Compared to andy other time of the day, the streets in Cairo are empty in the morning, about 6am. I say about because I’m not entirely sure of when this was. There’s been some confusion about daylight savings time. I’ve spent today in front of the computer, except for the half hour walk I took this morning, in the quiet. Programming and thinking and playing games. Man I need to get outta this room. Maybe go walk around. Down to the Museum, even though it’s closed.
seriously, the traffic here is something else. It’s a big part of what I’ll take away from here. I’ll have dreams of the sound of horns and weaving through crowds of pedestrians. Also, crossing the street here is a bitch and a half. The cars in that first picture? Stopped. Then they move a few feet, then they stop again.
If I were a fruit-lover I’d be set:
Hipshot foot-traffic.
Up next, though, we have the antithesis of this: at 7AM, the streets are empty and the light is wonderful. I’m getting ready to move on from Cairo though. I found out about a really nice beach in a place called Dahab, in the southern Sinai. Cheap Too. I think what I might do is go there for a week and then come back here for a couple days (however long it takes to get my flight arranged) and then head back to the OKC. That means I’ll be back around the 20th. That’s two weeks earlier than I thought I’d be coming home, but I think I’ll need that time to make money. Gotta eat, gotta pay rent, etc. Meantime: Gotta rock out. Laters.
yesterday, I went to the pyramids, fulfilling my tourist quota for this entire trip, and maybe even for my eventual recovery trip to St. Louis (Stuart: I would kill half a dozen men for a pizza-pie from blackthorn. Just name names. THERE IS NO REAL PIZZA HERE).
Ahem. Anyway, I went with the same kiwi I’d met yesterday, good guy. Walked around in the heat of the morning (not nearly as bad as you’d expect) and in total spent about $20 (100 Egyptian pounds). I’d been told previously that it was rather more expensive to get into the site, so I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, I could have paid more to go into one of the pyramids, and more to go into the temple next to sphinx, and more again for a guide, souvenirs, and refreshments, but as I had my water, knew enough about the pyramids already, and the only souvenir I wanted was a bit of sand, I was satisfied just to go and see and look.
About that: Don’t be an asshole. I say this because I was tempted to be like Anthony Bourdain and skip the pyramids altogether. That would have been a mistake. They are, in a word, magnificent. Skyscrapers are cool, and much taller, and arguably superior in a lot of other ways, but man, these things are impressive. I’ve tried to convey the scale in the pictures below, but it’s hard. Scale like that doesn’t fit easily into a frame (it’s interesting to note how well the city-scale of things here seems to fit in my viewfinder though).
A note about the location: The town ends abruptly at the pyramids, and on the other side, from the looks of it, there is only desert. Amazing how the city would have such sharp borders.
Anyway yeah. I’m going to shut up and show you the pictures. The photo of me is by Mr. Kim (not his last name, but whatever). Annoying tourists are annoying, with all the silly things they do.
Went to the Cairo Museum yesterday. I met this New Zealand fellow, Kim, and he was going, and so I went. Photos were against the rules in the museum though, so unfortunately you’ll have to go yourself to see such wonders as the burial mask of king tut and 12.5 million tiny statues of every pharaoh ever. Today we’re going to the world’s oldest tourist trap, the pyramids. Should be a fun morning. Then I really need to get some programming done. Money is officially short.
Jackson Pollack once said: “All I ever wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house,” or something to that effect. I know exactly what he meant.
So, after the last plane landed, I got myself through customs with no hitches. The visa was a piece of cake, just pay the man, get your sticker, and move on. I looked like what I am, a tourist/backpacker, and customs doesn’t give a fuck about guys like me. This is probably wise on their part.
So I’m sort of wandering around, and a taxi driver approaches me, wants £80 to drive me into the city. I’m like, no way, there’s a bus that’ll get me there for way less. He tries to tell me there is no bus from the airport, yada yada, but I get on a shuttle and get to the airport bus terminal just fine. At this point I’m feeling quite good about myself and take some notes to the effect of “You’re not an idiot.” And then I waited an hour for a bus that I never saw, and shared a cab into the city with some other backpackers. I tried to get the cabbie to take me to an ATM, as my funds were low, but he didn’t understand. This is a recurring theme: English is useless here. Or nearly. So he dropped us off at the Cairo Museum, which was closed (probably for ramadan), and the other backpackers covered me. We wandered a bit in search of an ATM, no luck, so said our goodbyes and split off our separate ways.
Thus began one of the great trudges of my life, in search of my hostel. I walked one way, and then another, and then a third. Then I ran into some British people with a guidebook, who told me how to get to Ramses Square, which is very close to where I’m staying, and so I set off walking. Unfortunately, what they said would be a 20 minute walk took the better part of 2 hours. There’s nothing quite like the self doubt you get when walking alone with a heavy pack in a foreign city, with no map and only a vague idea of where you’re going. So, I finally get to the square, and I can’t for the life of me find the street I’m supposed to go down to get to the hostel.
So I call my mom, shout some (this is the loudest city in the world), mom gets on google to try and help. I’m trying to figure out where I am, exactly, because I’m not sure after all the walking and the self doubt. So I walk down one road for a little while, find a hotel with a sign in english, and she does directions from there to my hostel, and kinda directs me. I’m on the phone with her, and she’s talking me through getting there, when this guy comes up to me and asks me in english, “Can I help you?”
So I show him the address of the hostel, and he knows the way, and we start walking. I never for a moment doubted this man; I could tell he wasn’t a con man or tout. Just a man, doing something good. Along the way, he shows me a blob on his hand that at one time was a cross. “I’m christian,” he tells me. “Coptic?” I ask. “Yes,” he said. And then I get up to the hostel, and there was showering and sleeping, and then wandering in search of food.
Up next: first impressions of Cairo.
Copyright © 2008-Forever, Matt Mills.
