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Published: December 24th 2009
Saqquara Pyramid
This is the 1st successful Pyramid from the 3rd dynasty. They call it the step pyramid.Sorry for the delay in this post. We had all of our planning done up to and including Egypt before we left, but nothing after that. So once we had access to the internet, most of my time has gone to making preparations for Greece and Thailand at the expense of staying on top of the blog.
Our third country in Africa is Egypt. Nicolas chose this stop on our tour because of the pyramids he learned about in school. We spent 10 days in Egypt and decided to use a tour guide service as we were informed that signage and information at the sites were in arabic. We are glad we did as the information we received was very good and you really cannot do this on your own as there are no explanations (in the form of signs or audio guides) at any of the sites worth visiting. Our Egypt experience included planes, trains, boats, and automobiles, including two sleepless nights on overnight trains, and we really could not have asked for more.
Egypt is a difficult bird to describe. It is a land of contrasts. The developing part of the culture and the developed are very
Carpet Weaving
We tried our hand at carpet weaving distinct and you can see the developed part taking over. The desert and the lush Nile valley, sitting side-by-side, are stark contrasts. The visual indications of attempts to provide security for tourists and the contrasting feeling of uneasiness that the tourist feels are another example. It is all very interesting.
Upon arrival in Cairo I was struck by the metropolitan atmosphere of the city. There are over 20 million people in Cairo…it is the largest city on the continent of Africa. The first thing I noticed was the thousands of scooters and motorbikes that we saw in Burkina Faso and Tunisia, were absent and replaced by about 5 cars each! I do not think the horns are loud enough or the lights bright enough to ride the scooters and motorcycles here. The second thing I noticed was the thick layer of smog coating the city…apparently they rarely see the sun, even though the sun is always shining.
As we were driving to our hotel from the airport I saw the first contrast. Amongst all of the traffic on a main road (and there was a lot!), the cars were weaving around something up ahead…that something was a horse
Papyrus Making
We learned how to make paper from a reed. and buggy…in the middle of Cairo! You do not have to go too far away from the city centre to find neighborhoods that are traditional African/Egyptian, with the mud brick homes, carts and donkeys, and the like. For Egypt we hired a guide service to take us around. Normally we are not the ‘tour’ type as we like to research and explore on our own, but this was recommended as the best way to go in Egypt as it would be difficult to get around in English only, and know the best sites to see. We were pleased that we did this in Egypt as we did hit the highlights and transportation was included as were the accommodation arrangements. It was still ‘tourish’ in nature, even though it was only us and a guide, as we would have liked to spend more time in some of the places but the schedule determined otherwise.
There are armed (ak47’s) guards/police everywhere and especially heavy in areas where tourists frequent. The presence of these guards will either make you feel safer or otherwise, if you consider their necessity in the first place. I guess we should be happy that they provide a
deterrent, although one wonders how effective they would be if a determined terrorist wanted to wreak havoc. The disturbing part is that they are even necessary at all. The hotel we stayed at in Cairo had a metal detector as you entered and a 24 hr private security guard. It is a different atmosphere.
We took a four day cruise up the Nile. We started at a place called Ashwan which is in Upper Egypt (which is in the South of Egypt, lower Egypt is North?!?), and we took an overnight train to get there. At places like Ashwan and another stop of Luxor, we saw many grand temples that the Kings erected to honour/worship a particular god. Like the pyramids and tombs, the amount of work and time required to build these must have been astronomical. Over the centuries, other Kings made additions to the temples, so they became monolithic.
The Nile is truly amazing and most of Egypt’s population lives in the Nile valley as about 90% of Egypt is uninhabitable due to the desert that makes up most of the country (much like Canada and the arctic). The contrast is severe between the kilometer or
Giza Pyramid
Cairo in the background. so on either side of the river and barren desert outside of that boundary. From banana trees, sugar cane, palm trees, cabbage and cauliflower fields, and many other crops and vegetation to barren rock. It is almost as though someone drew that ‘line in the sand’ between arable and not! The cruise took us to Luxor where we took another rover night train back to Cairo.
