Day One in Cairo!

Today we had a tour scheduled. We had tried to call and confirm it and were unable to reach anyone, or at least anyone who spoke English. Luckily, our “tour guide” showed up early so we didn’t have to stress and we headed out for our first long day in Cairo. We stopped at an ATM and then were picked up in our own little touring van. There was no sitting on laps today, thank goodness. We started off on our journey and quickly discovered that Cairo, a city of over 20 million, has an extreme pollution problem. The air was filled with a cloud of smog. It looked like a foggy day, but really it was just the car exhaust and all other types of fumes filing the air. It was literally hard to breath. The air coated your throat and almost made me nauseas. We drove through the crazy traffic and went for probably 30 minutes with all the traffic to Giza, but really you couldn’t tell that we had left Cairo. The guy who picked us up told us as we were driving that 90% of the building were unfinished. They cant be taxed for building that were not completed. So for some reason they don’t finish buildings, just stop midway through a floor. People then live there. Or not, some don’t even have doors or windows, some are just the concrete frames. It was really unreal. We picked up our guide, and stopped at a gas station to try a different ATM and get some snacks and water. Then we headed to the pyramids. Lamiaa went and handled our tickets with our student IDs. We went in to begin our tour.
Lamiaa explained a lot about the pyramids, most of what I don’t remember. I was too amazed by the sight of them and everything we were surrounded by. There were police officers riding camels and also set up with their vehicles under covered “garage” they stood around with metal shields and their AK47’s. There were tons of tourists, busses and vans like ours and even Egyptians who had driven their own cars. There were souvenir venders carrying there wares with them handing you things and if you didn’t refuse, you ended up paying. One even walked up to the guys and put on an Arabian head scarf saying it was free, but Lamiaa, almost angrily, explained that nothing was free. They ended up paying 10 lire each for the scarfs. We also learned not to take pictures of the men on camels, they would ask for money too and we shouldn’t buy anything without telling her we would like to get something first and she would get us the best deal. We started to walk to the first of the three Pyramids in Giza and she looked for an entrance that we could go in and see some things. Suddenly there were officers yelling and blowing whistles and she got a confused look on her face. She said it was strange that we couldn’t find an entrance. Then some man spoke with her and she explained that they were doing some sort of excavation today and that all of this was closed, but we would still get to go in and see the other pyramid, Catherine. We headed in that direction ignoring venders as we went. We walked up to the entrance of the other pyramid and Lamiaa collected our cameras because we couldn’t take them in with us. Then we headed down into the pyramid. It was a pretty steep decline on a little ramp. People coming out were sweating and breathing hard, either they were extremely out of shape or we were in for an adventure. We had to crouch down and crawl through a small hole and then had a small space where I could stand and walk but the guys all were still a little hunched over in the small space. Then we had to start climbing up through a small cramped space again, and finally, as we began to sweat we reached the large room. It was humid and hard to breathe. The room was large with high ceilings and had the name of the man who had discovered it on the wall. There was a sarcophagus there but it was only a replica and the guy explained it to us in poor English and handed us a flashlight to look at. When we tried to leave he wanted money, but we told him no and headed back out. It wasn’t all that impressive good thing we only paid 15 lire, a little more than 1 Euro to do that. When we finally emerged from the pyramid, Lamiaa navigated us toward our camel ride. She had negotiated that it would be 100 lire pounds per person and we were to give them a small tip afterwards. The guides took us up to our camels and helped us on. It was slightly akward because they acted strange to the girls. I was called queen and princess and other things. We began the ride being led and eventually they gave us our own reigns. They kept saying “kick it lady, come on lady”….it was really kind of annoying but they were speaking English so I couldn’t complain too much. And when they wanted us to go over something the said “other side, other side” We were so confused because what we undersood was to go the other direction, but really they mean to go to the “other side” of the hill, or rocks. We got to have a small little camel race and we stopped a few times to take some pictures. They took our cameras and took them for us. I learned that my camel’s name was Michael Jordan. Finally we reached a flat area of desert and they got us off the camels and we took more pictures with all of the pyramids in the background. They put headscarfs on, did the whole top the pyramid thing, and made us do the “Egyptian” poses. One of the guides asked if I was married, I laughed and said no, but I had a boyfriend back in the states and he said I was a very lucky lady, I don’t know what he meant but…I was getting used to the random comments from Egyptian men. After our professional photography