Friday 17 Feb 2012

Woke early and had a pretty nice buffet breakfast then just chilled until it was time to go to the airport for our flight to Cairo. I'm soooo excited, I've wanted to see the pyramids for, oh, l don't know…. ALL MY LIFE!

OMG!!! As we were descending into Cairo from the plane l was looking to my left and right(wait, l have to say, we were in a plane that is 3x3x3 seats and we were in the middle 3 seats), so, l was looking to my left and right trying to see the pyramids 'cause l thought it'd be awesome to see them from the air but l couldn't see them at all and I thought to myself, "that's okay, probably need to be right beside the window to enable a proper look so no biggie right, we'll see them soon". So we hopped off the plane and was met by Hossam , our tour guide, who deftly got us through customs, handled our luggage and guided us to our transport. We walked out of the airport to 11 degrees and rain, s***….l didn't bring a raincoat…who knew! When we hopped into our transport Hossam introduced us to our drive(Mosam….l know, l know) then he handed me a bouquet of fresh carnations and said "for you madame"….well l thought l was pretty spesh eh! He said it'd take about 40 minutes to get to our hotel, ( Four seasons Cairo at the First Residence) and l'm thinking "oh good, we'll see a few things on the way….well it nearly broke my heart and l just about burst into tears looking at the sight of the country. I just wasn't prepared for what l was seeing. I guess l was just as naïve as the Americans who come to Oz and expect to see kangaroos jumping all over the road…I was expecting to see pyramids all over the place but instead all l saw was a drab derelict country crying out for love. All of my romantic expectations were smashed in that short drive from the airport to the hotel. I saw houses with no roofs or window panes,(lots of satellite dishes though, hmm…) a cemetery that went on forever with houses practically on the graves, a cow being led down a street, a horse and cart amongst cars , utes carrying people in the back, cars that are piled high with l don't know what, rubbish piled high into a corner of a block, a butcher with carcasses hanging out in the open and streets with bonfires to give warmth to their inhabitants. The majority of cars are death traps or as Craig described the "piles of s***", the highways have no lane markings and it truly looked like a 3rd world country and probably for the first time ever l wondered if l was in any danger, sob. Hassan suddenly said, the hotel is just up here and l thought " but we're still in what looks like a slum area", as he pointed out the Giza zoo which is opposite our hotel and the French Consulate which is right next door to us. After checking into our very impressive hotel (check out the photo's) we took stock of our surroundings then had dinner. We've decided that on the 2 days we're here on our own after the tour finishes, we're gonna stay pretty close to our hotel. Well, we have to get up at around 6.45am in the morning to enable us to have breakfast and meet Hassan in the lobby at 8.45 so sayonara for now.