What a day. Seriously. We started out really early, at 7am or so. We went straight outside to the port and picked a bus for a day trip to Cairo! We started out in the first bus, and got comfortable. We always sit in the same seat (near the back exit so we can be first off), and that’s right where we headed. My roommate got on a little later with her group of friends though, so when we saw our friend Matt go onto bus three, we switched and sat with him….Good decision I think. The trip up was not eventful. We slept as much as we could as it was a three hour ride. When we got up, we were right at the Great Pyramids! Holy cow, I went for exhausted to super energized in the span of a second! The pyramids are nuts. They are ginormous and they’re everything that you want them to be from what you’ve heard. There are people on huge camels everywhere and people on horses. There are a lot of hagglers trying to get you to buy things. There are tourists everywhere. It’s an experience for sure. I loved it though without a doubt. We went around the two that we could see with Matt. We took some stellar pictures in front of them and even went inside one of the tombs for the wife of one of the pharaohs who was buried in the bigger pyramid. We had to crawl down into the tomb area through this little cave thing. It wasn’t really intense, but it was still pretty cool. We had to run to get snapshots of the smaller pyramid, but it was worth it. It brings the number of wonders of the world I’ve been to up to three: The Great Wall, The Grand Canyon and the Great Pyramids. Sweet.
We got back on the bus for about five minutes and made our way down to the Sphinx. This was not what I was expecting. It was huge. And the paws of the lion were extremely big. Everyone is so taken by the face that it’s easy to miss the massive lion body that is under it. More stellar pictures here. You can’t actually go into the Sphinx, nor touch the pyramids. But being that close to them is an experience all its own. It’s fascinating to think that people where able to carve and sculpt such detail thousands of years ago. The ability of the ancient Egyptian society was without a doubt some of the most impressive in history.
Next, we moved onto some of the ancient tombs next to the Pyramid of Zoser also called the Step Pyramid. The tombs were beautiful. They had just uncovered another one literally one week earlier, so we were extremely lucky that we were able to explore two of them. These two were above ground, but because of how well they were preserved, you can still see some of the color that was painted on thousands of years ago. The hieroglyphics were to beautiful, and the uniformity that they were able to achieve with hand painting and carving is incredible. We went underground (crazy) to see the last tomb. You should see the video James took. We traveled for about five minutes underground completely hunched over to finally make it to this tomb. It was worth it with out a doubt, but it was an experience getting down there and even more of one getting back up. James surreptitiously video-taped our trip, and it’s worth watching I’m sure.
Next we moved to the pyramid itself. Zoser is the oldest pyramid in the world, and beyond that, it’s the oldest standing building in the world period. It’s not nearly as big as the Great Pyramids, but it’s still intense. We took some silly pictures in front of it, but I must say that we were the first to make a human pyramid in front of the first pyramid every built. That’s saying something at least. We got a little haggled along the way (see James blog. I’m still too ticked to reiterate it again).
We went to lunch after. We drove through some crazy parts of town to get to a country club that served us a buffet lunch. It was a little disconcerting to see the differences in the neighborhoods in Giza (the town outside of Cairo where the pyramids actually are). There is a nice country club in the middle of the desert, but surrounding it are sheep herders and poor farmers who live next to a polluted river that was filled with dead animals and trash. Our guide said that the people were not upset or discontent with their living conditions. They feel that they will eventually receive their due in either the afterlife or in the life of their children. It’s an interesting philosophy. The children in the neighborhood were cute. Every time we passed by them in the bus they would run after us waving. The day before a man carrying a little girl about a year old told me that his daughter wanted to kiss me and if that was ok. We were outside of a mosque in a big group, and it was a baby. So I said yes and let her kiss my cheek. She gave me this huge grin. It was SOOO precious. She was adorable. The children are cute here, so excited about everything I feel.
Afterwards we went on our jeep safari. We piled six people in a land rover at the country club and headed out to basically off road on the dunes of the Sahara. It wasn’t too crazy, but we did some bouncing and we went up a rather large hill once. I was a little scared, but Matt and James were fine. I liked it. The jeep took us to a huge swarm (?) of camels waiting for us all.
I picked first. Well, I was ushered to one really. He seemed a little ornery, and he kept barking at me. I had expected to ride attached to James, but some how Matt got ushered up next and we ended up riding together. James’ camel wasn’t attached to our train and he was led by a little kid who didn’t understand when James said he wanted to ride near us. We were never too far, but it was funny. Matt and my guide took a picture of us in the middle and said for us to hold hands because he thought we were together….We gave high fives ☺
My camel’s name was Mikah, which I thought was cute for obvious reasons. Matt’s was called Moses. There were about twenty Moses I think. But mine was the only Mikah I found ☺ James’ was Michael Jackson. He’s just lucky that way. The camel ride was freakin sweet. We went through the desert till we reached the country club again. What an experience. Camel riding is not very comfortable, per say, but I like it!
After our trip, we got dropped off in Giza near Cairo. We met up with Charlotte and got in a taxi heading towards our hostel. It wasn’t a terrible experience. It was a little hot and a little crowded and the man had to ask a few people but we eventually made it to Wake Up! Cairo, our hostel. It was my first hostel experience, and I have to say it was pretty good. The beds were clean. There was AC. The staff was really nice. We had a great little breakfast of bread and jam. The bathrooms were nice enough. There were two computers there with headsets for skype. I will say, it was like a little oasis in the desert and once we got in there, we really didn’t want to leave for the night…but we were really really hungry….and then Patrick (who was there with John from earlier) suggested we order from the pizza hut he’d seen earlier that day….and we haven’t’ had American food yet…all trip! SO we did. We ate freakin four huge pizzas between the five of us. And they were freakin delicious. James, Matt, and I had a little excursion out to go for cheaper cokes and everyone drank two of those along with their six slices of pizza each. I’ve never appreciated pizza hut more.
Then John came back over with a friend who’s studying Arabic in Cairo. She was a family friend and his older brother’s ex girlfriend. She’s soo cute and soooo smart. Her name’s Becca and we ended up staying with her for quite awhile just talking about the cool places she’s been and what she’s doing. We had some great conversation and then she ended up taking us to the best koshery place in town. Koshery is like Egyptian pasta with hotsauce and tomato sauce and lentil beans and some other strange stuff. It’s actually pretty good, though I was skeptical at first. We hung out there for awhile before going back to the hostel. John and Charlotte and Becca stayed out for a little while longer but the rest of us headed home for showers.
You’d think that’d be the end of the day. We’d been up since 7am and we were exhausted. But no. We ended up staying up for prolly three more hours just talking and being extremely loud. The kids we hung out with were a really good time. The whole group is pretty funny. And we like to give hard times. I was an awesome day for sure. I went to bed with a better feeling about Cairo and Egypt in general.
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