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Published: November 30th 2010
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I stopped counting after 39. It was time I gave up on trying to count how many times my taxi driver from the airport was going to honk his horn. I was headed to downtown Cairo. Unfortunately, my friend missed her connection to Cairo in Istanbul. She called our tour company and told them her new flight info. What they didn’t realize is that we weren’t traveling together; therefore no one was at the airport to pick me up. I was super patient as I realized this was a misunderstanding. The tour company wasn’t prepared to get me, so they got me a taxi instead. The only problem was the taxi driver had no idea where he was going. OYE. The driving in Cairo is by far the WORST I have ever seen my entire life. It is worse than NYC and worse than Rome. It is like watching a train wreck (except the Egyptians call them kisses vs. accidents). Anyhow, my driver asks me for a tip when he tells me to get out. Ummmm – I asked where my hotel was and he didn’t know. We take a walk and we get directed in so many directions. We get
back in the car for 20 more minutes and then the driver pulls up to every other street corner and say – good? No good – my hotel isn’t there. FINALLY, I see my hotel and I applaud. Welcome to Egypt.
I spent the afternoon walking around downtown Cairo. It is a dirty city… kinda what I expected. My orientation for my tour is at 6pm. Only 5 of us made it as most people haven’t even arrived in Cairo yet. The tour guide takes the 5 of us to a local restaurant for dinner. Eventually my friend, Brie makes it to the hotel and meets up at the restaurant. As it was late and we had a long day ahead of us… it was bedtime.
Our 1st day was phenomenal. We started at the Pyramids. They were a lot larger than I expected. I have seen thousands of pictures, but once you are there it is incredible. We spent lots of time walking around and taking pictures. We also went to the solar museum to see one of the oldest boats in the world. Following the walk near the largest pyramid, we went up to the ‘panoramic’
view. It was simply wonderful! The last stop was the Sphinx. It also was ridiculously big. We wondered around and took photos (kissing and picking his nose)… It was an intriguing morning. We then went to lunch followed by the Egyptian museum. It was hot and I was pretty tired. Our guide is an Egyptologist (NERD) so he is super into everything he tells us about. He also forgets his chain of thought and jumps all over the place so sometimes he is hard to follow, but either way he seems like a solid Egyptian.
After a very long day, it’s time to board the overnight train to Aswan. I have never (that I recall) ever take an overnight train anywhere (after the bus experience in Turkey, I wasn’t looking forward to it). We had a cabin. This was 2×2 and the seats pulled down to one bed and then the top dropped down to the top bunk bed – pretty funny. I couldn’t stop laughing how it was so small, so smelly and not so clean. I slept for the most part excluding the occasional whip lash when the train stopped short. We were supposed to arrive at
9:30am. By 10am I asked the guide what the story was and he said the engine shut down some point in the night and they had some repairs (ghetto perhaps?). By noon we were picked up and headed to the hotel. It was easily 105 degrees. We showered and grabbed some lunch.
The afternoon started with a boat ride on the Nile to the West Bank. Here we started at the botanical gardens on Kitchener Island. These were pretty nice… not many flowers, but trees from all around the world. The walk along the West Bank was pretty sweet as well. We then got back on the boat to go to a traditional Nubian home where we learned about the village. I held a baby crocodile for a bit (oh memories of Iggy). Then came our camel rides! The sun goes down around 6pm, so it was wonderful. The breeze picked up a bit and the scenery was great. I tried taking pictures, but it was way too shaky on the camel. The ride was only about 30 minutes or so. We arrived at the bottom of some sand dunes where there were 2 trucks to pick our group
up. We headed to a Nubian home for some home cooking. It was amazing! The children and adults came out, played lots of music. The group starting to get up and dance (shake your booty really). It put huge smiles on everyone’s faces. This community is a very happy one. Our tour guide said no one goes hungry in this village and they all take care of one another. You can tell the Nubians apart from the Egyptians by the color of their skin. Nubians have much darker skin.
My tour group itself is made up of 14 people. The age range is 25 – 43. Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Australians round out the group. Everyone seems pretty awesome excluding one woman who looks like Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory all grown up (she even chews a ton of gum). She picked up a book of Hitler while we were in Cairo and thought it was the coolest thing. I didn’t tell her I was Jewish, but I certainly wanted to ‘show her my horns’. She made herself an outcast anyhow with some very silly questions. There are people who are doing what I am
doing – taking months to see the world and then there are people who are here just for this tour. So far so good…
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