Cairo - A Whole New World

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Flying into Cairo, the view is incredible! It’s all sand and thousands upon thousands of high rise buildings. All the buildings blend into the landscape though. But no pyramids yet!

We are met at the airport at 7am by Ahmad, who is the representative from Memphis Tours who will look after us for some of the time in Cairo.

CAIRO - THE FIRST GLIMPSE

The weather is already warm; we are expecting the weather while in Egypt to range from 38-45 degrees Celsius - fantastic!

He asks us about our peak hour traffic and tells us it’s peak hour in Cairo all week, there’s 20,000,000 people in Cairo and someone’s always going somewhere!

They drive on the right side of the road and the cars are left hand drive, so it gives us a taste of what is to come in other countries where we will be driving. Thank God we’re not driving here, although the roads are very good, especially compared to Tanzania and Uganda, the driving is still as hectic with cars going all over the place, weaving in and out to get passed everyone. Our driver, Ahmed is a great driver and we’re very glad to leave it to him. We have a nice new black Kia, only 4,000 km on the clock.

One the way we go over the River Nile, he even stops in all this chaos so we can get out and take a photo, further along there is a full tourist bus doing the very same thing so we are not alone! As we drive along we see the pyramids! Right there, next to the city! I imagined them to be miles and miles out!

Nearer to the hotel, we pass lots of little side streets and if you look down, the pyramids are at the ends!

There seems to be building going on everywhere, and most of the high rise apartment buildings all look unfinished as they still have the steel stirrups poking out the top so if need be they can add an level or 6 on top later on. Meanwhile the lower floors are lived in.

I’m surprised by the amount of litter everywhere, bottles, paper, cigarettes, you name it. It seems this isn’t a concern for the locals as we saw an empty drink bottle thrown from the van in front of us while driving down a main street.

LE MERIDIEN PYRAMIDS HOTEL

On arrival at the hotel entrance, the car is not only checked with a mirror, there is also a bomb dog that walks around the entire car. There are thick metal bollards that are raised and lowered electronically before anyone can leave or enter.

In the hotel, we notice people smoke everywhere, there appear to be no restrictions and I think more Egyptians smoke than don’t. Smoking is very cheap here, 1 Egyptian Pound for a pack of Marlboro, perhaps about 25 cents Australian.

Ahmad handles all of our checking in at the hotel. We’re staying at the Le Meridien Pyramids Hotel. He tries to get us a room with a view of the pyramids but no such luck. Our room just looks out onto the street and has 2 single beds - happy honeymoon! Apart from that, the room is nice, the street is very noisy though, but Tim has a TV so he can happily tune out the street noise now. We both fall asleep and wake up at lunchtime and head to the pool, we can actually see the pyramids sitting by the pool - it just doesn’t seem real! The water is beautiful and warm and circles a bar and eating area in the centre. The water is 2 metres deep in some areas and shallow enough for little kiddies in others.

We go back to our room and turn on the TV and there is an add for the movie ‘The Bucket List’. The only 2 scenes they show are when they go to the Serengeti and see thousands of zebra and wildebeest so we get all excited because we did it, and then they show them standing in Egypt with 2 pyramids in the backgrounds and they are the very ones we could see from the pool - awesome!!!

We have tea at the hotel, and they bring the biggest basket full of the freshest softest bread rolls we’ve had in weeks. Good food is very important here we can already tell!

SOUND AND LIGHT SHOW AT THE PYRAMIDS

We arrive about half an hour early for our show, there are up to 5 shows a night each in a different language, so we sit and wait in an outer area after going through metal detectors and having my bag looked inside. This is something we will become used to in Cairo; there is nowhere you go to that doesn’t check these things. We even get asked here is we have any guns or bombs, I’m sure they were joking….

We get a glimpse of the pyramids as they are lit up for the previous show, they are spectacular, from here we can see 2. I am so excited!

The weather is beautiful now, still warm but with a cooler breeze. It reminds me of the outdoor cinema in Broome.

We are all ushered into the viewing area. Rows and rows of chairs, although there is a lot of people there it appears quite empty as this is the low season.

Then all of a sudden it starts, we’re not sure of what to expect, perhaps something like the light show at Sentosa Island in Singapore. But it is really nothing like that, Singapore was lots of spectacular laser lights, water fountains and fireworks telling more of a child’s story with the main focus on the lights and water show. This show is more about the history and details of the 3 main pyramids that we can see, while the pyramids are lit up. They use laser lights to draw a map on the outside of the largest pyramid to show the layout inside, and also how other famous large buildings would fit inside. It goes into the history and relationship of these 3 pyramids and also the valley buildings that were used to prepare the bodies before being placed in the pyramids.

The show ends at 10:30pm and as we leave we can see everyone arriving for the next show. It’s been such a long day, I’m lucky to have lasted through the show so am pretty glad to get back to our hotel, single bed and all!

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Comments

[tuna cokguler]

like this photo
very nice...