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Published: March 23rd 2009
Thankfully Egypt is blessed with a mild winter climate making it a welcome break after those chilly nights in Tunisia. And other than a small strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, rain seems virtually un-heard of in this country.
Amazingly, the population of Egypt is almost exclusively dependent on rains that fall thousands of kilometres and more than half a continent away for it's water supply. The Nile makes it all possible.
The most remarkable memories of Cairo are probably the traffic and the hassels. It turns out that walking like an Egyptian in Cairo has little to do with awkward side profiles and stiff limbs stuck out at odd angles, but rather being able to alternately sprint, stop, sprint, stop, sprint while crossing the street in Cairo's mad traffic.
Certainly talking on a mobile phone and walking through traffic at the same time is out of the question. It requires full concentration.
When we first got to Cairo, it seemed like everyone was very friendly until I began to realize that nearly every pleasant little chat ended in an invitation to "Come to my store. Yes! Come! Just looking! Looking is free." But after some
adustment and getting into the groove we both came to like Cairo, there is no shortage of character there.
Compared to the relatively reserved Tunisians, Egyptians seemed to be a more outgoing bunch. This could be partially driven by need. Apparently Egypt is facing a population boom not being matched by employment opportunities. Besides that, like many places in the world, tourism has yet to return to pre-9/11 levels which is particularly difficult for a country so dependent on tourism.
Egyptians are definitely night-owls. Many of the shops in Cairo did not open until noon. The sidewalks are jammed with couples, families, groups of young men or women window shopping until late at night. It must be so hot in the summer that it makes sense to be active after the sun goes down.
There were certainly plently of restaurants and coffee shops open all over town when we drove in from the airport at 4 in the morning when we flew in to Cairo.
The population being predominately Muslim, many Cairo women wear the headscarf. In fact, headscarf fashion offers far more options than hairstyles. There's the two-scarf layered look, the beehive style, different ways
to wear them around the head, neck and shoulders in every colour, size, pattern and texture imaginable. And you don't even have to wash your hair in the morning. The Christians are definitely missing out!
We also became familiar with the headscarf-and-skintight-jeans combo that many of the young women favour. Not sure what Islamic law has to say about this.
Conversations with locals suggest that wearing the headscarf in many places in the Middle East is often as not the local custom or the woman's (or her father's/husband's) preference rather than a requirement.
Some women dressed were more conservatively in the long, dark robe or chador with headscarf, sometimes with face covered or just eyes showing, but this was much less common in the big city.
One of our first disappointments about Egypt was finding ourselves on the wrong end of a well established two-tier price system. Not limited to monument fees, there seemed to be an understanding among Egyptians that foreigners will be charged more for nearly any kind of good or service. As a result, a part our first few days in the country was trying to figure out the real price of daily
items such as water, falafel wraps, chicken shwarmas and taxi rides.
Once we started figuring out Arabic numbers, (we'd been spoiled in Tunisia where use of numbers as we know them was prolific) we could plainly see a two to four times price difference between the Arabic and English menus. In order to keep eating, we tolerated a certain amount of tourist rip-off, but we returned to the places that weren't as bad as others or that were at least willing to negotiate.
Even when we would point out that the highest price on the Arabic menu was less than the least expensive item on the English menu, the response was a shrug: "You don't speak arabi; you don't know what this says." Effectively saying this is the price for you, foreigner, so too bad.
At fruit and vegetable stands, prices per kilogram are often written in Arabic on a small piece of cardboard and placed on the pile. One time when we asked the price per kilo in Arabic, the spoken price was triple and upon initiating negotation he simply refused to sell to us. He would rather lose the sale than give it to us
for a fair price. Very frustrating when all you want to do is buy some oranges.
Sufficiently motivated and no longer able to hide behind English
or French, we dug in and vowed to improve our Arabic. We had little hope of learning the written language, but slowly we got a handle on some basic words and phrases.
Despite the agressive traffic, we did some wandering around in Cairo. Found a bookstore selling precious overpriced English books at the American University. Walked through Islamic Cairo and the hectic, colourful Khan al-Khalili bazaar.
*****
We visited three pyramid sites on the outskirts of Cairo:
Saqqara, home of the Step Pyramid of Zoser,
Dahshur, home of the Bent and Red Pyramids, and
Giza, for the largest and most famous of Egyptian pyramids.
The Step Pyramid of Zoser is the world's oldest stone monument and the first proper attempt at a pyramid. Apparently it took some practice before they got them right. There is also a good little museum at Saqqara and we climbed inside the Pyramid of Teti.
At Dahshur, we only got to gaze at the Bent Pyramid from a distance. The Bent Pyramid could
miniret caps
Khan al-Khalili bazaarbe a transition between the "step" and "true" pyramid styles. It is also theorized that perhaps the initial steep angle of the construction showed signs of instability and so the angle was changed part way, or that construction was hastened due to the approach of Sneferu's (the builder's) death.
We ducked down low and climbed deep inside the hot and stinky Red Pyramid. Sweltering and humid it had an ammonia reek that was suffocating, stung the eyes and in fact turned a few people back. Built after the Bent Pyramid, the Red Pyramid is the oldest true pyramid in Egypt.
For the record, unless you are some kind of structural engineer, there is not really much to see inside the pyramids. All the goodies, sarcophagi and such, have been removed and taken to the museums. It's more for the clausterphobic adventure of walking down long ramps bent completely double, ducking through various passageways into stone rooms and hoping the power does not go out.
Most famous of the Egyptian pyramids, the Giza pyramids are an impressive sight. These huge tombs built from giant stones boggle the mind in attempts to imagine how they were actually built. By
contrast, the Sphinx is a relatively dainty huge sculpture.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the oldest and largest Giza pyramid. To give you an idea, it was built around 2600 BC and stood 146.5 metres high when completed. Khafre, the second largest but looking larger due to its location on higher ground, is nearly as large as Khufu and located between Khufu and Menkaure.
The smaller pyramids sitting in front of Mankaure are some of the Queens' Pyramids.
The parking lot in between the pyramids is a typical mosh-pit of large tour buses, guys trying to sell camel- and horse-rides, boys selling postcards, others selling trinkets.
The award for the best "sell" in town, however, goes to the guards. The bases of the pyramids are cordoned off by a very basic post and rope system to protect the slowly eroding pyramids from climbing tourists. It is watched over by trusty guards.
If a tourist gets close to the rope, making for a close up photo op, a guard will get her attention and, with a stern look, wave her past the rope. "It's okay," he'll say, as though he is offering a rare favour.
Of course nothing is free in this land of
baksheesh. After the photo, the guard will discreetly rub a thumb and forefinger together in that universal sign for
moula and whisper, "
Baksheesh. Tip."
Surprisingly, this tourist nonsense takes little away from the experience of the pyramids. Or perhaps after putting up with the unending hassles of certain places in India, anything else seems rather tame.
*****
We took a day trip to the town of Suez which of course is all about the Suez Canal. Connecting the Red Sea to the Med, the Suez is how ships avoid circumnatigating Africa when travelling between Asia and Europe.
Travelling from Cairo to Suez gave us our first taste of the dry, desolate scenery that would predominate intercity trips for the next two months.
There is nothing to do in Suez but wander the boardwalk, drink tea or coffee and watch giant ships float by. Some of the ships, only a stones throw away, were massive.
We met some great people in Suez. Had tea with a local retired doctor and his wife who gave us a ride from the bus station into town. Later, we
met an entertaining young man with an excellent command of English who was killing time on forced holiday from his job in tourism.
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