Day 10 - a rest day for our tired team travelling Cairo to Tel Aviv - much more security than we cared for. Tel Aviv was the slickest airport arrival ever with the help of Levy, our man in Israel, there to meet us inside the security frontline. Then a quick trip to our hotel, BY 14 - super-modern, minimalist, a shower like a monsoon, a great place to stay. Then Day 12- today, breakfast with fabulous Jewish bread next door at a cafe. Our guide, Graeme Stone (a...

Day 9 - early start for Anzac Dawn Ceremony with the Aussies and Kiwis in Cairo - at the Heliopolis War Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. We got lost on the way there but the driver managed to sort it out and deliver us with 3 minutes to spare. It is a beautiful cemetery and such s contrast to the squalor around it. I found the gardner later on and congratulated him (via interpreter) on the great job he was doing. The ceremony itself was small and ve...

Day 8 - a day visiting Maadi, Zeitoun, NZ Army Camps in WW1 (& WW2) and Heliopolis where Grandad Bert was in camp & a Convalescent Home for a while. As you might expect Cairo is a lot different than what it was 100 years ago. I suspect Bert might have recognised the trash in the streets but that would be about all. The city has boomed - especially in the last 10 years or so with a nationwide increase in population of 20mill. It seems the revolution to remove th...

Day 7 - a few wobbles. Jeff & Seft got the ‘squitters’ - not too bad though so it’s onwards and upwards. Temp 24degC , light breeze, sun not too fierce. Today was all about the trip to the Suez Canal about 2 hours from Cairo on a superhighway - same trip took the NZ Mounted Rifles a week in 1916. I really wanted to go to the Sinai Desert, but the military authorities would not let us. Turns out there are still a few hostilities going on out there and the ...

Day 6 - Cairo, 26deg C, good sleep last night, and a fabulous Egyptian omelette for breakfast (bodyweight ballooning up past the 88kg mark for sure - going to be a reckoning when I get home. Up and away at 8am with Carter, an Egyptian speaking perfect English and 20yrs experience as a Giza pyramids guide. It is still the post-Ramadan holiday here in Cairo - so not much traffic on the road but huge crowds of Egyptians out around the pyramids. It was all a bit o...