Pyramids, Pyramids, Pyramids

Today it was an early rise to visit the pyramids. We left at 8:30 on our own air-conditioned bus, with tour guide. This was definitely the way to travel, as opposed to the horrible smoggy piece of shit taxi we had last time. It was already quite hot when we got there, but no more then you would expect in the desert. Ahhh, loving the heat!

Our first call of order was the Great Pyramid. Very impressive. You can opt to go inside this one, but we decided to go into the Second Pyramid, as it was a shorter trip down, and a quarter of the price. So we just climbed up to the entrance instead to at least say that we have been on it. Hooray for us!

We then went around to the side of the Pyramid of Menkaure where King Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid, had built three small pyramids for his favourite wife, his mother, and half-sister who was also a wife… surprise, surprise… We got to go inside the favourite wife’s tomb. A small taste of the Second Pyramid we were yet to enter. It was really interesting to see, and we tried to guess where everything would have been. It was a small entrance on the way down, only about 1x1 metre, with a steep incline.

We then headed over to the Second Pyramid. When going inside, the entrance went for 25 metres, but it was nowhere near as claustrophobic as everyone thought it would be. At first the tunnel was much like the other one, but then it started to open up, then it goes small again, and then it opens up again as you start ascending to the chamber. It was so hot inside the pyramid, that when you got out it was actually cool.

The burial chamber was a lot smaller than I was expecting, but you could see as you walked down the tunnel that there were other tunnels that lead to other room, but these were roped off. The chamber still had the crypt that the sarcophagus would have been in, but all other artefacts, and even hieroglyphs, had been removed. It was still pretty cool to see though, and rather awe striking to think that we were actually in a pyramid! The heat became stifling though, so we decided to head out.

We then headed back to the bus to be taken to the point of the panoramic view. This was pretty cool to see the pyramids all neatly lined up across the desert. It was also the perfect opportunity to take stupid tourist snaps.

Our last stop was to see the Sphinx. He is a cute little fella, and I was actually surprised at how long his paws were. Those things went for miles!

The hotel and lunch was our next destination. Again a local dish was in order and this time it was koshery. It consisted of rice, noodles, macaroni, chickpeas, lentils, fried dried onion and a tomato sauce. Great!

After a chill out at the hotel we started out for Coptic Cairo. This is in Old Cairo and is full of different churches enclosed within a wall. It was a pretty place and the churches were interesting to see. Even though they were Christian and Greek Orthodox, it still had a local feel to the place. Most of Coptic Cairo was accessible via a tunnel under the wall, so it seemed like a different little world down there.

We made our way to and from Coptic Cairo on the Metro. This was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. It was still grubby like Cairo is, but it wasn’t packed and the carriages were rather big. The fact that there are so many dirty cars on the road, my lay proof as to why the Metro isn’t used nearly half as much as it could be.

On return to the area we were staying in, we headed up to the local fruit market and got plenty of food for the over night train we were catching that night. The locals there were real characters. One old man tried so hard to get an extra Pound out of Lucy, but that wasn’t going to happen. He was cheeky about it though, not sly, so it was all good fun. We then went out for dinner at a local falafel place, which was really nice. It was then back to the hotel to get out stuff and onto the train station for our over night train.

We headed off to the train station walking with our packs on. This is always fine, until you get to stairs, and boy is that a work out on your inner thighs! We arrived at the train station at 9:30, giving us 30 minutes until the train, only the train was an hour late. Finally we were on our way. It was meant to be a 10-hour trip, but already it was feeling like it was going to be longer. One must get used to being on “Egypt Time” as opposed to any type of schedule.

---

---