I think it was to costly to cross the cannel tunnel with only 2 customers and he could get some customers on the return trip to Taba. The new service taxi had close to a full load and we traveled through the cannel to the town of Suez. At Suez we were then transferred to a third taxi. This taxi then headed to Cairo. On the way we picked up a soldier on one of the many army barracks on the side of the highway. On one road checkout he had to hide under the seat and the driver bribed the soldier manning the checkout. Apparently he was AWOL. Some of the checkouts the soldiers wanted to check our passports which was a bit of a nuisance for the drivers.
Getting close to Cairo the taxi got very full as the driver stopped for anyone along the highway who wanted to go that direction. Some people got off but more got on as we got closer. We finally stopped in Ramses Square which was the last stop. Just before we got there, I asked the driver that I wanted to get to the St. Georges Hotel in Giza. He asked the other passengers where it was but they didn't know. At the square they asked a few people. They had an idea about where it was, then they asked 10 LE to drive us there. It sounded fair so I said OK. The taxi then drove all around Giza looking for the hotel and the street. They would ask someone who said it was a couple blocks down, go a few blocks and someone would say the same. Even the taxi drivers didn't know. By the 10th person or so, they finally found the place. They asked for another 10 LE for their trouble. I offered 5 LE but ending up having to pay 9 LE.
Cairo is a huge city where there are almost no traffic lights, nobody obeys traffic rules and the traffic is very chaotic. It was an experience first driving through it. There are about 18 million people there, and it is huge. I knew I wouldn't want to rent a car here, most of them have a lot of bumps and scrapes.
We checked into the hotel in time to meet the tour group, that was having a supper meeting on the 9th floor. We first went to our room. It was on the 7th floor, the sink was clogged, the TV didn't work, the fridge didn't work and the toilet had a strange pipe in the middle of the tank. I thought the pipe was something for flushing, so when I first used it I turned it on and to my surprise a spray of water reached the ceiling. Later I found it was a sort of bidet, Egypt not using toilet paper. The toilet still didn't work, I had to fill the tank with water from the shower.
We met a lot of the tour group upstairs on the 9th floor. The tour guide was a 26 year old Egyptian named Sameh. A lot of people smoked.. He recorded our passports, insurance, tour, return flights for confirmation, and we had a meeting to tell us what will happen in the next 2-3 weeks. Most of the group were only going for the 2 weeks, only 8 out of the 25 were going for the third week. The group were mostly 25-30 year old women from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There were two couples, three counting us, and a single boy, which meant 4 males and 21 females in the tour. The boy had the exact same birthday as Elizabeth. We figured that he was a few hours younger as he was born via caesarean section, which is usually scheduled during working hours, and Elizabeth was born at about 6:30am.
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Monday, May 11
Cairo Tour start
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Up at 7am, cursing the side table. It was higher then the bed and right next to it. Whenever I moved to the edge of the bed I banged my head on it. This is another sign of the lack of care, the sink was still clogged, but I wasn't going to push it as we were leaving that morning. To flush the toilet we had to pour water in the bowl still. I figured that when the tour comes back in two weeks I would complain.
We packed our bags into things that we would leave for the two weeks, like my souvenirs and some clothes. The rest of the stuff we would put in a bag that the tour group gave us. We then had our usual breakfast in Egypt of one boiled egg, bread, jam, Egyptian white cheese and tea.
Outside the Hotel we got on the bus. Our bus driver for the next two weeks was George. We also met Rasha our Egyptologist guide for today. We started out to visit the Egyptian Museum. 10 German tourists were shot in front of the museum in 1995. When we got there, there were a lot of guards with AK47's keeping an eye on things. Wasn't likely anything would happen. Rasha took us through the museum, starting from the most ancient exhibits and going onto most recent. She spent about an hour explaining the changes of the styles, type type of constructions and more. She left us to ourselves in front of King Tut's exhibits. Almost all of us then visited Tut's treasures. I remember them from when I was in elementary school, about 35 years ago they came to Vancouver. They still looked the same, still magnificent. After that we all went separate ways, I explored the rest of the museum where there were a lot of mummies stacked up to the ceiling. There were a lot of art students practicing drawing the pictures on the objects. Maybe they are budding papyrus painters!
After leaving the museum we all got on the bus and went to lunch to a fairly fancy Egyptian restaurant. It costed 15 LE for the meal which consisted of a large number of pitas, with different sauces followed by a meat course. One of the women on the tour, Chara complained that she thought it was a budget tour and lunches like this will break her budget. It was fairly expensive considering that the previous night we bought for supper pitas for the two of us for .4 LE each.
