We’re here in Alexandria for the better part of 2 days. Yesterday we took a 13-hour tour that was wonderful but also nearly did us in. The ship offered a variety of tours -- the tour to the museum in Cairo was cancelled because 20 people were killed near there 2 days before during a pre-election demonstration. But our tour only skirted Cairo so we were fine.
We showed up on time for the tour bus, 7:45 AM, and were on our way by 8:30 in a police-escorted convoy of busses (that‘s they way they do all tourist tours in Egypt now). We drove on the outskirts of Alexandria (which is at the end of the Nile delta, on the Mediterranean and is one of the world’s largest ports). In the outlying neighborhoods we saw many half-finished houses (people build houses as they can afford to pay for the materials and labor), and many buildings torn down. Saw a woman herding a flock of sheep down a street, which seemed unusual in a city environment. Saw a lot of ancient-looking open carts pulled by horses, driven by old men, and often carrying a small boy or two with the cargo -- traffic in the streets consisted of cars, busses, trucks, and horse-drawn carts and they all seemed to handle the congestion pretty well. Also saw many 10-20 ft high towers made from mud, hollow, the shape of a bullet, with lots of holes in the sides. These are pigeon houses where they put out food to attract pigeons and then they catch them to eat.
Our first stop was Giza (a 3 hour drive) where we saw the pyramids and the Sphinx. First of all, everywhere you look all you see is brownish sand color. There is very little to contrast with that other than the blue sky. Yes, there are palm trees, but around the pyramids there is only sand and stone. What I didn’t expect was that the pyramids are right on the edge of Giza, which is a largish city. So everywhere you go in the city the pyramids highlight the skyline. It is weird to think that what is normal for the people who live here is an amazing treasure for tourists like us.
Luckily, our guide prepared us for what to expect when we got out of the bus and he was so right. We were immediately inundated by men selling trinkets. Now, I thought I had gained plenty of experience in Turkey dealing with sellers like this, and my sister has even better experience dealing with sellers in Pakistan, but these men in Egypt are more aggressive by a quantum leap. They try to give you something as a gift then turn around and charge you $1, then when you hand them $1 they say that the price is not 1 dollar but 1 Egyptian pound which is $5 -- all of which is a sales pitch. They yell “1 dollar, 1 dollar,” “the whole kitty kaboodle only 1 dollar,” “I have 5 children please buy,” “everything only 1 dollar” and hold things up close to your face. They sell necklaces, glass and plastic pyramids, stamps, pens, coins, head scarves, hats with pictures of pyramids and camels, and statuettes of cats and pharaohs and pyramids. You are expected to bargain -- the starting price of $10 US can easily be bargained down to $2 or $3. Saying no has very little effect. Walking away has some effect but not a lot. In their defense, I am aware that incomes in Egypt are very, very low and that this is one way to support one’s self and one’s family. And apparently the competition is stiff. At one point, a seller yanked my hat off my head, put the hat on his own head, and then tried to sell me a scarf. When I said an emphatic “NO”, he shrugged and walked away, still wearing my hat. I ran after him and grabbed the hat back, quite angry. Tipping is another interesting thing. I am accustomed to tipping guides and bus drivers and waiters, but in Egypt it is customary to pay for every little service. If someone opens a door for you, you give them a tip. You tip the lady in the ladies restroom when she hands you a towel, even though you don’t really need a towel because there are paper towels available.
So there we were, surrounded by sellers, and it was hot, very hot, and dusty, and there were horses and camels everywhere, and men trying to sell you a camel ride or charge you for taking a picture of a camel, and the camels were making their camel noises (loved it). Our guide led us over to a group of camel drivers with whom he arranged a slightly lower price for rides (he probably gets a kickback, but that’s fine by me because that’s the way it works here). The rides were short but by golly, my sister and I each got to ride a camel and I’ve got the photos to prove it. (And the camels were not flea-bitten nags, they were nicely brushed and cared for, with photogenic saddle blankets and saddles to entice the tourists.) It is quite a wild experience when the camel gets up -- I really had to hang on and lean way back to counteract the forward tilt.
The pyramids were amazing. Like everyone, I’ve seen pictures of the pyramids, but it is hard to really know how big they are and how huge the blocks of stone are until you are standing directly in front of one. And oh my, the heat reflecting from the stone was oppressive. (I promised myself that after complaining about the heat all through Africa on my last trip, I was not going to complain about the heat. So I’m not actually complaining here, just mentioning it.) Then we drove just a short way around the pyramids to the Sphinx. Everyone hopped out of the bus and we were surrounded once again by sellers. This happened everywhere we went so I’ll just stop talking about that part. The Sphinx looked just as majestic as I had hoped. I could go on about how wonderful it is, but you already know that. Once again, I was impressed at how truly huge it is.
