Why Not Tour

Now all together in Africa, we were suitably hung over and ready to make our way south to Cairo. I thought I’d offer to drive… it had to start at some point. So we got ourselves up and ready early and set off to Cairo. I originally planned for us to stay in Alexandria so we’d miss the crazy traffic in Cairo, but it seems that crazy traffic is everywhere, so we didn’t miss anything. After about 30 wrong turns and 600 beeps of the horn, we finally made it to the highway. It’s a nice drive down to Cairo, mostly lined with local farms. The traffic on it was pretty standard for Egypt, but very easy to manage when you go faster than everyone else.

About half way to Cairo we decided we’d get some breakfast from a roadside shack, so we pulled over into the dirt and sat down to eat. The place was surrounded by stray cats and we had no idea what we were going to be served or how much it would be. But we got a few bowls of beans with oil, hummus, tomatoes, goat’s cheese, and bread. The scene was set for a “What not to eat while travelling” ad, but we chowed down anyway. We’re still alive, so I guess it was all good.
After that, we continued south and finally made it to Cairo. We knew the camp ground (Salma’s) was very close to the pyramids, so we kept a look out for them. Driving along the highway they suddenly appeared in our view. They absolutely dominated the horizon and they really made an impression. I was in awe for a few minutes. I’m guessing Jim was too, because he was navigating and after this, we got lost for 3 hours.

We never saw our turn off for the camp ground, so went around on the ring road for ages. It seemed to have lots of on ramps, but no off ramps. Eventually we saw one and took it. We then tried to make it about 5km due east to reach the campsite. I’ll spare the boring details of taking a 3 hour tour of the backstreets of Cairo and Giza, but let you in on one impressive moment.

We somehow found ourselves in the most remote looking village in history. The “road” was only just wide enough for our car and turned left and right about every 20m. Luckily, there was a little van in front of us that seemed to be picking up people, so we figured it was a bus. We followed this bus, hoping like hell it’d take us back to some kind of actual road. It
did, but this road led us around more villages. I was starting to really crap myself by this stage. The car was constantly surrounded by people, little kids kept jumping out in front of us, other vehicles were always within 5cm of us, and there seemed to be no way out of this endless maze of buildings. If we accidentally did something wrong and the people turned on us, it would have been game over. Welcome to driving in Egypt, Dan.

But, we finally made it out. Another 50 wrong turns and two villages (not as big thankfully) later, we found the campsite. As we were so late, we had to quickly run off to get our letter of invitation, Sudanese visa, and Jimbo’s Ethiopian visa. We’d take a taxi for this.

We were hoping it would be rather quick, but the letter from the Australian government took quite a bit longer than expected. This was due to the Australian Government’s new policy of not wanting to be actively helpful in entering countries on their do not travel list. This new policy meant we had to write and sign a stat dec saying we were aware of the DFAT warning, knew the risks, and knew we couldn’t be helped by the Aus government if things went wrong in Sudan. This then got sent back to Aus to be “approved” and we came back the next day to get our letter. As we needed to get south for our ferry, we asked very nicely if we could get it all that day. We were helped out by Stewart, who took us to a meeting room in the back with a Sudanese specialist to go over exactly what we could expect in Sudan.

The meeting itself was quite sobering, just like it is when you read the travel advisory. But I had to laugh at Cory, who looked like he had just seen a ghost and crapped himself all at once. After the briefing about elections, recent massacres, potential violence, instability, and the prospect of closed borders, we paid our money and left the consulate, letters of invitation in hand. It was too late for the other embassies, so we went back to camp and set ourselves up for the first night camping all together. Our cab driver offered to go pick us up some dinner, so we let him. He came back with the best roast chicken dinner, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. A few beers to wash the chicken and Sudanse talk down, and we were off to bed.

The next day we planned to get our Sudanese visas in, Jimbo’s Ethiopian visa in (on his SA passport) and then go to the pyramids. Our plan worked perfectly, which was a nice change. We even got to pull over and get some roadside chicken sandwiches that were super tasty. Off to the pyramids we went, where our taxi driver said we could sort out a camel ride and everything. It turned out to be a perfume shop, but the guys inside did run tours.

