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Published: March 24th 2008
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March 20, 2008
Cairo, Egypt
We took our 3 hour + flight from Dubai to Cairo via Amman, Jordan. Not much of a visit to Jordan as we only changed planes. Jordan is becoming a favorite place to fly to to take day trips to Israel and other Middle East locations. A one hour flight to Cairo and our first visit to Africa.
Arrived in the evening in Cairo and took what turned out to be another 1 1/2 hour driving adventure through the city of Cairo and Giza to get to our hotel close to the Pyramids. This was comparable to the road adventures in India. We were happy with the driver and transportation but the driving habits here are a spectacle to behold with everyone being very aggressive. We arrived at the start of a holiday celebrating Mohamed’s birthday and a lot of traffic was people taking advantage of this holiday to make a long weekend and leave the city.
In the morning we got an early start from our hotel to visit the pyramids that are literally next door to the very, very nice Mena House Oberoi Hotel. ( 5 minute drive to the
Giza Pyramids). As advertised the pyramids are an amazing piece of construction considering they were built over 4000 years ago. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with money, power and some slave labor. At any one time, for 20 years, there were about 100,000 workers building one pyramid. They told us there are 2.3 million of the very large stones used to build the 3 most famous GIZA pyramids. ( I don’t know who counted them but we will take their word for it ). Only the top of the second pyramid shows how the surfaces were finished as the limestone used as the finish material has been removed to build Mosques and other later projects. Like some of the other famous world construction projects ( IE; Taj Mahal, Machu Pichu, Great wall of China ) it is impossible to explain the scope of these projects. You really have to be here as even photos don’t capture the whole thing very well. We passed on the long trek down to the central chamber of the main “Cheops” pyramid but I did go down to the underground chamber in a smaller one. (33 meters underground ) This is a steep climb
in a very low “tunnel”, and if you are a little claustrophobic it would be a problem. The central chambers were where the actual tombs were. All the significant items are now removed and taken to museums. ( What was left after a couple of thousand years of tomb raiders )
Close to the pyramid site is the home of the Sphinx and a major reconstruction project and archaeological dig is still underway here. Another very interesting thing is the 45 meter long “Solar Boat” that was built to transport the dead to the next life. This amazing discovery was made next to the Chops pyramid buried in a long and very deep channel cut into the rock and covered with huge stone slabs.
We continued our visit to Cairo with visits to museums, additional pyramid sites, close to Cairo, and the standard shopping stops we have begun to get used to. One store demonstrated the making of papyrus paper (and of course had paintings done on the paper, for sale). We did by a very nice “Pyramid /Sphinx” painting for a souvenir.
We had a very interesting day with a very good guide who did an
excellent job of filling in the historical details as we went along. I think there is a lot to be said for traveling as a private ( or at least very small ) group as the bigger tour groups really get herded around this type of attraction.
We continue our visit to Egypt tomorrow with a flight to Aswan in the south of Egypt and cruise on The Nile to Luxor as we work our way back to Cairo and Alexandria.
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