I must say that Egypt has the potential to be one of the friendliest nations on the planet! This is another contrast. I say potential because they have the 1st part right in being friendly and welcoming to visitors. However, it’s the 2nd part that needs a great deal of work. The 2nd part refers to being genuine in their desire to help. Beware the friendly Egyptian, as he will want something…and that something is money.
Unfortunately, our visit to Egypt was tainted a bit by the ‘tourist knats’ as I call them. They are everywhere tourists are, and are trying to sell you something or trying to be kind for money, or just asking for money. It is very unfortunate, that us normally happy and nice people had to resort to
rudeness to get our point across that we were not interested in finding out what angle this person was going to take to ask us for money. It is unfortunate that in other countries we actually see people genuinely interested in assisting visitors for no other reason than to help and be nice, but not in the touristy areas of Egypt. You want to give the Egyptians the benefit of the doubt and not be rude and stop to listen to them when they ask you to…but 100% of the time the sole purpose will be to get money from us. The unfortunate part of this is that it seems to be engrained in the population that services visitors…even those who own stores and provide services and even the Tourism Police, as even they beg for money even after you have just paid them for their service (like the carriage driver, they call them the Egyptian limos, who we paid for taking us around and then wanted more money to feed his horse or the tourism police that offer to take your family photo and then ask for payment after the fact). I tried to put a positive spin on
it by saying to a few that you must really like the way I wear my dirty shorts and crumpled t-shirt, because everyone thinks that I am rich and made of money…but after awhile that got tiresome too. Pretty soon you walk by all of the shops and people in the streets with your head down to avoid eye contact and ignore their questions about where we are from (98 % of the time, you will get a ‘canada dry’ in response, even though I have not seen a Canada Dry since we left Canada) or their pleas to ask us one question. If you don’t stop to listen they act like you are being rude and they are insulted…but it ALWAYS comes back to asking for money…so, once you learn that, you be rude and insult them.
Particularly bothersome was when someone forces their service on you like at the airport at our departure, where we place our bags on the belt to go through the scanner only to find that someone has already placed them on a luggage rack when we get through and waiting to walk us to our destination. I guess I have a problem
with someone doing something for me that I am perfectly capable of doing in the first place…especially seeing as we are on a very tight budget. But when he complains about the amount I reluctantly give him, I almost lose it…so the trip has helped my patience as well! It is a very good thing they have some fantastic things to see here, because this aspect of Egypt is VERY IRRITATING!
Now I would like to qualify my comment about the ‘tourist knats’ with a comment about the other Egyptians. Please do not paint the Egyptian people with the same brush as I have described above. They are friendly and passionate people. I very much like the Egyptian people and felt very comfortable walking in their midst, when not in a tourist environment. They were very helpful and English is not a hard language to find. I apologize for being rude to the ‘tourist knats’ and describing them in such a way above, but it is important to describe the negative as well as the positive.
It is very hard to wrap your head around that fact that you are visiting sites that are 2000 to 5000 years
old. For one reason that is just SO long ago! For another thing, the ingenuity of everything; construction, living, agriculture, governance, and so much more is not far from today’s realities and our abilities. We saw references to economics, foreign trade and relations and so many things that are just awfully familiar. We saw pottery that was designed and decorated beautifully…it would rival today’s fine pottery. We saw hieroglyphics carved into limestone, granite, and marble with remarkable precision and artistry. I still do not know how they were so precise and artistic in such hard rock with the tools they would have had 5000 years ago?!??! Sculptures again that were artistic and precise and in some cases huge.
We saw blocks of stone, several tons in weight, in the middle of a desert! 5000 years ago they had to cut that rock and transport it to the location of the pyramids or one of the many temples, and it was not just one but tens of thousands of these rocks! We learned that the true obelisk is one large piece of carved stone. I was astonished at the ingenuity used to carve the rock, separate it from the rock
it was carved from, lift it out, and transport it to where it was to be erected. It is truly amazing what they were able to accomplish so long ago with so little. It makes me wonder…how much farther have we really come as a species.
We visited Alexandria as well for a day. This is a nice city on the Mediterranean. I got the feeling that the rivalry between Cairo and Alexandria was very much similar to the Calgary/Edmonton love/hate relationship. i can say this though...we saw the sun in Alexandria! We also saw the Mediterranean, which is a beautiful site. One of the sites we saw was the site of the Alexandria lighthouse...one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. It does not exist anymore like six of the seven wonders (the pyramids are the only still existing ancient wonder of the world). In total we have visited two sites of the ancient wonders of the world.
