48: Sharm El Sheikh to Cairo (Egypt)

Week 48 Update:

Sharm El Sheikh, Cairo.

Day 331:

Our third diving day in Sharm El Sheikh started pretty much like the previous two. The alarm sounded in our perfectly dark bedroom long after the sun had come up and it was dot difficult to get up, have a shower and walk to the fancy hotel restaurant for the magnificent buffet breakfast. We strolled to the Ocean College Dive Centre and were sitting in the poolside chairs by the time Jim; our trusty dive guide arrived with the morning’s paperwork. We got loaded onto the familiar mini bus and taken to the Naama Bay Jetty where the Seagull, our massive dive vessel, was waiting for us.

I am pretty amazed that they would switch jetties depending on where we were diving that particular day. Our destination was a reef called Tiran, which was on the opposite side of a shipping lane and fairly close to an island that was reportedly still littered with landmines left over from the war with Israel. That was a little strange as we were actually swimming distance from Saudi Arabia, but then again, very few things in the Middle East actually made sense.

In Jim’s briefing he explained that the reef in question had claimed its fair share of ships in the past and that was evident by the two wrecks we could see on the surface. He also told us that because of weather and currents it was pretty rare to dive some of the sites there, but that day was absolutely perfect! Our fist dive was on a huge wall with the normal suspects floating around. Catt and I hung at the back and saw another Crocodile Fish which was always quite rewarding. We spotted another Napoleon Wrasse which was about two meters long and a few Barracuda which always got the juices flowing a little. We were just trying to catch up with the rest of the group when I saw Jim pointing out into the big blue waters on our right. I spun around to try and see what he was pointing at and almost swallowed my regulator as a human sized White Tip Reef Shark swam by us. It was only the second time we had seen sharks while diving and it was a little scary to say the least. Most divers go out of their way to find these predators in the water, but we had always had the opinion that they were best avoided in their own environment. To be honest though, that one was totally uninterested in the bunch of us and simply cruised by in search of easier food.

For the second dive we had an apparently very rare opportunity to dive a wreck by the name of “The Cormorant” That was on the ocean side of the barrier reef and took the brunt of all the bad weather the gulf had to offer. It was very shallow and we spent an amazing half an hour at only about 6 meters below the surface. The colours were amazing as the sun still penetrated well to that depth and the amount of life on the wreck was simply astonishing! Because of the strong currents and waves that normally reign there we saw no soft coral at all. The hard stuff was still really impressive and quite pristine though. Jim had told us that it was only the third time he had the opportunity to that specific dive in eight years of living there, so Mother Nature had not suffered from the usual influx of tourists at all. For us that did not really know any better the place represented the third time our minds were totally blown under water in less than one week!

There some guys who did a third dive for the day, but Catt and I preferred sitting in the sun and out of the wind for the afternoon. We had another brilliant lunch on board prepared by the crew and just looked at the container ships sailing past and the bubbles of the divers breaking the surface close to us. It was about 16:00 by the time we got back to the jetty and we were definitely starting to show a little wear and tear. After our usual dinner of fresh bread, vegetables and Fuul we tried to watch a movie on the computer, but we both fell asleep within the first half an hour.

Day 332:

It was our last day of diving and by then we had the routine down perfectly. The coffee, breakfast and showers were dealt with effortlessly and once again we ended up at the dive centre earlier than necessary. It did give us a chance to chat to the manager a little more and mingle with the other guests before driving the usual road down to the jetty and boarding the usual Seagull for the day’s diving. It was strangely cold that day and fairly windy, but the boat had an inside area where we could hide and we knew the wind would not blow under water.

The plan for the day was to return to Ras Mohamed National Park. Jim was teaching a deep diving course that day so we were left in the capable hands of Jo, his wife. She was fantastic! In fact, she was almost like a female version of the man himself. They obviously dived together quite a bit and worked together as many times because their methods and explanations were very similar. We instantly felt comfortable and happy around her as well. It took the usual hour to reach the dive site and in that time we chatted like old friends.

Shark Reef, the place that I had proclaimed to be the best place I had ever seen under water was our choice was dive number one. The boat was bobbing around in the swell that day and the wind was fairly formidable. I was almost scared that the experience under water would not be as good as the first time because of it. I expected the visibility to be low and the water to be freezing, but was pleasantly surprised when we jumped in! As soon as we went under the world transformed into a warm and welcoming place. Apart from the obvious lack of wind, the visibility was incredible! We dropped to about 27 meters below and started looking for interesting things. The pickings were good there! We spotted some Lion Fish straight away and kept on falling behind the group because of the amount of photos we were taking. We found a massive Moray Eel with a head the size of a Rottweiler and stopped there for a while before seeing some other interesting things that required to be photographed. By the time we looked up after all that we could only just make out the bubbles of the divers ahead of us and decided to swim fast and catch up to them.

A few minutes into the swimming Catt grabbed my shoulder and when I looked at her I couldn’t actually believe that a human’s eyes could get that big! She pointed to the blue water away from the reef and I immediately saw what spooked her. It was another shark! It was Black Tip Reef Shark that time and he was about two and a half meters long. He swam ten meters away from us, but did not even glance our way, so I didn’t really care too much. A minute later I got another jerk and when I looked I saw another one. That one was slightly smaller, but definitely looked at us and made Catt feel fairly uneasy. I was just about to try and calm her down when I saw the third one. That was it! We were outnumbered by sharks and my darling wife was NOT HAPPY! I couldn’t actually believe our luck. I mean, divers spend lifetimes chasing after sharks and usually spend years in between actual sightings. Yet there we were, looking at our fourth shark in two days under water. I knew they weren’t really interested us as potential food, but to see something bigger than you and with that many teeth under water is still a fairly interesting concept.

