Cairo

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The beginning of our trip saw us leaving Winnipeg on Friday, February 13th, a great day to head off to the middle east. Our routing took us through Toronto and Paris. After snaking around the dungeons underneath Charles de Gaulle airport and boarding a bus to find our gate, we finally arriving in Cairo after about 25 hours of travel at about 7pm. Most of the tour we had arranged was with a local Egyptian travel agency called EOL tours. Leading up to our departure date, I had read some poor reviews about them, so I was crossing my fingers (didn't tell Melissa too much about the reviews) that they would show up.

Fortunately they were standing there with a sign with my name on it, escorted us through customs and to baggage claim. After a few nerve-racking minutes as our bags seemed to be the last ones out, they took us out to the parking lot to meet our driver and tour operator. Turns out the guy in the airport was just hired by EOL to meet and greet us, and that's it. This was how the whole trip would go, with EOL hiring people throughout the country to coordinate our itinerary.

We met one of the drivers Tamer, and tour operator Ahmed. I never did meet the famous Egyptian Jimmy, who all my correspondance was with. I had made it very clear to EOL I wasn't paying a penny to them until I had hotel and cruise vouchers in my hand. Ahmed quickly gave them to us and reviewed with us the itinerary in the Cairo airport parking lot. Everything looked good, so we took the US cash out of our money belts and handed him a stack of $100 US bills. It all seemed very official paying him in the back of the minivan at the airport, coming off 25 hours of travel and arriving in the chaos of Cairo.

From there, we dropped Ahmed and his son off on our way to the hotel I had booked myself, Hotel Longchamps in the Zamalek area of central Cairo. First glimpse of Cairo traffic was pretty shocking. Honking, flashing lights and people weaving in and out of traffic in our bumper to bumper ride to the hotel. Took about 1.5 hours to get to the hotel, we later found out in our 3am drive to the airport that you can get there in about 25 minutes when traffic is lighter.

Checked into the Hotel Longchamps with no problems, and ventured out in the Zamalek area in the search for bottled water. We were told there was a market somewhere by the Hardee's. Not sure if we found the right one, but we did find our favorite little store in all of Egypt on our first night. We picked up a 1.5 litre and 4 500 ml bottles of water for 8 pounds and 50 piastres, or about $2 Canadian. We thought this was great and we really wouldn't have to spend that much money on water this trip. Unfortunately we later found out this would definitely be our cheapest purchase in all of Egypt.

The Zamalek area was quite nice. It is a more upscale area of Cairo, where most of the embassies are located. The people in the area were certainly used to seeing Westerners and Europeans, so we didn't stand out quite as much as in other locations. We quickly concurred with everything I had read about the area that we felt safer walking around there at night than we would in downtown Winnipeg. Being a city of 20 million people, Cairo has people everywhere, so you're never alone walking down the streets.

So after our first little taste of Egypt, we headed back to the hotel to send emails off of our safe arrival, and get ready for day 1 of our tour.

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Photos

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First glimpse of Cairo traffic

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Room at Hotel Longchamps