CAIRO, EGYPT!!!! (May 30th-June 2nd 2013)

Well, we went to Egypt!

It was amazing! When Skye and I first found out we would be living in Israel for the year, we had a list of places we wanted to see and Egypt was at the top. Once we arrived in Israel though, things were really dangerous in Egypt, so we got used to the fact that we wouldn't be going. Not only that, but I had no idea how we would get there even if we could go. There are no direct flights there from Tel Aviv, no buses, and we certainly didn't want to rent a car. So I simply moved it back on the list of places we want to see before we die.

A couple of things happened to put the idea back on the list: Petra, and Holly's visit to Israel. This was Holly's second time in Israel so she didn't need to see all the major tourist things like the Dead Sea or the Mount of Olives. However, she had seen so much on her previous tour, I was having a hard time thinking of something we could do that neither of us had already done. That's when I got on the Abraham Hostel site. That's where Katherine found the Petra tour, and that trip went so well I just thought it would be a good start. Then, I saw they had a Cairo/pyramid tour. Suddenly, it was back on the list. I scrambled around trying to get a hold of Skye and Holly to see what they thought and if it was doable. Holly was ecstatic because she's been dreaming of seeing the pyramids since she was a kid! Our only concern was safety. This tour isn't allowed to be booked online because of the safety issues. Then I started reading the news and asking people what they thought. Things had settled down quite a bit from when we first arrived in Jerusalem. Then we decided there was safety in numbers and invited some of our friends we thought might be interested. One of our friends had already been but he told us all about this convoy they drove with and these police who are hired just for tourists, so it sounded like they keep their tourists very safe. This was encouraging so we booked it! We had a small group of 6 of us, Skye, Holly, Dan, Veronica, Eric and myself.

We chose the two day tour, and our itinerary was this: leave from Eilat at 9pm, drive through the night (sleeping on the bus), arrive at a local place for breakfast at around 9:30am, then start seeing Cairo. We would sleep that night in Cairo at a hotel, see a few more things the next day then head back to Eilat arriving around 11pm. So we booked the same hostel in Eilat that we did on the Petra trip.

Because it was similar to the Petra tour in that we left from Eilat, we did basically the same thing. We took the 4 hour bus ride to Eilat and had a couple hours to kill before they picked us up, so we went to the Red Sea and had dinner at the place on the beach with the cool circle tables. Actually, we even sat at the exact same table. What can I say, Skye and I are creatures of habit. Unfortunately it was extremely and uncomfortably hot, even when the sun went down. It was one of those days that in Jerusalem, was over 100 degrees, and Jerusalem tends to be about 10 or so degrees cooler than everywhere else.

I got the infamous lemonana to go with my dinner, something I will really miss when we leave. We ate, hung out a little and went back to the bus station to meet our ride. The van picked us up and took us to the border, which is on the edge of Eilat. I didn't realize it was that close, Eilat borders Jordan and Egypt, so that's pretty awesome.

Holly and me in the Red Sea in Eilat

Our crew at dinner before leaving for Egypt

There was one guy in the front seat of the van, I thought maybe he was working with the driver or something, but it turns out he was going on the tour with us. Remember from my Petra tour, we had Mick and Dolly on our tour? Best tour buddies EVER. But this case was the opposite. His name was Michael and he ended up being a terrible person, a terrible traveler, and just an idiot all around. I'm going to try not to mention him too much in this blog, other than he kept disappearing and reappearing with an angry Egyptian whom he didn't pay for their services, he kept getting us completely off schedule, mooching, caused us an hour delay because he had only paid for half of his tour, and was generally bad company.

We got to the border and made our way through. This was different and way more chaotic than the Petra border crossing. There was a huge Russian tour group in front of us so things moved quite slowly. The border crossing fee was supposed to be 62$, which it was, but part of it was for Israel, and part of it was for Egypt, so we were a little flustered at first not realizing this, and thinking there was an unexpected fee. We got through and met an Egyptian guy on the other side who guided us through the rest of the Egypt crossing and took us to what would be our cozy home for the next 12+ hours, the space van (it looked very spaceship-like). It was here that we were introduced to Salama, our guide for the next two days, our driver, and our body guard. Because we're Americans, we were required to have a body guard with us at all times. It was also explained to us that the road to Cairo would take about 5 hours, but that we would not be going that way due to road blocks. This meant we got to go alllll the way around the Sinai and along the Red Sea, a 12 hour ride. Hooray.

