Day 2: Nothing is Free

It feels like we've been in Cairo a week - and I mean it in a good way.  Last night we went across the bridge to the East bank of the Nile and hopped on a small boat for a little Nile cruising.  I continue to be surprised at the slightly run down feel of most of the buildings in the city - it's much poorer than I thought, and it really seems to have hit 
hard times.  Laila later confirmed this.

After a really nice Lebanese dinner at a high end hotel last night (they really were bending over backwards to make us happy, and it's really looking like there are very few tourists here), we walked home in the early evening.  Wow.  The city had come to life.  It seemed as though everyone had been hiding indoors during the day but they were all out on the streets now.  We saw a ton of young families and groups of young girls and boys congregating around the Nile in celebration of a drop in temperature it would seem.

We hit the sack pretty early and we all slept like rocks.

Laila, our young guide from Egypt Tailor Made tours, met us promptly at 8am.  The plan was three main stops - the pyramids of Giza, the first ancient capital of Memphis where there was an open air museum, and Saccara - another pyramid group.

The streets were relatively calm... we really planned well (or luckily) to come on a Friday/Saturday.  We crossed to the West Bank and merged onto a highway, where we noticed that red brick tenement after tenement lay half finished and completely unoccupied.  Laila referred quite a bit to 2011 being a major turning point for Egypt.  With an economy highly dependant on tourism, the revolution in Egypt in 2011 known as part of the "Arab Spring" in the area caused a power vacuum which was filled by the Islamic brotherhood for a year and then replaced with a military government.  Things went to pot during the Brotherhood's brief reign, and the occasional flare up since then has caused the world to generally stay away from Egypt.  This has really hurt the country - with really high inflation and unemployment rumoured to be over 60%.

I'd heard a bunch of a people saying they were disappointed with the pyramids of Giza; that they'd thought they were in the middle of the Sahara; that they were not all that impressive etc. Etc.  Wrong, in my opinion.  As we passed through the suburbs of Giza we could see the pyramids silhouetted in the distance and I could already feel that excitement building.  When we got through the front gate, Laila got our tickets while we adjusted to the heat....or hid like cockroaches in the shade in reality.  The sun reminded me of Vegas - not too much humidity but when you were out in the open you fried.

Coming through the gates, I was actually surprised at the impressive size of the pyramids.  Built almost 5000 years ago - you're kidding me!  Amazing, huge, a feat of engineering, impressive, beautiful...I think you would have to be pretty jaded not to look at the pyramids with anything but awe.  Maybe people get sunstroke and it sways their opinion :-)

Laila did a great job buffering us from the vendors, and continually reminding us that "nothing was free!".  We've traveled a bit and are not very susceptible to the little scams and annoyances, but the way she intercepted the touts and warned us about tipping scams and more was really nice.  We did notice that even though there were a few touts and the usual souvenir vendors, their persistence seemed half hearted - like they'd been through years of not selling much and they had lost hope....and that was a bit sad.  Laila confirmed the drop in numbers - from 10,000 plus visitors a day to just "a couple of hundred", tourism had shrivelled up to barely a blip on the radar.   She said without the Chinese tourists and the occasional Spanish or German group, they would be totally dead.  We may have seen a handful of visibly "western" tourists the whole day.

Most of us opted to go into the man-made shaft that goes up and into the heart of the large Ramses pyramid which is the only intact structure remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World (there was a lot of talk about this, and we've concluded there must be a few lists of "7 wonders" out there....https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonders_of_the_World).  The tunnel inside the pyramid climbed upward in a tight box shaped tunnel about 4'x4' until it opened a little bigger halfway up.  Eventually, we got to the top and saw a big empty stone coffin.  Not a big deal to miss this part but still the size of everything when you were inside was magnified and made the whole thing that much more impressive.   Squeezing back down the tunnel while others were coming up, I couldn't imagine what it would have been like with thousands of visitors were there that day....yikes.

Next up was the obligatory camel ride into the desert, which I initially balked at (been there, snobbily done that) but it turned out to be pretty fun - especially watching Alex ride the camel like it was a bucking bronco...including a loud, one handed "yes haw!"

On the way out, we stopped briefly at the Sphinx.  So cool - we couldn't believe that it was carved out of one solid piece of stone.  It was interesting seeing the "casings" (or what I like to call "facades" (builder lingo I guess..).  All of the pyramids and temples etc were all clad with stone (limestone, granite, alabaster etc) to make them totally smooth back in the day, and the sphinx was no different around the body area.    Most of the facades had fallen off the structures, and not having the knowledge to put them back, they were taken over the years and used to construct buildings in the city.  

We stopped for some felafel and babaganouj on the way to Memphis...my god the food is good here!  So far we'd probably managed to drink five bottles of water each.  The drive to the ancient capital area was really marred by streets lined with garbage, still rivers filled with garbage and obvious poverty and disrepair everywhere you looked.   We were pretty shocked with how bad it was....I never imagined they would be this destitute.  Laila kept talking about 2011 as the beginning of the decline, but it was clear that things were not fantastic before this either.  

Memphis was now the site of a neat little open air museum, including a huge, nicely intact statue of a king that was unearthed after laying buried in a small lake for hundreds of years.   The heat was getting a bit much and we were continually scrambling for every scrap of shade we could find.

Last stop, Saccara (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqqara), and we got the usual warnings before getting out of the van.. "remember everyone, nothing is free, someone wants to take your picture, not free, someone wants you to take a picture with their donkey, not free, ok?".  Thanks for the reminder Laila...note to self, no donkey pics!

Saccara was really interesting - a large pyramid that was built much earlier in a stepped shape rather than what we picture as a triangular pyramid.  We ventured down another tunnel to the inside of one of the tombs... a nice respite from the heat.   That tomb had a ton of hieroglyphics and a repeating cartouche (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartouche) representing the name of the owner of the to,b.  We got pretty good at recognizing cartouches! 

We were really melting, so it was time to bid adieu to Laila for the day and take a long dip in the pool.   We have been so impressed with the kids on the trip so far (I realize it's been 2 days...but they've been very long days!).  They are so mature, yet childish in the best of ways possible.  They all get along famously as if they were cousins and they've shown a real acceptance and willing to learn and try pretty much everything put in front of them.  We need to remember this for when we are back....lol.

We walked down to the Sofitel for dinner...finally deciding on a Moroccan restaurant as our choice (I think there were 5 restaurants there...all mostly empty).  The kids again opted to sit on their own, order on their own...and just generally 'be' on their own.  Well, they did better than the adults.  While there were quite a few groans at our table after eating way too much delicious food, the kids were very smart about what they ordered.

I'm not sure any of the adults had any more energy by the time we stumbled back to the hotel.  We closed our suite doors, leaving the 4 clowns playing cards for god knows how long.  Eventually we woke up and sent the boys packing down to Kim and Alex's room.  What a day.  

Seeing the pyramids was definitely a dream come true.  So was recreating that feeling that we were back on our big trip... maybe this really was Day 188?  Maybe the trip never ends?  With days this long, this three week part of our 'big trip' may continue for some time. :-)