ORIGINAL POST: 6 Feb 2008
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Throw all your presuppositions out the window...
If you've never been, there's no way to describe it...
The History Channel and Discovery Channel barely can scratch the surface...
Tourist books can't get close to preparing you for what you're going to experience...
Strap yourself in for this epic photo blog... multiple posts ahead. Wading through 3313 photographs to convey some idea of what I've just seen - and I still feel they only tell a fraction of the story.
Welcome to Egypt.
From the first moment we landed, I knew it would be one of those unforgettable trips.
What started as a normal flight...
Definitely a first for me to hear the flight attendants making announcements in Arabic. That's EgyptAir, though...
Beautiful blue skies, partly cloudy skies, picturesque Mediterranean islands.
And dirty airplane windows, of course. Yes, yet another airplane wing shot...
But "normal enough" turned rather exciting very quickly. I should have known we'd get the pilot that used to be a fighter pilot turned airline pilot. Upon our landing, we did one of those high-wind storm landings were we bounce after we hit the ground and slide sideways across the runway.
"I've been on a lot of flights," said our sponsor, Jerry Myhan, "but that was the roughest landing we've ever had."
In the midst of a good 10 seconds of screaming by many of the female passengers on board, I had the presence of mind to start shooting out the window...
This was in the middle of the bounce under full airbrake. When the plane bounced it rolled a good number of degrees right and pitched the right wing up. Let me just say... LOTS of loud engine noise and mechanical rattling.
And if you've never been to Cairo airport before, you don't get out at the terminal gate like most of the rest of the world. It is old-world style... and you feel like the president walking down the stairs onto the open tarmac. But, this time, maintenance vehicles and ground crew crowded the plane and began working on it. Evidently, the landing was as rough as it seemed!
Our Cairo experience began rough, but first impressions don't go very far when our Egyptian instructor invited all of us to his house for some meet-and-greet time...
And take that Sigma 30/1.4... LOVE that DOF!! I love that lens!
And the first night was met with the most surreal experience yet... only 6 hours in...
...Cairo traffic. Our fearless leader, Khalid Osmon, explained, "Before you drive in Cairo, the only rule you have to learn is 'there are no rules'... and a greenlight means go - and a redlight means go faster."
Yeah... you just think I'm joking... or exaggerating... yeah, we thought that, too... We thought Osmon was just saying that as just 'something cute people say'. But, alas...
For instance:
How many lanes? Seven? Six? Why don't they just follow the stripes on the road!? Yeah, what stripes...? There should have been 3 lanes here. This is on one of the bridges crossing over the Nile.
But the next day began rather well. Early wake-up call, but well worth it. Start early... beat the large, midday crowds...
And beat the huge traffic - all but the locals doing their everyday 7am routine...
The destination was 5 minutes away. You can appreciate it from a distance, but being at the base of #1 of the Wonders of the Ancient World is an awe-inspiring experience.
Its huge. You get closer and closer and it just gets bigger and bigger. The blocks placed by PAID (not slave) workers 4000 years ago are about chest high-each. And there are 1.9 million of them in this structure. Wrap your head around that...
1.9 million. It is truly a colossal structure. The Parthenon is impressive, but there's just something about the Pyramids... they have another 1000 years on the Parthenon...
For a little scale... not the people in the foreground... the people on the steps...
Kinda big... This one wasn't even the "Great Pyramid" - this one is the smallest. We went inside of the Cheops pyramid. No pictures - no cameras allowed... I didn't always heed that rule - but this time I had to.
What is it like inside a pyramid? Um... small... cramped... very stuffy... very stale air... kinda smells like tons of sweaty claustrophobic people...
But, generally, that smell became commonplace. Kinda smells like camel. Mounted police... on camels... all around the Pyramids.
And for the family, I got the obligatory grinner in front of the pyramids...
Did I mention they're huge? And there is SO much going on around them...
Security guards doing their job... oh, and notice the size of the blocks...
