Cairo, Egypt: whenever I hear these words I instantly think of sun, sand and wind burnt explorers, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns – how I wish I looked like Rachel Weisz.
We arrived in Cairo early in the morning, the flight felt like a dream probably because we spent so much of it asleep. We got a sweat box of a bus into town. Mission on to find internet access so we could find the place Djalma booked months ago. We found the address but decided it was too far to go in the heat and so we started looking for a cheap hostel in the down town area where we were based. What a mission, Cairo is a massive dirty hectic sweat-box (everything is a sweat box) but I really like it here. After finding a place to sleep, despite being the cheapest place we found, it was still two to three times what we paid in Morocco, we dropped our bags and fell asleep sprawled dirty, sticky and dusty on top of the beds.
We woke up about four hours later feeling groggy but not exhausted and so decided to go out for a wander and some much needed food.
To date we have avoided nearly all the places mentioned in the guidebook, 90% of the time they are well out of our budget but we decided to stop by one of the cheap eats mentioned in the book. We got a couple of falafel pockets and some garlic and chilli marinated baby aubergine, really really good. We shared a small table with a young Aussie who was waiting for his pizza, Andrew, and we got to chatting. We finally got rid of the seven Euros I'd been carrying around in my damn money belt and also found a cheaper place to sleep the following night in the dorm just around the corner where he was staying. We toddled off feeling a lot better having had a conversation with someone other than each other.
We wandered leisurely in the general direction of THE NILE! Which when we first arrived it matched the colour of the sky – beige, but it looked much cleaner under the cover of night. We had hoped to catch the sun setting over the water but were too late, instead we stood and watched the madly lit Arabic disco boats (or river taxis as they're known here) go by. I'm not sure words can describe quite the atmosphere, hot with a warm breeze, full of people not many of them tourists, the near constant calls for felucca rides from semi hopeful touts competing with the music from four or five different boats blaring out Egyptian Pop.
We walked along the THE NILE! For a while and although it was now dark, the sun long gone, I still felt like I was baking in my skin.
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| From Cairo, Mother of all Cities, Egypt |
I was determined to find a café and sit and have a sheesha so we could sit and relax properly. Luckily for us it was not very difficult to find a place, if the avenue we were walking down didn't have one, several of the side streets would have them. So we plonked ourselves down, after umming and ahhing over which café patronise, and ordered and ordered an abble nargileh and got to puffing our troubles away. We were there for what felt like yonks, time seemed to have slowed down and melt away, it also helped that there was a fan blowing a steady breeze our way. We watched men with beautiful pipes puff apple scented tobacco while they played serious faced games of what looked like backgammon.
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| From Cairo, Mother of all Cities, Egypt |
After two little bricks of our own apple flavour hubbly bubbly, I was more than ready to move on again, my feet rising like loaves of bread in the heat and we did despite Djalma wanting to stay, smoke some more and watch the second half (Germany v Ghana 1-0 or Australia v Serbia 2-1). So on we moved slowly, in the direction of our hotel, stopping to get water and a small bag of washing powder on the way back.
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| From Cairo, Mother of all Cities, Egypt |
We went to bed at 1ish in the morning feeling fresh and clean after a glorious and much needed shower, our clean clothes hanging over every available surface in the room (Djalma had fun stamping them clean in the bathtub). Our clothes dried in the heat of the night while we slept sprawled butt naked on top of the bed trying to make the most of the too gentle breeze coming from the gently revolving ceiling fan.
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