session we re-mounted our camels and headed back to our starting point. The guides hopped on and rode back part way, but we decided they probably weren’t supposed to because they hopped off before we got into sight of their boss. I officially won the race, because I was the first one back to our little spot. They got us off our rides, and we got out our money again and gave them pretty large tips, for the little that they had to do, but we really felt bad for the probably12-year-old boy that was one of our two guides. So we gave them more than Lamiaa had advised us. It was a lot of fun, but we were off to our next stop, to see the Sphinx. We drove down a ways and then we got to the main road and got dropped off. Lamiaa explained a little more (which I don’t remember of course) and we had 15 minutes to go take pictures. It wasn’t very long and Adam somehow managed to get conned into buying batteries and after the whole conflict ended. Lamiaa lectured him and all of us once more. We were not supposed to buy anything without asking her about what the price should be first, to avoid conflict for her and for ourselves. After we looked and took pictures we met back up with her and she called the driver and he picked us up and we went to go get lunch. We went to a buffet that was 50 lire each and we actually received service. Our waiter was extremely smiley and happy to be working, or he faked it really well. Not only that but he kinda reminded me of Mario Lopez. The buffet was the exact same spread as we had had last night. It was good to get some food in us. We finished and got picked up again and we headed to Memphis. It was an outdoor museum, I didn’t find it exteremely interesting but it was still really cool, to see all the statues. After this we headed quickly to Saqqara and saw the first pyramid, the step pyramid. We quickly took pictures then went to another one that we could go in and look inside. We got there and I noticed a sign that said “No Photo” as we walked down. Adam was still being trigger happy and didn’t seem to have any interest in stopping. We went down into the pyramid. This one was more interesting because there were hieroglyphics on the wall and more than one room to look at. We still looked rather quickly. Zach accidently kicked one of the lights and it went off for a little bit and the men yelled in Arabic, but didn’t get too upset, and we headed back up. Once we were back in the fresh air we went into another room with more hieroglyphics and even tho he had been yelled at once in the building already he continued to snap a photo. Just to mention again, he’d been told by Lamiaa and the guy in the building NOT to take any photos. For some reason however, he thought he could snap one more and not get caught. He left the flash on and everything erupted in chaos. A lady ran over to us and started to yell. She asked if we spoke Italian, rather strange, but Zach responded and began to argue with her. She was extremely heated about the whole situation. She said "Lui" pointing to Zach and he said he didn’t take a photo that his camera wasn’t even working and she continued to argue pointing at her eye saying I saw the flash, I know someone took it. Zach apparently didn’t know that Adam had taken the photo because the lady pointed at Adam next, poking him in the chest saying “lui”… Kristina and I snuck away at that point. I couldn’t believe that there was an argument with a French lady in Italian in Egypt. It was rather comical, after we had somewhat resolved the conflict, we hurried out before there could be anymore problems. Adam was officially the token American on our trip. I was actually rather annoyed, because if you are told not to do something, there is a reason for it, so don’t do it. Simple enough, but obviously not. We drove away and headed out to our next stop. We went to one of the Carpet schools where they teach kids to make silk carpets, and wool and woven rugs. It was crazy how fast they worked and we were told that at 7x10 foot rug could take nearly 2 years to complete with 4 ppl working on it. We went upstairs and he explained how to tell it was hand made versus machine and showed us the changing colors of silk rugs. We asked how much one of the larger rugs would cost. He said 60,000 and he was talking in USD. Crazy! The hand made rugs are the same on both sides just mirror images. After the explanation, they offered us something to drink and we sat and had a cup of tea. When we finished our drinks we headed out to our next stop, the papyrus shop. We get a short explanation of how papyrus is made and how to feel the difference between really papyrus and the fake stuff they make out of banana leaves and then we got to shop around with our drinks, Egyptians are very hospitable. Our next stop was the cotton store where they sell Egyptian cotton. I was done buying so I looked for a while but then just sat and had another drink. Lamiaa was having a Lemon drink and I decided to try it too. It was amazing! Perfect lemonade, just juice with a little sugar, not watered down like in US. While we were there Kristina and I got our silver charms for necklaces that had our names inscribed in hieroglyphics. They were gorgeous. I loved it. We finally took Lamiaa home and we tried to tip her and she refused, but she gave us her number and email address and said if we need anything to call her and if we ever wanted to we could visit her any time and stay with her! Our driver then took us back to our hotel and we just sat around and chatted with Wallid for the rest of the evening. It was a great day!