For many of our group, it was a first experience with panhandlers and trinket sellers. It was a pretty intense crash-course in ignoring very very pushy people. They just crowd the area around the Sphinx.
Oh well... its the way things are... part of Egypt. The way of life for so many people there...
More on that later... it is on of those things you just have to deal with. Along with the jeers and taunts that go with it.
Oh, and why is this picture exactly like almost every other photograph of the Sphinx you've ever seen?
Its a really cool thing - pretty impressive - but there are only so many ways to photograph the thing...
There was, however, an unexpected thing there that I had never heard of but was pretty cool. Back in the early 1900's, a horse fell in a hole near the base of one of the pyramids. They dug around a little and found an entire boat buried in its own sarcophagus just a few meters away from the pyramid. More impressive still is this boat is from 2800BCE. Yes, a 4800 year old boat. And this isn't just a little thing... 79 meters bow to stern.
They built this really cool building over the site where it was discovered and turned it into a museum for the "Solar Boat". Educational moment: during the lengthy ceremony associated with the death of a "god-king" pharaoh back in the Old Kingdom period, a symbolic boat was used to shuttle the king's spirit through its 12-hours of darkness before it emerges in the daylight of the afterlife - hence the name "Solar Boat". Its name is a bit of a misnomer, though - it is not exactly as eco-friendly as the name implies...
Anyways...
What else from the Giza Pyramids?
Our driver for the 8 days was Magdee... he was just about the best driver I've ever sat behind. Only one wreck the whole time... and it wasn't even our fault! Haha... His bus was one of those new Mercedes buses with independent rear wheel steering. Cameras all over the bus... Pretty darn cool...
Oh, and just for you information... I've changed up how I save files onto Uber.com now... because some of these photos have little details that can only be appreciated in full view. So... click on the picture... and it'll be pretty big... look at the little details... like the man in the exterior camera on Magdee's bus.
Lets see... Mrs. Myhan - one of our accompanying sponsors...
"What are you taking a picture of?" she asks me as we were waiting in line in the funerary temple at the base of the Sphinx.
"Just being random," I reply.
We ALWAYS had armed escorts following us around. At least one, usually two.
This was Ali.
Know how to tell the difference between "just" a security guard and a police officer in Egypt?
Automatic weapons... Kinda makes a lot of difference in the respect you give the crossing guard, doesn't it? But, hey... its a military state, what do you expect?
For a city of 18million, the crime rate is shockingly low... percentage - of course.
Fun traffic... never know what you'll see... Mercedes CLK's and camels and horse-drawn carriages. People walking in the street... cars on the wrong side of the road. Whatever...
That's something that just is a fun part of Egypt life.
But then there are things that people don't talk about so readily. You always hear "don't drink the water" and it is driven into people's psyche. You rarely hear WHY you don't drink the water...
Well... this could give you an idea...
Its everywhere. The canals are FULL of garbage and filth and human waste and dead animals and... everything normally found in our landfills and more. All of this canal water feeds DIRECTLY to the Nile. Where does all of Egypt get its water? The Nile. After all... you're in the desert.
Evidently, I had a pretty strong constitution and could tolerate using the water to brush my teeth and stuff... but I wasn't about to regularly drink it. Kinda makes you all warm and fuzzy to think about this canal water coming out onto your toothbrush doesn't it?
Yummy...
And yummy-er still is our eating locations. Nice little vistas overlooking the Nile. The meals put on for us were rather good, too. Go for a little local flavor where restaurants are nice venues during the day and nightclubs after hours...
Did I mention our driver was good at navigating the tiny, crammed-full parking lots? Good job, Magdee...
Public transit anyone? This was across the road from the Cairo Museum.
So... that concluded the first 36 hours...
I returned at 14:00 today after very few hours of sleep for the past 4 days... more on that later... causing me to get sick for the last 1.5 days... more on that later, too.
Much love to you all,
~Noah D.
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