Saving the World, One Egyptian Cab Ride at a Time

7/31/2009

Day two brought another early morning.  Yet again, I found myself awake before sunrise, but this time it was not to watch the sun come up, but it was to get ready for my day.  I hadn’t finished packing before I fell asleep, and I was planning on spending the next two nights away from the ship.  Luckily, packing went quickly, since I would have to carry everything I brought with me the whole time.  After I packed, I ran upstairs for a quick breakfast, and then it was off to the buses.  I was on a SAS trip called “Pyramids with Camel trek and Jeep Safari”, which sounds like it would be pretty hard to mess up.  I didn’t meet Audrey, Sarah, Dan and Tim before loading the buses, and there were three buses, so I was a little worried that my plans might fall through, but I was assured the buses would stay together all day, and so I didn’t worry about it too much.  Turns out the reason the buses would be staying together is because we were in a caravan, complete with police escort, for safety.
The day started with a nearly three hour drive along the desert road between Alexandria and Cairo, and then we continued on to Giza and the pyramids!  Our guide for the day was named Raina, and she was very nice.  Along the way, she gave us history and an idea of what we would be seeing.  Even with all of her talking, nothing prepared me for my first glimpse of the pyramids.  They were massive, and much closer to the city than I expected.  Our first stop was the Great Pyramids in Giza, where we were given time to look around and take pictures.  It was crazy.  Not only was I standing next to one of the wonders of the ancient world, there were also camels, vendors, and other travelers everywhere!  Our last warning before exiting the van was not to let anyone put us on a camel.  It wasn’t long before we found out why this was necessary. 
Upon exiting the bus, we were ambushed with men trying to sell head coverings, get you to take a picture with their camel, get you to buy a statue of some sort, and they didn’t like hearing the answer “no”!  I made it out unscathed, but saw more than one student being herded toward a camel that was waiting in a laying position.  Apparently they put you on the camel for free; it is getting off that costs money.  From the pyramids, we moved on to the Sphinx.  We were given time for pictures at the Sphinx, but not nearly as long as I was hoping, and then it was back to the buses and on to our next stop.  Our next stop was the jeep safari portion of the day.  We unloaded the bus, and piled into jeeps.  They were not nearly as old as the ones in Bulgaria, nor did they have soft tops, but a while after we took off into the desert, I began appreciating to solid nature of the roof.  I ended up in the middle of the back seat, and as such had minimal things to hold on to.  There was also no seatbelt to help my situation.  We bounced along and I think I spent about half of the time airborne, trying to brace myself between the ceiling and my seat.  We were all laughing and bouncing along over dunes and racing the other jeeps.  It was a lot of fun, and there were also some photo stops, where our driver would stop at the top of a dune and let us snap some pictures of the pyramids in the distance before continuing along again.  After making our way into the desert, we saw the camels we were driving to meet.  The jeeps all circled around and stopped by the camels, and we unloaded.
The camels were all lying down in a line, and we each got our own camels.  Some of them looked friendly, others looked vicious.  When I exited the jeep, my hand got grabbed and I was being led to a camel that was laying down and roaring like a dinosaur.  He did not look happy, and I was pulling away trying to get to a more content looking camel, but I was unsuccessful, I was ushered on to the saddle, and just managed to get my hand holds before my camel stood up.  They are much taller than I realized, and it is not exactly a smooth ride.  Managing to stay on my discontented camel while it stood was enough of a challenge, and before I really got settled in, we were off and moving.  The guy who was responsible for herding my camel, and one other camel along was named Alec, and he told us that our camels were named Columbus, and Charlie Brown.  Mine was Charlie Brown.  After we started moving, he settled down a little – at least he stopped roaring, which comforted me slightly.  A thirty minute trek through the desert later, and we were back at the country club where we were to have lunch.  As we stopped, Alec told us to “lean back”, one of the few English phrases he knew, along with “picture?” and “are you happy?”, and our camels laid down so we could climb off. 