We caught up to the others when they turned a corner and faced a current so strong that no one could swim against it. I was trying to explain what we had seen and where we had seen them, but at that stage in the dive we had to swim much closer to the surface and no one really had enough air left to go looking for predators while humming the Jaws theme tune. Despite being totally terrified and almost hyper ventilating at the sight of things that could eat us, we still managed the full hour under water and when we came up the boat was in the perfect position to pick us up. The rest of the group was fairly disappointed that we were the only ones who saw the sharks but still impressed with the amount that we found.

Even though it was past mid day the skipper postponed lunch until after the second dive of the day. He told us that the afternoon would bring really rough seas and high winds and that we would be much better off finishing the diving early and fighting the waves back to the jetty with time to spare. No one argued with that analysis, so after the minimum requirement of one hour on the surface we all plunged in again. The site’s name was Jackfish alley and it was amazing once again! We entered a tunnel in the coral at 5 meters below the surface and after about a thirty meter swim through got spat out on the main reef wall at about nine meters below. The coral was pristinely beautiful and the small fish around outnumbered anything we had previously seen. It was breathtakingly beautiful and I really did not want that dive to ever end! However, most things did have to end so after spending an hour submerged and once again being the last divers to surface, we were helped onto the boat and the captain set sail for home pretty quickly.

The moving and rocking boat did not stop the crew from producing a phenomenal lunch though and we ate our fill and a little bit more long before we docked. We also had a chance to rinse our gear off in fresh water and actually mostly dry it out in the strong winds. By the time we got back to the jetty we were met by a trusty employee who took our stuff back to the dive centre so when we arrived there we could hang it in their gear room over night.

As it was our last day there we allowed ourselves the rare opportunity to have a drink or two in the bar. The Brits at the hotel kept on saying how cheap the beer was, but in South African terms I could afford two at the most. I bought one for myself and one for Jim, who had been a fantastic guide and with whom I hoped I would be able to dive again. The toll of the four days of fun was definitely starting show though. After my one beer we marched our bodies back to the hotel, had our usual dinner and passed out for another night of well deserved and uninterrupted sleep.

Day 333:

There was no alarm set and with the darkness of the room and the emptiness of the hotel it was after 8:00 by the time we woke up and got up. We had our last fabulous shower in our fabulous room before packing our stuff and heading for another fabulous breakfast. I felt depressed as I ate my fabulous omelette and fabulous sandwiches. I started remembering our experience in the Salma Camp in Cairo and every bone in my body was rejecting the idea of returning there.

When we were there the first time it was the only place in town to camp and it suited us. However, looking at back at it I saw how the place must have had dementours of something that were slowly sucking our souls from our bodies and dumping us into obvious depression. Or perhaps that was just the amount of mosquitoes we encountered there. None the less I could not think of a single thing that I wanted less than going back there. Luckily, when we picked our stuff up from the room I saw that I had received an email from our friends Andrew and Lucy. They were in Cairo and gave us the address of the place they were staying at, which sounded nice enough for us to go to as well.

We drove Maggie back to the dive centre and packed our gear as slowly as we possibly could. We chatted to the staff one last time and when we ran out of excuses to stay longer, we started the big diesel engine and headed out of town. I was sad to be leaving. It had been a fantastic break from Egypt and Egyptians and the diving had been so incredible that we were far from bored with that. I wished we could stay another week and dive some more, but neither the budget or Catt’s desire to reach home would allow that.

It was 10:00 by the time we passed the sign post saying that Cairo was 500km away. We left the insane city of Sharm el Sheikh behind and as we got the edge of it we passed through something that resembled a toll gate. There was a man sitting on a chair on the wrong side of the car and as he saw us he moved over to the booth and flagged us down. When we rolled the window down he smiled and said “$1”. My reply was “what? E£1” and he nodded in agreement. Catt handed over the coin and I asked for a receipt. When he couldn’t produce one I got slightly pissed off and told him that I wanted my money back then. Without any hesitation he handed Catt the E£1 coin back and we left. Welcome back to Egypt I thought! A place where you could not actually trust a single person or relax for one second!

The drive back to Cairo was hard! The sea did not seem as turquoise and welcoming as we had seen it when we arrived and the even the desert seemed fairly dull and uninteresting. It was windy as hell and the dust in the air meant that we couldn’t even really make out the mountains we had walked up the week before. By the time we got to the Suez tunnel I was grumpy and tired and the last thing I wanted to do was deal with some policeman who insisted on searching our vehicle. However, after the first guy showed us into the search area, the second guy had perfect English and started by profusely apologising for delaying our journey.

That got me totally by surprise and I assured him that we did not mind him doing his job at all. He explained that his electronic device detected some chemical in the car that was worrying and needed clarification. After a short chat of what it might be we decided to remove our first aid kit and try again. I watched him walk past Maggie and I saw the antenna of the device swing violently towards the first aid kit on the ground. I was amused. He still did not tell me what it was that sent his machine haywire, but he did say that some medicines just confuse the thing. The bizarre thing was that he never actually looked inside the bag to see what there. He simply believed me when I said that it was for first aid only and sent us on our way.

As we got closer to Cairo the traffic started getting congested as well and before long we were in the thick of it. People had warned me that Cairo traffic was probably the worse in the world ever, but those people had never seen Dar es Salaam! To be fair, the traffic in Cairo was horrific and the city planners should really be taken out and shot. For some bizarre reason their answer to congestion (Perhaps adding to it) was to make specific places to do U-turns and then force you to cross 4 lanes of bumper to bumper stuff in about a hundred meters when you get to your next exit. It was ridiculous! The major difference between that traffic and other cities was that everything seemed to happen a lot faster. In Dar and Nairobi the density is so incredible that you hardly moved. But there I was dodging suicide drivers at 60km an hour. No one ever planned to be in the right lane until it was too late and no one ever considered anything that happened behind their bumper line. It was a strange phenomenon that we had noticed all over Africa: People were mostly lazy and laid back to the extreme. What did not happen that day could happen the next day, or the next…. Or a week or so later if it had to. But wait until one of those totally relaxed and laid back hooligans got behind the wheel of a car! Then they could not wait half a second to let someone else merge in and they definitely had no time to stop for something as insignificant as a red traffic light.

