So this is Cairo. We arrived round lunch time here and whoa! What a difference. We could see getting off the plane for one thing. For another we were bused from the plane to the terminal which was great after almost 24 hours straight of constantly filtered air. Dubai was not nice in that regard.

We were met at the gate by Mahamaud who is our tour group leader for Egypt. We'll be meeting our guide and the rest of the group tomorrow.

We drove from the east of the city past were the old dictator lived (not that we could see anything) across the Nile to the west side were the pyramids and our hotel it. He said we'd pass through some poorer districts but other that the state of disrepair on everything I didn't notice much difference.

The whole place is amazing! And the road rules. I laughed when Mahamaud said traffic lights were just there for decoration but I didn't even see any. People were just pulled over or stopped where-ever they wanted. The amazing part was there was no accidents at all that I saw and the trip to the hotel was really quick. We obviously arrived on a good day though. Friday and Saturday are their rest days so it was apparently pretty quiet. Maybe as busy as Christchurch during the day. Mahamaud said they don't have rush hours, they have rush days.

Our hotel rooms are lovely! Cool! The heat here is amazing. I was most impressed with the pool that is the view outside our room. We got our money finally. I wonder how long it'll last us.

I am not impressed with the mineral water that is all we have to drink at the moment. I was really thirsty. Getting off the plane and just needed some water so we grabbed a couple of big bottles of this Nestle mineral water. Mineral is right, very heavy metal taste. I think I'll keep taking my medication just to keep the bad taste of the water out of my mouth.

We had this afternoon to ourselves. We jumped into our togs and took a dip in the pool. Now thats a great way to get cool. Then we just lay in the sun waiting to dry before jumping back in again. It was absolutely wonderful. We were the only ones there. There were no other guests just the staff. It was exactly what we needed after a long days travel with who knows how many people.

We've decided to skip dinner tonight and head straight to bed.