Monday, Day 5 Hurghada, Cairo - Pyramids - The Nile - The Cairo Museum

Taxi Cab to Airport
We land in Cairo early in the morning Monday and start to look for a cheap taxi to the Cairo Museum. The first guy who walks up to us asking if we need a cab says he will take us the museum for 60EP (the conversion is 5 to 1) so this is going to cost us 12us to get there sounds pretty cheap to me. We figure if the guy sucks we can just get another cab when we get there. Well surprising to Kevin and I this guy speaks what we consider great english and is super nice. Of course so was the guy in the suit the day before so we are quite skeptical of this guy and are ready to bail at a stop light if need be. As we leave the airport we have to pay the toll to get out an unexpected 10EP(2 us are you with me). Kevin and I give each other the great we are going to get screwed look but again 10EP is nothing. The we come to an armed gaurd who flags us down and then makes me write my name down in a book, he doesnt care about Kevin just me. I ask why and I get a because, again this is discomforting but ohh well I figure if they want to know the name of the people that get kidnapped each year I want to be in that book so I sign away.
The first thing that I want you to know is that driving is Cairo is like nothing else on this planet. People are speeding around driving insane fast and you know the white lines on the road.. yeah they mean nothing to them, nor do stop lights, stop signs, people in the road, break lights, heck most cars in Cairo don't have side mirrors since they have all been scraped off at some point during driving. I have tried to take as many photos of this experiance as possible but I am afraid you cannot fully understand how scarey/insane it really is until you live through it.
So sitting in the back seat white knuckles obvious to our cabbie he asks what are plans are for the day. I figure this is setup of some sort but trying to be honest (ok not that honest he still thinks we are from Canada) I tell him we plan on visiting the museum first, then the pyramids, then hotel for sleep. He tells me my plans are all wrong and he would suggest otherwise since he has live in Cairo his whole life and he knows better.
He tells us to start our day at the pyramids since it is a long drive it will be cheaper since the trip will be shorter. I ask him how much and he replies with how about this. I will drive you around all day, wherever you want to go for 500EP. It takes me a minute to do the math but for 100us having a personal cab that will wait for us everywhere we go sounds too good to be true. I am willing to take the risk since he seems so friendly. As we drive towards the pyramids he shows all kinds of buildings (which we can barely see through the smog), he shows us bediwins(sp?) right in the middle of the city (nomad sheep herders). We see so many amazing sites and such bad driving that I was willing to pay 500EP just for that ride. It was awesome.
First thing he does to win my confidence was to ask if we would like to get a water in town since it will be half price at the pyramids (good thinking!). So we pull over (traffic is now having to drive into on coming traffic to get around us but this seem to matter very little to the driver and heck to the people passing us, he asks if we like a large water or small. I am thinking Kevin and I share one so I say get me the large. Kevin being a germaphobe(I forgot about that) says that he would like a seperate water. The cab driver laughs to himself (since he knows what a large waters is and orders it up in Arabic to the vendor and makes some arabic joke about how many times we are going to have to go to the bathroom. They both get a good laugh out of it and we continue on down the road.
I would like to point out one more thing that happened before I get to the prymids, while we are driving in the worst traffic ever on a two lane road Kevin about jumps our of his seat and I look up to see what appears to be a car in our RIGHT hand side of the road diving the wrong way against the flow of traffic, the look of shock and horror on our faces again makes the cab driver laugh audibly. He asks Kevin if he would mind driving for bit he is getting tired again laughing to out loud at us and our expressions of fear.
Please let me explain something, as int the previous post I cannot emphizise enough how dirty/backwards/third world this place is. We pull into some back streets and hop out. The driver introduces us to a man who rents Horses and Camels and then guides you up to see the pyramids, the man has Kevin up on the Camel and me on the horse before he is willing to tell me the price. Once up on the back of the horse your ability to barter is somewhat taken away from you. So he says would you like the short ride or the long ride and I ask about price, he says 250each for the short ride about 30 minutes or 350each for the long ride about 1.5 hours. I know that I only have 600 in my pocket so I tell him I can only afford the short ride and he and my cab driver both tell me I really need to take the long one am I sure that I want to take the short one. The Cab driver then starts talking Arabic and tells the guy to give a break and give us the long trip for the price of the short one. When the camel driver tells me this he does so with a (since he is your friend and mine I am going to give you a discount) then the second we get out side of the cabbies view he says.. you know, my tip should be really high since I gave you such a break on the price.

