Cairo, Part 1

At the end of the March, we went to Egypt. Cairo is about a three hour flight from Abu Dhabi, but it would take longer than that to describe the differences between the two cities. Compared to the clean, shiny, orderly newness of Abu Dhabi, Cairo was a crumbling, dusty, chaotic sprawl. Things in Cairo that are older than anything in Abu Dhabi don't even count as history there. The frame of reference for what "old" is in Egypt has a couple extra zeros in it compared to U.A.E. or U.S.A. For instance, the average age of buildings in Abu Dhabi is probably about 35 years, while our Cairo tour guide went to church in a building built in the third century, A.D.

So after we manage to get through passport control with the help of a man who thankfully didn't run away with our passports, we are approached by a man in a suit who offers us a taxi ride. The price was right, so we follow him through the parking lot until I start to wonder if we've made a huge mistake. He leads us to a group of not-as-well-dressed Egyptian men, helps us put our bags in what seems to be a random car, and then enters into a lengthy conversation (in Arabic) with the group about (I think) the best way to get us to our hotel, to which our driver has apparently never been. Our concerns about getting to the correct hotel were quickly replaced by concerns about surviving the trip.

Upon arrival in Cairo, prior to confronting the insanity that is passport control.

Driving in Cairo must be one of the most well-established iterations of human hive-mind I've ever experienced. The rules, if there are any, are unwritten and may, in fact, lie outside the scope of standard forms of communication. Perhaps similar to the way honeybees communicate with a combination of pheromones and dancing, Egyptian drivers somehow avoid death (most of the time) through a complex horn language and a don't-hit-me-I-won't-hit-you attitude. Also, there are no seatbelts. Yet somehow, cars, trucks, military vehicles, horse-drawn carts, bicycles, and sprinting pedestrians all use the same road, seemingly unfazed by nearly dying every second. We later tried to get our guide to explain how the traffic signals (which were always flashing yellow) worked, because whole groups of cars were clearly taking turns, but he just laughed at us.

But first, a word about traveling with children in the middle east. Be prepared for grandparent-level-plus spoilage. Seriously. Q could have walked around slapping old ladies and knocking over flower arrangements and people would have rushed up to offer him juice and cookies and more flower arrangements. It's either wonderful, embarrassing, or infuriating, depending on your outlook and how much you care about consistency. I am not exaggerating when I say that no fewer than two staff members were doting on Q at all times whilst we were on hotel grounds and not inside our room. And by doting I mean bringing him giant glasses of fresh juice, custom dishes that we did not order, hot chocolate, fruit plates, double handfuls of candy, personal invitations by the head chef to join him in the kitchen, requests for photo ops, ponies.

Q and Chef Antonio

Ok, no ponies, but the rest is true. This is also true in U.A.E., Oman, and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait. C'mon middle eastern peoples, do you want tyrants? 'Cause this is how you get tyrants.
Parents, consider yourselves warned.

Alright, enough about the cultural differences, on to the pyramids!
 

Tahrir Square in the background.

Our two-day tour with Let's Explore Egypt (which we can't recommend highly enough) started at Giza. I mean, really it started at our hotel where our guide, Ashraf, and our driver, Zayn, picked us up. [Side note: all cars were subject to a dog-sniff and visual inspection before entering hotel grounds, protected by a fence and hydraulic bollards like they have at every government building in D.C. Also, all guests had to go through a second security checkpoint, metal detector and bag scan, before entering the building. Did I mention that our hotel adjoined Tahrir Square?]
So Ash explains the dynastic history of Egypt as we drive the half-hour to Giza, nonchalantly fielding random questions from Q on the way. "Why does that truck have extra wheels?" "Is your name Ash, like ash tray?"





Here's what I remember about said history lesson: Egypt is really old, they started building pyramids after Egypt had been around for a really long time, the pyramids are really old, they built hundreds of them, pyramid design underwent several reformations over the course of a few thousand years, some pyramids were built better than others, the capitol city was moved up and down the Nile, leaving pyramids scattered all over. There was quite a bit more detail than that, but I wasn't taking notes. The Giza pyramids sit on a plateau above the Nile (can't have your eternal burial spot flooding every other year) literally right on the edge of greater Cairo (zoom out for full effect). The Nile has since changed its course so that the pyramids are no longer river-front, leaving plenty of dry-ish ground on which to build tenements and tourist traps.

Our first glimpse of the Giza pyramids.