So…. Not too sure how to say this and once again my mother should probably not read it, but I’ll just write it like it is then: The place Andrew and Lucy were staying at and recommended was right in the centre in of the city. And what else was right in the centre of the city apart from the Cairo Museum? Tahrir Square off course and that still had a few thousand protestors camped in it. It was also notorious for having the worse traffic congestion in the world and that was before it was lined with camouflaged panzer. The closer we got to it, the slower we moved and the last kilometre took us about 45 minutes. We had plenty of time to see the demonstrations and gauge the mood of the people and I have to say that the atmosphere seemed quite festive. The traffic police were being helped by strange men with luminous green whistles who had nothing to do with authority and every Egyptian with a food or drinks selling trolley obviously flocked right there to feed the masses. While standing in traffic we could have bought a hundred Egyptian flags and about three dozen cups of coffee and tea, not even to mention the kebabs and bread.

When we finally made it around the square we found the hotel, The Canadian Hostel, without any trouble at all. What we did not find was parking. We knew that we had to park on the street, but it was full. The only thing we could do was to go around the block again. While doing this we decided to check out alternative accommodation in the suburb of Garden City, but got so lost that we ended up on Tahrir by default. (All roads led there) That was half due to how useless our GPS maps were and half due to the fact that at least 50% of the roads were barricaded by weapons of mass destructions. I did see that the soldiers were using the barrels of the tank guns as laundry lines and most of them were sitting on wicker chairs drinking chai and smoking shisha pipes. They all seemed a little bored to be honest.

Our second round of braving the famous square took only about half an hour. Then again, we did end up there by accident, so it probably did not count. As we drove past the Canadian Hostel we saw a parking space and while debating the suitability of its size we saw our friends walking across the street. That was it, we just had to manage! I remembered that in my driving test I was allowed three manoeuvres in the parallel parking test. At that time I was driving the smallest hatchback I could borrow and the size of the parking space was big enough for a minibus. I had never tried parking a fully loaded Land Cruiser with no rear visibility and a duel spare wheel carrier and bull bar in a space that only one meter longer than the actual vehicle. I eventually did manage it though, but not in 3 manoeuvres. In fact, I lost count at 7 and started feeling like I was in an Austin Powers movie. Apparently it was also a good thing that I couldn’t see behind me as I was later told that I usually only had a centimetre spare.

So that was it. It had taken eight hours to leave the Red Sea paradise, drive to the riot infested capitol and park Maggie 37 meters from the edge of the action. (I measured it) I was dead tired but it was awesome to see our friends again. They spoilt us with chocolate cake and coffee and after we had recovered a little from our journey they marched us off to a small side street to get dinner. How they found the place was beyond me, but the brilliantly friendly lady served chicken, rice and vegetables for almost no money at all. The meal was freshly prepared and absolutely delicious! We spent hours chatting and catching up and eventually slogged back to the hotel at around 23:00. It did not take long to fall sleep!

Day 334:

We woke up from the alarm in time from the included breakfast. The room we had was still very dark and surprisingly quiet given its location in the world. Breakfast was served in a lounge area and was pretty basic, but hit the spot none the less. Our friends were off exploring for the day but we had only one thing on our minds: Getting my passport back from the French Embassy, hopefully with a Shengen visa inside it.

Catt was kicking and screaming against the idea of driving to the embassy so we decided to take the metro train. The station was perfectly positioned in between us and the square and the signage was in both Arabic and English, making the navigation pretty simple. We had a fair idea where the embassy was, so wasn’t too worried about the effort of finding it. It was right across the road from the Giza Zoo entry gate. The metro cost E£1 ($0.17) and the trains ran every five minutes in all direction. We found the right platform and hopped on the right train without any hassle and even got off at the station we believed to be the correct one. We disembarked, walked up the stairs expecting a street map, but found nothing of the sort. We stood around for a few minutes trying to get our bearings when a local man asked if he could help us. I explained our destination and he shook his head saying that we got off one stop too late and the right stop was at least four kilometres away. He then marched us back to into the station, bought us another ticket and deposited us on the right train with clear instructions and an address writing in Arabic on our map. I held out my hand with the ticket money in it and he just shook his head and said: “You are my guests…” That was it; he refused to take any money from us and even insisted on accompanying us on the train until we got to the right stop. That confused me to be honest. He definitely looked and sounded Egyptian, but he was nothing like most of his countrymen that we had met before. As we got off at the correct stop I shook his hand and thanked him for being such a fantastic ambassador for the new Egypt. He just smiled.

It took a while, but we found the embassy without getting lost. We stood by the locked door until I could show the receipt to someone and when he opened the door he asked if I had an appointment. I was confused for the second time that day and simply explained that I was not there to have my biometric data collected. I told him that I handed my passport in 11 days before and that I was told the process would take 10 days. He took my receipt and asked me to wait.

Ten minutes went by before he re-immersed and he simply shook his head while informing me that my passport was not back yet. As simple as that. I asked if he could tell me when to expect it and he suggested that I try again in two or three day’s time. I asked if there was a number I could phone to track the process, but he did not know. He sent me to the main door to the Embassy but they also did not know what number I could call. I was dumb struck. My brain was fried and apart from being insanely disappointed I didn’t really know what to think do or feel. Apart from feeling a little sick that was… The only good thing was that I had not booked the 900 Euro ferry ticket for the end of that week. I turned around and walk quietly to the bank of the Nile and just started following it back to the hotel.

