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Published: January 12th 2010
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The Citadel
Ceiling detail 2 We had received plenty of warnings about Cairo - most of which contained the words
“cess pit, complete hole, get in and get out as soon as possible” so we set our expectations of the city pretty low and ended up being almost pleasantly surprised!
Our budget hotel in
Islamic Cairo gave us a pretty good taste of the non-touristy part of the city and the owner did do a good job of arranging us with decent drivers for our stay. Shame about the cockroaches in the bed though… and the flooded bathroom… and dirty sheets…
Our first day we set off with our driver ‘Mohammad’.
Mohammad was a 20-something Cairo boy with a passion for New Zealand dairy products and a habit of driving with a constant monologue of “come on, go go go, yes YOU, go goooo, yessssss!” Despite his tentative grasp of the English language, he was a safe driver who managed to find shortcuts around the worst of the traffic jams.
Our first stop was the
Citadel, which I later found in Lonely Planet to be described as “relatively unimpressive and decidedly overpriced”. Well I’m glad we didn’t bother reading that description because
The Citadel
Ceiling detail it probably would have put us off visiting! Perhaps we are easily pleased but personally I thought the interiors of mosques in the citadel were some of the most beautiful and peaceful places we went in the whole trip. The photos of the ceiling decoration, domes and chandeliers really don’t do it any justice.
We also paid a visit to two other mosques in the area;
Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan and
El Rifai Mosque which were both absolutely beautiful, peaceful and very nearly deserted.
The afternoon was spent wandering around
Coptic Cairo and visiting the churches and graveyard. We sat down in a coffee shop and spent a half hour watching the buses unload of batches of tourists who followed their flag waving guides around for less than 20 minutes before being herded back onto the bus.
Meanwhile Mohammad had found a group of friends and was spending the afternoon chilling in the sun and drinking coffee - no doubt, mentally preparing himself for our drive through the worse of the traffic to Egyptian Museum. “No, no - you craaazy man, go go now - why you do that man?!”
Our drive through the traffic got
us to the
Egyptian Museum with only one and three quarters of an hour to spare before closing time. We booked in our camera (always scary!) and made a mad dash up the staircase towards the Tutankhamum room at the back of the building. The iconic death mask was there in all it’s golden glory, still bright and shiny after thousands of years. After power walking our way around most of the rooms we finally made it to the animal mummies room which was contained amongst others, a pet mare, dozen of animal mummy fakes and a massive crocodile!
Early the next morning we met our new driver who took us out to
Giza to see the famous pyramids. We have seen quite a few ancient sites by now and the pyramids of Giza have never been too high up my list of ‘must see list’. It wasn’t until we saw them growing bigger and bigger as we drove closer, that I actually began to get excited! The pyramids are mind blowing.
We were truly blessed with the weather. Bright blue skies and perfect morning temperatures. And surprisingly, despite arriving at about 8 o’clock, there was hardly anyone
about. In fact for the first 25 minutes we had the Spynx all to ourselves and we were able to photograph to our hearts content.
By the time we headed up to the grand pyramid, the first of the tour busses had arrived and the touts were out in full force.
Now we had been expecting loads of hassle at the pyramids but after camel trekking in Jordan and India, I knew there was NO CHANCE that I would ever find myself astride these snarling, spitting beasts of burden again.
How wrong I was.
As I arranged my scarf around my neck, a little Egyptian guy ran up to me and started telling me that I was doing it ‘all wrong’. Within moments I was been dragged towards the pyramids where what looked like the worlds biggest camel was standing.
Okay, okay, it was my own fault, I realise this. I should have ran but I was instead convinced that a photo of me standing in front of a pyramid, holding the lead rope of a camel, would make a good souvenir. Cheesy I know, but it beats camel riding and should only have cost
Window detail
Mosque of Mohammed Ali a couple of Egyptian pounds.
Chris however was walking off into the distance with the camera so the little guy realised that his opportunity to make money was fast disappearing. With a few tugs on the lead rope, the camel was down on it’s knees and the little buggers hands (the guy’s - not the camel’s obviously) were around my bum and under my shoulders…. “No no!” I cried
“I TOLD you I didn’t want to…” Arghhh! With one swift motion, he picked me up like a child and plonked me ON TOP of the bloody camel!
It all happened so quickly and I now realise that even the camel wasn’t just an innocent bystander in this scam. Because before my bum even touched the saddle, the brute leaped forward, propelling me through the air and nearly sending me flying.
Of course I let out a barrage of abuse and Chris had literally turned grey with anger. Now the little guy had trouble controlling his once docile camel and despite tugging on the lead rope, the foul creature refused to kneel. There I was. What a loser. Held hostage about 10 feet up in the air,
on a bloody camel - quite possibly my most embarrassing travel experience yet.
Needless to say, the little guy didn’t get any money out of us. My goodness, we had been warned about aggressive selling tactics but this took us completely by surprise. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be the last of our unpleasant encounters with touts in Egypt but it was definitely the most physical!
After our adventures at Giza, we set off again to visit the far pyramids at
Saqqara and Dahshur. The small museum at the Saqqara was really well done with loads of information panels to read. It was great to see The Step pyramid and surrounding ruins which were part of some of the earliest monuments.
The drive out to Dahshur was great as we got to see miles of date palms growing along the irrigation canals. Not so great were the tonnes of rubbish floating in the water and lining the river banks. I counted five dead donkeys with bloated stomachs floating within metres of little boys fishing. Nice.
The
Red Pyramid of Dahshur was really peaceful as there were less than ten tourists at the site. Chris was the brave
one, venturing inside the pyramid while I waited outside the tunnel with a few other travellers who weren’t too keen either! He said it was amazing inside, he ended up being in the middle of the pyramid inside by himself as the others all turned back. I guess I’ll just have to take his word for it but nothing was going to get me inside that thing!
Our final evening was spent walking to
Khan al-Khalili. Unfortunately we were too tired to keep walking through the tonnes of tourist tat and ended up having an early night with the cockroaches back in our hotel.
Thanks for the memories, Cairo! It’s a shame we couldn’t have seen more but Aswan is calling!
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