discovery as much of the area was covered in sand.
our main stop here was to visit the Step Pyramid. built for the Pharaoh Zoser in 2650 BC it's Egypts earliest stone monument. and first pyramid.

previous tombs and temples were made of more perishable materials.

The step Pyramid rises in six steps to a height of 60m and was once encased in a fine white limestone. which has pretty much eroded away over the years, and they reckon that 50% still lies undiscovered under the sand.

we were given 30mins to wander around, and set off around the pyramid itself.

you cant appreciate just how huge it is until you're standing right next to it...

and to think people built it in those days.

around the back we found a serdab, a stone structure just in front of the pyramid itself, which has 2 small holes in the front which you can look through and see a statue of zoser himself... eerie!

we kept wandering around, had a look down the entrance to the tomb, which wasn't open for the public.

but heres where having older americans comes into play... while we were happy not to pay any attention to the egyptians about, Paul was easily entranced into a conversation, which generally involved him handing over money to them as well much to our amusement..

needless to say that after payment they were more than happy to dress him up in their clothes and take pictures off him, then want more money to get his camera back... his poor wife just left him to it...

headed back to the van and headed down the road to the little museum, it has to be one of the best museums i've been too, there were lots of different things to look at and everything was well labled in multiple languages.. they even had a few mummies on display. and you could actually take pictures inside.

afterwards we set off towards giza...
with our token stop at the perfumery where were were shown all the different types of perfume, all made by flowers alone, and no chemicals!
they had some gorgeous bottles though..

we all left armed with purchases.. the lotus flower seemed to be a winner there...

from there we were taken to a papyras shop... where we were given a demonstration by a girl of about 17 who got extremely cross whenever anyones attention strayed from her... rather scary as she had a long bit of stick that she was swinging around!

we're were all looking about the room which had magnificant egyptian scenes painted on them. i learnt however how papyraus is made, and how to tell the difference between the real thing and banana leaf... (if it criss crosses then it's real!)
after the demnstration, each of us was hounded by an egyptian sales rep, which tried to entice us to buy up big...

not my idea of looking...
so it was no surprise that we all left withough buying anything..

they were lovely though, and if given just a tad more space to breath, i might have bought something... but of well

were then taken along the road to lunch...

a huge restraunt with an egyptian buffett for 35 LE, there were some amazing looking salads to be had, and a mix of all different types of hot food... the bread was delicious... fresh out of the oven and still warm and soft... mmmm

Then it was time to hit the pyramids.

i've always dreamed of seeing the pyramids, one of those dreams that you never think will happen, yet here i as about to see the sole survivor of the seven ancient wonders of the world the Pyramids of Giza!

as we rounded the corner all you could here were sighs! and wow's

totally amazing...

we came through the main entranc and after paying out 50LE to get in, we walked through the metal detectors.. (they'd go off and no one would do anything about it... go figure)
and we were in there.. at the foot of the Great pyramid of Khufu.. the closer we got the bigger it seemed...

this pyramid is the oldest at giza and stands at a massive height of 146m and they reckon it was completed in 2570BC... with each limestone block weighing it at an impressive 2.5 tonnes..

they're just so perfect in shape, it is hard to believe they were made by humans... if you go by the egyptians they believe that all three pyramids were made by 4 people, and only them.

to me that is just too hard to believe..

no wonder there's guestions of how they came about, and why

we were given time to wander around and we decided to walk around the entire pyramid...

it was slightly difficult to admire the pyramids with so many egyptians tugging at your sleeves constantly harrassing and yelling at us when we tried to ignore them.

got proposed, to called a bitch, and just screamed at al in 10mins!

funny now, but not at the time, i was glad to have the company of the others.

it's amazing how many sentances and languages the children know...

obviously taught the important ones..

caught the van through to the Pyramid of Khafre, it seems slightly larger at first glance as it's on slightly higher ground, but it's a few metres shorter at 136m. this has to be my favourite one, possibly because it's top is still capped with the limestone casing giving you an idea of how they must have looked when they were first built...

supposedly many years ago all three were coated with a white polished limestone, which would have gleamed in the egyptian sun like jewels... though over years this layer has been stripped away and used to build palaces and mosques and the like. which has left the softer stones to be exposed to the elements, and you can see them eroding away with the desert wind.

we were then led up past the thrid and final Pyramid The Pyramid of Menkaure and up to the vantage point, where you could truely witness the sight the three pyramids make...

here we boarded camels and made the treck back to the third pyramid..

camels are hilarious...

it was fun...

though made the mistake of trying to make a video while riding the camel and almost fell off...
it was post card perfect, riding a camel towards the impressive site of the three pyramids...

amazing...

i have to say that getting on the camel was the easy part, having the camel sit down was the scariest part...

but i survived!

from there we headed down to the sphinx, definitely smaller than i imagined, yet huge at the same time..

took a bit of cohercing to actually get us in, as they were trying to get people out and not letting people in... a few bribes and some money say us head in for a quick look.

i wish we had a little more time to look around here, but i'll just have to come back some other time i think.

back on the van and back to cairo...

dropped off at the hotel and was carted away by cab to the felucca harbour for my cruise on the nile..

now the others on my tour had all done this the night before, so i found myself on my own, with a rep, and the felucca driver... on the nile in what could have been an extremly romantic setting...
needless to say it was not, as the other two left me alone and spent the entire time talking in Arabic...

probably about me...

it's the first time i've really wished i had someone with me..

had a half an hr ride and was then dropped at the hostel

made a friend at the hostel, the guy on reception who then decided to give me the tour of the hostel, all the way to the top, where we got to stand on the roof, over looking the lights of cairo... seems they live on top of the building... this is where it got interesting...
he decided to quiz me on my relationship status... and tried to make a move... lol rooftop with an unknown male... will i ever learn!

i quickly lost him and ran back down stairs lol

packed up all my goodies and made plans with tash to meet her at the museum the next morning..

yay