Our first step into Egypt at the border crossing!
(from left: Skye, Eric, Veronica, Dan, me, Holly)

Our spaceship van

Pumped up for 12 hours of bumps!!!

Sleeping in the van was, well, I don't know if it can even be classified as sleep. I was in the second to last row and I had an extra seat, so I thought I'd be golden. Nope, that far in the back it didn't matter. It was the bumpiest ride I have ever been on! The roads in Egypt suck! Every mile or so we would hit some huge bump that would jolt me awake. If I kept my head against the back (the seats reclined, but it was equivalent to how airplane seats recline) not only would my head start to roll around, but it was so bumpy that when my head actually was staying against the back, it was constantly moving around creating this ginormous rat's nest in my hair. Then if i tried to lie against the window, we would hit one of those huge bumps and I probably would have had a concussion. So I tried putting my very full backpack on my lap and laying forward on it. This was the best idea, but there was a handle on the back of the seat in front of me, so every time we hit those bumps, my forehead slammed against it, more concussions. So finally I just twisted my body into the weirdest position and laid partially on the seat next to me and on my backpack. This worked, but about every 30 minutes or so I had to move because I was so twisted that my back felt like it would snap right in half. It was quite horrible!

The other weird part about "sleeping" in the van was that it seemed like every few hours we stopped at some sort of check point and/or gas station in which Salama recommended we go to the bathroom. So getting in and out of that van in more than half asleep mode to use bathrooms that had no toilet paper, and no soap, was quite the adventure. And half the time we had no idea why we were stopped just that we were waiting around for clearance or something.

Our first stop. Not too shaken from the bumps yet.

FINALLY Salama announced that we would be at the breakfast place in half an hour. Thank goodness! I was so happy, but also very concerned about how I would get through the day feeling that sleepy. We got to the breakfast place which was sort of cool in that it was near the Suez canal and they had a bunch of pictures of the history of it. We had to buy a portion of toilet paper at the entrance to the bathrooms. See, the bathrooms had no toilet paper, but they had hose/spray thingies. Not fancy like a bidet, it looked like the thing attached to your kitchen sink. I still can't figure out how that would work while keeping everything dry.

We had been well warned against the food and water in Egypt. We heard many horror stories of people getting very sick from it. This breakfast place was very odd, and the kitchen was through this little hole in the wall (literally a little hole in the wall) and looked filthy. We asked Salama about it and he didn't seem to think we would get sick, but it was just too sketchy. Eric tried to order fries thinking with the hot oil germs would cook off. But Salama didn't quite understand him, and many places in Israel call them chips like the British, so he asked for chips. And chips is what he got. They poured a bag of potato chips on a plate, stuck a roll of bread on it and brought it to him. hahaha. Next we were finally off to Cairo which was very close now. The city looked really cool! We crossed the Nile, which was HUGE! So wide!

Cairo!

More Cairo

More Cairo...see the pyramid in the background?

The Nile River

Then we arrived at our first stop, the Antiquities Museum. Here we met up with our actual tour guide, the one with all the information about the sites. Her name was Suzie. She was very sweet and had a BA in history and had gone to school for tourism in Egypt. There were quite a few artifacts and statues in the courtyard of the museum, so she gave us some information about some of them and let us look around for about 10 or 15 minutes before we went inside. There were some pretty awesome things out there, such as Lotus and Papyrus which represented upper and lower Egypt and statues from different excavations.

Then we got some head sets so we could hear her better in the museum and we went in and she showed us around. Of course there wasn't time to see everything in the museum, but she showed us the highlights. We saw a few tombs with hieroglyphics and some statues that different kings had made of themselves. We learned that the statues of the kings were always made to look muscular and healthy because that's how a king should look, but they weren't always necessarily that buff. We also learned that hieroglyphics are read both from left to right, and from right to left. It just depends on the way the snakes or other animals are facing. You always read into the direction they're facing.

