Around the World in 365 days: Cairo Again, Egypt 13.09

After a quick breakfast, we packed up the campsite and left in our Lancruisers. It was another long, hot drive, but we had lots of great scenery on the way. We stopped in Bahariya to refresh ourselves and pick up our bags before we returned to Cairo.

We drove for about half an hour before we reached another checkpoint. Unfortunately we had forgotten one of our papers, and we had to drive all the way back to get it. Wahid was not happy, he hates all the bureaucracy that you have to go through to get anything done.

Finally we made it through the checkpoint, and were on our way to Cairo. We made it to the huge city by about 5pm. It was a relief to get back to the airconditioned hotel. We had about an hour break, so we rushed for the shower as soon as we had the chance.

Soon we met up for our final meal as a group at the usual 'Gad' restaurant. We laughed again at some of the silly names on the menu. One of the sandwiches was called, 'Viagra', because they see seafood as an aphrodisiac. We also rehashed the funny things that people in our group had said during the trip. It was a fun farewell dinner.

In reality, it wasn't really a farewell for us just yet, as we had an outing planned together for that evening. Most of us were staying in Cairo for a couple more days at the same hotel too. Our plans for the evening, were to see a group of Sufi dancers, and to visit the local market for souvenirs.

We all took taxis to the theatre, which was not far from a huge mosque that can hold 25,000 people. The mosque was all lit up, and it looked really pretty. Wahid lead us to the theatre entrance, and we found that the place was already filled with tourists from all over the world. We found some good seats, and settled in, listening to all the different languages being spoken around us. The Sufi dancing was a free promotional event sponsored by the Egyptian government, so the place was packed. The building was like an enormous courtyard with an open roof and balconies built into each storey of the building.

The first part of the show was with drummers and other percussion players. They seem to be having a vibrant dialogue, just with their instruments. It was amazing to watch. One of the guys was really comical with the way he moved and how he used his face. We weren't supposed to take any movies, just photos, but we managed to get a couple of surreptitious clips. You just had to pretend that your camera was focusing, and taking a while with each shot :)

The main event of the show, was the spinning dance. It was like a world record attempt at spinning in the same direction for the longest time possible. The guy was literally spinning for more than 30 minutes.

By this time we were begging him to stop in our minds. It hurt just to look at him, and you can only watch someone spinning for so long before it becomes tedious. They kept us entertained with other dancers moving around the outside, and by removing different layers of the spinner's skirts while he was spinning.

After the dancing, we went to the nearby market. It was just like the other ones we had been to, but with a much higher density of people. We weren't interested in buying anything, so we just wandered aimlessly behind the rest of the group. We managed to escape all of the sellers as we went past, without giving in and buying anything. Quite an achievement!

Soon we returned to our hotel, where we farewelled our guide Wahid. We found him quite grumpy and unfriendly in the first part of the trip, but magically in the last two days, he became everyone's best friend. Probably something to do with the tips that we were expected to give that evening, and the evaluation form that he was about to send us.

The next morning, we headed back to the Cairo museum, because we missed on seeing a lot of it on our first time there. Artur decided he didn't want to go in, so he sat on the lawns outside and wrote in his diary of the trip. Loren went in to see the museum by herself, which she loved, as she got to go slowly over every exhibit.
There were so many amazing things to see in the museum. The lower floor was covered with the biggest pieces. They had huge sarcophagi, enormous sculptures of kings and queens and panels of hieroglyphs. The top floor had things grouped into rooms specific to their kind.
The best room of all was the mummy room! Loren was so excited to see them, because she missed out before. The ticket collector tried to chat her up at the door to the exhibit, but she warded him off with her engagement ring. Once she escaped from the entrance, she went inside to admire the famous mummies. The coolest thing about these mummies is that they are all kings and queens or closely linked to the royals.
The first two mummies were Queen Hatshepsut and Hatshepsut's wet nurse. The wet nurse had the most amazing long hair that Loren had ever seen on a mummy. It looked like it was blond and wavy. Hatshepsut was described as being 'obese with bad teeth'! Although you can't really see unless you're an expert, because the mummies are so shrunken with time and loss of body fluids and organs.
The other mummies were mostly kings, and one of them was extremely tall for his time and grew to a very old age. This is in a time when people barely passed the age of 30 and were very small in stature. The mummy room was definitely the coolest part of the museum. It's crazy to think that these bodies belong to the very people that ruled Egypt thousands of years ago.
After the museum, we went back to the hotel, where we hung out until dinner time. We weren't sure about where it was safe to eat in town, so we went back to the Gad restaurant, despite its slow service and fast food atmosphere. We met our friends there, and Wahid showed up again too with his new tour group.
After dinner we went out for a shisha at a local cafe. It was in the middle of a very busy collection of cafes and shops. Nearby there was a soccer game showing on tv, so we got the chance to see how much the Egyptian people enjoy the sport. They were going crazy at every move!

We all cooled ourselves down with some cold Karkade, or Hibiscus tea. Loren loved this drink so much, that she had bought some of the flowers for herself, so she could make the tea. You can drink it cold or hot, and the flower is very strong and sweet in flavour.

The next day, we stayed in the hotel for most of the morning because Loren was sick again. We left the hotel at about midday to find some dry crackers and water for Loren. On our way, a man walked by and slammed into Loren with his shoulder and then into Artur. Artur was angry and followed him to shove him back, but thankfully the guy wasn't interested in fighting, just in being inconsiderate.

Loren started disliking Egypt at this point, especially when she was waiting out the front of the little mini mart and all the men just stared openly at her. It was like they were undressing her with their eyes, it was very uncomfortable. She wished she was wearing a burka like the religious muslims here, it would feel a lot more secure.
We rested at the hotel for a while longer, and then we decided to check out the Coptic Orthodox Christian neighbourhood. Apparently there was some cool architecture there. We took the subway to that neighbourhood, and started to wander around. We saw a cool looking section of ruins, so we had a look from above.

It was about 8pm, so we couldn't go inside. We wandered further down the street and found a Christian church. Artur wanted to go inside and have a look, it was filled with little kids running around and a couple of adults. However when we came in the door, we were told it was closed.

We wandered further down the street toward another street full of shops. We were stopped by a guy in military uniform who told us, 'It is finished'. We weren't sure exactly what was finished, as we just wanted to walk down the street not into a building. We realised for the first time, that Egypt is really quite a military state. We should have realised with all the checkpoints we had to go through in the desert, but while we travelled with our tour group, it was well disguised from us. The train station was also full of police and people in uniform sitting around talking.

We walked back to the hotel, after grabbing some dinner, watching the colourful lights of the taxis. The taxis here decorate themsleves with neon lights in all colours, to attract attention to themselves. It looks pretty funny! Just before we reached the hotel, Loren tried to take a picture of a huge billboard that had a picture of their president/dictator. Some parking guy came up to us and told us we weren't allowed. There was another military guy not far from this area too, and we realised just how strict and horrible a place Cairo would be to live.
The constant attention from Egyptian men, the overwhelming police and military presence, combined with Loren's constant food poisoning, made this one of the last places she ever wanted to live. Egypt was a great place for sightseeing, the archaeological sites, and the amount of ancient arifacts that you can see here are just incredible, but the heat and the dust and even the people here can turn you off quickly. Like India, we wouldn't return here in a hurry.