Pyramids
The fun for me began on the top of a horse. I have never ridden a horse before and I am also not great with directions. So when the camel driver guys hands me the reigns and asks if I have ever ridden before and I say no.. Well I guess this means I am going to figure it out real quick, he tells me it is just like a car, you pull right it goes right, left it goes left and front mean go forward and back to stop. Seems easy enough.. So we are slowly click clacking our way down the road towards the main street (yea with cars zooming everywhere) and I decide I am going to try out my new car I mean horse and see how the handling performs.. So I yank on the right side and the horse turns its head and looks at me.. (doesnt go right) I yank on the reins to the left now the horse looks at me out the other side of his head and does not go left. I think this is odd since the instructions I got were left to go left and right to go right. I pull a little harder to the right... maybe my horse didnt get the message. The horse again looks at me from the right (no turning), I yank pretty hard to the left (the horse will understand that I am thinking) and lo and behold the horse does understand.. he thinks I am some idiot flea like creature that he needs to rid himself of and starts to try to buck me off. Quite interesting, I am now on a pissed off horse, heading for a busy road with broken steering and I am trying to be thrown from my seat. The camel driver yells at the horse and since I figued out that yanking pisses the horse off I decide to change my tatics and I only ever so slightly move the reins to the right and away we go to the right. I figured it out and I stayed on the horse I think my next step is going straight for the whispering in his ear but I decide to save that for the next horse I ride.

Along the way to the pyramids we get mauled by people trying to sell us stuff like turbins and drinks and the camel driver is yelling at them in arbic I assume he is saying something along the line of this idiot white folks are mine back off because for the most part they leave quit quickly when he starts yelling at them.
We make it up a large hill to finally turn the corner and see the pyramids in all their splendor and also get to see our camel driver pay off security gaurds to leave us alone and he also pays off some other people and honestly I am not sure why. But we get our pictures, we are asked if we want to go in the pyramids or climb them and we answer no (I had a feeling that cost more). Plus with that many pissed looking arabs around that we kept having to pay off I was afraid for some reason we were already pushing out luck. We pay our tip get out cairo hard rock hat and away we go in our personal taxi for the day, the pyramids we a great experience and we had a great time. I am not sure a second visit would do much for me but I did get to see them and I am very happy for the experience, once in a lifetime.



We get back on the road and since I am broke from the camel ride I try and stop to get some cash and my card doesnt work. I try like fifteen times and finally have to resort to my company card to get some cash. My accountant will love that one.

Cairo Museum
I really was excited to see the Cairo Museum, it is truly amazing all the stuff they have found over the years. They have unreal attention to detail in their work, I think the thing that was most interesting was the models they made, I am not sure if they were toys or what but they were of such great detail. They had made models of everything, the way they fished (little boats with fish on teh decks and little nets) the way they made beer (a full brewery model) the way they made food. it was truly interesting.

We told the driver to pick us up in three hours so that would give him enough time to run some errands and we would have enough time to see the whole museum. He told us to meet him (he would be waiting) on what appeared to be a 4 lane highway with six lanes of traffic running on it all the time. I told Kevin.. I bet we have to wait here cause I am sure he will have to pass a couple of times to be able to pick us up. Well to my surprise he was parked in the middle of the fast lane with his blinkers on the opposite side of the road. We had to dodge a million cars (all driving crazy, honking their horns and generally not abiding any american road saftey laws to get across the street and hop in the car and speed away. Totally insane is all I can really say about that taxi entry but I was getting used to it.. this is Cairo you know.. They do things a little different here.

