🙂 HISTORY!
🙁 Constant harassment for baksheesh! Filthy toilets!
Jacques and I had travelled to the UK almost one full earlier on 20 April 1992. We had not seen Oupa since so it was with great excitiment that we boarded our flights to Cairo where we were meeting him! He was overjoyed to be reunited with Trent!
We stayed in a budget hotel in a very noisy part of Cairo! The souks were a maze selling all sorts of interesting items. The hotel guys adored Trent!
We watched them making rugs.
Our transport was camels and carriage!
We arranged a tour of Cairo which included a camel safari to the Sphinx and Pyramids. It felt almost surreal to actually be there … completely in awe of the fact that I was standing right there in the legacy of an ancient civilisation was mind blowing. We were constantly harassed to buy water, trinkets, more camel rides etc etc! We were told that they were built 4,500 years ago in 2500BC in the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt. The latest theory is it took two decades to complete the Great Pyramid, the last and only surviving ancient wonder, with an army of around 100,000 paid labourers. The Great Pyramid is also named Cheops. The second and third Pyramids of Giza are called, Chephren and Mycerinus. These were built by Pharoah Khafre (who also built the Sphinx) and Pharaoh Menkaure. There are actually 9 Pyramids in total. The other six are smaller ones. Giza is the most famous, but across Egypt, they’ve discovered over 138 Pyramids! The Great Pyramid of Giza is 139 metres high and each block weighs approximately 2.5 tonnes. There are 2.3 million blocks that make up the Great Pyramid of Giza. Making the total weight 6.5 million tonnes!
Located south of Cairo, Saqqara was the vast necropolis of the Ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis, and is home to the nation’s oldest pyramid: the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Aside from being home to Egypt’s oldest pyramid, Saqqara is the largest archaeological site in the country
The Cairo Museum was amazing – loved seeing all the artefacts from Tutankhamen’s tomb.
The views from Cairo tower were great. The tower was inspired by lotus flowers, made up of 8 million mosaic lozenges, with a revolving restaurant. Its is 187 metres in height, was the tallest tower in the whole of Africa for ten years after it was built, and remains the tallest in North Africa to this day.
We left Cairo taking a train to Aswan.
Aswan was also an amazing place.We really enjoyed our cruise down the Nile on a Felucca.
Jacques enjoyed a sheesh pipe with locals!
From Aswan we took a bus to Luxor. Bizarrely, the South African film, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ was the film on board! The Collossi of Memmon were HUGE!
Visiting the Valley of the Kings was awe inspiring! It was so hot that we took a horse drawn carriage!
Trent enjoyed watching the snake handler!
We then took a bus to Hurghada and crossed by a small fishing boat with a disgusting toilet to Sharm – el – Sheikh. At that time there was one hostel and one German diving operator! It was called Tiran Dive Club. We booked a dive for the next day. The first dive was Jack Fish Alley with lovely coral and two caves which were a bit claustrophobic. The next dive was Ras Mohammed with the toilet seats – Jacque’s o-ring blew and he shot to the surface from 30m and burst his ear drum! It was complete chaos!
The next day we had to take a tourist bus to Eilat in Israel – there were tanks everywhere! The border crossing was horrendous as we were leaving Egypt to enter Isreal and our South Africa passports cost us hours of delay. Very frustrating!
Go To: Egypt
