Our trip to the Pyramids

After seeing them through the smog, and of course being only about 10 km away, we naturally couldn't resist a trip to the pyramids. Karam and Khalid said that they were going that way anyhow to visit some family, and offered to negotiate a cab for us, and bring us to some guides that they knew and could recommend. I realize this sounds a bit shifty, but we figured we'd give it a go anyhow, since pretty well everyone was going to try to get us to pay as much as possible anyhow. (This was something really interesting to me, as people were completely okay with trying to get us, as tourists, to pay an order of magnitude more for a product or service than what they'd eventually settle for, but they were completely honest about it. It's not like they would take our money and then give us nothing in return, any time we were being ripped off it was with our full knowledge and agreement that we were willing to pay "x" for product or service "y". It was only our ignorance of the price of things, compounded with our poor haggling skills, that led to us paying too much.)

And so we set out in one of the little black and white taxis that are found throughout the city. These are mostly older cars, heavily dented and repaired, with a big luggage rack on the roof. (We also shared one of these taxis from the airport to our hotel when we arrived in the middle of the night - see the previous post about that.) The traffic is crazy in Cairo, but I really think it's largely because of the insanity of these cabbies. They also honk continuously at each other and other cars, but the honks seem to symbolize a variety of things, even just a friendly greeting.

It was quite a fascinating experience, but mildly terrifying. There were quite a few points when I had to close my eyes, mostly when changing lanes or trying to fit between two vehicles that were in adjacent lanes. Jeremi took a short video of the taxi ride, which doesn't quite do it justice, but it gives you some idea of the madness of the roads, with cars weaving, pedestrians walking, and the occasional donkey cart to be overtaken.


Once on the outskirt of Giza we set out with our guide, on horseback, and our two camels, which we were riding. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of riding a camel, but Jeremi really wanted to do it, arguing that it wasn't something that we got to do all the time, and who knows when we'd have the chance to do it again. Plus, we were going to see the pyramids!

My argument was that the camels were smelly and the ride was dangerously high, and safety standards ranged from flexible to non-existent. Besides, we could easily walk to the pyramids from where the taxi left us - the city of Giza has really spread right up to the edge of the desert where the pyramids and tombs are located. Still, I relented, and we set off on Mickey Mouse (Jeremi's camel, who had a huge goiter on his neck) and Moses (my thankfully more sedate mount). They also gave us ridiculous polyester headscarves to wear, which I quickly got rid of. While a hat might have been nice in the sun, it was actually breezier out on the sand, and not too uncomfortable. I did try to buy a hat while we were there, but there were hardly any in the shops, and we saw almost no Egyptians wearing hats. Women have headscarves of course, but the men were mostly bare-headed if not in a uniform of some sort. And of course I have trouble buying hats anywhere, as they rarely fit on my giant skull. In any case, here are Jeremi and I on our camels:


We rode up to a ridge where we could see all nine pyramids at the site lined up (the three "great" pyramids, and six smaller ones that are located at the same place. It was really spectacular.
Then I decided to tear off the top of the biggest one.



Here, as everywhere around Cairo, there were plenty of heavily armed tourist police, most of them on beautiful white camels. It's an entirely separate branch of the police which deals with problems specific to the tourist trade, which is an important part of the economy. Here's one of the officers speaking with Sam, our guide.


After this we left the beasts with the guide, and explored on foot for a while. Here Jeremi is standing next to the biggest pyramid of the three, to give some idea of the size of the blocks.



And then I backed up and took the picture again, just to give an idea of scale. It was truly enormous.
Here Jeremi was being accosted by one of the many men wandering around the site who offered to help him adjust his headscarf, and then did so without really waiting for an answer. Then he suggested we take a picture of the two of them together, and offered Jeremi some small scarab beads as a "gift". Of course this all ends with him asking for money, but before it go to that point he then approached me to put his scarf on me. I wanted nothing to do with this and tried to tell him repeatedly, and finally got so upset that he apologized and left us alone. After this I refused to speak to anyone - I just wasn't comfortable with being manhandled by someone I didn't know, and then have them expect to be paid for it.

We were actually allowed to climb up part of this pyramid. Apparently if you offer the guards a bit of money they'll look the other way and let you climb right to the top, but it's pretty dangerous, and also pretty difficult. Remember how big those blocks were behind Jeremi? It's really not like climbing up a long flight of stairs (although the area in the picture below had stairs added for easier access).
Next we went inside one of the pyramids, the one that was open on this particular day. They open them up in rotation, I presume so that they can maintain some level of preservation of the interior. Our guide tried very hard to discourage us from going in, saying that it was difficult to climb down and back up, hard to breathe, and not very interesting as all of the treasures had been taken to the museum already, and so it was money and trouble just to see a couple of empty rooms. Still, we were determined, and I'm glad we stuck it out. It proved to be more trouble than anticipated - they'd changed the way the tickets were sold the day before, so we could no longer pay at the pyramid, but rather had to go way beyond it to buy tickets from the main entrance. We also weren't allowed to bring our camera inside, and weren't officially allowed to leave it with the guards outside, but for a small baksheesh (tip) they'd watch it while you were inside.

It really was difficult to climb up and down - the ramp at the entrance was quite a steep descent, almost 45 degrees, and the height of the tunnel was only about 1.2 meters, so we were bent over at the waist to walk down. They'd put a wooden ramp with horizontal slats in, otherwise I think it would have been near impossible. It was also quite narrow, so that you had to wait for any people coming up before beginning the descent (and vice versa). Certainly not recommended for those who tend towards claustrophobia. And the air really was hard to breath - it was incredibly warm and humid. As soon as we walked in we were both drenched in sweat. It was like the steamiest sauna imaginable - not the hottest, but definitely the steamiest.

Once down the ramp we were able to stand, as there were two rooms inside, joined by another couple of ramps and a corridor. The rooms really were pretty well empty, with the only painting on the walls being done by an Italian expedition that was there in the early 19th Century. Still, we both thought it completely worth our while just to see what the passageways looked like inside. Here we were after exiting (after getting our camera back), trying to show how wilted we were after all that sweating.

From there we rode over to the Sphinx, which is only a couple hundred meters away, directly in the same area. The path we followed was a raised stone causeway, that was built at the same time as the pyramids, and was used to transport the stones along. It was somewhat covered with sand, but there were smooth stone slabs underneath. This was not the ideal footing for the camels, and their feet were slipping out from them pretty regularly. While they were always able to recover, I was not loving it, also because a fall at this point meant a fall onto stone slabs, rather than the more forgiving sand. And camels are tall. Still, we made it there without incident. The Sphinx was pretty damn impressive too, I might add.
And then, finally, after a great meal of foul medames (fava bean paste, a standard breakfast dish in Egypt) with pita, salads, and spicy pickles, we made our way back to town. Unfortunately we couldn't get a cab right away (or at least not for the price that Karam wanted), so first we took one of the many microbuses, these ancient vans with no doors, which seem to have semi-defined routes, and stop to pick up and drop off people along the way. This is something that we would never have been able to negotiate without a decent knowledge of Arabic, as you have yell out to the driver where you're going while he's driving past, and negotiate the fare, all while piling into a van filled with a dozen or so other people, with little kids hanging out the open doors and windows. Madness, I tell you, but it got us where we were going!