Welcome to Cairo

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Wednesday, July 5 - Well, Cairo is an interesting place. After waking up at noon I went out and about to look around and immediately got swooped up by one of many men selling perfumes. Out of nowhere there is always someone who would love to "help you find your way" ie sell you something in their shop that they will lead you to. Funny at first, not funny more than once. I ended up in a shop where they tried to get me to stay and have tea and sell me perfumes, though "looking is free". I got out of there eventually with no tea (I'm so rude) and wandered a bit more. Another country where I don't speak the language, and Arabic uses a whole different alphabet, including numbers, so reading anything is not an option. Luckily most people speak English.

Note: It is impossible to walk down the street as a westerner, especially as a woman, and not get every single man you see talking to you or calling after you or hissing a you. This is some kind of throw back to the fact that due to tv and movies, all western women are sleazy, and therefore easy. Also, it is a muslim country where many of the women cover their hair and wear traditional covering clothes, so western wear does not go undetected. I dress modestly - a pair of pants and a tee shirt - and yet the harrassment never ends. Oh - and they always call out "Welcome to Cairo" or "Welcome to Egypt" or just "Welcome". Seems like it should be nice but I have never heard the word said so sleazily before, makes me cringe just to hear it.

For lunch I ate at a take away called Felfela - which sells really yummy felafel, shwarmas, and koshary, a yummy combination of pasta, rice, and sauce. This became my new favorite restaurant and is super cheap. You can get a pita sandwich for less than 15 cents!

I walked around town a bit to try to get familiar with the set-up and ended up inside McDonalds - the first one I've seen since Cape Town! So of course I ate and felt instantly better. It's one of the only things from home and feels all warm and cozy inside because of it.

I also ended up inside a travel agency called Happy Center when some guy was "helping" me get around. He brought me to the "information center". The people who work there are nice, but I wanted nothing to do with them, since I had no reason to go in there in the first place. I met Nova there, a Canadian who must have been a used car dealer before - he just oozes slickerster, and blends perfectly with the Egyptians. He knew I didn't want to be there yet made me listen to a sales pitch about the desert and a tour through the highlights of Egypt. I left but he said I could use the internet there sometime for free, so I kept that in mind.

Thursday - Still no luggage. Decided to go to the Egyptian Museum today, in order to look at all the antiquities they have pulled out of the pyramids and tombs at Valley of the Kings and such. It is a huge building chock full of everything Ancient Egyptian you could ever imagine, and all thrown in seemingly without much order. There are some descriptions written in English but not a lot of them. I saw coffins and mummies and statues and doorways and jewelry - I spent three hours in there and after the first hour it all blended together and became hard to take in. But I looked for the sake of looking. It was also hot in there, making me feel a bit sleepy. But the best part was the *air-con* rooms with the King Tut's belongings - not only was it cooler but the things they have are absolutely beautiful. Really impressive. There is also a room with mummies that was interesting to see as well. Afterwards I got some koshary at Felfela. In there I saw a tall blonde couple that I had seen before and during my museum time as well.

Once out of there (and before as well), I got the "come to my shop" scenario and managed to avoid most of that. Then some guy started walking with me and talking to me for about an hour. He seemed nice enough so he could walk wherever he wanted. We talked about my "husband", among other things. I have a fake wedding band just for this purpose, though it does nothing to prevent all the unwanted attention. Eventually ended up at Happy Travel, where I decided to leave my tail and take them up on the internet offer. They informed me that this guy was a known criminal, though I wonder if this is just to look more like my "friends" than anything else. In the office I met Joan, a student from Spain that I traveled with for the next week or so. The name Joan is the Catalan version of Juan, and Catalan is his native tongue. We started talking and become friends immediately - bonding over the "how did we get into this shop anyway" scenario. We talked about going on the desert tour, because it would be nice to see but difficult without a tour. We left and went to use the internet elsewhere after a long walk around the city. Stopped in a couple pharmacies to buy some things until my luggae arrived. Ended up at the Hilton for a drink which was insanely expensive, so Joan treated as he did not want to drink alone and I refused to pay those prices for water or coke. Got a shower and finally to bed.

Note: crossing the street in Cairo is of no little matter. There are tons and tons of cars and they won't stop for you. It's amazing the streets aren't littered with corpses. It's like frogger, the old video game. Iusually tried to cross with locals, but even that was scary.

