“The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, writes in “Travels with Herodotus” that with every new town visited, with every new foreign word learnt, the traveler experiences small, almost imperceptible personal changes. Wherever you go becomes part of you and the person who returns home is never the same as before departing. Knowing new people is in many ways like travelling, and those who you meet along your road become part of your existence too.”
― Mateo Cabello, Of Mountains and Men
Go-Date: Day 57, Wednesday. March 20
Lesson Learned: Reading about something is not the same as doing it yourself. You may read descriptions, see photos, hear sounds, watch travel shows, cruise the Internet, and hear the voices of new people, but those senses carry a fraction of the actual experience when you venture forth to a new place. In Cairo, the pace, smells, energy, sights and interaction with the people may be what you expected, but so much richer than you could imagine. This is true whether your experience is good, bad or surprising, but it will never be boring.
Cairo, Egypt
Bedlam, chaos, hustle, untidy, energetic, oppressive, exciting, confusing. All words to describe Cairo. Not negative words, just a hand full of terms descriptive of your experience once off the airplane. Honestly, I expected more discomfort, confusion and angst about our arrival in the Cairo airport. It wasn’t bad.
Ellen and I deplaned over a jetway into the airport terminal, which was nice as we have become used to stairs onto the tarmac. Here are my recollections of arrival in Egypt:
• Came in through the jet-way, found the direction for baggage claim, and headed in that direction. Information signage was in both Arabic and English. There were moving sidewalks and marble floors. Everything was neat and clean, tastefully done up in a commercial airport way, and not crowded. I mean, not crowded like getting to the airport in Lubbock, Texas on a Tuesday, at 10 PM, 3 days after New Years Day. There were more security personnel with AK-47s than there were passengers. This was at 11 AM on a Wednesday.
• We needed a Visa and you get those from a bank kiosk. Don’t ask me why. There were two people ahead of us, and we gave them $25 US dollars each (foreign currency is required. US and EU preferred). This all took about 4 minutes.
• We moved on down the hall to passport control, where we stood in line for about 5 minutes, got up to the window and the agent glued the visa into our passports, stamped them, asked where we were from, welcomed us to Egypt and sent us on our merry way.
• Down to the baggage carousels, we waited for about 10 minutes before the luggage began vomiting out of the tunnel. They have a cool machine that scans the carousel and stops the conveyor belt if there is not room on the turnstile. Its like a baggage traffic cop. Very efficient.
• We picked up our bags, headed to customs, and nobody was there so we crossed over into Egypt.
• Fortunately, there was a Vodafone kiosk there, so we were able to purchase a SIMM chip and buy data for our visit. That was nice. While I was doing that, Ellen popped over to an ATM and picked up some Egyptian Pounds (LE). Banks limit you to withdrawals of 2,000 LE or less (which is about $116). Be aware, Internet in Egypt is slow and sporadic. Most hotels offer “Open” Wi-Fi. This should send up alarms as these type of connections are easier to hack. We use our VPN extensively, which gives you more security.
It was all very easy, and I was pleasantly surprised.
Now the fun began. Once we cleared passport control a guy kept offering us a ride to our hotel. I knew we shouldn’t be doing it, but I bantered with the guy until I thought we had a good rate for the ride (200 Egyptian Pounds (including tip)) so we followed him to the curb. Then the details and issues, and waiting for the driver to arrive. After a couple of minutes we knew this wasn’t working out so with Ellen’s prodding we bugged out to the taxi stand, got a driver for 180 LE plus a 20 LE tip so we were right back where we were, except for one thing. We were moving.
The currency exchange rate is a bit confusing. We had Euros down pretty well, but Egyptian Pounds, not so much. A Euro fluctuated between 1 Euro to $1.13 to $1.16 our entire time in Greece. With a little analog adjusting we knew that whatever was quoted was just a bit more than you think. If its 20 Euros, you kind of know its around $22 or $23 (its actually $22.62). In Egypt, they will quote you in Egyptian Pounds (LE), or Euros, or Dollars. When they tell you $25 but you want to pay in pounds, and you know that 100 pounds is about $5.76 so that means the price is about 400 LE (well, its 432LE) and nobody has anything less than a 5LE note so you get shorted on the deal (you end up paying 435LE). Oh, it makes my head hurt.
We got a refund of 5,000 LE from a hotel. They paid it in 50LE notes which I swear was a stack of bills an inch thick. I’ve not seen anything like this since Italy back in the 80’s when $1 was worth about 175 lire.