Despite the proximity to the brown bubble of Cairo, the pyramids at Giza are striking. Geometrically perfect and massive, each of the three main pyramids at Giza stand as a testament to a belief in the human embodiment of a deity, the continuation of life after death, and the determination and labor force to pursue that end to extremes. Millions of tons of quarried stone, transported for miles, carefully placed and polished, all to help one guy make it to the afterlife. (Wives, sisters, and daughters got their own, tiny pyramids off to the side.) Thanks to several thousand years of weather, looting and, um, repurposing, nearly all the pyramids we saw (and the antiquities formerly within) were damaged, but it was not difficult to imagine them in their original grandeur. Clearly, being king was kind of a big deal.

Thanks to some pre-pyramid coaching from Ash, we were able to avoid being constantly hounded by multiple hawkers of China-made kitsch. Still, watching them descend on bus after bus of Asian tour groups was sad, but not as sad as many of the fashion choices made by the selfie-stick wielding mobs. After a few hundred photos, we took a two minute drive to the "desert" side of the pyramids for our obligatory camel ride. For those that haven't tried it, riding a camel is a bit like straddling an ottoman, tied to a cow, who is wearing stilts. Camels are actually quite graceful, but they will make you feel like you are not. At all. Thankfully, they are low-key animals who do not look at all like they are judging you.

While in Giza, we also saw the Great Sphinx, which is tiny compared to the pyramids, but still pretty darn big for a sphinx. We learned from Ash that the literal de-facement of the Sphinx was probably not the result of world war target practice, but more likely due to a (much earlier) rival king's displeasure at the prospect of his subjects' worship of a giant man-lion-god. I mean, as a person without the body of a lion, that is pretty tough to compete with.

So after our photo-assault of Giza, we went to the Three Pyramids Papyrus Institute, which is not so much a place of higher learning as it is a way to sell traditional Egyptian art. We got a one-on-one demonstration on the papyrus making process, shots of hibiscus juice, and an explanation of several ancient paintings reproduced from scrolls and tombs and such. Attention marsh-dwelling hipsters: there is an artisinal market niche for the taking, stateside. Papyrus is quite remarkable as a medium; it is flexible, durable, repairable, and washable. While we watched, our host transformed a green reed into a layered piece of 'paper', washed off of it what I had written in ink, tore the piece in half, then pressed the thing back together like new. Not quite as portable as a .pdf, but probably more likely to be accessible and readable after several millennia.

Lunch with a view.

We ate lunch in a place with a post-card view of the sphinx and pyramids, then spent the rest of the afternoon touring other pyramids outside of Giza, in the complexes known as Dahshur and Saqqara. At Dahshur, we saw the "bent" pyramid, so called because the builders changed the slope of the sides about half-way through. I couldn't help but think that the first contractor had quit/been fired, and that either the first or second contractor could not read/refused to follow the architect's drawings.




King: So, the first guy didn't really work out. *draws finger across throat*
Contractor #2: I can tell. It's good you hired me when you did, that thing would never withstand the millennia, the way he was building.
King: Can you fix it?
Contractor #2: Oh yeah. No problem.
King: ...
Contractor #2: It won't be cheap.
King: ...
Contractor #2: Ok, ok, I'll do it for free.
King: Finish before I'm dead.

The Bent Pyramid

These pyramids were definitely not on the tourist map. We were the only people there, other than the military guard and the guy who keeps the lights on inside. Since we were going to climb all the way to the center of the pyramid (yes, inside) we gave that guy a tip before we went in. He made a joke that we didn't get, and we laughed nervously as we descended the ramp/ladder. The shaft was about a meter high and a meter wide (don't worry American friends, I still think in feet and inches), dropping at a steep enough angle that, had the floor not been augmented with treads of square steel tubing, we would have slid all the way down and probably not been able to climb back out. At the bottom, we found a series of chambers leading to what I'm going to say was the middle of the pyramid. It reeked of ammonia. Having only what we were wearing and a couple of smartphones, we felt totally unprepared for the afterlife. We did not linger long.

The Red Pyramid: Yes, we were inside that pyramid.

Inside the Red Pyramid

The side of the Red Pyramid

Climbing out was easier than climbing in, and how refreshing we found the sand-filled wind and blazing sun after 10 minutes inside a 4500 year old crypt! The old man with the light switch was still laughing at the jokes we did not get as we climbed back down the face of the pyramid to our waiting tour guide and van. In the distance we could see the mound of rubble that remained of the "black pyramid" which had been built of clay bricks instead of stone. Lesson learned: don't skimp on materials when building for eternity.

The Descent

Although we were slated to go the Incredibly Amazing Sound and Light Extravaganza at the Giza pyramids, by 4:30 Q was exhibiting classic I-need-a-nap mania. Neither Jenn nor I was so interested in hearing the Sphinx, awash in red and green light, rumbling about the history we had already heard that we wanted to endure five more hours without supper and beer. So we went back to the hotel and swam in the pool. We wrapped up our evening with room service and some reality show featuring tattooed dudes in Russia crying about mammoth blood. It was perfect.