Two Weeks Away

Okay, so Cairo for two ladies on their own is a bit of a minefield. After being dropped off in the middle of “downtown” by our friendly taxi driver, we must have had “I am gullible” tattooed on our foreheads. We were befriended by men left right and centre,  who wanted to “show us the way” to wherever we were going, which always happened to be right past their brother/cousin/dog’s aunty’s hairdresser’s shop. Since we didn’t have anything planned, we generally went along with it, drinking tea, buying jewellery etc.

We only really had one which went a bit too far. When in a perfume/papyrus shop down an alleyway, the proprietors told us there was a “doctor” who was selling a special magic oil. He was only in Cairo for a few days, and lucky us, he was available to show us how the massage oil worked! Since he said he would massage the neck (and we were sore from our long-haul in cattle class) we acquiesced. However, he decided that the neck actually extends far below the t-shirt line and wanted to massage lower back and around to the tummy! We decided that this wasn’t on and wanted to leave, but ended up buying various items we’d already expressed interest in as the guys were a bit aggressive at this point. One even “escorted” me to the ATM as I’d run out of money already, and then to add insult to injury, asked me for baksheesh on the way back!

After this episode, we were pretty careful about where our “assistants” led us, and went to one more perfume shop, but on the main street this time! These guys had the best line in compliments ever – apparently we were worth millions of camels!

We stopped into McD’s to use the facilities and were amazed at the local speciality – a “McArabiyya”! Basically a cross between a kebab and a burger – bizarre.

We decided to see a bit more of Cairo by walking back to our hotel – a bad idea since a lot of the backstreets weren’t marked on our map! We took the scenic route – across the Nile and past the Eye Hospital. After being given directions to yet anther papyrus shop, we decided to admit defeat and took a taxi back to the hotel.

My first overseas trip and I choose the Middle East. Why? Because I’ve always been fascinated by the aura of romance that surrounds it. The fact that I’ve been taking bellydance classes does help a bit to add to the mystique of the place. So when K brought up the idea of visiting Egypt, I jumped at the chance!

After exhaustive research (re-watching The Mummy a lot, mostly) and reading many tour catalogues, we decided on Gecko’s Footsteps of Alexander tour. It ticked off all the big things we wanted to get out of the trip, plus took a detour into Jordan, which looked fabulous.

We arrived amongst the hustle and bustle of Cairo airport and followed the crowd to back collection and visa checkpoint, where we found our transfer. Phew! Glad we organised a pickup at the aiport as we were pretty zonked after two long flights, and negotiating the taxi touts would have been fun and games. The traffic is interesting too – a 2 lane road means at least 3 lanes of traffic, beeping and bumper-car-ing their way through!

We ordered room service for dinner when we arrived: moussaka, yummy! and had our first experience with Egyptian plumbing. At least there’s hot water!

So here we are in Cairo, woken at 5.15am by the call to prayer from the mosque we can see from our window. Beautiful, but we certainly don’t need an alarm clock.