We have no idea when we docked in Port Said as we were asleep; our first contact with the continent of Africa went entirely unremarked.
Despite our best intentions we missed our alarm which had been set for 6.00am but we rushed through breakfast and made it to the muster in the Marquee where we were issued with a sticker for bus number two. The previous day we had been allowed to collect our passports now proudly bearing the Egyptian visa stamp so thus equipped we were escorted in bus groups off the ship for the first time. We scanned our cruise card and the computer said goodbye to each of us in turn. Now on the quayside before joining the convoy of coaches we were struck by the heat and the pressure of the Egyptian novelty sellers, we avoided eye-contact and refused to take any item offered as that would, in the seller’s view, have constituted a sale completed.
Having gone through Customs/Immigration and having our visas checked we were directed to our coach. A long line of coaches were parked down one side of the road and on the other side there were open backed jeeps crewed by armed soldiers. We got settled in one of the first coaches and our guide, Gharda, joined us, only when all the coaches were filled did the convoy move out. The jeeps were our escorts and they slotted in between every three or four coaches. We later heard that some of the coaches had plain-clothed armed guards sitting up from with their guides.
It was a surreal experience, as the convoy travelled through Port Said we noticed that each junction or crossroad we passed through was held open by the police to avoid us being stopped on our route out of the city.
To get out of Port Said we passed through a check point and then continued our three hour journey to Cairo the first part of which ran alongside the Suez Canal, we could not see the water in the canal but we passed close to large ships making their way in both directions.
The land we were passing through was rural and we were told very fertile, the farms were worked by families using horses rather than machinery. We noted that many of the farms had tall thin buildings which were for doves which in turn were raised as a food.
After about an hour on the road we left our escorts at Ismailia, which I think I remembered from Forces Favourites, and proceeded towards Cairo, en route we were warned not to photograph any thing which looked like a military installation, apart from the most basic farms everything looked as if it was military. The most basic factories had walls topped by barbed wire and observation posts often housing armed guards.
While we travelled Gharda was very interesting about Egyptian culture and sociology, her most notable fact was that the government was battling a population explosion which she illustrated by saying that a child was born every 26 seconds. She also was keen to get orders for shirts and jewelry featuring the letters of your name in Hieroglyphs surrounded in a cartouche – clearly she was on commission and I feel the price of the trip may have made our bus a bit on the stingy side, we were one of only five people who ordered a shirt and there were no takers for the gold items.
When we reached Cairo the journey changed from dual carriageway through the countryside to a version of “Death Race” the usual set of rules of the road were abandoned and the driver took the coach through gaps that I would have hesitated to cycle through, we arrived at the National Archaeological Museum remarkably unscathed and we emerged from the bus leaving our bags and cameras behind as they were not allowed in the museum. We entered the museum grounds through a check point only to find that most of the other visitors had their cameras. Thus we were unable to photograph the antiquities which were displayed outside, there were armed guards inside the compound and at most junctions but we would have resisted any temptation to snap them. Gharda had departed to get the “whisper” sound system which would allow us to hear her commentary once inside the museum and we resentfully fried in the heat of the day without our cameras. However we discovered that she was right, as we entered the building we were scanned again and cameras would have been taken from us.
Gharda was enthusiastic about the history, she constantly said “we” did this or that and for a while I thought she had been involved in the actual discoveries but I soon realised she meant the Egyptian people as a whole. Her enthusiasm was such that she set a hectic pace through the museum, saying at one point, “the faster we go the more we will see” true I suppose but the museum experience is a bit of a blur to me now. She did make the point however that in the days of the pharaohs gold was more plentiful than silver so the golden parts were considered less prestigious.
When Julia and I took a toilet break she continued ahead and while trying to catch her up we were at least one exhibit behind in terms of what we were seeing compared to what we could hear her describing. Meanwhile back in our respective toilets we both experienced our first hard-sell begging. On entering the museum toilet we encountered an attendant who was handing out loo paper, after using the facilities they demanded paying for their assistance, speaking for myself, I would have managed without their unsolicited help and as I had no Egyptian pounds I was unable to pay had I wanted to, the short face-off ended when I used my teaching face on the gentleman and he backed off. It was a foretaste of what was to come at the pyramids.
We returned to our bus having caught up with Gharda, something some of our group never achieved, and we moved on to Giza where we were booked in for lunch as part of the tour. Cairo and Giza overlap and Gharda pointed out that the local farming land beside the road had been developed into housing illegally. The buildings varied immensely and looked unfinished in the most part simply because the owners continued to build up and/or out from their original dwelling as their situation changed. It looked a precarious existence but many were living in that state.
We then saw the pyramids which were a back drop to the hotel where lunch was booked. The contrast between the opulence of the hotel and the illegal housing could not be escaped. Lunch was a well-stocked buffet and we by chance shared a table with one of the other table tennis players, Richard, who had played the husband of the professional pair. He told us it got worse after we had left as the husband had played his wife in the final and made a point of humiliating her – nice guy!
From the hotel we rejoined our bus and drove to a vantage point with a view of the pyramids in front of the hazy outline of Cairo city. It seemed somehow wrong that the pyramids were so close to the modern city. We were in the process of taking some photos when I was grabbed by a Bedouin in a arm round the shoulder type way, he then waved his stick around and encouraged Julia to take the picture, which she did. He then wanted to take the camera from her and photograph us together, we had been warned about this ploy, we would have had to ransom the camera back, so we refused. He demanded money from us and became heated when we refused but the moment passed without him being paid
Our next stop was at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, we were warned again about the begging Bedouins and told not even to trust the armed security guards, that was not a reassuring thought, untrustworthy and with a Kalashnikov! We wandered again for a forty minute spell and took some great photos including a couple of panoramas using some of the tips picked up at the lecture. We did have to be firm with a couple of Bedouins, and one was in security guard uniform.
Just before we returned to the coach there was a stampede of the Bedouins, some on camels, some on horseback and at least three driving horse-buggies, the tourist police had arrived and dispersed the beggars, the fake security guards were rounded up but appeared to pay an “on the spot fine” to be released.
The pyramids were, it hardly needs saying, huge and impressive. However it remains a mystery how exactly they were constructed but it appears that the labour force was not all slaves but farmers who signed up for several months when their farming work was less pressing.
From the Great Pyramid of Khufu we travelled about 300 yards in the coach to see the Sphinx; it was again a brilliant moment.
On our way back to Port Said we stopped at a government sponsored shop where we saw a demonstration of making papyrus and then were invited to buy some, we passed on the chance to acquire our names written on reeds but we would have been tempted by a beer about then.
We set off from Cairo on our coach unescorted but breaking any speed limits that there make have been. We passed a dead cow lying on the side of the road with its legs up and shortly after we passed a truck loaded to cab level with what looked like sugar cane but on top of the crop there were at least five farm workers hanging on for their lives!
As you gather our drive back to Port Said was pretty hectic but we successfully met up with the other coaches at Ismailia, from there we were escorted by the same armed trucks with local police waving us through all junctions as they had on the way out.
We reached the ship and were back on board by 8.00pm the ship was due to sail at 8.30pm but the computerized registration system meant that the crew are aware when everyone is aboard so they can work based on that rather than deadlines.
Looking back on the day it was an experience to treasure but the level of poverty and the aggressive begging it causes meant that I cannot see us returning to Egypt in any great hurry.
It had been a long and full day so we ate and, after a quiet drink in the village square, we retired to bed and slept well.
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