May 21 (Leah's)

May 21, 2012

            I couldn’t believe it was 7:45 am when the alarm went off this morning.  It felt like 4:00 am. But we got up, ate breakfast and made our way to the mini-bus station. We saw on the internet that you could catch a cheap local bus from here and get to the pyramids. So we thought we would give it a try.  Sure enough, we got a mini bus taxi (like an old hippy Volkswagen van).

            The driver dropped us off at the ticket office and we got our tickets. A man inside the ticket building started to follow us and said he was a “watchman” assigned to keep tourists safe.  He told us that he wasn’t a tour guide and that he wasn’t doing this for money, but that he was going to show us around and tell us about the pyramids. We knew that he was lying.  It didn’t feel right….  We tried many times to tell him we wanted to go alone, again he said he was our watchman. We said, look there are some other white people, they don’t have a watch man. After about 10min we got him to realized we didn’t want him “tagging” along with us. And we escaped him.

            We enjoyed walking around the pyramids. They are huge. There are three big ones and 6 smaller ones. And also the Sphinx- the lion with a human Pharaoh head. We were there for about 2 hours. We said La Shukran (no thank you) many times to men trying to get us to ride their camels and horses at a “good Egyptian price” We told them we had two good legs and we could walk!

            We climbed up this small sand dune and gazed at the pyramids. Such a cool place, but also sad, thinking of all the slaves needed to build a place like this. There wasn’t too many tourists at the sites so we were able to walk around and not have to be lost in groups. One man trying to get us to buy something told Spencer what a beautiful Queen of Canada he had, and then he asked Spencer if he would sell me for a million camels! Spencer could have been a very rich man, but I am so glad he didn’t sell me to that old man! 

            We took a 2 mini buses and the metro to get back to the hotel. A man on the last mini bus really helped us! He was going to the metro after we got dropped off by the mini bus (it didn’t go all the way to where we needed to go) and he took us to the metro station, bought our tickets (one Egyptian Pound = $0.16cents) , then he walked us to the platform, got on the metro train with us, and then showed us our stop when it came time, and he continued on till his stop. One of the first real times any one has really gone out of their way, and paid money, to help us! A true taste of friendliness. Although in Cairo, many people have helped us by giving us directions and have been more friendly, this man just made us really appreciative of genuine helpfulness.

            We had raisin bran, yogurt and bananas for lunch followed by a cup of tea. We talked to a family from Bangladesh that is staying at our hotel and they told us about a Carrefour grocery store here in Cairo. I thought we could get some items that have been hard to find there, so we google mapped it and thought it was quite “close”.           

            We took the metro train to get there. WOW what a crazy experience. We were at a main station and we were standing waiting for the train. Once it came it was like a mad fight to get on. I was literally being pushed from all directions. This older couple was trying to help us, motioning us to keep going. And to think, we were standing right in front of the door, but with the people coming off and the rest of the multitude trying to get on behind us, it became quite the event. I was basically sandwiched completely up against strange men. And when we got on the train for the first 2 or so stations it was so crowded that I was pressed up again from all sides….soon it wasn’t that crowded though….but what an experience!

            From the map we thought we only had about a 15min walk (the map said the whole trip was 12km from hotel to Carrefour). Since we covered most of the distance with the metro we thought for sure it was close…….we were wrong…….very wrong….we walked, and walked, and walked…and when we asked people they said it was very far away….we ended up along a highway and since there was no side walk we decided to run as to make it quicker to get off this main road…..

            We ended up taking a taxi….it was like 15min in the taxi, so we would have been walking for a long time….the whole trip seemed kind of futile, as we couldn’t even get most of the stuff on the list….But whatever J I bought some fruity mentos to enjoy.

            We decided to take a taxi all the way to the metro so we didn’t have to walk and get lost trying to find the metro…which was a long, long ways away…we took the train back to the hotel street and we went yet again to GAD for dinner. We were pooped, we had a long day, in the sun, with lots of walking (and running for our lives). I think the rest of the night will be spent in the room.