Finally we made our way to the second level of the museum. Though the museum was cool and very interesting, I was feeling very sleepy and weary wondering how I would ever make it though until....Tutankhamen! That woke me right up, I was so excited! I remember learning about king Tut in grade school! First we started at the tomb itself. It was a big box that had 3 other boxes inside. They were both surrounded with glass. But one of the things they did with this was make it so that in the reflection you could see how each of the other boxes fit into the first box, so that was pretty cool. Then we saw all of the many things they found buried with him, and then finally we got to see the good stuff! His death mask, his coffins, jewelry found with him, and more! It was so awesome! All of that was in its own special room with a temperature controlled climate. The coolest thing for me was the death mask. That's the one I remember seeing in all the pictures and that's the thing I always picture when I think of king Tut. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed, but I may or may not have snuck a picture of it on my ipod. We moved onto a few other things on the upper level and then it was time to go to our next stop.

Museum of Antiquities

Papyrus and Lotus plants

Holly, Skye and me in the museum courtyard

Obelisk in the museum courtyard

If you can get past my reflection,
you can see how the box behind me is reflecting into the box in front of me

King Tut's death mask!

Our next top was lunch which was included in our tour cost. It was at a big tourist buffet. The food was alright, but we took the warning from before and didn't eat much of the salad or other fresh things. We were full and ready for the pyramids!

But...we didn't go to the pyramids right away. First we stopped at a papyrus shop. We went to a counter where this guy told us all about papyrus paper and how they made it, and even demonstrated it for us. It was actually pretty interesting. There were tons of paintings on papyrus hung around, and many options of things to buy, aka, a tourist trap. But we just enjoyed the demonstration and air conditioning. Thank goodness we had a/c because this is where we were stuck for at least an hour while they tried to make Michael pay for the rest of his tour. What a pain in the you-know-what. We were so worried we wouldn't get to see the pyramids since they closed at 4pm, and it was already close to 3pm. Thankfully the situation was figured out and we headed to the long awaited pyramids!!!

Papyrus guy

Papyrus making process

The Pyramids of Giza, or the Great Pyramids, are surprisingly close to Cairo. In most pictures you see a whole lot of nothin' in the background (or you know, desert), but that's only one side. You can see Cairo perfectly from another angle. It's crazy, I had no idea how close to the city it was. In fact, driving to it we got glimpses of them while we were still in the city. We got out of the car and could see the three pyramids of Giza perfectly. They were built for a Pharaoh father, son and grandson. There are three very small pyramids next to them for the queens. Part of the top of the tallest one has come off, so it's about the same height as the second one now, but there is a pole at the top showing how high it used to be. The second one is also smoother for the same reason. But this was fine, because as soon we took about a million pictures we drove closer to the tallest one and got to climb up on it! It was amazing! Very surreal.

Next we drove down a short ways to the Sphinx. This was also quite amazing and surreal! It's huge! And it was so cool to be able to see the Giza pyramids in the background. We got to walk all the way up to it, but there were walls and barriers so we couldn't actually climb up on it. There are many different theories about who built the sphinx and when.

Glimpses of the Pyramids from Cairo

Behold!!! The Pyramids of Giza!

The Great Pyramid and the small pyramids for the queens

Holly, Skye and me at Giza 

Great Pyramid, and second largest

Our crew at Giza
(from left: Eric, Skye, me, Dan, Veronica, Holly)

After many failed attempts...this is the best we could do for this trick!

Camels!

Second largest Giza pyramid, up close and personal 

We got to climb on it!

Sisters at the pyramids!

Sphinx and Giza Pyramids! AMAZING!

When we finished up there, they took us to another tourist trap, a perfume shop. They took us to a fancy area and offered us something to drink. Then they gave us a sheet with all the different scents listed and we we went though a few of them we had to mark the ones we liked. We also got to try a few on, including a male and female version of one that was guaranteed to lure in the opposite sex. We listened and smelled and tried to be as nice as we could knowing none of us had any interest in buying any of it. It was weird, but an interesting end to the long but fantastic day.

