Cairo and the Pryamids

Sunday, November 6, 2011 Part Two

Yes, we are home having arrived yesterday. Air France had cancelled another one of our flights but they put us up at the Sheraton in Charles De Gaulle airport so it wasn’t too much of a hardship.  We are delighted to be home and had a wonderful adventure.  More of that in the coming days.  Happy Sunday, Cindy and Wm.

Cairo and Pyramids

We docked rather early in Port Said, Gateway to the Suez Canal.  We were on the tour buses for Cairo at 6:30 am and we had to depart in a convoy with a military escort, which is always fun. Everyone seems to have an abundance of caution, but everything we saw was normal and everyone on the streets was waving to us on the bus.  The little city of Port Said was very quiet since it was very, very early and it was a Friday  (their Sunday) so nothing really gets going until a bit before mid-day prayers.  We had a very good guide and she explained a lot about the Suez Canal, the history of Egypt and what we were going to be experiencing.  It is a very, very long ride to Cairo and we were lucky that it was a Friday since it helped to reduce the traffic.  We could see the smog about an hour before we arrived in Cairo and the quiet flat farmland gave way to a congested, loud and filthy city.  There was garbage everywhere and lots of rather creative driving which kept everyone on the edge of their seats.

Our first stop was the Egyptian Museum, which is right next to Tahrir Square so we could see all the burned out buildings that were casualties of the Arab Spring in Egypt. The museum is monstrous and filled with marvelous examples of art, statues, mummies, and of course, all the stuff associated with King Tutankhamun, which I have to say was rather impressive.  We were given about thirty minutes after the ninety-minute tour to wander and I went into high gear and tried to see as much as I could.  The building itself is spectacular, built in 1901 by a French architect and in some places it looks exactly like any one of the major train stations in Paris that were all built at the same time as the museum.  Unfortunately the Egyptians aren’t taking very good care of the building or the artifacts and it was dirty and somewhat decrepit, but the good news is that a new museum is under construction.

We all piled back on the bus and headed toward our lunch, which was close to the Pyramids.  As we drove there we were overwhelmed with the filth of the place.  Canals were choked with plastic debris, discarded furniture and surrounded by filthy kids throwing more junk into the water, not the most appetizing thing to see before lunch.  While we were still in a very dense part of the city of Cairo, we could see the Pyramids in the distance.  I had thought we would have to travel through parts of the Sahara before getting to Giza, but it was really right up against the city and it was quite jarring to go from city to desert just like that.  As we got into the bus after our lunch, we were told that we could not go to the Pyramids for another hour for some reason related to prayers, but not to despair, we would be making a stop at a souvenir stop while we waited!

This was one of the most disappointing stops you can imagine.  We had to get out of the bus and run the gauntlet of hawkers selling garbage made in China. They all seemed to have one phrase of English, “One Dollar, One Dollar” as they tried to sell you glass pyramids and wooden camels, and they would not let you get by them.  We all had to wear these stupid tags that identified our bus color and number and these guys were very clever and would say, “Okay, everyone on Red Bus 9 this way,” in an attempt to get us to go over to his stall before we even got to the shop.  Several of our fellow travelers almost fell for this and I had to intervene and yell at them, “Keep moving, and do not talk to these people.”  I enjoyed that since the hawkers got mad at me.

We finally got out of the shop and headed to the Pyramids where we had to make three stops. One to see all three of them from a panoramic site, one close to the smallest Pyramid so we could walk up and touch it or something and the other by the Sphinx.  I think, in reality, we made three stops so that we could be assaulted three times by more filthy vendors hawking camel rides, trinkets and guided tours.  The bus would just be coming to a stop when eight or ten of these guys would come racing over to the doors and try to drag you to something they were selling.  It was pathetic and really ruined much of the feel of the Pyramids.  We did manage to get away from many of them by telling them in Arabic that we didn’t want anything and wishing them a good day.

I have a very bad feeling about Egypt.  I think this revolution will turn out to have been in vain.  The country is poor, has nothing the rest of the world wants except history and high end resorts on the Red Sea, and the money from these tourist lures really doesn’t trickle down to the masses.  I think the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take advantage of the power vacuum, the poverty and the tough economy to make significant inroads into the political arena and within three to four years, Egypt will be fighting a civil war between Islamic and Secular rule.

While the three and a half hour ride back to the ship was no more enjoyable than it had been inbound, at least we were putting distance between Cairo and ourselves, which gave me great pleasure. We arrived at 8:30 pm and the ship set sail for Alexandria at ten.  The next day we did not go on any of the tours in Alexandria since we had had enough of being assaulted and we couldn’t stand the idea of getting on and off any more buses.  We did walk off the ship with the idea of finding an Internet café outside the port gates but as we approached the gate some fellow passengers came back and warned us not to even think about it. They tried to walk to a café and they had lots and lots of people following them asking for money, not even trying to sell anything. They said it was just as filthy as Cairo and they just didn’t feel safe.  We really didn’t need to hear much more so we walked back to the ship.  The only things we had thought about seeing - The Greco-Roman Museum and the Library of Alexandria - were both closed, much to the disappointment of those who took the tour.   

The ship was set to sail at seven pm and Cindy and I were on the deck doing our four miles at five.  We noticed that there were two tugs and one pilot boat heading in our direction and we thought that they were a bit early, but they weren’t coming for us. There was a huge tanker near us and they approached that vessel to get it out to sea.  It appeared that everyone on that vessel was asleep because the boats kept sounding their horns over and over again for about thirty minutes, but couldn’t rouse anyone. Finally the pilot boat pulled ashore and someone got off and managed to wake up the crew. There was a flurry of activity and they tried to get the tanker ready to depart and we laughed like crazy that they could be so lax.  No sooner had the tanker been escorted out of the harbor that our horn sounded and it was time for us to head out to sea for two days enroute to Dubrovnik.  We were very, very happy to see Egypt disappearing in the dark.