About half an hour into our stroll we started talking again. One of the comments I made was that when they said 10 days, they may have meant 10 working days. The problem there was that we didn‘t really know what they considered to be working days. If they took weekends and Egyptian days in mind it meant that they only had a four day working week, so it cold actually take three weeks to get my passport. Then again, if they did a five day working week it was totally possible to be summoned there two days later. That meant that we could still make the Sunday ferry at the end of that week. However, we did not have time to disappear into the Western Desert if we could get the damn visa in two or three day’s time. I mean, it was a day’s drive there and a day’s drive back, giving us only one day in the sand for sixteen hours of driving. That hardly made sense. Apart from that, there was a load of things in Cairo that we had not seen and our second loop around Tahrir the previous day showed that the Cairo museum was open again.

So instead of crying and getting horribly drunk we took a leisurely hour long stroll along the Nile, breathing in the city of Cairo. We noticed that we were not getting hassled by a single person. We stopped for coffee and did not need to argue about the price and every time we walked past a soldier we were greeted with a “welcome to Egypt…” When we reached the square in question it was peaceful and fairly quiet and we walked straight through the middle of it to the entrance to the museum. The army had barricaded the road in front of it with a near row of panzer and no one was allowed to drive it, but as we walked in we saw half a dozen families posing for photographs in front of tanks and machine guns. And there I was thinking that photographing the military in Africa was punishable by death.

At the entrance gate to the museum we were greeted by a force of men with bullet proof vests and bayonets on their rifles. They were only there to look inside our bags and search me. After that we bought our tickets and got stopped at the entrance to the building for another search where we had to send the bag though an x-ray machine. You would have thought that they could do that all in one place, but no…

Inside the building we were approached by a man claiming to be the best guide the world had ever seen and offering his services to us for “a little something”. When I told him that the only guidance we needed was to the closest toilet and that our Lying Planet had more information than what we could retain anyway he lost interested and touted the poor people who entered just after us. That allowed us to go exploring at our own pace without being bothered. Andrew and Lucy had told us that they wished they started their exploration on the second floor, so that was exactly what we did. The vast open spaces were packed with display cases of all sorts of small and interesting things so we also decided to really take our time there. The problem was that the “explanations” on the little cards inside the cases were what I would call less than adequate. For example, you would read something like: “Small wooden statue of man with fishing line” to which I would then exclaim: “Really?”

To be perfectly honest I have to say that the museum was a phenomenal disappointment! The exhibits were badly planned, badly laid out and badly explained. I’m sure Mr. “I have been working here for 22 years” would have been able to shed some light on the situation, but then why did we have to pay an entrance fee? Incidentally, our fat and overcharging taxi driver from Salma (Suck your soul out) camp had also been doing his specific job for 22 years. I wasn’t too sure if there was any significance to that specific time. Anyway, even though we understood little of the artefacts and didn’t really like the idea of mummified animals in one room, we still persevered and walked past every single thing that was on display. There were some impressive things, like the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun and the hundreds of little statues that was apparently found with him. But then again, that would have been so much better if it was left or even on display in his tomb in the Valley of Kings.

The ground floor wasn’t much more impressive than the first one either. It had bigger stuff and rows upon rows of coffins that mummies had been found in, but honestly nothing that I found inspiring of ultra interesting. It had mostly big stone things on display, but the whole place was dusty… and dirty to be honest and had an air of a place that was unkept and never really cared for. I was once told that there were about six floors underground with rooms full of boxes that were not even open yet. It wasn’t hard to believe that, but it also started to look like everything was just a repetition of the last thing. The same names cropped up and the same statues were displayed around them. At the end of the day I am sure that someone with a real interest in Egyptology would have gotten a lot from the place, but for normal run of the mill tourists and travellers it ended being nothing more than a “tick box” activity which would probably never be repeated.

It wasn’t like we rushed through there either. In fact, we ended up spending about four hours exploring the place in the hope of finding something that lived up to the hype, but alas that never materialized. We left a little confused and slightly ripped off and braved the traffic around the square by foot until we got back to the relative safety and quiet of the hostel. Andrew and Lucy were already there waiting and had coffee and cake ready for us on arrival. It had become a bit of a tradition with them to have something sweet in the afternoon and the fact that there was a bakery right next door made that quest even easier!

That evening we decided to spoil ourselves with a decent meal. The Falfela Restaurant was fairly well known in town and we felt fairly under dressed when we marched in. We selected the four cheapest dishes off the menu and could see the disappointment on the waiter’s face when we ordered them and some tap water. Perhaps he did not know that we saw the small print informing the unsuspecting patron that there was a 12 % tax and 10% service charge to be added to the total bill. Sneaky basterds! To be fair, the food was FANTASTIC! And the portion sizes were quite large. There was only one other occupied table in the whole place, so it wasn’t like we had to rush through our meal either.

We took our time and enjoyed our feast for an hour or two before wandering down the street and finding a wine shop who sold our chosen Egyptian plonk at E£45 a bottle, instead of the E£145 the restaurant wanted for the same stuff. Back at the hostel we located an opener and sat on the uncomfortable couches by the large TV while discussing politics and sipping away at the prize.

Day 335:

There was no real rush to get up and do stuff that day. We managed to drag ourselves out of bed before the 8:00 breakfast was served and after the usual shower and morning stuff decided to venture into one of the older parts of Cairo. It was called Coptic Cairo and consisted of a fairly strange little hamlet with alleys and tunnels and a maze of little streets.