Friday - Friday in the main religious day in Muslim countries and most things are closed. Ended up at Happy Travel most of the day to take advantage of their internet while they were "technically closed". Spent hours catching up on my blog since I was so behind. The tall blond couple came in to get student cards from that office and i found out that they had also signed up for the desert tour leaving Sunday and were staying in my hotel. In the late afternoon I went to the second hand street market with Moustafa, one of the guys from the travel agency who had lived in Canada for 10 years. We went looking for at least a shirt and a skirt for me since I only had the one outfit. I ended up with a new shirt anyway, though we looked for skirts forever. He has self appointed "good taste" and wanted me to buy several horrible things, but I got out of it. Then we had some cheap food there and headed back to the agency where Joan and I were meeting. We went for another walk and got some coconut juice, which was like eating a candy bar at the same time as drinking it, for about 30 cents, then we stopped for mango juice a bit later. Walked over to the Nile for sunset and sat there for a bit before walking back and calling it a night. In the hotel I met the tall blond couple - they are Dutch and their names are Martin and Marloes. They were going to see the pyrmids the following day in a taxi that they rented and I decided to join them.

Saturday - Long hot day. Who goes to the desert in the summer, really? Egypt is hovering at about 100 degrees all day every day. Combine this with not wearing shorts or tank tops. Hot hot hot. We went in the morning first to Saqqarah, the first step-pyramids. Then we headed off to Memphis, the ancient town that used to be the meeting place for north and south Egypt. There were some statues but nothing much to see there, so we didn't stay long. Finally we drove back to Giza to see the pyramids. By this time it was really hot and blazing down, so my interest levels were lower than they should have been. But I couldn't help being a little let down by the site. The pyramids are great, but not as great as I had expected them to be. Maybe because you expect so much from hearing of them all your life. Or maybe it is that they are surrounded on one side by the city of Giza, which detracts a bit from the mystery. The sphinx was definately a letdown - much smaller than I ever thought and covered with scaffolding to some degree. We were constantly asked if we wanted a camel ride or a horse ride around the pyramids, which we didn't.

We did buy a separate ticket to go inside the biggest of the three main pyramids, however. We weren't allowed to bring our cameras in, and didn't want to leave them with the attendants, so I waited outside in the shade with the cameras while they went in, and a bit later Marloes came out and I went in. Martin wasn't feeling so well with the heat, so he had stayed inside. Walking inside the pyramid was a cool feeling, and no one else was there which made it more of a special moment. You basically have to climb up inside the pyramid, with your head bowed to prevent scraping it on the low ceiling. I could hear what sounded like chanting as I walked and this made it seem more surreal. At the end of the climb was just one chamber and it was there that Martin lay on the ground, singing. So he was my chanting. The echo was remarkable and it was even difficult for us to speak with so much echo. We both lay there on the ground, trying to stay cool, as it was still hot and stuffy in there but cooler than outside. No one came in the entire time which was great. Finally we decided to leave and join Marloes outside. They also decided to go inside the other pyramid but I opted out. So I help their camera in the shade while they went inside. In the meantime I talked to two girls that have been raised in Canada but are Egyptian by descent. They both wear the Muslim scarfs to cover their hair, even in Canada, which surprised me a bit. They couldn't even go snorkeling or diving in the Red Sea here because it's too complicated with the head scarf!

After the Dutch couple was done with the pyramid, it was closing time and we walked back to find our taxi. Went back and read some of the Da Vinci code and went to sleep.

Sunday - Checked out of my hotel in the morning - still no luggage - and made my way to the travel agency with the Dutch couple, where we met Joan and Sumie, a Japanese girl coming to the desert with us. They got us a cab to the bus station where we waited about 30 min before getting on and leaving. It should have been a five hour ride to Baharaya Oasis, where we were headed, but we had a bus that decided to stop working halfway there. So we broke down but with enough juice to get us to a restaurant in the middle of the desert. We stayed there for four hours until the bus company finally sent a new bus from Cairo to pick us up. Meanwhile none of the locals seemed upset about the delay in any way, reminding me that we are still very much in Africa, even though they consider themselves from the Middle East. "Africa time" applies in Egypt. We finally arrived in Baharaya around 5pm, when the hotel picked us up and served us our "lunch"! From there we picked up the itinerary and went out to see the oasis itself. Not very pretty really, but impressive to see all the lush green palm trees in the middle of the desert. We went to the top of the tallest hill to the Enlgish House, where the English had set up base in the war. It is mostly crumbled down now but makes a great spot to watch the sunset, which we did.

Tonight was the World Cup Final, Itlay vs France. There were bunches of French high school kids there on some kind of "summer camp" so we thought that would make it interesting. We decided to have dinner at 9pm so we could eat before the game. But it turned out the game began at 9pm, so we watched it and after the first half Joan and Martin went with the kids to a bar to watch the second half. Marloes and I stayed behind, reading and chatting. The boys made it back around midnight, and this is when we ate dinner. Afterwards I washed out my clothes I had been wearing for a week and hung them out to dry before going to sleep at 2am.