As with a lot of things in Egypt, it was a bit of a struggle. We organized to ride the camels around the pyramids, check out some tombs, see the sphinx, etc. We were very adamant about making sure the price we paid included everything. As always we were assured it did and that we were getting “Egyptian price for you my friend, no tourist price”. Something you hear from everyone in Egypt, which makes me wonder how much tourist price is. Anyway, we got our little head scarves and went off to hop on the camels. As soon as they stood up, it began. “Okay, so you can pay your guide at the end of the trip, whatever price you like”. Another 10m down the road, someone was asking for 50LE for our head scarves. Then we got to the gate and still had to pay 60LE each for the ticket to get in. We’d only been in Egypt for 2 days, but we were already getting very used to this style of doing things. We figured we came to see the pyramids, so we didn’t fuss about it too much. We got our own back at the end when the “guide” asked for 200LE from each of us and some more for his little helper kids. We replied by giving nothing to the guy for the scarves, giving the guide 100LE for all of us, and 20LE for the kids. He seemed annoyed, but he didn’t do any real guiding, so we didn’t care.

Besides that, the trip was very cool and quite funny at the start. My camel hated me, probably because I weighed more than it did. So when I tried to get on, I got one leg on and it stood up. So here I was, holding onto the saddle of my now fully standing camel, dangling off the side, in the middle of a busy street. It was awesome. I did some kung fu and got my leg back off so I was just hanging by my arms, and let go. I was surprised that even hanging outstretched by my arms that I still couldn’t touch the ground. Camels, it turns out, are quite big. After this I never really trusted my camel, especially after it was the only one puffing as we walked up the hill. But it was good to me the rest of the trip. However, the camels were not too kind to our posteriors.

On the trip around, we got to see all the pyramids from a sand dune to the side. Then we went across to the pyramids themselves and got to climb up the one with the cap on it. It was very impressive how big and how well made they were. After that we went down to the slave tombs, which are meant to be where they lived and where they were buried. It was very dark and small, but nice and cool in the desert heat. Then we cruised around to the sphinx where we could only see it from the side. It was pretty cool. We had come to a fence and it seemed all the tourist setup was on the other side. It turns out our tour probably wasn’t legit, which explains why we were cruising through the desert for a while. But we got some sweet views and got closer than it seemed all the tourists on the other side of the fence got, so that was pretty cool. Even the slave tombs had no footprints, so it seemed we might have been in a normally restricted area. It was all pretty good though, all the guys were very happy we got to see it all up close and personal. The whole thing seemed very surreal, actually being somewhere you’ve seen on TV your whole life.

We thought we’d end our last night in Cairo with a little cook up of the local beef in a can, aptly named “Beefy”. After cooking some rice, we added Beefy to the mix to find out it was basically the smell and consistency of refried beans. It tasted kind of… strange, but it filled us up. Unfortunately for Jase and me, it marked the start of a not so beautiful friendship with the toilet. Whoever invented Imodium should probably get 14 Nobel Prizes.

The day was upon us to finally start the trip properly, with all four of members getting together. Jase & Dan were definitely looking forward to catching up with the guys and finally starting this huge tour after a year of planning. As expected, Jase had no problems on the trip over. In fact, he even managed to sweet talk some Egyptian lads from the plane to drive him all the way from Cairo to Alexandria. I, Dan, was not so lucky.

After having a 2 year old scream for 14 hours from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, I managed to get a little sleep at the green and blue igloo that is Abu Dhabi International Airport. The flight from Abu Dhabi to Cairo was fine, but it was unfortunate I couldn’t see any sights because of all the dust. Who’d expect that in a desert?!? But then, the trip from Cairo to Alexandria was an experience to say the least.

After clearing immigration and customs with minimal trouble, I was ready for the barrage of people offering to take my bags or offer me a ride. I made it about 10m before someone asked if I wanted a taxi. Instead of being cautious and checking other options, I just said yes. He then proceeded to tell me it was LE75 when I knew it shouldn’t be more than LE50. After arguing for all of 5 seconds, I caved again and just said “yeah, whatever”. After walking about 100m to the car and him giving me a receipt, he asked for a tip. I asked what for and he wanted it for and he just smiled and kept saying “tip”. I caved again and just gave him LE10, because it was the smallest note I have. In actuality, a LE10 tip is huge at the best of times, let alone for a short walk. Welcome to Africa I thought as we drove off.

