Around the world in 155 days: Ready to leave Cairo, already.

I was ambivalent about having to come back to Cairo for a couple of days before I leave for Morocco - but I've had a surprisingly good day (yesterday) and a day where I think Cairo can just shag off and go and implode somewhere in a filthy pit of dead cats, pollution and car horn honking..... Having had both ends of the spectrum, I'm now ready (well and truly) to leave Cairo - but sad to leave Egypt overall because as with SO many countries, the capital just doesn't do the country justice. (Case in point: Canberra, albeit for different reasons).

Cairo in a nutshell:
1. Dead cats - yes, everywhere. Where there are cats, there are dead cats. I've never seen so many cats, stray cats, dead cats.
2. Poor dental hygiene: they're missing, they're black, they're green, they're yellow, they're horsey, they're mouldy... urgh. It makes me sick every time I cop an eyeful. Maybe it's because you can't buy Colgate here.
3. Harassment: refer to previous blog entries.
4. Traffic and pollution. Traffic and pollution. Horn honking.
5. Having to bargain for everything- my haircut (30% off), my laundry (50% off), burning my meory card (25% off).... it's tiring. I like fixed prices!

But, Cairo has the pyramids. Sigh. It has the pyramids, therefore it wins regardless.....

My good day yesterday - I decided to visit the "other" pyramids - which was my best move yet. The pyramids at Saqqara and Dahshur are awesome - and way underrated by comparison with they're Giza relatives. OK, so Giza's are bigger, but the other ones are older and way more intersesting.... and they're near abandoned. I was the only person in the Red pyramid, and one of a handful of people at the Bent Pyramid and Saqqara.... It was a welcome change from camel touts, donkey touts, horse toutss, souvenir touts, Coke touts... well you get the idea.... even so I was still black with dust by the end of the day.... and I was sweaty so it was like I was covered in a thin layer of mud... I won't miss that either....

I even managed to score a driver who didn't come out with "would you like to see my brother/father/sister/long lost uncle with one gammy leg's shop" and let me sit in peace for the journey....a red letter day by Cairo standards.....

The drive was only 25km out of Cairo, but in the middle of a vast desrt plain and through a village where donkey and cart was the only transportation, and boys on the roadside were selling piles of onions and garlic, and melons... it was green one minute, and then bam! it was desert....

Here's the Red Pyramid at Dahshur.... red is a stretch, but as one of the early pyramids, the inside is certainly impressive - three huge galleries with peaked cielings (grrr. the word that meant I only got 99/100 on my Grade 6 spelling test and apparently i still haven't learnt. Oh well, from now on, that's how it's spelt) deep in the pyramid - I had to crawl down a 63m tunnel to get inside, and inside it was dark, and deadly silent - I was a bit scared. Old mate tried to give me a cigarette lighter so I could see better - moron - the inside has a wooden floor and wooden staircase up to the burial chamber...... and I don't think they're well equipped for fire out there in the desert....

The Bent pyramid. This was an early attempt, and they built the edges too steep. It started cracking just before they were halfway up, so they changed the angle. (Dad, I don't think it would have passed the three day rule - it would have driven me mad).

The Owner of this Camel tried to charge me for including him in the photo. He was unsuccessful.

The Black pyramid is just ruins now. It's a blur, but you can see the green, dense stretch of palms in the background before they stop abruptly at the rim of the desert.

One for Mum - yes, it's curly again.

But here it is straight again at sunset, over Cairo.... one last time....

My favourite pyramid - the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. One of the guards offered to show me inside for a bribe (visitors are banned inside) - but I resisted.....a short time in the Pyramid, a long time in an Egyptian prison.....

All these pyramids were in eyesight of each other, and used to stretch all the way tothe Giza plateau. This poor one in front of the Step pyramid is a bit tired, but deserved a photo. It's not it's fault that people stole all the limestone blocks to build houses and now it's a pile of rubble..

At the Step pyramid, they put this statue of the King in the cellar at the foot of the pyramid and you can peer through a tiny hole to see him.... it's all a bit eerie.

Cairo's taxis are as old as the Pharoahs. They are a tired black and white fleet of 1980 Renault tiny sedans with cracked vinyl seats and recently installed cassette (not CD, cassette) players... and here's the meters that were installed at the time that the taxis were introduced to prove it....

Today was alright, until I sat in Cairo traffic for an hour (no air con, old taxi) to go to a place that was SHUT, AFTER getting ripped off by the cab driver (10 pounds somehow miraculously turned into 20 pounds on arrival. I was too hot to care, he got his money, and some choice mutterings. Before that though, I had a lot of fun at Khan al Khalil, the market area: shopping, drinking tea, people watching, drinking coffee, eating felafel, bargaining and haggling and so on..... It was really good fun!

I tried to find Will a tshirt with a Camel on it - but all the camels were smoking sheesha, pipes, cigarettes, and I just didn't think it was appropriate. I had a big discussion with the stallholder - he kept opening more bags of shirts and saying "this camel smoking, this camel smoking, this camel smoking, oh loook! This camel only smoking a little bit! this one ok!!!".... it was quite funny. When I said "No", he pulled out another bag - of shirts that said "A Camel can do 14 days without a Drink! I can't even go 1!" - he tried to insist it was water, but it wasn't and I didn't think that was an appropriate shirt for a 2 year old either..... I can hear Will now: "Mummy, can I wear the drunk camel shirt today". No. I don't think so...

Here are some pics of the Khan....