Egypt was certainly nothing like I had expected. We landed at Cairo International Airport at about 6 pm local time on the 10th April, desperate for a shower and a bed, but what we got instead was a crazy ride in a van through insane traffic to our hotel. Cairo is loosely controlled chaos; traffic is complete insanity, and the locals only seem to follow one rule: drive on the right, like Americans. I was very surprised that we didn't happen across any accidents on the way, although there were rather a lot of cars missing their sideview mirrors. Anyway, being a passenger in a car in Cairo is nearly impossible to describe, as there is so much happening at once. What would constitute three lanes in Australia is somehow, magically, transformed into five in Egypt. The roads are dusty and covered in potholes, and every person in Cairo seems physically attached to their car horns. What made the chaotic drive through Cairo worth it was the view we had once we reached our hotel, which you can see in the photo above.
It wasn't until our fourth day in Egypt that our tour started, and it started with a bang. Nine of us hopped on a bus and were driven to the Great Pyramids, where our tour guide left us to fend for ourselves. We had been wandering around the base of the pyramid for all of five minutes when we were approached by a man in a red headdress and a white robe claiming to be security. He suggested the best vantage points to take photos of the pyramid, and even had us pose for a few pictures. Here's where it all went sour. He grabbed my leg and forced it into the stirrup on a camel, which I hadn't even noticed until I was suddenly on top of the bloody thing. The photo you see above is one 'he' actually took, so I suppose the experience was worth something. He then had my friend get up on one, and led us away from my friends fiance, where he proceeded to try and rob us. After arguing with him for what seemed to be hours, we gave him 70 Egyptian pounds just to get rid of him, and took off as fast as we could in the other direction. I was left feeling completely disheartened and disillusioned with the entire country, and, quite frankly, was ready just to go back home to safe, comfy Australia. I didn't, and I'm very glad I didn't, but it was the first in a series of bad experiences I had while in Egypt which has convinced me that one trip was definitely enough.
After that harrowing experience, we got back on the bus and drove to the second pyramid, where we were led down a steep passageway and into the heart of the pyramid. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever done - you could feel five thousand years of history pressing down on you, feel just how amazing the ancient Egyptian civilisation really was. It was unbearably hot and stuffy, and cramped beyond belief, but I'm glad I did it. Everything had obviously been removed from the pyramid, save a stone coffin in the burial chamber to show you where the mummy had been.
The tour of the pyramids ended at the Sphinx, where it was hard to get a decent photo without some random tourist's head in the shot. The same thing is true of any famous landmark, though. We concluded this fourth day with a trip to the Cairo Museum, the highlight of which being the contents of King Tutankhamun's burial chamber, and lunch at a local koshary restaurant. Cairo definitely left an impression with me, and now that I'm home and the shock of being robbed has faded somewhat, I can say that I definitely enjoyed the majority of it.
The next day, we left on the bus for Alexandria, and what an adventure those Egyptian highways are. Our tour bus got a flat tyre three seperate times. One of those times, we kept driving until we reached a roadhouse, and we all found it highly amusing. It did postpone our checking in to the hotel though, and delayed our visit to the catacombs as a result, but it was all good. The hotel more than made up for it - 5 star, right on the Mediterreanean Sea, private beach. It was gorgeous. The traffic was much less hectic in Alexandria as well, and the food was good. The next day we visited the Catacombs, the Roman tombs for the nobility of the time, the Library, and various other points of interest, and Alexandria became my favourite Egyptian city.
After Alexandria, we drove back to Cairo and caught a train to Aswan, which took fourteen hours. My god, were those fourteen hours long. The food was terrible, and there was a very creepy rail employee who liked randomly opening my cabin door to grin at me. I kept the door between my friends' cabin and mine open from that point on, to keep the creep out.
Aswan embodied the craziness of Cairo, and the hotel in Alexandria had definitely spoilt me. Again it was right on the water (this time the Nile), but no where near five star. We caught a plane out at 4 am the next morning for Abu Simbel, where we visited the two temples Ramses built for himself and Nefertiti. You can see Ramses' temple in the photo above. My fear of flying came back threefold on that flight, as the plane was a rickety old Memphis Air plane, with broken seats and table trays and screws coming out everywhere. Not my idea of a safe, relaxing flight. The temples themselves were amazing, having been rescued from the flooding of the valley below due to the construction of the dam.
The next night we embarked on a three-day cruise down the Nile, stopping at various ancient sites such as Kom Ombo along the way. We disembarked at Luxor, where we were able to visit Hapshetsut's temple and the Valley of the Kings. Visiting Hapshetsut's temple had been a dream of mine since I was small, so walking around the giant pillars covered in her face, seeing petrified trees she had had brought back from Punt, and seeing some of the paint still on the elaborate heiroglyphs was very surreal. It looks exactly as I had pictured it, as if it had been carved right out of the mountain. The Valley of the Kings was rather similar, experience wise, but for different reasons. The tombs were almost perfectly preserved, with brilliant murals still with their original paint. What pleased me is that, after two weeks, I could determine which figure depicted which god. Despite the blistering heat, the amount of walking, and the fact that I was so poor I couldn't afford to eat McDonalds, it was really a fantastic day.
Our final day in Egypt began and ended with a visit to Karnak Temple, another place I had been very excited to see. The entrance is guarded on either side by hundreds of sphinxes, known as the 'Avenue of Sphinxes', and after the first courtyard, it opens into the forest of pillars. What angers me about the temples is that people throughout the centuries have had no respect for them, defiling them with graffiti or removing parts of them. The British removed the beard of the sphinx and have kept it ever since, while hundreds of faceless strangers have carved their names and the dates they were there into the stone walls and pillars of Egyptian temples and tombs. Karnak was no exception.
We flew back to Cairo soon after, only to find that my suitcase had been broken in to and the extra money I had put in there at a friend's insistance to keep it safe was gone. The final straw that broke the camel's back, you could say, because I knew then I would never come back to Egypt, even though I had had such a wonderful time on the tour and had seen so many fantastic things. It was just one bad experience too many I think. Overall, the Egyptian people were very friendly, but the people who worked in the tourism or retail industry were horrible, and completely soured my outlook.
No comments:
Post a Comment