Egypt 2009 - Day 3 (Afternoon)

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 – Tour Giza area

Our next stop was lunch. This was at a nearby open air restaurant. The lunch was not included, but we really had no choices other than to eat or not eat. The cost was $10 (US) plus drinks if we had any (and here water is considered a drink and you pay for it.) The food was pretty good. It was, in my opinion, better than the food at the hotel. I do think that it should be included with the tour when there aren’t any other places to eat and there isn’t a menu from which to order. The fresh baked bread was wonderful.

Egypt 2009 Day 3 Afternoon

After lunch, we finally went to the most famous site in Egypt – the Pyramids of Giza. Here we admired the Great Pyramid of Khufu (AKA Cheops) for a short while then we drove on past the second pyramid (Pyramid of Khafre) to a good view point.

Here we embarked on what was the adventure of the day. Some of us opted to go for a camel ride. We road our camels back to the Pyramid of Menkaure – the third of the major Pyramids of Giza. Yes, I actually road a camel. The cost was $10 for the ride plus $1 tip for the camel herder that led us. Our first excitement was being assigned to our camels and camel herders. Some of the herders got very belligerent over who had been picked and who had not and they starting arguing over us. We had a security guard with us who got between them and us and was holding them back. I was about ready to hightail it back to the bus before this got really ugly. But the bus had already left and was headed to our rendezvous point. Things cooled down and I was assigned my camel and driver. The driver was short several teeth and looked much older that I supposed he really was. I mounted the camel with the help of the driver and one stirrup on the left side. My first problem was clearing the second saddle horn that is in back when I threw my leg over. Horse saddles don’t have another horn in back. Now I was sitting on the camel while it was kneeling down. I had to stay on while the camel stood up. This was no easy feat as the camel stands up on his hind feet first putting the seating surface at about a 45 degree angle. I was leaning back and trying not to impale myself on the front saddle horn or tumble off head first in front of the camel while it took its sweet time fully standing up. I have no idea if my camel was a girl or a boy so I’ll settle for “it”. It finally was up on all fours and we started off, me rolling from one side to the other with the gate of the camel. About 5 minutes into the ride, Marianne commented that she thought a 20 minute ride would be long enough. (Our guide told us that the ride would last about 20 minutes.) I concurred. When it ended, I went through the same nearly falling off sensation as I did at the beginning. I paid the driver his tip. I’m glad that I did it once in my life, but I have no need for a repeat performance any time in the foreseeable future.

We drove over to the second pyramid where some of the folks that were willing to crawl through a 70 foot 3 X 3 tunnel known to be very hot and stuffy to see a broken sarcophagus and have bragging rights to say that they had actually been inside a pyramid left on their quest and the rest of us got on the air conditioned bus. As we left the pyramids, we passed the Solar Boat Museum which holds a reconstructed Egyptian boat discovered in 1954. I would have loved to have stopped here but it was already closed. Another strike against wasting time at the carpet school.

Our final stop of the day was once again a "shopping" stop - this time to a papyrus parchment making store. The demo on how the parchment is made was interesting, but then they tried to sell you the paintings that were available in the shop on papyrus. Admittedly the paintings were pretty and very colorful. However, every time I stopped to look at something, someone would be at my side wanting to know where I was from. I resisted the urge to say “None of your damned business.” I sat down in a chair and starting dozing off until it was time to get on the bus.

We had another so-so dinner at the hotel. My major complaint about the food at the hotel was that the hot food was not kept hot. The soup would be lukewarm as were other dishes. It was a buffet. The desserts were great though.

Thinking back on the day, I was pretty much underwhelmed by the pyramids. I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t experience any kind of wow factor with them. I hate to admit it, but the best part of the day was probably the camel ride. This was a very long day and I was still suffering dearly from jet lag and it did not improve my disposition any. Some down time at the hotel would have been welcome.

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