Monday - Got up at 10am and had breakfast. We just had a bunch of lounging until 2pm. The Dutch couple wanted to swim but the pool they were directed to had no water! Then they were shown another place to swim, but it was only for men. Nice. At 2pm we finally got under way and drove out to the Black Desert, where we picked up flower stones. These are black stones reasonably shaped like flowers. And the black desert really did have a coating of black all over everything. Then we hit the White Desert and finally the New White Desert, which is truly white. It has huge white structures that look like mushrooms coming out of the ground and they feel very chalky and leave your hands white. This is where we would be spending the night, literally sleeping under the stars. No tents, just us on mattresses. Here we met Aleksey and Marisha, a Canadian brother/sister duo who were a lot of fun.
Sunset was beautiful and we all chatted while dinner was being prepared. There were plenty of desert foxes to be seen, and kept away from the food. Eventually got to sleep under the stars.

Tuesday - Woke up cold last night a few times only to discover that there were blankets on the hood of one of the jeeps. This would have been better knowledge last night, but our "guides" never told us. We left the Canadians as they were doing the tour in reverse, and apparently for $80 whereas we had paid $100. We headed back to the hotel after dropping off Sumie, Martin, and Marloes at a random bus stop, as they were heading off in different directions. Joan and I got some lunch in the heat of the day then were dropped off at the bus back to Cairo. This didn't break down but was incredibly hot. The seats and all the aisles were full of people and the windows didn't open. Luckily we had the seats by the back door, which did stay open, so we at least had a hot breeze. Got back to Cairo only to find we were in Giza. Marisha had warned us about this possibility, though the people at Happy Travel hadn't. So we got on the metro and made our way back to town. I got back to my hotel only to find that it was full - even though I had a reservation, I thought. So I went to Joan's hotel, which was much cheaper and therefore better. Also I found out my luggage was now in Cairo! But I would have to pay to get to the airport myself and bring it through customs. Of course. Ridiculous.

Wednesday - My birthday! Yay, I'm in Cairo for my birthday! It was a strange day to say the least. I went to my old hotel to ask again about my luggage. He let me use the phone but then tried to charge me for the call - it had never been an issue before. Then I tried to exchange my book in their library and he said no - even though the book was theirs originally! And I couldn't use the internet there. Bastards. The I had to meet Joan. We went to the Sudan Embassy to pick up his passport and new visa and met Roger, a 19 year old Brit traveling for a couple months. Afterwards we went to Happy Travel, with our new friend in tow. Not the people I wanted to see but I knew they would help me anyway. Told them it was my birthday and the owner wanted to have a big dinner for me. I told them I had plans, but then they insisted on having a cake for me and my friends. I said ok - what could I say? I invited Roger, Joan and left a message for the Canadians at their hotel as they were due to arrive that day from the desert. They also gave me two mother of pearl boxes. From there Joan and I went to the airport to get my luggage. Got in a cab and agreed on a price, only to find ourselves heading over the Nile, in the wrong direction. So we told the driver, who didn't speak English. He stopped someone on the street who translated airport for us and helped us negotiate a price for a return trip. Then on our way to the airport our taxi broke down. So he got us another one and sent us on our way. There was so much traffic I knew we'd never make my "party" by 6pm. Got to the airport and went to find the office for my luggage. Had to sit and wait forever. Then finally I could walk over to where it was and bring it through customs. Went back for Joan and then to the taxi driver.

He took us back to the travel center - at 7pm - and everyone was already there. I was an hour late for my party. Then it was time for cake, the most beautiful cakes I had ever seen. A chocolate heart shaped cake and two boxes of individual cakes that were beautiful as well. They sang, we ate, we took photos. It was a huge family affair and very akward for me. The whole thing was very nice and incredibly creepy - but memorable. Nova was there and even more sleazy than usual. He had told me I could have his guide to the Middle East and then today told me I could "borrow" it. Indeed. I took it and that was that. Happy Birthday Me.

We finally were able to get away and I wanted to go to TGI Fridays. First one I had seen since home, and they have my favorite chicken fingers and honey mustard. The others agreed to go and we walked there, which took forever. The dinner was expensive compared to what I would normally eat, but cheaper than it is at home, though the honey mustard was different. And there were cokes with unlimited refills! Just like home (and nowhere else). Afterwards we walked back and then it was really late. Made a plan to meet early the following morning to go to Alexandria.

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