The Egyptologist guide then took us to a 'papyrus museum' which is really a papyrus store, which spent 2 minutes showing us how a papyrus sheet was made and 20 minutes trying to get us to buy them. The store papyrus's were good but at a price range from 60 LE to 1200 LE they were very expensive. Considering the one they charge 60 LE for I could have bought in Jerusalem for 5. I said that I hope this is not an indication of the expenses coming up, Fortunately it wasn't. We then went to the corner stand and bought some fruit and water. We dropped off Rasha at the hotel and then took the bus to the campsite on the outskirts of Giza.
Sameh showed us how to put up the tents and to help get the kitchen out of the bus for the cook. The tents were old and made of canvas, but they were quite spacious for two people. Elizabeth and I had a lot of room even with the sleeping bags and other bags on the ground. They also supplied 1 inch foam pads with a sheet liner on it. It was ok.
While we waited for supper we had a beer in a concession next to the site. Supper turned out to be rice, chicken, tomato and cucumber salad, watermelon and pita bread. This will be turning out to be the basic Egyptian meal that we eat at supper. After every meal we each had to wash our dishes in basins produced by the cook and dry them by waving them in the air. Drying only took less than 1 minute. The common dishes were washed and dried by assigned groups taking turns.
Elizabeth and I took a walk down the road from the site and looked at the villagers. Living in the outskirts of Cairo, the houses we wretched, some basic mud bricks, donkey carts were common, actually donkey carts were present in downtown Cairo as well. Most of the people were poor and lived in a lot of filth. It was next to a cannel from the Nile so there were a lot of mosquitoes as well as other bugs flying around. The children were very amused with us, but the adults generally ignored us, a common occurrence unless someone wanted to make some money from us.
Everyone went to bed at about 10pm as we had to get up early the next day.
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Tuesday, May 12
Cairo to St. Catherines
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We got up at 6am to shower, pack, bring down the tent and load the bus. Waiting for breakfast we walked down the road to where we could see a very good morning view of the Pyramids. Breakfast was almost the usual, no eggs but with orange slices. Some of the group forgot things from the hotel so we stopped at the hotel for last minute items and stopped at a pharmacy and store for snacks. Sameh then collected the tip kitty from us. This was a sum of 75 LE from each of us for tips for all group activities for the next two weeks. This means that we do not have to separately give tips for any of the hotel functions, meals, driving, loading or guiding, and including Sameh. This is quite a convenience and does save money and worrying about small bills. Also what we would consider a small tip can often be considered a very large tip to the natives and cases could be cause for inflation of the tourist items.
We finally started east towards the Sinai We stopped in Suez at 1pm for lunch. I wasn't feeling too well so I skipped lunch. It was much cheaper than the previous day, 3 LE for several pitas filled like the falafel in Israel. We bought water and pop in the market and then continued through the tunnel to the Sinai side. We drove around to the Cannel shore. We took a few pictures of the Suez Cannel at that point, our Sameh pointing out to where the Egyptians and Israeli faced off when Israel occupied the Sinai. Inside the cannel we could see jellyfish floating and the water looked quite clean.
We continued through, stopping at a bedouin Wadi (valley) oasis town for some pictures. We didn't see anyone there. We continued until reaching the Sinai mountains, I found the entrance to the mountains very magnificent and moving. We stopped at a store at the town of St. Catherines. At Sameh's recommendation I bought a flashlight and batteries for the next morning's climb up Mt. Sinai. I also bought a papyrus about 30in by 40in for 30 LE. One this big would have costed about 300-600 LE at the papyrus museum back in Cairo. This one though wasn't quite as good condition but I liked the picture.
We went a short distance further to our campsite for the night, brought out the cook's stuff, our tents and bags, and put up our tents. We had about an hour before supper so Elizabeth and I went to the town area intending to phone home. I hadn't seen any pay phones in Egypt, in Israel it seemed that there were pay phones every block and people using them heavily. I hadn't seen anything in Cairo in the day we were there.
On the way to the phone exchange we encountered several children who were interested in us, but I think were after baksheesh (tips, money). We gave them a 50 piaster note (worth about 20 cents), which one took and the others started screaming. We left them. At the town center we went to the Phone office. There were 9 phones. 6 had no dial and could only be used by arranging the number with the attendant. I couldn't use these with Canada Direct as I could not enter the digits. The others used a card. I bought a card for 30 LE from the attendant and tried to use the phone to phone Cairo's Canada Direct number. I couldn't get through, the number was busy even after trying each of the 3 phones several times. I decided to try later. Next to the phone exchange was a souvenir shop. They had some very nice Alabaster dishes that they wanted between 40 and 60 LE for. I was tempted but declined. They also had a number of quartz and 'dragon eggs' rocks, the ones you break open and there are crystals inside.
On the way back to the campsite we ran into the children. We got a picture of them with us. We gave a lady that was going by another 50 piaster note, trying to explain to divide it between them, She just took the note and walked off with the screams of the children. |
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