We are sitting in a traffic jam just outside of Cairo…it is a 3 lane highway with 5 rows of traffic across…we are in the land of ‘make it up as you go’ driving. It is very communicative
in nature as they use the horns liberally to communicate their presence. The horn works fine on the highway but when you get into the city with horns going off all around you, it loses its effectiveness…yet the Egyptians are undeterred. They also use the headlight flick as a way to announce their intentions …such as cutting you off or passing you, or that you should be moving through that 3 foot opening in front of you. The headlight flick is so popular that they tend to drive around at night without headlights so the flick can be that much more effective. Fortunately, I have learned all this by observing our various drivers and not by attempting this myself.
The Cairo museum is full of interesting items and of course…they are thousands of years old. Mummys, caskets and sarcophaguses, statues and treasures. The most amazing were the treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The famous solid gold mask of King Tut is unbelievable! As are the incredible number of items that were found in his tomb…it is hard to believe how many items were buried with him! What is amazing is that his was one of the smaller
Unfinished Obelisk
These are carved from one piece of huge rock. After all the work to cut this, it cracked and was abandoned. tombs! The reason King Tut is famous is that his was the only tomb found intact and not ravaged by Laura Croft and the other tomb raiders. There were many other more wealthy and important pharaohs, but none whose tombs have been found intact.
The Valley of the Kings is incredible…unfortunately, no pictures were allowed. It is in a barren area of mountains of limestone and absolutely no vegetation. But in this valley there are thousands of tombs buried…most of which have not been discovered yet. Several of these tombs have been discovered by mistake, and many by donkeys, who made the presence of cavities known by falling through them. There are still hundreds of tombs that have been discovered and you can tour them.
When a new King takes power one of the first things they do is commission the creation of their own tomb…life after death was an obsession. They take years to carve into the mountain and they vary in size…but all have a long passage way from the entrance and several small chambers off the passage way that leads to the burial chamber. It is difficult to imagine the amount of work that went
into these as all along the long passage way and in each chamber the walls and ceilings are covered in hieroglyphics that tells the story of the person buried in that tomb. Unfortunately, we saw numerous instances where the King dies before his tomb was finished, so not all of the walls were adorned. It is absolutely fantastic and mind boggling!
While in Egypt we had the opportunity to learn more about the muslim faith. The call to prayer here is louder than what we heard in Tunisia or Burkina Faso. That could be due to the fact there is a mosque on every block it seems here. Several of our guides provided us with information, answered our questions and took us on tours of mosques. We noticed in Tunisia, a country that is 98% Muslim, that there were more women not wearing the head and neck coverings than tose who wore them. In Egypt, most women wore head and neck coverings. This is covered off in the Koran, where a woman should not be seen without her head and neck covering by any man apart from her father or brother. There is a portion of women that wear
the full burka (everything covered except the eyes). This was explained to us as those who are the extremists amongst the religion. One person indicated that these women were the beautiful women, who must cover up so as not to be a temptation. I think I believe the first explanation.
Overall, Egypt was incredibly interesting! The kids found it very interesting…you can tell because they asked questions and the whining was at a minimum 😊. Now we head to Greece for Christmas.
Our time on our tour is winding down. Our tour is determined by our budget and the budget always seems to dwindle faster than expected or desired. We have Greece, Thailand, and Australia left on our agenda and rather than spending a month in each place, we will be only two weeks in each location to make sure we can finish as close to budget as possible. So we expect to return to Canada probably close to the end of January and start our new adventure in our home country.
Life is never dull…unless you let it be! All the best and Merry Christmas,
Dana, Nadine, Alex, Gabriel, and Nicolas
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Simon & Tab Neigum
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Merry Christmas Cooper's
Merry Christmas, thanks for sharing your phenomenal experiences, feels like you are there just reading it . . . well not quite there. We would like to wish you a very merry christmas and all the best going into 2010. Happy New Year, Simon, Tabatha, Tatum and Shayla.