Pyramids

So today was the day: my first official Egyptian foray into tourism. (Although I continually told cabbies and hustlers Mish hagawi -- "I'm not a tourist!") Three other girls and I piled over to Giza to see the pyramids, the Sphinx, and other assorteds. Oh, and to ride camels.

We got up early, and met around 0630 to head over, since Lonely Planet said the plateau itself opens at 7am. Of course no cabs were coming by, so we started walking down the road until we could flag one. I lost my first time bargaining with a cabbie. I forgot Haggling Cardinal Rule #1: Never ever ever throw out your desired price as your first option. Oops. So instead of the desired LE 20, it was LE 25 to get there.

We drive up through the first gray and cloudy Egyptian morning I've seen. When we reach the entrance to Giza, we're told it doesn't open until 800. What? Lonely Planet never lies! (There's a reason we simply call it "The Bible.") So a hustler comes over and starts telling us we have to ride horses up to the pyramids. And we say no, thank you. And he keeps up. And I wanted to tell him "we'll walk" (namshee), but end up accidentally saying "get the heck outa here"(imshee). A little more forceful than desired!

So an hour early and nothing really to do, we walk around the street a bit and then head down to the hotel at the end of the block to hide out in their bathroom for a while. When we walk back out, the road in front of us is JAMMED with tour buses. So we high-tail it up the street to where you're supposed to pay the entrance fee to the Giza Plateau. Except, best I can figure, we ended up in the midst of a million tour groups with pre-paid stuff. So we just walked straight in! Oops?!

As we walk up the road, passing the tour groups which are scattering to their various buses and leaders (my favorite was the Japanese group of elderly folks all wearing neon green scarves around their necks to keep them together...reminded me a bit of kindergarteners), all of a sudden there's something behind the fog.

It's a pyramid.

And not just "a pyramid." "The pyramid." Kufu's Great Pyramid of Giza--the one who started it all. Out of nowhere on this foggy plateau, there's a huge pyramid. It was a little amazing. Lonely Planet (now with only a 99% hit rate, we felt a bit betrayed) said only 300 tickets were available each day to enter the Great Pyramid, so we hustled over to the ticket place. LE 50 (since we're students everything's half price) got us tickets into the pyramid. Tickets in hand, we photo-opped in front of the bottom blocks, and then climbed up to the entrance. The men in gelabiyyas (look like calf-length cotton nightgowns and worn by many men here) took our tickets and asked "Camera?" "No," we all happily lied and opened our bags to show no cameras....which were in back pockets and jacket pockets. So we walk in--it's surprisingly and refreshingly warm and dry inside. The stone feels warm, not cold. Quickly we reach the ascent--a four-foot tall shaft with a reasonably steep upgrade. Handrails on either side, and the floor is wooden with horizontal strips every foot or so for steps. It's a longer ascent than we think it will be, but all of a sudden we're standing again. Walk a bit more, crouch and walk a bit more, then enter the Burial Chamber. Surprisingly bare. As in, completely bare except for a vault in one corner that housed his sarcophagus.

Upon exiting, it was a little less foggy, but still pretty bad. Some temple-looking things caught our eye on the left, so we headed over there to check out the pillars in the rock. It was a tomb for one of Kufu's viziers--his Chief Vizier, I believe. The man tells us to come in, and we hesitate. At Giza, you suspect everyone's a hustler. He says "I am watchman, I am not guide, come in." He shows us in the first room reliefs all over the wall. For something this old and this "discovered," the reliefs appear widely intact. We pull out cameras and then turn to see the sign on the door that says cameras and video forbidden (of course). He says "You will not tell outside", passing his hand over his mouth, "but in here, camera okay." So we start snapping away. Reliefs of life and people and animals from five thousand years ago onto digital cameras. He takes us to the next room, a relief-ed (relieved?) false door. At the base are images of the three pharoahs of the pyramids: Kufu, Khafre, and Menkuare, which means this part of the tomb was finished long AFTER his death. The next room is more carvings, another false door. The next room--the tomb room, now bare but for the reliefs along the walls and the carved heiroglyphs--is a place for more pictures, and, says our "watchman," a good place for meditation. We give him good--even extravagant--baksheesh, but getting the pictures was a blast.

Exiting the tomb, we head to the second pyramid--Khafre. We pay the entry fee (not as steep as Kufu, LE 15 instead of LE 50), and walk past the guards who ask "Camera?" "No." We enter heading down, this time. In the Burial Chamber there is nothing on the walls, again. Just another reminder that the inside of the pyramid was uniportant compared to the statement made by its sheer presence. Nothing on the walls except what looked like charcoal, high up: Scoptera de G. Bolazoni 2 Mar 1818. Guess we know who made it in. We take more pictures here, and then head out.

After two pyramids we're a bit done with dead things, so we start down the Causeway and there is a round shape ahead of us, after what looks like a steep drop. "God," I said. "That's the Sphinx." We're looking at the back of its head. Lonely Planet quotes someone famous as making a stellar observation: seeing the Sphinx is like meeting a tv personality for the first time--it's much smaller in person. Abu al-Hol ("Father of Terror") is not terribly big, despite the excellent photography used to make it look like he just hangs out at the base of Khafre's Pyramid (he does, I guess...what's a few hundred yards between friends?). We head over--finally something free!--and start getting pictures of the Sphinx, us and the Sphinx, the Sphinx and a woman in an atrocious paisley denim set....

