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Published: March 9th 2006
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Still no luggage. I think by now the baggage handlers have finally had the hangover wear off after drinking the Captain Morgan’s and Parrot Bay Rum in my missing luggage.
We got to meet everyone in the group this morning. There are a total of 10 others in our group. Three of the gentlemen work at Intel in California doing chip design. Six are Taiwanese, five of whom go to UPENN, and the sixth the brother of one of the others. The last is a Brazilian woman who works at the US Embassy in Brazil as a country expert.
We met our tour guide for the day, Mina. Mina really has a good heart, but if you could imagine an Egyptian dork…that would be Mina. He was overly melodramatic...which just added to his charm. He would start off his descriptions normally, then would start to speak quicker and slowly increase his volume until he crescendoed into a finale that had us cracking up/cheering. Oh…and then there was this thing he had about seeeeecrets, each of which turned out to be a really cheesy thing. Think bad Laffy Taffy jokes. Or Canadian humor. It was great.
The first thing
that we did was change some cash (which is extraordinarily difficult to do; hotels and banks don’t exchange traveler’s checks, and the banks don’t like to change $100 bills) and get some Student ID cards. After signing an affidavit promising that was attending college, taking a picture, and handing over $18 I was handed my International Student Identity Card…good for 50%!o(MISSING)ff of admission at most sites (which was not included in the tour cost). I suppose I should feel guilty…but it seems my morals can be bought for the possibility of saving $30 in entrance fees. In actuality, it probably helps out the tour company more, since they can now buy the train and cruise tickets for a student price.
Saqqara Saqqara is home to the Step Pyramid, the first pyramid, built in 2650 BC. Being a computer geek, I guess it would be best to call this a Proof of Concept pyramid. Previously, the Egyptians simply built big rectangular rooms (called mastabas) out of mud brick when they had a royal burial. Then an architect named Imhotep (I believe this was a character in the Mummy…but I may be wrong) came up with the bright idea
of stacking multiple mastabas up, decreasing them in size as they went up. His piece de resistance was to then build the whole thing out of stone.
I am figuring the conversion on building the Step Pyramids went something like this (any parallels to the FedEx Superbowl commercial are purely coincidental):
Imhotep: I have this great idea! Why don’t we stack up multiple of the mastabas when we bury the Pharoah…makes it easier to find the place in all this blowing sand.
Builder: I don’t know…that seems like an awful lot of work for something that isn’t going to last. Besides, my wife is probably going to be pretty mad that I will be working so much overtime.
Imhotep: I have thought about this too and you are going to love it! Instead of building this out of mud bricks, we are going to make it out of stone!
Builder: Are you nuts!?! That is going to take forever, and I don’t think we can afford it.
A distant direct relative of a certain Corporate Controller I know: You know, if we double the number of workers, don’t pay them, and then stop feeding
them, we could get this built in half the time for a quarter of the cost.
Imhotep: That’s a great idea! Do you think we can source the stone from Hughes Supply?
Finally, the builder is stepped on by a dinosaur before he can object any further.
Mina, our tour guide, asked if he could tell us a secret...but only if we promised to not tell anyone. I asking if this was like the promise we made that we were students. Mina laughed a little nervously and then proceed to tell us that if we walked completely around the Step Pyramid and then made a wish, the wish would come true. I'll be interested to see if we hit our go-live date for AR Phase II.
Memphis This used to be the Capital of the Old Kingdom. However, much of it has been destroyed, and only a few artifacts are left. Two stood out in my mind. First was the Sphinx of Memphis. The second was a couple of statues of Ramses II. All that is left of this once great city is now contained in an outdoor “museum” that is a couple of acres
in size. That really is a shame.
Giza Pyramids/Sphinx Obviously, this is one of the big things I will see during my time in Egypt (both in terms of size and importance).
The Great Pyramid was, well, great. We were able to climb up the blocks, and could have gone in…but decided against it since we could enter another of the pyramids for 1/5 the price.
You know the question “Would you jump off of a bridge if everyone else was jumping off of a bridge?” Well, if you replaced the phase “jump off of a bridge” with “ride a camel,” then my answer would be yes. Although I have a 2 hour camel ride coming up later in the tour in Dahab, everyone was eager to ride a camel at the pyramids…so I decided to too. Plus, I now know what I have to look forward to…hemorrhoids.
The ride was fun…having the camel get up and sit down with you on it is a unique experience. It took a while for the camel handlers to figure out how to take pictures of us (you would figure they would have it down to a science…of
course they knew perfectly well how to ask for a tip when they handed my camera back to me)…but I am happy with the photos that were finally taken. 10 minutes later, the ride was done. And I had to give another tip for the service.
After the camel ride, we headed over to the Second Pyramid and went inside. After being hunched over to climb down and then back up to the burial chamber, we were rewarded with the beauty of a big empty room with an empty sarcophagus in it. I had snuck in my camera with me to take a group picture…but no one seemed game except the guy in there who was “guarding” the place…who seemed more than eager to take our photo (for a small tip I’m sure).
Finally, we went to the Sphinx for some more picture taking. The batteries for my camera were getting low, so I had to be judicious in my picture taking, but I still got enough shots to make it worthwhile.
I’ll be back here later during my trip to see a Sound & Light Show.
Papyrus Paper & Essence On the way back
to the hotel to pick up our bags we stopped by a papyrus factory. After a quick demonstration on how papyrus paper is made, I had a chance to pick up some nice hand painted papyrus pieces.
After this we went to an Essence shop, which are the concentrated oils used to make perfumes/colognes. After a 30 minute hands on demonstration we all walked out of the shop without buying a thing. I think we hurt the girl’s feelings who gave us the demonstration, but we were all tired and really didn’t see a need to buy what she was selling. Hopefully none of my family was hoping I would bring some back with me.
Overnight Train Trip to Aswan We stopped by quickly to pick up our luggage and headed over to the train station. Since we had a 14 hour ride to Aswan, most of us decided to get tickets for the sleeper car on the train. As an added bonus, we were all put in the same car. For the first hour, we all hung out in the aisle chatting and swapping stories. I took a quick “shower” using the sink in my room,
and then settled down for dinner and some reading before hitting the sack. Although some of the others complained about being woken up by the jostling of the train, I slept like a rock.
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