For the transport there we braved the Metro Rail again and actually found it really efficient. In fact, you could have been forgiven to think that you were in London or Paris on the underground. Sure, there were less people and it was a hell of a lot cheaper (E£1 per trip regardless of length) and I also saw a young man give up his seat for an elderly man, which is not something I had ever seen in Europe, but the smells and sounds and even the people seemed very similar in deed!

When we got off at the right station we saw the first of the many Coptic Churches, the Church of St George, towering up over the city skyline. It was an impressive dome building marking the entrance well, so we ventured inside. It was obvious that tourism had been around there for a while as there were velvet ropes cordoning off some of the church. However, the woodwork and painted ceiling was incredible! It wasn’t exactly the Sistine Chapel, but for a day out in Egypt it was fantastic! The best part was that the whole suburb was so cluttered with buildings and people that there was no space for cars. With that you heard no engines, no horns and no shouting drivers. It almost seemed peaceful in that way!

We ended up visiting quite a few churches there. It reminded me a little of Lalibela in Ethiopia, only free and much more modern. It did talk about the same saints as Lalibela and a lot of the artwork and reliefs on the walls bore strong resemblances too. There wasn’t really enough to keep us busy for longer than a couple of hours, but it was a very peaceful and very peasant time none the less.

The Metro back to our favourite square was as efficient and easy as the outbound journey. The train was fairly empty and we actually had seats to sit on as well. Back at the station we disembarked and walked up the few flights of steps in some anticipation of what we would found on street level. The crowds had definitely grown since that morning, but the atmosphere was still festive and everyone seemed really friendly. As we walked we were welcomed by shouts of “welcome back tourists” and greetings from dozens of locals simply saying “hello”.

The afternoon was spent doing very little. Although the hostel was fairly dark and humid inside it still had a pleasant atmosphere and plenty of areas to sit and relax. The TV was on and showing some old films with Arabic subtitles and I soon found myself mesmerized buy the magic box where the images and sounds came from. That evening we went to dinner with Andrew and Lucy again, had a bottle of wine back at the hostel and went to bed before the witching hour with plans for an early start the following day.

Day 336:

Catt and I woke up early and skipped the long wait for the included breakfast. We made our own coffee and had a quick shower before walking down to the street and finding it totally empty! It was about 7:30 at the time and Maggie was the only vehicle in sight. The square to our left still had the usual camping inhabitants in but nothing stirred apart from the occasional cat crossing the street between dumpsters while looking for breakfast.

We fired Maggie’s engine up for the first time since arriving in Cairo and drove off into the streets towards Giza. We passed a burnt out police station before crossing a bridge over the Nile and found the main road to our destination quite easily. The traffic was light and the going fast so we stopped by the Great Pyramids ticket office only half an hour later. I spotted two of my fellow countrymen on bicycles and had a quick chat. They had arrived in Cairo the day before and that was their first day of a 4 month cycle back to Cape Town. I envied them a little, but at the same time could not imagine travelling that distance in that time, not even in a car.

The chat took about twenty minutes after which we bought our tickets, got back into Maggie, and started her up and…. Got stopped by a policeman before we could drive off. He told Catt to enter through a pedestrian gate and then decided to start his search of Maggie. I shook my head in amazement as I asked him why he could not do that while we were obviously standing there chatting. I mean seriously: He showed us where to stop and pointed out the ticket office. He watched us hang around and chat and he watched us get the tickets. He didn’t stop Catt before she got into the car and he didn’t stop me before I warmed up the glow plugs and started the engine. He waited until the second I wanted to drive before deciding to fuck with my day and I was not happy! We were the only people there and he was obviously just bored. There was also a man with a sniffer dog who had already done his job so it’s not like he could suspect explosives of drugs inside our car.

Not only that, but he also decided that his search would be more thorough than any customs search I had undergone in the eleven months we had been on the road. He was being utterly nosy and was seriously just wasting my time. When he was too short to see inside my clothes drawer and rudely said “What is this?” I pulled out a pair of dirty underwear and waved it close to his face asking if he wanted to see the rest of what was in there. Not only that, but I started undoing my belt while loudly asking him if he was seriously going to treat the last tourists in Egypt that way and as I undid the button of my trousers to slide them down for my proposed cavity search he blushed bright red, got shat on by his superior and waved me through.

I was quite apprehensive about visiting the pyramids in Giza. I had heard stories of hordes of savages on camels forcing you to do business with them and how you would not be left alone for a millisecond. I had heard that there were so many tourists there that you could sometimes not even see the pyramids and that the 300 tickets a day to enter the pyramids was usually sold out ion about a minute. That was obviously the old Egypt. In the new “democratic” Egypt it was a different story. There were one or two guys asking if we wanted to ride camels and when we politely declined they left us alone. Apart from us I saw three other foreign tourists: The two South African cyclists and one British lady with her Egyptian toy boy. (It was quite obvious what was going on there) From where we parked we walked past the Queen’s pyramids (Piles of rubble) straight down the hill right to the Sphinx portrait in most photographs of the site to start our tour.

That was where it got interesting. I don’t think it matters who you are or where you come from. I don’t think it matters what your beliefs or interest were. I do however think that the site of the big stone statue with the missing nose with the massive pyramids in the background is a site that will have a great impact on you. It was incredibly impressive! The morning sun was lighting it up beautifully and the total absence of other tourists meant that we almost it all to ourselves. There were some locals around and the obligatory curio sellers, but no one seemed that interested in harassing us. In fact, one guy insisted on showing us where the best place for photographs was (He was not wrong) and didn’t even come close to the dreaded “Baksheesh” topic.

