In case you haven’t heard, Dave and I are going to Africa!
Where exactly are we going in Africa?
How will it work out for us?
What could go wrong? Well, if we actually do get eaten by lions, apart from not living, we’ll never live it down. There’s also some areas of armed conflict to avoid, various diseases not to get, and that time-honored Brit/Yank antipathy.
But we planned ahead, you see! As we slowly figure out and travel our overland route from Cairo in the boiling hot north to Cape Town in the frigid south, we’ll be taking trains and buses and ferries, staying in hostels and camps and on the occasional ferry bench. We have anti-malarials, mosquito nets, sun hats and tiger balm. We’re pretty sure we’ve got everything covered and nothing can go wrong. Time to get this show on the road!
Getting into Cairo and finally to our hostel was mostly uneventful. We got to our hostel around midnight.
When the sun came up, we finally got to see the area we’d chosen in which to start our adventure. Downtown Cairo isn’t the cleanest place in the world, but it’s not as filthy as some places I’ve seen. And there are a lot of apparently feral cats.
Of course, what do you do first in Cairo?
The pyramids! The Giza pyramid complex is not exactly in the middle of the desert. In fact, at the end of the driveway there’s an entire golf course. There are roads paved through the complex so that tour buses can cart in tourists to take their selfies and get talked into camel or carriage rides or guided tours.
Of course we shook them off and just bought entrance tickets. The pricing scheme is not well-explained, but they essentially make it a-la carte: one ticket to get into the area, another for each pyramid and the tomb. We opted for what seemed to be a big package option including everything.
First up: the Great/Khufu/Cheops pyramid!
It’s really big, in person. (Thanks auto-complete!) They used to let you climb it up a ways on the outside, but that day has sadly passed and the gate is shut.
Alas, no climbing adventure for us. We’d have to settle for going inside.
It took a second to sink in but no time at all to rush forward, ticket in hand. “No cameras!” the stoic official-looking old man in a white uniform said. We had to give up our cameras in order to enter. I told Dave to go ahead, I’d hold his bag and camera. Then he’d hold mine and I’d go. Dave was gone a while. I wondered how long it took to walk down a hallway and maybe down a few stairs.
It turns out he took a couple shots on his camera anyway, which explain why he took so long. When my turn came, I was very glad my Tilley hat is slightly padded on the top, as I bonked my head a bunch trying to climb this in a constant crouch. Once you get to the top of this narrow shaft, it opens up into the “Grand Gallery” which is just as steep, more like an 8 story climb, but has a TON more space. At the top, you enter the king’s burial room which now has only his empty sarcophagus. I looked around for a bit, then headed back down the ramp to meet up with Dave.
Now, as I had been waiting for Dave, I noticed a woman carrying a nice DSLR walk up to entrance. She didn’t show her ticket to the dour gentleman in white or turn over her camera, but instead pushed a one or two euro coin into his hand, then carried her camera up into the pyramid. This was a good lesson for Egypt: many simple rules are negotiable for baksheesh (very small tips or bribes).
Dave and I then walked around the Great pyramid for the next one in line. It was neat to walk across the desert between the ancient wonders.
The second pyramid, Khafre or Chephren, looks just as amazing and imposing up close. The limestone cap still in place on the top is a bit shiny and has such detail that it’s easy to imagine it in its heyday.
This pyramid also had an indentation like you could go inside it, and they were selling individual tickets for this pyramid as well. But where is the entrance? There weren’t any people about.
An underground entrance! The little kiosk is where the ticket-checkers take shelter from the sun and confiscate un-paid-for cameras. We know the place shuts at 4p, and most everything else shuts at 3p, but it was only 2:20. Surely they hadn’t just packed up and gone home? Alas, that seemed to be the case.
So we did what any self-respecting travelers would do when the area seems to have shut down around you: wander into the desert.
We broke down and let a friendly busker take our photo for a couple of bucks. Dave pointed out that I mis-remembered this. I actually gave a busker a couple bucks when he took my photo at the ship exhibit (below), not in the desert. In fact, we found a friendly rock to do the job for free. After all, when would we be here again?
The last bit included in our ticket was not yet closed, but they made it clear we didn’t have long. When they buried Khufu they buried some of his ships too, largely intact, in deep rectangular tombs next to the pyramid. One of them was exhumed and restored, then reassembled and put on display in a hall just behind the Great Pyramid.
Dave and I were in awe of the details of construction like notched planks forming the sides, letting it work and flex without breaking apart. It’s neat to see such a tangible testament to ancient ingenuity and craftsmanship.
Dave has a friend from back home who lives in Cairo and works for the UN. She invited us to an iftar (breaking of the fast) get-together at her office that evening. We had arrived in Cairo with 4 days left of Ramadan, and many Muslims break their day-long 15 hour fast at 6:45p every evening. We ate with her team and their families, met her boss, then left the work party and went up to her lovely apartment next door. What a commute!
Next up, more Cairo!