It was at this point that the heat started to get to me in a scary way. Luckily, I brought 2 large water bottles with me, so I got my bandana wet (I never travel without one) and dampened my face and neck, then just said to heck with it and poured water all over my head and shirt. That helped. I wandered back to the air conditioned bus a bit early -- yes, seeing the Sphinx is a lifetime experience but not getting heat sick is a bigger priority.
As we drove to our next destination, Memphis, the guide announced that because we were behind schedule and because the antiquities all close at 4:00 PM, he was changing the itinerary and lunch was delayed until 4:30 PM to allow us to get into all the sights beforehand. By this time I was already past hungry and into mild nausea, which is not a good sign for me. Luckily, the tour company had passed out snack bags so I decided that I needed some salt, sugar, and a lot more water. So I ate a couple of potato chips, a couple of bites of a cookie, and drank almost a liter of water.
At Memphis, we went to an open air museum that has an enormous statue of Ramses II that is quite delicately carved and very beautiful.
At Saqqara, our next stop, we saw the famous first pyramid, called the step pyramid because the sides are stair-stepped, and we got to go into a mustaba, which is a tomb for anyone who is not a king. Nobles and wealthy workers built mustabas. We went into the mustaba of Idut, who was a noble woman (something of a rarity -- women didn‘t usually get artful tombs built). First of all, the carvings on the walls were much more intricate than I expected and included delightful scenes of people fishing and people eating and other daily events that Idut apparently enjoyed. And many of the figures still had color on them, 3400 years after they were painted. But once again, the heat was just too much for me, so I left the group and went back to the bus accompanied by a guy on a donkey singing out “taxi, taxi” (the bus driver always stays with the bus to guard our belongings and, most probably, to guard the bus itself, so he keeps the engine running and the air conditioning going). Unfortunately, photos were not allowed in the mustaba.
Have I mentioned the flies? Imagine all that sand, and camel dung, and horse dung. Of course there are flies. But with all those busloads of tourists, there were plenty of flies to go around for everyone, and it seemed that we each had one fly assigned to us to follow us everywhere. My sister said that later in the tour there were fewer people, so everyone got assigned several additional flies.
Finally, we arrived at a fancy hotel back in Giza for lunch. As we got off the bus the hotel had arranged 3 musicians to greet us (drum, trumpet, and bagpipes, what a combo), dressed in theatrical pharaoh costumes, and playing the triumphal march from Aida, followed by a John Philip Souza song. Odd but humorous. After lunch, walking out the front door to the bus, I looked up and right there in front of me were the pyramids. Gorgeous and breathtaking.
Our last stop was at a place where they make papyrus and paint beautiful scenes on papyrus sheets. We watched a demonstration of how papyrus is made (simpler than I thought) and then were left to wander around looking at the paintings.
We got back to the ship at 9:30 PM exhausted intending to go directly to our room but were enticed to look at some things at the market that is set up at the dock. My sister and I each decided to buy some traditional clothing -- long dresses for lounging around the house. At this point we badly needed food, a shower, and sleep, in that order. But the theater was having a show of traditional Egyptian folk dancing that we didn’t want to miss, so we grabbed a sandwich and in our bedraggled, slightly stinky clothes we went to see the show.
By the time we got back to our room we could barely move. A long day of constantly getting in and out of the bus (very high steps), and walking up and down steps (absolutely everything requires going up and down steps), a knee that is beginning to bother me, the heat, and the over stimulation of seeing so many wonderful things, used up all of my reserves of energy. But we needed to get ready for our all-day tour the next day (a tour of the museums and landmarks of Alexandria) and so we started laying out our supplies and clothes and tickets. It was at about this point that I caved in and decided to skip the next tour and after a few minutes consideration my sister did the same. Today, we are very glad we decided not to push ourselves too much.
General impressions of Egypt: The first thing I noticed was that there was rubbish everywhere we went. Canals of water were lined up the banks with rubbish and there was rubbish floating in the water. There was rubbish along all the roadsides and at the sightseeing stops. There were no trash receptacles that we could see anywhere. The prevailing color of everything is sand softened by the green of some trees (mostly palm and a kind of pine tree that has frothy needles, and eucalyptus trees), and the white, taupe, or black of clothing. Occasionally we saw the color of flowers, but not often. Occasionally we saw a woman wearing a colorful scarf over her black hibab. Most people are quite poor; the contrast between rich and poor is marked.
In the afternoon, the ship left for the entrance to the Suez canal. Apparently the protocol is that ships going south through the canal must queue up and then in the early morning we will start making our way through. Ships going north through the canal go in convoy during the night. Next stop is Jordan.
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