It was time to check into our hotel and call it a day. We all took much needed showers and freshened up before dinner. It took us about 45 minutes to decide what to do about dinner. Our friends, Julia and Christian (if you remember from wayyyyy back to my Germany blogs, this is who we spent Christmas with), now live in Cairo and gave us some restaurant recommendations, unfortunately we had some bad luck with timing, they were leaving that morning to visit Germany so we barely missed them! Skye and I were so disappointed! We were contemplating how to get to one of the restaurants, either by taxi or by bus. By taxi it would have been expensive and we would have needed two to fit us all. Salama would also be joining us, as he had to stay with us the whole time, and he didn't think taking the bus would be very safe. The hotel had a nice restaurant with extremely cheap prices, so we decided just to hang out there rather than risking being on the streets of Cairo.

View from our hotel, not too shabby!

We sat down, ordered and then noticed they were filming something. It was apparently a popular Syrian soap opera. While we were waiting for our food we piled in the lobby to watch them film a scene. There were some crazy outfits and some crazy hairstyles. We couldn't really hear anything, and even if we could we wouldn't have been able to understand the Arabic. But Salama said the main actor, Hisham Fahmy, was very famous there. We went back to our dinner table and then suddenly Salama brought Hisham in to take a picture with us! He had just been to the states and was very friendly and happy to be in a picture with us.

Our food came and it was really good! Skye and I each got a full dinner, a milk shake, and I got a diet pepsi, and the total was 22$ with tip. That's average per person in Jerusalem! We were so happy! After that we decided to bring out the cards and play games the rest of the evening. They didn't have beer at the hotel, but Salama sent one of the employees to get us all some Egyptian beer! It was interesting. It was very strong, 10%, it was ok. Not as good as Petra beer! It was a fun evening. The beds in the hotel were hard as a rock, but I slept SOOOO well after the night in the van!

Our crew with Hisham Fahmy
(From left: Holly, Salama, Eric, me, Hisham, Skye, Dan, Veronica, Michael)

We woke up fairly early to hit up the breakfast buffet before heading out to the sites. Breakfast was pretty good, as usual, we stayed away from the produce. And, also as usual, we had to wait a while for Michael to show up.

Our first stop that morning was Saqqara, a large ancient necropolis with tombs and pyramids. First we walked into the funerary complex for kings from the 2nd and 3rd dynasty which has been recently restored. It had a bunch of really cool old pillars. Then we walked through to see the oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Djoser built in the 27th century BC. It was the first structure of its kind, and was built with steps because they hadn't figured out how to make them with smooth sides yet. Many elements of it were used as a model for later pyramids. Then Suzie gave us 30 minutes to walk around the rest of the complex. We explored ruins of other tombs, found some ancient graffiti and got much closer to the Step Pyramid. Then we walked up some stairs to see a 28 meter deep tomb, and some cobra carvings. It was awesome!

One of the pyramids in the area was the sand pyramid, or the Pyramid of Teti. It is very poorly preserved on the outside and basically looks like a hill of sand. But it's extremely well preserved in the chambers and corridors underneath. We got to go inside this one! Pictures weren't allowed inside, though I did sneak a few with my ipod, as usual. We walked on this long ramp lower and lower and eventually had to duck while walking down. We got inside and the hieroglyphs were amazing! They're perfectly visible and legible, and they were covering the walls! It was awesome. To get from chamber to chamber we had to duck through small openings.

The boys tried to be Egyptian...

But the girls succeeded at it!

Through the funerary 

Funerary pillars

Skye and me in front of the Step Pyramid

Tomb ruins and the Step Pyramid

Ancient Graffiti 

Cobra carvings 

More tomb ruins

Tomb ruins and the sand pyramid (Pyramid of Teti)

Artifacts and rubble at Saqqara, see the sphinx?

Left: Step Pyramid, Right: sand pyramid

Our next and final stop was the Cairo Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (which sits on the citadel). The citadel was built between 1176 and 1183 CE by the Ayyubid ruler Salah al-Din. It's in the middle of Cairo and has amazing views of the city.

