Day 6 - Cairo

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We arrive early at Emad’s shop still a bit apprehensive about our back door tour. Our driver Abdul arrived and we headed out to Saqqara - Egypt’s oldest pyramid. On our way out we drove through some of the really old and poor sections of Cairo and it was a bit of an eye opener to see just how poor a lot of Egypt is.

We are not sure how people drive here in Cairo as the traffic is absolutely crazy. The whole country seems to rely on some hidden rules and it seems that a bit of money in the right places greases the wheel. After the first of Abdul’s money handshakes we arrived at Saqqara. We were warned by both Emad and Abdul that we should under no circumstances get a guide for the pyramid. When we arrive at the gates there are the people that we were warned about offering to guide us through the site. We started saying laa shokran - No Thank you - but he replied in his broken English that he was not a guide and was the Chief and would open the tombs for us. Being the trusting people that we are we accepted his word and let him lead us in.

Saqqara was quite impressive at 7000 years old and there were some nice hieroglyphics in the tombs near the pyramid. It was about the time that we over heard our ,”Chief” joking with a guard that we thought that he may not actually be who he said he was. Lo and behold as we were nearing the end of our tour he started asking if we had had a good time and asking for money we realised that we had been taken for a ride. In the end he did actually seem to know what he was talking about so we gave him a tip and went off to our next site.

We arrived at Memphis which used to be the capital of Egypt. All that there is there now is a small museum containing a nice statue of Ramses II a sphinx and a small collection of other statues. We went from here to the perfume factory. We had a nice tour here with an insight on where all the French fragrances come from. The sales man here was very pushy and we felt that we had to buy something just to get out of the shop. Off to the jewerly factory next. In complete contrast to the perfume factory the staff here were very nice and the shop was just beautiful. Michelle could have spent all her time in Egypt in that shop 😊. We then headed back to Rosetta for some more free lunch and an attempted phone call to Michelle’s mum in Australia.

We then headed back to the hotel for a bit of a rest as we met the rest of our tour tonight. Everyone else on the tour seems to be very nice and our tour guide Shady reminds us a lot of Brendan (one of many lovely hockey friends) and is apparently the best guide that Geckos have. Of the 17 people on the tour there is one English man, two Americans and the rest are all Aussies. After a nice bit of dinner and a general get to know each other session we head off to bed as we have an early start off to the pyramids tomorrow.

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