From the Sphinx we walked back up the smallest of the three great pyramids. There we saw one Tourist Police vehicle, an army truck and a small tank. The policeman that was supposed to keep tourists off the ancient structures invited us for a little climb up the side, which I declined and then happily posed for photos as we were snapping away. We even got some pictures of the tank with the pyramids in the background. The camel and horse touts all offered their services but was still less pushy than any of the curio sellers we had met along the Nile. It was almost as if they did not want to scare us away.

By the time we made it back to Maggie one bus had arrived and it seemed like the activity providers had lost interest in us in favour of the fresh bait. I filled one of our multi fuel stove bottles with petrol while being watched by a policeman and proceeded in boiling water and making coffee right there. I found it a little strange that I got away with that to be honest as it wasn’t even possible to buy petrol in a jerry can in Cairo. The powers were scared that people would make bombs if they were allowed to buy petrol in containers.

With a fresh brew we drove the road through the complex, stopped by the Sphinx for the obligatory photograph of Maggie in Cairo and left by an alternative gate. We headed further out of the city to another ancient, but much less visited site. It was a complex known as Saqqara. That was where it got really interesting… After we discovered that the chicken we had bought in Marsa Alam three weeks before was rotten in our fridge and after we cleaned that all up and had some lunch we bought our tickets and walked into a very shiny, very modern and amazingly impressive museum.

There was a poster explaining that the site was “home” to a French archaeologist by the name of Jean-Philippe Lauer. He was involved in the excavations and restoration of the amazing step pyramid there from 1926 until his death in 2001. He was also credited with being the person who “developed” the methods of excavation, preservation and restoration of most of Egypt’s sites. Apparently those methods he started in the 1930’s were still being used. The museum itself was incredible! It was nowhere near as cluttered or dirty as the Cairo Museum. The displays were inside environmentally controlled cases built into the walls with glass fronts. There were sensible and informative explanations about the different artefacts and they were all in great condition. There was even a mummy in a makeshift sarcophagus with the necessary descriptions and explanations. He was reportedly 2 300 years old and according to Dr Zahi Hawass (Secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities) the best preserved mummy ever found in Egypt. He was only found in 2005. They had found the mummy and coffin of a doctor dating back some 4 000 years there and an amazing array of pots, jewellery and interesting artefacts. The most amazing thing about the site was that although it had been excavated for almost a century and although more than 20 in tact mummies had been found there, it was still believed that only about one third of the total site had been uncovered.

From there we drove around and up a hill to the site of the famous Step Pyramid. That 60 meter high bad boy was designed and built by a man called “Imhotep” around 2650 BC. He was later discovered to be the Pharaoh’s chief architect and the pyramid itself was credited with being the world’s oldest stone monument. Not only that, but it was the corner stone of most of the impressive Egyptian architecture that followed.

We entered the complex through a temple that had had a concrete roof added to protect it from the elements. The courtyard in front of the very impressive stepping pyramid was totally empty and we could see the remains of the once very prominent and impressive wall around it. There were some tombs we walked into and I was really impressed with the colour and state of preservation of the many reliefs on the walls. They were fairly graphic depicting people slaughtering and butchering cows while others carried the legs to an altar looking thing. I guessed that the person whose tomb that was must have liked steak. We found a place where some Arabic lettering was covered with Perspex and read that that was the oldest graffiti known to man. It was done by some ancients in the 47^th year of the reign of Ramses II which was about 1 500 years after the owner of the tomb died.

From the main site we drove over to some other tombs the Lying Planet rated fairly highly but they were all closed to the public. We did see a few more pyramids in the distance and as we had not used Maggie to her full potential in a while I engaged 4x4 and drove there in a straight line. The site’s name was Abu Sir. It had some ruined pyramids and a temple we walked around and took some photos at. Before long we were met by a grossly overweight and slightly out of breath Egyptian who told us that the place was closed and that we had to leave. I thanked him and turned back to Maggie when he suddenly offered to take us into a tomb that was not open to the public. I acted as if that was a little confusing. First he told us that the place was closed and that we had to leave, but then offered to take us somewhere we were definitely not allowed to be. When I declined on the basis that the site was closed he almost insisted and when I declined again, got in the car and started the engine he finally did what I had expected him to do anyway: Asked for baksheesh…. I smiled and told him that I had not accepted any offer that warranted me paying him money and with that we drove down the face of the closest dune and found the tar road back to Cairo at the bottom of it.

The drive back was very interesting! We knew that the GPS maps we had were fairly useless in Cairo, but we still followed them towards the hostel. It took us on the smallest back roads and though the tiniest villages all the way. Interesting, but I didn’t actually think we would fit in most of those alleys. We still managed to complete the journey in less than an hour and even found a parking spot in front of the hotel. I started the parallel parking procedure when a man slapped his hand on the window. When I spoke to him he aggressively told me that it was not safe to park there and that I should follow him. The problem was that the other three people who “helped me park” were all trying to convince me that it was all good. So I parked. When I got out the guy got quite insistent and when I told him that we had been parking right there for the previous three days he was not impressed. What he proposed was that we followed him for about two kilometres to a place where he had a garage. We could park the car there, where we could not see or hear it, and he promised to look after it…. For a fee of course. I politely declined… five times!

Let me just explain the situation here: Imagine London or Johannesburg on a Saturday morning. There would be a thousand in one chance to find parking on the street and there would be millions and millions of people walking the sidewalks and driving the four lane roads. That was what Cairo was like from mid day to midnight every day. There was a curfew in place forbidding anyone to be outside after midnight and before 6:00. So our security lied in the sheer number of people around. In fact, a man selling cigarettes chose Maggie as the perfect back rest for his stall. I didn’t mind, he was also looking after her. So I wasn’t worried about this dude wanting to take for yet another ride.

