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.
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.
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.
1 comment:
I hear you on the long list of safety concerns - travel in Ghana by car was similar in the city (love your video with the guy in the middle of the road! almost ready to be hit!) and the mini buses there were the same. There used to be the same system in NA with jitneys before private land development/ bus/streetcar/tram companies took over. Mini transportation hubs like these certainly take care of the need for personal vehicles but they aren't so desirable without safety regulations.
That's awesome you got to ride camels - when will you get to do that again???
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