The Desert

Thursday morning we got up early and scheduled a tour with the hostel to go to Giza and Saqqara to see the pyramids. We had a hearty breakfast of a glass of tea and two rolls and by the time we finished the guy at reception desk said our driver was a no show and that he would take us instead. This gave me some reservations but it turned out to be the best turn of luck! The guy's name was Mido and he was hilarious and he gave us some really good tips on how to respond to the locals (ignore them) and how to bargain. The first stop was a random bridge over the Nile (above photo) where he said people set up chairs and sit in the summer to cool off, which made perfect sense because it was 80 degrees already and it was only March. He bought us some water on the way to Saqqara because the desert would be even hotter. We bought our student tickets and Mido dropped us off at some tombs warning us to ignore the people inside, but we didn't really understand what he meant.

Inside a guy asked to see our tickets then motioned us to follow him into a tomb which we did because we thought he was an official tour guide. Wrong. We had to bend over double to get down on little planks across the steep rock leading down. He took our pictures inside and lead us to another tomb, and after he showed us the rooms in there he asked us for $10. We gave him $3 and learned our lesson. Don't listen to the locals! This was the next stop:

And the area around it:

I'm pretty sure this guy was just breaking rocks so he could charge tourists for the picture they took. (He didn't see me take this):

It's Djoser's Step Pyramid, the oldest of the surviving desert tombs. We ignored the locals this time and wandered around taking pictures and applying more sunscreen. After a little while we walked back to the car and Mido drove us toward Giza. Along the way he gave us a few riddles to solve, and we felt like idiots for not getting them. Here are 2 examples maybe you can figure them out: "What is between land and sky?" "What do you call a fish without an eye?" And then Spice Girls and Enrique Inglesias came on the radio and we all got more excited than we should have hahaha. We passed some interesting sights along the way such as men dumping piles of trash into the river banks and setting it all on fire and some water buffalo being led by ropes, but the car was moving too quickly to get good pictures.

When we got to Giza we did some bargaining to take camels to the pyramids, and we probably paid too much, but it was worth it. Instead of 2 camels they gave us a horse and a camel. Thank God. At one point on our way up a hill the guide, Hesham, whipped the camel, which I was not expecting, and it shot up the hill and I almost fell off sideways. I clung on for my life not wanting to fall 7 ft to the rocks and sand and spend the night in an Egyptian ER. Hesham had to push me back up and after that he held onto the reigns, hahaha. Typical embarrassment that is my life.
After this picture I got off that camel and for the sake of not wanting to press my luck, I kept to the horse for the rest of the desert tour. Hesham made Lindsey and I have a photo shoot in front of the pyramids thus the cheesey pictures:


We climbed the big one a little bit, which was not very good for my shoes, but very thrilling. And then Hesham stopped the herd and we walked to this:
I couldn't believe it. I felt like I could die happy at that moment. I really did, is that bad? Not many people get so excited to see 5000 year old buildings, but it really is mind blowingly amazing.