Cairo's traffic chaos

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Arrived safely. The taxi ride from Cairo airport to our hotel was hard to describe and not for the faint of heart. Our tour van driver today told us that Cairene drivers need three things; good brakes, good luck and a strong heart! Arrow lines show the general line of traffic flow but lane dividers are purely for decoration.

Today we visited the pyramids of Giza, Dahshur, Memphis and Saqqara - a full day but very interesting and I realized that I still need much more practice with reading hieroglyphs.

We heard that it only rains once in every seven years in Cairo so we moved our raincoats to the bottom of our bags.

F.

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Photos

Sphinx
Leo the LION

Comments

[rob]

Is that a KW is see scratched on the Sphinx's ear?? Rob

[Adrienne]

Traffic
The trick to surviving the traffic is to not look. Just sit in the back and enjoy the ride! Just wait until you have to try to cross a busy street on foot....now that is a cultural adventure. And in that case, the best thing to do is to hold onto a locals t-shirt (like they do in soccer without letting the ref notice) and move when they move! Good luck.

[Steve H]

Mad Drivers!
I was in Egypt back in 1996 and it doesn't sound like too much has changed. We took a coach from Hurghada on the Red Sea to Cairo for a trip to see the sights. We had to have an armed escort all the way, including a couple of guys on the bus with sub-machine guns...scary stuff! I remember that the drivers in Egypt do this crazy thing at night. They drive around in the dark with their headlights off, then flash them as a warning when another vehicle approaches, great way to dazzle the on-coming driver and make him crash..!!! Still, if your heart survives the driving chaos, I'm sure you'll agree that the stunning sights make it all worthwhile!