That evening we walked the streets and saw the crowds swell a little more in the square. We had Lasagne for dinner while sitting in an open air restaurant in an alley close by and the owner even managed to serve us beer. It was quite interesting to experience the hustle and bustle of the capitol in that way and we all agreed that Cairo, as a city, was actually quite a nice place. The people seemed friendly and none threatening and we mostly paid what we perceived to be fair and local prices for the things we wanted. By that time we also knew the written numbers in Arabic very well which meant that we could work out prices from menus which helped. We eventually made it back to the Hostel by about 22:00 in the end. It had been a fantastically interesting and rewarding day and I felt quite privileged to have experienced the ancient sites the way we did… Alone.

Day 337:

The alarm woke us early enough for breakfast and showering before we marched out of there by 8:30. We walked through the middle of Tahrir square and the ever swelling crowds and laughed at the way the protestors had taken over the duties of traffic direction… badly… We walked over Freedom Bridge and crossed the Nile, turned left and an hour later stood right in front of the French Embassy with a great big knot in my stomach.

The security man let me in, looked at my passport receipt and once again asked if I had an appointment. He spoke fluent Arabic and French and I spoke neither, so communication was fairly slow and frustrating. Eventually he made me sit on a chair and wait while he walked off in search of the right person to speak to. Catt wasn’t allowed in the secure area, but we could see each other through the bullet proof glass. The process took so long that we started playing charades to keep us occupied. I secretly started coming up with a Plan B and C for when the news came that either the visa was declined or not ready yet. I didn’t much like any of the plans I could come up with though.

An hour after arriving I was however met by a friendly French man who handed my passport back and said that it was all done on the day I handed my application in. He said that he had been trying to phone me every day from that day (for 14 days) and that he never managed to get hold of me. I briefly told him that I was there the Monday before and that I was told that it was not ready yet, but that I didn’t really care and that I was just very relieved that they were able to help me. When I opened my passport I looked at a fantastically new six month multi entry visa for most of Europe which was totally free because I was married to an EU citizen…. The UK charges £64 for a visa regardless of who I am married to….

So that was it. There was a huge weight off my shoulders and when I saw Catt outside and shared the news I thought she was going to cry. I felt like screaming “Viva La France” at the top of my voice, but then thought that the hundred or so soldiers with tanks and automatic weapons around the embassy may not appreciate that. We walked back to the hostel with a spring in our steps and I could see only one more large obstacle in my way. I still had to visit the Egyptian Immigration office on the square and it was creeping up to mid day. I still braved the masses and found the entrance. I was about to walk in when the security people saw the camera in my small rucksack and was totally unimpressed. I was not going to be allowed to enter with it. In the end Catt took the bag and walked back to the hostel while I walked into the building and found the right counter. It was fairly busy but it still only took half an hour for me to get to the right person and do the right things. I was told that the actual stamp in the passport would take another hour, so decided to trot over the square, through the crowds and back to the hostel for lunch.

An hour later I returned without a camera or bag, walked straight in and up to the counter and got my passport back as promised with all the correct visas and extensions in. It was hard to believe that I had actually managed two most important things in one day and it was only 13:00. We stayed at the hostel relaxing for a few hours before springing back into action for the last of our Cairo adventures: The Pyramid Light Show.

At 16:00 I took my camera bag and we walked past Maggie to get a tripod. As I walked closer I immediately saw that something had changed and it took only second to spot the dent and bent metal of one of the back doors. It was crystal clear that someone had taken a crow bar to the door and tried to force it open. It was never opened though, no windows were broken and nothing was stolen. No one in the area knew anything about it either… obviously… and I was PISSED! The worse thing was that I knew who did it. It was that guy who wanted me to pay him to look after the car in his garage. I even took a photo of his face the day before, but there was nothing I could do with it… Egypt had no police. There was no one I could report the crime to. So what could I do? Quietly asking Allah to make his balls rot off in a very painful and hopefully public and humiliating way was about the best I could come with.

Armed with tripod and sending curses to the crow bar vandal we marched the 50 meters back to the square and entered the metro station. We took the train to the end of the line for E£1 each and found a metered taxi by the station. It took a few seconds to explain that we wanted to go to the Sphinx entrance of the pyramids but I am convinced it was my cupped hands around my ears and my roaring like a lion that did the trick. I sat next to the driver and watched the meter tick over slowly and was actually really impressed when the half an hour drive cost only E£17. That’s less than $3 and I was pretty sure the cheapest taxi ride we would ever do! I handed over a E£20 and told him to keep the change.

It was 17:00 and we had an hour and a half to kill before the show started. Our mode of transport was obviously too efficient and the Pyramid site was closed, so we were a little loss for something to do… Until we met Sahid. He was a mountain of a man with a voice deep enough to match his stature. He had a shop (Of course) and he was the proud owner of a few camels. He offered to take us to a high dune overlooking the pyramids for sunset, then serve us some tea in his papyrus shop while we chose a painting to buy before the show started. He even said that we could watch the show from the roof of his house instead of paying the entrance fee. Now we never really intended to ride camels, but his deal sounded fab….

It was going to cost us E£80 for two camels and an hour and a half trip into the desert. That translated to $13.50 and we had paid a lot more money for a lot less fun than that! So I agreed. I made sure he understood that there would be no more money that could change hands and with that we mounted up and were led towards the desert. Catt’s camel was called Banana and mine was called Mickey Mouse. The whole thing sounded a lot more romantic than what it really was as well. Instead of heading to sand and dunes we headed through the suburbs. We followed the massive and impressive perimeter fence of the pyramid complex around and passed an array of stables and coffee shops. We even passed though a place that could only be described as a land fill site with a dozen or so dead animals in it. After passing through the village graveyard with some woman smoking a Shisha pipe we eventually made it to the dunes but we were still next to a great big and very ugly fence. Our guide, who had been sharing my camel, hopped off at that point and gave me the two minute briefing on how to “drive a camel” Banana had his halter tied onto Mickey’s saddle so Catt had little choice but to follow me. Not that I took advantage of that at all.

