On Monday we woke up nice and early at the kibbutz for breakfast. They worked really hard to make us a nice breakfast but I was definitely missing the Oasis Cafeteria. We drove for about 45 minutes to the Egyptian border and hopped off the bus. We had to carry all of our stuff across the border because we had a different bus waiting on the other side. I was carrying my teddy bear (it is a great pillow!) and Brother Wilson thought it was so funny that he made fun of me for days! When we finally got through Israeli and Egyptian passport control we got on our new bus and settled in for a long day of driving though the desert.
We stopped at a rest stop for lunch and experienced our first Egyptian bathrooms. It was definitely an experience! You have to take your own toilet paper and you have to make sure to throw it in the garbage instead of the toilet. If it goes in the toilet then the toilet is instantly clogged. Needless to say the bathrooms were clogged within minutes of our arrival. Oops! I would definitely recommend having hand sanitizer with you 24/7 in Egypt. I don’t consider myself a germaphobe but when I was in Egypt my Hannah Montana hand sanitizer never left my belt loop! You can look for it in pictures. It will ALWAYS be there!
The next exciting moment of the day was driving under the Suez Canal. It is the number one source of income for Egypt! It was pretty cool to see a barge floating across the desert horizon.
We finally got our first sight of Cairo in the late afternoon. I knew almost immediately that I would never want to come back. It was so crowded and so dirty and so sad. Some of the first sights in Cairo included: the Nile, the Pyramids, 7 cars squished into 4 lanes, carts and camels in the street, dead horseS in the canal and so much filth. This is their canal:
We got to our hotel and it was beautiful. I felt kind of silly staying at such a nice place in a third world country but I am so grateful that we had such comfortable accommodations. I had a full size bed with TWO pillows to myself! It’s amazing what a difference that extra pillow makes! There were only two people in each room and it was so nice to only have to share a room and bathroom with one other person. It is really fun to have four of us in the same room at the center but it was a nice break to go back to something hat I am more accustomed to.
We got to dinner and everything looked so delicious! Steve looked at the fruit and salad bar and he was seriously about to run up and get some since no one else was there. I thought he was kidding but he was serious for a minute. Good thing we were there to remind him that he didn’t want diarrhea for the next week! Everything looked so amazing that it was really hard to pass it up so I can’t blame him!
After dinner a bunch of us wanted to go out and just see what Cairo is like. All of the boys had to split up because there had to be a boy in every taxi. They had to get in first and get out last to make sure the driver wouldn’t run off with any of the girls. JJ accompanied Stephanie, Amy and me and we took off for quite the adventure! Driving in Cairo is insane! The traffic was so bad that it took us about 45 minutes to get about 4 or 5 miles. We weren’t just at a standstill the whole time though. I feel like there were points when we were flying along but maybe that is just my overactive imagination.
The conversation was fantastic during the ride down to Pyramid Street. JJ was talking to the driver and the driver asked him if he was married. JJ said no and then the driver asked him if any of us girls were married. JJ said no again and the driver said he should marry one of us. JJ asked which one and the driver literally turned around while he was driving to inspect each one of us carefully. Guess who was the lucky winner? That’s right! Me! Then the driver decided that JJ could marry all three of us so in the end we all won. Then he offered all of us cigarettes. Gross! He went through two of them on the drive! Eventually he came to a stop at a barn instead of stores and his ‘friend’ was going to let us ride his horses over to Pyramid Street. That is code for ‘I am going to accidently lead one of these pretty American girls away from the group and hide her in a deep cave in the middle of the city where no one will be able to find her and she will be my fourth wife…blah, blah, blah’ you get the idea. Eventually we convinced the taxi driver to take us back to a well lit street and all of us girls jumped out of the car pretty fast.
When we got to this little street with shops we saw a KFC/Pizza Hut. Of course we took a few pictures and then went on our way. Well guess what we saw the next day right across the street from the Sphinx?!? This very KFC/Pizza Hut! We had absolutely no idea that the Sphinx and the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World was directly behind us. This taught me to keep my eyes open for the rest of the trip and to not get caught up in KFC/Pizza Hut. I mean seriously, how many of those have I seen in my life?!?
Anyway…a little farther down the street we found a fun little perfume shop. We went in and the owner was, of course, thrilled to see Americans. He was a really nice guy and he had us sit down and try about 10 different kinds of perfume. He even went into detail about the more sensual ones. That is quite the story but I don’t think you really want to know more than that. I ended up getting a little bit of lotus flower oil and I can’t wait to use it! For it to be perfume you actually have to mix it with alcohol so I’ll wait to do that when I get back to the States.
We were in that shop for so long that we decided we better head back to the hotel to make it in time for curfew with all of the traffic but the ride back took less than 10 minutes. When we walked into the hotel lobby there was an insane dance party going down with a bunch of crazy Mormon kids from the United States! It was out of control! There were a bunch of Asian people videoing them and all of the hotel employees were completely transfixed. I jumped in to talk to everyone else and hear about their taxi/shopping adventures. The dance went on forever and ever and I took some pictures and videos. It was tons of fun!
After that we finally went to bed. I already mentioned that I had two pillows and a full sized bed. It was amazing! Who ever thought I would think two pillows feel like heaven? Egypt was already making me crazy!
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