Donia’s alarm didn’t go off. Donia’s alarm didn’t go off so we began our adventurous day with a phone call:
6.00 am. Donia’s ringtone ‘Attack’ by 30 Seconds to Mars is not the most serene thing to wake up to…
Groggy Donia: “mmm… hello?”
Ahmed: “Donia?”
Groggy Donia: “Yeah?”
Ahmed: “Uh, Where are you?”
Suddenly awake and alarmed Donia: “Where are you?”
Ahmed: “Uh, here? Like I said I would be?”
Donia: “Shit! Sorry! I’ll come let you in!'
Donia uses the intercom to ask the porter to open the gate...
Donia: “Hello?? Hello?? Can you let my friend in?”
… No response
Donia: “Hello!! Let him in. Please let him in!”
Frantic Porter: “Hello?!? Hello? Who is there? Who are you talking to? No one is here! The door is open! No one is here! Who are you talking about?"
30 Seconds to Mars reprise...
Donia: ”Dude where are you?”
Ahmed: ”I’m right here!"
Ahmed's voice can be heard on the other side of the front door. Donia, grinning sheepishly, opens the door...
Donia: “Hi”
Ahmed: “Hi. I thought you were going to call me at 5:30
am to make sure I got up?”
Donia (coolly searching for an excuse): “Oh well, yeah, you know…”
Kat: “YOU SAVED THE DAY AHMED!!!!!”
Kat throws her arms around him..
Kat: “You totally saved the day!!! We would have slept in and completely missed the pyramids and I NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Ahmed (Completely caught off guard… Canadian’s are very strange): “Ok, you ready?”
The girls exchange a frantic look and laugh… FASTEST GETTING READY SESSION EVER ENSUES… Good thing neither of us ever shower anyways… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
As we drove across the city and the pyramids begin to come into view over the rooftops. We decided to make the last leg of the journey on Camels…
The Camels weren’t OVERLY pleased to see us but the let us get on. The only English words the children who brought the Camels over told us was to ‘sit back’ as we were getting on. Very good advise! You get on Camels while they are lying on the ground and when the straighten their back legs to stand up while their front legs are still kneeling on the ground it is very important to be leaning back so you don’t go right over their heads!
We travelled through the streets of old Cairo. It was a different kind of poverty then I saw in Argentina. It was mixed with cruelty and uncaring. I have tried hard not to judge these people to harshly because I know there is not way I can understand all the elements of their situation. But I have not been able to find any impartial words to describe it to you. I have no pictures to share. So I will move on…
When we reached the edge of the ancient town that lies in the shadow of the pyramids and their surrounding desert, our guide (a rather portly man who was walking along side us) stopped and proceeded to mount Ahmed’s camel so that he and the guide were sitting quite cosily together on top of one camel. The moment we realized what was going on Donia and I exchanged a look, equally gleeful and horrified by this situation. We nearly fell out of our saddles we were laughing so hard at his expression. Poor Ahmed looked so unhappy, uncomfortable and embarrassed that Donia took pity on him after a few minutes and invited him to ride on her camel… But NOT before I got pictures!!!!! Ahahahahahahaha
After our little game of Musical Saddles we proceeded into the desert area around the pyramids. The pyramids rose up from behind a very old graveyard.
We saw many people riding Arab horses around the sand dunes. Watching this beautiful beasts tear ass through the desert, their riders hooting and hollering (either out of fear or fun, sometimes both) gave me a whole new understanding of why Paddy acts the way he does. He would have fit in so naturally into this environment!
And after about 20 minutes of trekking through the desertous terrain atop Camels and bribing the police officers to let us in the back door of the area supposedly off limits to tourists, we had a magnificent view of them!
Stu, a good friend from my band who has been to Egypt before warned me before I came;
“Remember, if they say it’s $20 for a ride into the desert then they’ll take you out nice and far and say ‘By the way, it’s another $20 for the trip back out.’”