When the sun was about to hide behind the far away sand dunes we stopped on a rise and looked back at one of the Seven Wonders of the World and I was impressed! It was amazing to see! We were far removed from the beeping horns and begging hordes and we could actually hardly see the city. Between us and the pyramids was only sand and the sky was almost pink from the low sun reflecting of the millions of dust particles in the air. We successfully avoided the trap of having a drink forced upon us by a passing salesman and after taking many photos and being dumb struck by the impressiveness of what we were seeing, we mounted up again and started our journey back to the village. I felt quite chuffed that we could forever claim that we had gone to see the Great Pyramids of Giza by camel…

Sahid was obviously waiting for us to get back and marched us right into his shop before we had a chance to say no. I was about to start my protest but the words got lost before I could speak. The inside of the shop was incredible! The paintings on the walls were massive and beautiful and seemed to cater for every taste. He showed us how they made the papyrus paper and we saw the water paint they used in their art. I was incredibly impressed. There were so many things that caught my eye that I didn’t actually know where to look. I spotted the published prices starting at E£1 000 for an A3 size posted and knew it was not something we could really afford. I still liked looking at it though.

Sahid’s father was obviously the artist and when we met him he knew exactly which painting I liked most. He asked me to make an offer. I honestly and sincerely told him that I would not because I did not want to insult his work. I told him that I was incredibly impressed, but that we simply did not have the money to pay for what we really liked. I will probably never know if what happened next was genuine or simply the game they play, but I’d like to believe that I can read people well enough to tell the difference.

The old man explained that they were suffering greatly from the total lack in tourists. He said that although he had worked very hard to fill the shop with the beautiful paintings and that he knew that they had a certain value, any money would be better for him than paintings on his wall. He asked me to please offer a fair amount for something that I liked. I liked many things… In the end I tried very hard to explain our own situation to him. I made sure that he understood that I wasn’t trying to bargain with him because it was the “thing to do” and that he really did have the right to say “no” to me. I offered him E£500 ($85) for an absolutely stunning door sized painting of a felucca on the Nile with a temple in the background. I almost wanted him to decline, but he smiled and simply said “Thank you” as he shook my hand. He even made Catt chose an A4 size sketch as a gift. I felt truly sorry for him.

We did pay our entry tickets into the Sound and Light Show. We sat in an amphitheatre style arena and were mesmerised by the historical stories told over massive loud speakers and the lights dancing on the ancient stone walls. The show lasted more than an hour and was arguably one of the most impressive things I had seen in Egypt. I looked around at the few other tourists there and could not help but wonder about the way they had travelled through the country of the Pharaohs. It was obviously a tour group and I could see the luxury coach outside. I had heard that all the cruises on the Nile were cancelled for the following six months and thought that arriving in a country where every major intersection had a massive military tank protecting it must have been quite a shock to a package holiday tourist.

After the show ended we walked outside, found a taxi and negotiated a fair rate before agreeing to use it. He had no meter and we had been in the country long enough to know better than accepting anything before an agreement had been reached. On the way to the station the traffic was really heavy and it took about twice as long to get back. So in the end we added “a little something” on to the fair which made the man happy enough to drop us right by the steps of the station. We rode the train back to our square, saw that the size of the festivities had doubled since we left and expertly weaved through the traffic, across the road and into the hostel.

We had a mountain of vegetables left over in our stores and that was one thing that was hard to find in restaurants and cafés in Cairo. So we chopped them all up and while Catt stir fried the lot I sourced some yard long French breads from the bakery down stairs. There was enough for at least ten people but between us and Andrew and Lucy we managed to scoff it all. We were obviously all desperate for some decent nourishment. It was fairly close to midnight by the time we decided to call it a day. The streets seemed quiet and Tahrir Square seemed peaceful and I prayed that the Crowbar Vandal was tending to his rotting bollocks rather than attacking our car again just before falling asleep.

If I had to do it all again:

Don’t do to Egypt…

OK Seriously:

The diving was incredible and I can not wait to go back there. It would very hard to share the place with many tourists so we will either have to go in the quiet season or wait for the next revolution.

When I got the receipt for my passport from the French embassy I was so relieved that they took my application that I never checked to see if it had contact details on. It didn’t, and I never managed to get the right telephone number to phone. It would have been good to ask the name of the manager who helped me and to get his phone number….

The place we stayed in Cairo was actually really nice. The setting was not exactly perfect, but I rather brave the friendly thousands than the million mosquitoes at Salma (Suck your soul out) Motel. There were other hotels and hostels further away from Tahrir, but I somehow felt a little safer in a place where there were many people and no dark streets. Cairo is quite an interesting and culturally diverse place. There are many places there I would have liked to go but never did and to be honest, I don’t see myself ever going back there, especially not with a car!

The Pyramids were AMAZING! For nice photos you need to be there early, as we were. The site only opens at 8:00 though and closes at 16:00 which is a bit of a shame. However, the camel ride around the outside was also very cool in deed! In time of peace and no revolution I would probably drive the vehicle where the camels go outside the complex and find a place to park, see the light show and sleep over. I am convinced it would be safe and I am also convinced no one would bother you. You’d also be able to see the light show three times although you obviously wouldn’t be able to hear the commentary.

Saqqara was also an incredibly impressive place and I am pleased we went there. The museum there was the best I had seen in Africa and I really hope that the new Cairo Museum could be as good as that.