The lunch buffet we had set up was delicious, and like most of the countries I have visited, there was watermelon for dessert!  At lunch, I was finally able to go talk to Audrey, Sarah, Tim and Dan, and make a meeting time for later on.  They had ended up on a different bus, and as such we had not run into each other as much as we anticipated.  The drivers were going to drop off everyone planning on staying in Cairo at a pre-designated spot where it would be easy to get a cab though, and so that is where we were going to meet to try to make our way to Luxor.  After lunch, we still had another stop on the itinerary.  We went to a temple, and then the step pyramid, the oldest stone building in existence.  From there, we had a view of the bent pyramid in the distance, one in which they changed the angle of the sides when it was partially finished in order to finish on time.  This was our last stop, and it had been a full day, it was already after 5pm.  The buses loaded up again, and caravanned to the drop off spot.  Despite the fact that we had been told it was in Cairo, it was actually in Giza, within view of the Great Pyramids.  The other buses pulled up as we were unloading – about half, if not more of the trip was not planning on returning to the ship – I was able to meet up with Audrey, Sarah, Tim and Dan.  We had trouble getting a cab at first, since there were so many people that were trying to do the same thing, but eventually we found a cab driver who was willing to let all five of us into his cab, and actually charge us the proper rate (what the guides had told us to expect) to get to Ramesses station, where we would figure out train stations.  It was an interesting cab ride, to say the least, and with all of us crammed in there, we decided we were just doing the environment a favor, instead of taking two cabs.  By some miracle, we made it to the train station in one piece, although slightly cramped and happy to be freed of the cab.  We were able to get our tickets to Luxor, as well as return tickets for the next night on the sleeper train, and then we were told that the train left from Giza – where we had just come from – and not Cairo.  At this point, it was all just a series of jokes, rather than getting upset or flustered, we just laughed, and prepared ourselves for the adventure ahead.  We decided to take the metro down to Giza, as it was cheaper than a cab, and we thought it might be slightly less cramped.  We were wrong about the second part, the passengers were crammed on to the metro like sardines, but it was easy to navigate, and relatively quick, as well as air conditioned.  Always a plus.  We made it to Giza fairly quickly, and fortunately the train station and the metro station were in the same location, so we just had to go down a flight of stairs and we were on the platform waiting for our train.  We were early though!  As we were waiting, we met up with four of the LLC’s from the ship (they are basically the equivalent of RA’s), and they were planning on doing the same thing we were, Luxor in a day with two back to back overnight trains.  We were in the same car on the train as them, so we waited with them, and talked about what there was to do in Luxor.
We found car 10, where we were assigned to, and got on.  The entire train was sloped at a rather extreme angle toward the center of the tracks, which made no sense to us, but we hoped it would right itself when the train started moving, and it was.  The sleeper cars consisted of three seats, a small sink, and a door connecting to one other cabin that looked like a mirror image.  I was odd man out, as they were supposed to be two bed cabins, and so I had a separate, non-connected cabin.  All in all, it was a lot nicer than any of us expected.  I stayed in the cabin with Sarah and Audrey, and we had the door open that connected to Tim and Dan’s room through dinner time, then we were all ready to crash for the night.  Dinner was surprisingly edible, it consisted of the steward bringing us all trays with food, and then coming back to clear them away when we were finished.  After clearing the trays, he came back to fold down the beds.  The back of the seats folded down into the lower bunk, and the top bunk came down out of the wall.  I made sure he folded down the bed in my cabin too.  There was even a ladder to get to the top bunk.  Because there was no one in the second bed in my cabin, I went in there to have my own bed, and dead bolted both of the doors, telling the girls I would be back around breakfast time.  It was a bumpy ride, and every now and then the train would jerk, sending me nearly rolling off my bed.  Luckily, I was tired enough, and used to sleeping on a ship that moves, that I was able to fall asleep quickly.