Well we didn’t encounter a problem that was quite as bad as that but our guide was definitely a rip off artist in his own right. Just in case we had been planning to complain about the fact that we were supposed to have gotten a camel each instead of sharing two between the three of us he stopped the camels half way back through the desert and demanded to be paid the full amount before going the rest of the way. Which of course we did pay him.
I’m not sure at what point it is that you pretty much accept the fact that you’re going to be ripped off no matter where you go here if you look foreign. You just begin to accept it because they’re poor and if you speak English they assume you must be rich and in comparison to them, you really are. Don’t get me wrong, we still haggled over prices as much as possible but it’s not as big a deal when you consider that it’s often only a matter of a dollar or two difference in Canadian. (The exchange rate on a good day is about $1 Canadian to $5.4 Egyptian pounds.) Poor Donia is a hero and a saint as most of the painstaking bartering was left up to her because I, of course, don’t speak the language. (Although there was those 3 bottles of water I got down from 30 pounds down to 20. Boo Yah!!!)
But of course, we were not done with the pyramids yet!!! Oh no! We were determined to get MUCH closer! So, after our camel ride we went around to tourist’s entrance. I paid $50 pounds to get in while Donia and Ahmed flashed their Egyptian passports and paid $2 pounds to get in. IT WAS SO WORTH IT!!!!!
First we explored the tombs surrounding the pyramids which were for the Royal family and Priests.
It was hard work but we were happy!
Then we set our sights on loftier goals…
Unfortunately though…
So we stuck to the ‘tourist approved’ height and areas to climb…
I desperately wanted to go into the pyramids and explore but we had missed the morning tour would have to wait 2 hours for the next one. We knew it would be worth it so we spent our two hours sitting at the very base of the largest pyramid in Africa, scrounging for what little shade we could find and contemplating its’ magnificence, its’ construction, its’ meaning to the world in the present, past and future aaaand talking about our favourite bands.
I figure each of our karma points went up quite a bit because of those meditative hours.
Then, it was time to venture inside!!!! Once again, Donia and Ahmed whipped out their Egyptian passports and paid a measly 20 pounds each while me and my fancy little foreign butt paid 80 pounds. This would be a theme for our entire trip. But, STILL DO WORTH IT!!!
No cameras were allowed inside, they confiscated both mine and Donias’ but they missed Ahmeds’ so we snuck it inside!!!! In the initial passageway past the entrance we had to duck to get through the brick that had been either dig or blasted through. After the dead pharaoh had been placed inside the pyramid was sealed up so that the entrance was completely sealed up and looked no different then any other part of the pyramid. This was to prevent grave robbers from getting in and stealing all of the fantastic treasure that were buried with the Pharaoh.
Then we came to what once would have been a very long stairway but again, in order to stop grave robbers from reaching the treasure, the ancient Egyptians had filed down the stairs behind themselves so that all that was left was a perfectly smooth, very steep and thin ramp that had a sheer wall on one side and a deep pit on the other. Modern day Egyptians had laid down wooden planks to use as foot hold and a metal railing on the pit side of the ramp for tourists to use but it was still a very long, hard climb.
Finally the ramp ended at a low tunnel that you had to crawl through in parts. And without warning you suddenly found yourself in a large rectangular room with high ceilings and nothing inside but a ominous stone tomb at the back of the chamber. It took my breath away. Such a cold, uncomforting and lonely place to sleep for thousands and thousands of years. Give me returning to the earth any day! We waited in the chamber until we were alone and Ahmed finally pulled out his camera to get some pictures of me inside the tomb. Then we made our way back out, came home and spent the rest of the day napping, thoroughly exhausted from the heat and excitement.
I will post Ahmed pictures of inside the tomb here as soon as I get them from him!! I don’t know how they turned out yet but I hope they were cool!
I know this has been a very long post so thank you to all of those that have hung in there with me! This day was by far one of my favourite of the trip, rivalled only by one day at the Red Sea which I will talk more about later… It involves Dolphins…. EEEEEEEEE!!!!
As I said before, Egypt has been a cornucopia of juxtapositions so it is only fitting that both of my favourite days here featured both great excitement and great upset.
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