As we cruised down what was built as a 2 lane highway being used for 5 lanes, I just sat back and relaxed and watched Cairo and 4,000,000 other cars go by. I bought my train ticket for LE37, which took me about 10 times further than the taxi for half the price. I was pretty happy and was starting to get into the swing of things, even running on about 2 hours sleep. The train came an hour later and I passed the time talking to a nice Norwegian guy at the coffee shop. He was heading the same way and gave me some info about Egypt and Alexandria. I boarded the train with everything falling into place, looking forward to see the guys there picking me up at the train station. When I arrived, they were nowhere to be seen.

After about 2 minutes of looking at the traffic, I quickly realised they never intended on picking me up. I spent about 10 minutes looking around to make sure, then eventually called over a taxi. I showed him the address of the hotel, but he had no idea where it was. At this point, I wasn’t even sure I hopped on the right train and searched desperately to find out if I was even in Alexandria. After a few tense minutes, mostly filled by me wishing I had learnt even some basic Arabic, I hopped in with the taxi driver and we set off in search of the mystical Union Hotel. After driving for a bit, we went down a few back alleys and I saw a lot more people staring at me. Then we just stopped in this alley and a man walked up to my door and I nearly crapped myself right there. I slowly realised he was there to help work out where I was going. They called their friend who spoke English and I told him where I wanted to go. He told them it was “Union Hotel”, which sounded pretty damn similar to when I said “Union Hotel”. More than likely I mumbled and they had no idea what I was saying. After asking about 30 more people where it was (all were very happy to help), I spotted the Trusty and told the cabby to drop me off. He asked for a tip too, which I gladly gave him. Unfortunately, I spent the next 20 minutes walking up and down the main road trying to find the hotel after that. I eventually found that the entrance was on a side street and made my way upstairs. I hopped out the lift and almost pissed with excitement when I saw the guys there drinking beer and realised I had finally made it. I would say let the adventure begin, but it had well and truly already begun.

Having arrived in Alexandria we set about finding our hotel and a secure place to park the vehicle over the next two nights. We had come to accept that in Africa, even some of the simplest jobs often take the whole day, but to our surprise both tasks where finished off with no trouble at all and so set about looking for a local bottle store to quench our dry throats. Something we had not been able to do all through Libya. With another “win in the bag” we spent the rest of the afternoon slugging back Sakkara’s and looking over the med.  One small detail we didn’t notice was that the beer here was a hefty 10% in alcohol and it wasn’t long before we where both itching to hit the town and see what Alexander had to offer…

Having been warned that not much would be happening on a Sunday night we were still keen to catch a cab and try our luck but after visiting a very snobby hotel cigar bar and an almost dead local night club we thought we may have to call it quits.  Jumping back into car we told our almost blind cab driver to take us back, however he soon had his business cards out and was showing us a number of alternative local disco techs we might like to try. Hearing the word local and having had a little experience growing up in Africa I wasn’t keen to try it out, but after much insistence from Cory I finally conceded. Having heckled the cab fare down to 50EP we set off in a last ditch effort to find a decent place to have some beers, but after 25 minutes, some of the worst driving I had ever seen and many little side alleyways, I was totally disorientated and a little worried about the area we were in. By this stage Cory had gone very silent and seemed to be trying his hardest to sit in my lap, but the cabby soon stopped and proceeded to scuttle us down some even smaller alleyways, all the while telling us these few worrying words, “WOMAN, NO MONEY, MAFIA”. Not wanting anything to do with the Egyptian Mafia, I should have pulled the plug on the evening but after spending 100EP on cabs that night I was at least keen to get more than one beer out of the evening.  Stepping into the “discotech” I was initially pleasantly surprised and even more surprised when as we sat down, two girls climbed on either of our laps. After enduring two minutes of some borderline inappropriate hand placements I called over the mafia boss ask him to remove both the girls and proceeded to slug the rest of my beer before making a bee-line for the door only to find our cabby still waiting for us and demanding an additional 150EP to take us home and out of harms way…..Upon reflection, I think we might have been played??????