Giza and Cairo

Arriving in Egypt: 29th June

When we first started talking about exiting our current life and travelling, I introduced it after a particularly glum day in Grey Lynn, like this….

Hey kids, who wants to travel around the world next year?

Kids: Yeah right! You’re always talking about it and it never happens.

Jude: Yeah well I think I’m ready to go now.

Stella: When mum says something’s going to happen, it happens, remember.

Jasper: Oh Ok! , well can we go to Egypt because we’re studying the Pyramids of Giza at the moment and it looks really cool.

Jude: yep, I reckon.

And so here we are. Because despite whatever travel warnings might be in place for Egypt at the moment, it seems to us as if this can’t not be part of our plan for the year. Plus, of course the Pyramids look cool and I’ve always wanted to come here too.

There’s something about flying from an extremely oil rich nation, that makes air travel seem safer. As if the UAE have their financial fingers in so many (halal) pies that they are a little invincible on the terrorist circuit. Perhaps it’s all the pressed, floating white robes. There is certainly a lot of security at the airport and we spend quite some time at the door of the plane, waiting while security pull an ominous black electrical box from someone’s bag. It’s probably we who have more potential explosives in our bags but we don’t get a second look.

This is the first time that I have flown across an entire desert. Saudi Arabia is vast and dry and visible for most of the flight.

As we near Egypt, we fly over the Gulf of Aqaba (where perhaps Moses parted the waters) and we see down below, the Sinai Peninsula.

We have booked an airbnb flat in Giza (about half an hour’s drive from Cairo) that has a view of all three main pyramids from the verandah. It’s a pretty outrageous view and even more so when we realise that we can see the Sphinx from the toilet window.

Our host, Ashraf, is friendly and enthusiastic and within an hour, we are eating lamb shawarma and organising our day at the pyramids with his 86 year old father as our guide.

We fall asleep to the sound of the pyramids sound and light show, which plays every night. There is a kind of 1950’s radio dramatisation of Ancient Egypt, including eerie music, with dramatic orchestral moments and crazy lighting. None of us have ever stayed anywhere like this in our lives!

We get up early to get on the road. Opening the curtains to see the pyramids outside the window would never get old!

For an 86 year old, Moses, our guide , is very spritely. Our street is bustling with activity as it houses all of the horses and camels which carry tourists around the pyramids area. At one time, the pyramids were part of the back yard of the locals but now there is a perimeter fence and the entrance is a short drive away, via the breakfast falafel shop.

Moses explains that too many beans and falafel make people stupid, but it’s ok to have it for breakfast.

Part of a tourist downturn in Egypt are near-empty tourist sites. There are more hawkers and souvenir sellers than there are sightseers which makes for a slightly stressful entry. We can’t work out whether it is hot or extremely hot. It’s hard to tell as it seems to be getting hotter every time we move to a new place.

We’ve had 12 hours to adjust to the pyramids outside the house, but arriving in front of them is still exciting. Moses assures us that a trip inside the 2nd to largest pyramid (for a much lower price) is as good as a journey into the Great Pyramid. We take his word for it because let’s face it, a climb down into any pyramid is exciting at this stage.

We’re quite keen on a camel ride, just for the experience of riding in front of the pyramids. Roger isn’t keen because he said his testicles were compromised during our last camel trip.

The Sphinx, which looks surprisingly small from the toilet window, still looks smaller than expected, close up. We arrive at the same time as a tour bus and it is difficult to navigate our way around people with their selfie sticks who seem oblivious to their surroundings.

We leave the Pyramid complex and head for Saqqara, the site of the oldest pyramid in Egypt, about twenty minutes down the road.

The art of siphoning coloured sand into a bottle has us all transfixed and we end up purchasing another surprisingly heavy thing to lug around.

Moses, who has some repute as one of the first guides around the Giza area, seems to have some standing at the Sakara pyramids and temple and despite the ‘no photography” signs everywhere, we are able to spend a lot of time photographing and sitting on the floor of the temple listening to his stories of playing in the temples and tombs as a child. It is awe inspiring to see your first hyroglyphics up close, especially in a temple that is completely empty of other people, and the kids are just as interested as we are to hear Moses’ interpretations of the stories on the walls.

It is around this point in the day that it becomes obvious that our family dynamic is of some interest to the local men. They are particularly intrigued by mine and Roger’s height difference and are obviously impressed with Roger’s stamina at keeping up with such a virile looking woman!

Our experience inside the mound of rubble that turns out to be another very ancient pyramid is a little more bizarre.

The guard who waits inside, comes across all secretive and starts whispering and zipping his lips and pointing to our camera. There is a sarcophagus in this pyramid which is exciting, as the Pyramids of Giza are completely empty. We are quiet and respectful because after all, it’s someone’s tomb. We are busy reading the inscriptions on the sarcophagus when the guard suddenly grabs me around the thighs and tries to hoist me up on to the top of the sarcophagus. Keen to detach myself from his grasp, I clamber up and once perched on top, he gestures for me to hop inside and lie down.

Now, I’ve watched the Mummy movies enough times to know that you probably don’t lie in a sarcophagus, especially at the urging of a slightly weird tomb guard. I reassure him that peering inside from above is enough.

We move into the room where the guard statues would have stood (they are now in the Cairo museum). Roger seems to have disappeared and I am left at the mercy of this austere and unusual stranger.

Luckily Jasper is with me to document his bizarre advances on camera. I stand up on one of the columns (at his insistence) and pretend to be a guard statue. Next minute he is up there with me and we are dancing. Could this day get any weirder? Well yes, it transpires that he wants to be paid for his assistance.

We head over to the second pyramid and the the funerary complex of Djoser where we are one of two small groups of tourists. It’s obviously a quiet day for the man on the donkey who spends his days extracting exorbitant sums of money for photos. He assures us that a photo will be free and because I like to take people at their word, I snap away. We thank him and he asks for 100 EGP, we reiterate that the photo was free and he stresses that his donkey needs food. We give the donkey a banana and go on our way. He then follows us for the next half an hour and just as we think we’ve lost him, he comes galloping over a sand dune waving his stick.

Moses is cross with is for getting involved with him but it has been such a strange day of illicit transactions in underground passages, that I am happy to hold out on giving this donkey con-man any money.

On the way home we stop at an oil and perfume shop where a man is hand blowing the glass for the oils. Despite our insistence that we can’t carry any more weight in our packs we spend a couple of hours there, having oils dabbed on our skin and drinking Caravan Maravan Tea.

The end of the day brings a sad discovery; my guitar has been damaged on the flight from Abu Dhabi and has a crack that radiates out from the sound hole and threatens to split open further.

I am pretty bummed about my damaged guitar as I have been a bit foolhardy in checking it into the luggage hold on the plane. Googling ‘damaged guitars on flights’ brings up a whole lot of imaged of guitars so badly damaged that they are barely recognisable. We will repair it somehow and carry it on board from now on, despite the hard case that I purchased for the journey.