We have not eaten (by orders of our driver who tells us if we eat we will want to sleep) ever since we have arrived in cairo, and if any of you know me I will be the first one to try something native no matter how terrible it sounds (ok I skipped the ox tail in Madrid, but the trip isn't over and maybe I can be convinced). So I tell him to take us to one of his favorite resturants and nothing that is touristy we want Egypt on a plate. He laughs and says I have just the place for you, you want shiska bob.. I say sounds right up my alley, take us there. We park the car in the scummiest neighborhood I have ever, wait wait wait.. Cairo is the scummiest city I have ever been and this neighborhood is no different. We enter what seems to be an upscale (meaning clean) restaurant and are greeted by well dressed egytians and treated to a wonderful meal that included 2 kilos of shiska bob meats, a plate of what looked like dandy lion leaves, a plate of green vegetables with tomatoes, one plate some type of cucumber sauce (like you would get with a gyro) and one place of something a little darker (kevin called it mud mainly because it tasted like mud), we also get a large pile of pita bread which we are told not to eat cause it fills you up and you cannot eat more meat that way (I like how the guy thinks). All in all a great meal, we are all stuffed and it only cost 250EP or roughly 50us. One last thing to note, I was told I would meet lots of poor beggars in Cairo and the little girl that came up to the car after dinner was the only one. I turned away not giving her anything since I am not into beggers but something odd happened. The driver did give her something so of course that made me feel bad but. I got over that quick don't want anyone to think I have a soul or anything, so back in the car and away we go.



We really have nothing to do now and it is still early so he asks if we would like to go the Bazaar, he tells us we want to go and no trip to cairo is complete with out the world clas shopping that can be done here. I am not sure if he has been to fifth avenue but I take his word for it and we get dropped off at the "Bazaar", well let me tell you something, the word Bazaar has a second mean because of this place. This place was PACKED with people, stepping over, on top over and around each other like ants, I honest to god have never experianced anything this wild. We saw,smelled,felt and heard things that were extraordinary without equal anywhere else on the planet. Some of the things that I thought noteworthy.. The guy selling fake euros, the guy selling what appeared to be a windex colored drink out of a backback vending device, a cooked goat head hanging in a window I am guessing for purchase, fake rolexs, a man selling pastries off the top of his head, a man selling billfolds with one of his arms stuffed in his shirt and down his pant leg so he looked armless. The list goes on and on.. I remember getting lost in the bowels of this "Bazaar" place and telling Kevin that NOW would be a good time for us to walk faster and finally, everyone seeing that we were white would try to speak to us in english, with catch phrases like "hey you come into my shop", "buy here its cheap", "what can I help you find", "come here my friend", "whats your name my friend" and finally my favorite, "How can I take your money". We didn't buy anything at the Bazaar but we has a great time getting lost in the maze of shops and see such incredible sites.

Pictures of the Nile
On our way back to get something from the Hilton gift shop Kevin made a motion to take a picture of the Nile. The cab driver leans over the seat and says.. you want picture of you with and the Nile.. I can do that. So in the middle of the bridge, with thousands of crazy ass drivers zipping everywhere he pulls over and we all get out and start taking pictures on top of the bridge. The guy was great, and again something like is unforgetable.

Hotel
We finally end our day kinda early (we had to be back to the airport by 2am) so we checked into our hotel around 6 and even though we had not slept well in days the energy of the city kept us awake for a couple of hours but we were able to get some sleep and at 2am say goodbye to by far the craziest city I have ever been in. I would recommend if you ever get the chance to go.. do.. you will not be sorry. If you need company I would be happy to return. I just hope I can find our great driver again, he made the whole trip worth it.