Sitting a bit away from the Sphinx and crowds of Japanese and German tourists, we enjoy some granola bars (Snickers Marathon Energy is some good stuff when you haven't eaten all morning), until a man on a camel comes to the other side of the fence. He asks if we want to ride four camels into the desert and around the pyramids. All morning we've been pushing people off, waiting for when we feel like it. He says LE 20 (Lonely Planet suggests LE 25), so we look at each other and decide: Sold!

We walk around, and he comes over with two other men, and four camels in all. We get on the camels (the guides each get on with one of the girls, I end up with my own camel which suits me fine), and walk up a path. Then we gallop a little, then walk. We slow to a stop and the man gets down from his camel and starts to talk about the pyramids, and how he'll take us around them and the desert and tell us all about them. Some people, he says, will pay 120 pounds, 150, even 200. I give to you for 80 Egyptian pounds each. Photos and everything. SHOOT! Up on the camels already, and a ways away from where we started (okay, like a 15 minute walk). We start looking at each other, a little panic. I try to bargain a bit with him, lying that other friends had gotten a similar tour for 60 each, but he doesn't buy it. In retrospect, the guides must all set a baseline and agree not to go under it...typical oligopoly behavior (I can't believe I just brought microeconomic theory into my blog....), and I gave a price under it. So we look at each other and finally decide, what the heck. We're here, we all very much wanted to ride camels today, and LE 80 is something like USD $15. For $15, would I ride a camel three times around the ring at the zoo? Probably not. For $15, would I ride a camel around Giza for an hour? Probably yes. So we set off. This time a guide climbs onto my camel, and I'm in back. I refuse to hold onto him, instead scooting back to the edge of the saddle and holding the saddle on either side. It works, even when we gallop. The next time we pause, he gets onto the camel he had been on.

(NB: Lonely Planet is very up front and borderline fatalistic about riding horses, camels, and donkeys in Giza. They give disaster scenarios about being forced off your camel far away and them charging awful sums to take you back, guides mounting the camel behind women, and the guides being generally awful people. I therefore spend this entire ride not really enjoying the ride, but more worried thinking "When are they going to scam us? How do we best stay together? I have to always be able to see Giza." The other girls report that each guide tries to sweet talk them, one said Lindsey was worth 200 camels, two chickens, and the Great Pyramid. The guides also liked to gallop because then the girls put their arms around the guides' waists. They would hold the girls' hands and kiss their hands. I felt so bad when they told me, wishing that the guide had stayed on my camel, since at least I knew how to handle it. Unfortunately, P.T. Barnum is a brilliant man, and if I go back again I still won't trust any of them an inch.)

Here's another note. Every camel in Giza is apparently named "Michael Jackson" or "Mickey Mouse." I feel for the former, and am thankful I rode the latter, since Mickey Mouse seems to bestow a more docile temper. (But if your name was Michael Jackson, wouldn't you be grumpy?) And after riding a camel for an hour, your inner thighs HURT from holding on...but I thought camels would be harder to ride. They're very easy.

By the time we finish the camel ride and taking pictures we're a little wiped, but we want to see the Solar Barque, currently the oldest known boat. Pharoah Kufu had five cedar-wood boats bear his sarcophagus down the Nile to Giza, and the boats were buried at the base of his pyramid to transport his soul to the Afterlife. One of these boats was found and excavated basically intact. 4600 year-old cedar, restored to be just about seaworthy. It was worth the price of admission to go in and see this thing. First, it's huge. It really is a massive boat. Second, it's held together with no planks, no nails, no studs. It's a rope-boat. The boat is held together with knotted ropes on the inside and in between that swell when wet, making the boat watertight. Third, the little museum below had bits of the original rope and original matting that covered the cabin. 4600 year-old plant fiber, still around. I sound like Indiana Jones gone silly, I know, but just something that fragile, that old, still being around. Oh, and fourth, you have to wear these canvas booties over your shoes to keep out sand.

By the time we got out, we were pretty well wiped. I had to stand in line for a good 25 minutes to use the bathroom, and when we regrouped all we wanted to do was leave. It was about 1300, and it was getting BUSY. One surprising thing was the amount of Egyptians I saw touring there. I expected only foreign tourists, but by the time we left it was mostly Egyptian families out for a Friday (weekend) jaunt. One cab driver asked if we needed a taxi, and wanted LE 50. I said LE 15. He got pretty angry, so I told him we were going to the restaurant and left him blustering. At the hotel at the bottom of the hill (same place we'd used the bathrooms this morning), we walked into a cafe sort of thing, and got two teas and two coffees. We were wiped and wanted something to keep us going to get home. We enjoyed them (the room was beautiful--the hotel was built as an 18th-century hunting lodge for the King), and then got the bill. A cup of tea (plain old Lipton) was LE 16. That's about USD $3. Outrageous!! But we paid and left, feeling that the sitting down and relaxing was probably worth the gross price.

When we left, the man at the gate offfered to take us back to Zamalek (where we live) for LE 50. I said LE 15. He blustered more, but went to LE 45. I stuck to my guns, using my favorite excuse in any language--"We're students!" He blustered, saying nobody would take that price. Another comes over and says LE 40. No. Three are coming towards us and one shouts LE 25. SOLD! We jump in his cab and head out. Supposedly you can do it for LE 20 if you're good, but I'm still learning to haggle. From LE 50 to LE 25, though...not bad.

So we returned, and I spent a good two hours getting my photos up and running. If I missed "sharing" my Kodak album with you, please let me know. I wish Kodak would just give me a URL to post. The pictures are pretty darn good.

Tomorrow, sleeping in and Khan al-Khalili, a huge outdoor market. (Darn, and I was hoping to put away Lonely Planet for a few days....)