Brown is the New Black
Your first impression of Egypt is that its dirty. No, I don’t mean that there is garbage everywhere (yes there is in many places) but what I mean is that everything is covered in a fine layer of dust or sand. The buildings are brown. The statues are brown. The windows are brown. The window awnings are brown. The streets are brown. And the desert is, of course, BROWN. There are street sweepers (men with brooms) on almost every block, but only to get the garbage not the sand, and there is always the sand……everywhere. So, the impression that sticks with you is BROWN. Cars are not so much brown, because people are washing them everywhere. I mean in all the open available spots….on corners, at red lights (if the drivers decide to obey the lights), in yards, on sidewalks, on freeways (yes, I saw someone washing his van on the freeway), and any vacant lot. And there are cars everywhere. The Greeks are incredibly creative on parking. Egyptians have elevated parking to an art form of conceptual creativity. Parking 4-deep on corners is normal, and they don’t double park in Cairo, they triple park and abandon the car in rush hour traffic.
Nobody owns a dryer in Egypt. I don’t think anyone owned them in Greece, either. When the laundry is hung out to dry in Cairo, I’m not sure how it comes back off the clothes line cleaner than it went into the washer. I suppose it does, but I’m not sure how. There must be at least a quarter inch of dust on the building walls below the balconies of apartments. Just wait till a windy day happens in Cairo. You will not be wearing your contacts for long. The dust will fill the air, your eyes become gritty, smiles dim to off-white, and dust flavors your food as if it came out of a table shaker. However, its no bother to me, after all, I spent 4 years in Lubbock, Texas. You learn to understand dust.
Traffic
New York City drivers are pussies. Seriously! They would not last 5 minutes in Cairo. We have witnessed a 4-lane freeway turned into 6 lanes, with traffic at 70 mph, pedestrians crossing, vans stopping, and everyone weaving in a synchronized pandemonium that dented nary a vehicle. I am in awe. Terrified, but in awe none-the-less.
No matter how I describe it, the details cannot compare to the reality of driving in this city. These guys are amazing (women drivers too), crisply moving in and out of streams of cars, brushing pedestrians without bruising, or creasing their garments, avoiding vehicles stopping or changing lanes without the sounds of screeching tires, or crumpling metal. Think of anything a driver could perform in the US that would earn the blast of horns, shaking fists, and screams of “You Fucking Idiot!!!!!!!” and Egyptian drivers deal with it a dozen times a minute without a moment of road rage. But there are horns. A symphony of horns. Horns of every tone and timber used with frequency, relish and pattern. Car horns are more essential to Egyptian drivers than brakes or turn signals. I think I’ve deciphered the horn-honking pattern etiquette of Cairo:
• One horn tap – “I am here”
• Two horn taps – “I would please like to come through”
• Three horn taps – “I AM coming through, beware”
• Four or five rapid horn taps – “What do you think you are doing?”
• Rapid repeated horn taps – “No, No, No, No, don’t do that, get out of my way”
• Long single blast of horn – “You drive like a donkey!”
• Two long horn blasts – “Your mother is a camel!”
• Continuous horn blast – “WOMAN DRIVER….GET OFF YOUR PHONE!!!!!”
I said their were women drivers in Egypt, I didn’t say there wasn’t a gender bias by the other (predominantly male) drivers on the road. I won’t say that the drive was upsetting, but Ellen did ask the driver if she could get Valium over-the-counter in pharmacies here.
Security
There is a lot of security here. It is everywhere you see, and I suspect even more where you can’t see. Police stations are the size of Walmarts. And there are a lot of them. The police academy on the banks of the Nile is the size of a 6A Texas high school. There are police guard stations on the roads every 100 meters or so in downtown Cairo and they all seem to be carrying AK-47s (that’s a Russian assault weapon). There are frequent check points where you must stop and identify your nationality (especially around monuments and hotels), security cameras everywhere, and I wish I owned a metal detector company because they are in all the hotels, department stores, office buildings, airports (of course), museums, and all the tourist stops. If there are terrorist bad guys around, the security in this town is on the lookout for them.
Given all that, we have never felt uncomfortable once since arriving. True, most folks are on the lookout to share some of your money (in an honest way), and I’m sure there is petty crimes occurring, but we’ve never witnessed it. The most common English phrase we’ve heard since arriving is “Welcome to Egypt. I hope you enjoy your stay.” Truly, the Egyptians have been friendly.
This is not to say that there aren’t surly, rude, and dismissive Egyptians around (especially in the banks, strangely enough) but as a whole, they are friendly. The children are sweet, mischievous, and curious. Their parents watchful and patient, just the same as parents anywhere else in the world. We found the people very welcoming.
This is a whole new world, but we’ll adjust. I can’t wait to see some of the antiquities we’ve seen and heard of our entire lives.