We got to go inside the Mosque, a first for all of us. This mosque was built to look like the Turkish mosque in Istanbul. It was beautiful inside. We had to take our shoes off at the entrance, and of course needed to be very modestly dressed. We walked through a courtyard with a clock tower and then entered the indoor part of the mosque. It's a huge open space with ginormous carpets and no seating at all. The tomb of Muhammad Ali Pasha is inside to the right of the entrance. At the front there is a staircase that the koran is read from once a week. It was all really cool to see!

We left the mosque and took some pictures of the city from the top of the citadel before we headed out. We went to another place for a lunch buffet, stuffed ourselves and got back on the road for Eilat. We had to say goodbye to Suzie at lunch, she was such a great tour guide!

Citadel 

Citadel

Citadel

Holly and I loved these orange trees! The citadel had beautiful landscaping.

Muhammad Ali Mosque

Skye and me

Holly and me 

Mosque courtyard

Mosque interior

Mosque chandelier 

Mosque ceiling

Mosque interior

Muhammad Ali Pasha's tomb

Stairs at the front of the Mosque

Cairo from the top of the citadel 

Another mosque on the citadel

Holly, Skye and me in front of Cairo from the citadel

Our crew at the top of the citadel
(from left: Suzie, me, Skye, Eric, Dan, Salama, Veronica, Holly)

Originally we were going to take the short road back to Eilat, but the convoy would have left at 1, and the road would have closed. That meant we would have had to leave Cairo by 10am to make it in time, and then we would have had to cut something. We were completely unwilling to cut ANYTHING from our itinerary, so we had to take the long way back to Eilat, along the Red Sea again. But it was worth it! We stopped at all the same places, and had similar delays for check points. Holly and I LOVE green apple flavored things and we miraculously found green apple fanta in Egypt! So we made sure to split one of those before we left. Good thing they don't have it in the states, I'd be hooked. We loaded up on some junk food at another stop, including Cheetos and Haribo (teeth shaped haribo nonetheless)!

GREEN APPLE FANTA!!!

Red Sea in the Sinai  

Haribo teeth! 

Sinai 

Sleeping on the van was the same horrific experience as the first night. Then we finally got to the border crossing at about 1am. We said our goodbyes to Salama, our driver and our body guard and hurried to beat the huge bus of Russian tourists. We got through the Egypt side with no problems. I imagine most of you have heard stories of the crazy Israeli border control. Apparently I'm suspicious. Maybe it's that I have short dark hair in my passport picture. In Petra they kept it while I went through the rest of pass control. But it didn't take long for them to give it back, and all was fine. So this time, I gave it to the very first person who said they were going to keep it. Then I put my bags through the conveyer, and those weren't suspicious. Guess who else's passport they kept? Michael's. Lovely. And they wouldn't let anyone else wait with me, everyone else had to keep going through. I was stuck with Michael and a bus full of Russians. I watched my passport sit on a table while they extremely thoroughly searched each and every item in each and every Russian's bag. I very politely asked one of the passport control employees about it, to which he replied, "you have to wait your turn in line". But...I was there before ALL of the Russians! And they didn't keep my bag! Ugh. So...for about an hour I waited there with Michael and the Russians watching them search bags. FINALLY they grabbed my passport, took a quick peak in my bag without taking anything out, and sent me on my way. I guess I wasn't that suspicious after all. They kept Michael for even longer. Fun times at the Israeli border!

We got to our hostel in Eilat a little after 4am, showered and got to bed about 5am. Our bus back to Jerusalem the next morning left at 10am, so we were at breakfast by 8am. What a nice 3 hour night of sleep we had. We felt like a bunch of zombies at breakfast, then walked to the bus station and caught our bus back to Jerusalem.

We had such a fantastic trip!!!!! Even though the driving was a bit rough at times, even that was an interesting experience. It was worth every penny, and worth every bump in the road! We had a great time with all our travel buddies (not counting Michael, of course), and felt safe the entire time. Seeing the pyramids was a dream come true for all of us!

HUGE shout out to Holly who made this trip possible for Skye and me. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so so so much! We had an unforgettable time, and were thrilled to experience it with you! I love you, sister!!!!!