Pyramids at Giza and more

Monday, December 20, 2010

We started today meeting our guide Marwa and headed off for the Giza pyramids. Giza is a part of Cairo – like a suburb next door. (Side note: If you want to see any of these pictures better, just click to enlarge.)

Marwa, our Guide

This was our first real experience with the amazing Cairo traffic. From this point forward, throughout our stay in Eqypt, we are being driven in a small, 10-seat touring van; our driver is a very skillful, patient man named Malak and our guide is Marwa, a young woman who is fun and very knowledgeable.

But now for a short digression about the traffic. In general, let’s assume that Egyptians don’t pay any attention to the lines on the streets and though they do stop at the stop lights, mostly ignore other traffic signs. All this while incessantly honking their car horns – to warn that I’m coming up on your left, to warn that I’m pulling out into traffic, to complain that you are not moving fast enough, to encourage the cop to stop the OTHER lane now and let me go through, etc. At one point, we were stopped with many other cars on a side road trying to merge onto a main drag and about 5 drivers from cars behind us actually got out of their cars and went up to confront the policeman who was favoring the other direction. There was actual physical shoving of the cop and much shouting and gesticulating by everyone before Malak just managed to squeeze around the fracas and we got out of there!

Pyramids behind Marwa and Carol

The pyramids at Giza (from the Old Kingdom) were amazing. We stopped next to the Great Pyramid of Khufu (the largest) for pictures. It was very dusty and smoggy. Visibility was not great. But at least the wind wasn’t blowing. Jane & Sally said when they were there, the wind was so bad whipping up the sand, that they had to go sit in their car and afterward were covered with sand and dirt, like they’d been to the beach.

Carol,Marwa, JB on camels at Giza

We took a 20 minute camel ride – which was pretty trippy! It’s much easier to ride a camel than a horse. But I’m guessing not so fun at anything over a walk. Smaller pyramids in the background were for 3 queens.

Boat – hanging on display

We went then behind the pyramid to see the Solar Barque Museum. This is a boat that had been dismantled into 1,224 pieces and buried beside the pyramid – so the pharoah would have decent transportation. It’s been reassembled and is displayed in a very nice building where you can walk up a ramp to several levels and see it from all sides. This and the pictures of where/how it was originally found and restored were great.

As we are seeing these things and more, Marwa was imparting vast quantities of information fairly quickly: History of the sites and architectural tidbits about pyramid and temple construction, gods and goddesses galore and their relationships to the various kings, weather conditions and more. They started with pyramids in the Old Kingdom but of course this is like advertising “This is where the gold and stuff is buried” so tends to invite robbers and other undesirables. So they eventually switched to tombs dug into the sides of desert hills (join us in a couple days in Luxor where we’ll visit the Valley of the Kings). No, we didn’t go into a pyramid. Marwa told us there wasn’t much to see – nothing like we’d see in Luxor down in the tombs there.

Temple entryway to Step Pyramid

Next to view the step pyramid at Saqqara – this was representative of the next phase of pyramid building – and houses the remains of King Dsojer (2667-2648 BC).

Step Pyramid

We then drove out into the countryside to the old town of Memphis (no relation to Elvis) which had been a major city/provincial capital at one point. High point is a giant 43ft status of Ramses II – for context, Ramses II was played by Yul Brynner in “The Ten Commandments” – the one to whom Moses said, “Let my people go!”

Statue of Ramses II

At this point, it’s about 3pm in the afternoon and we still haven’t had lunch. We were all VERY hungry. It was another whole adventure trying to find our way to the restaurant where we were supposed to eat. But we finally found it and ate lunch. Then back into traffic for a return to the hotel. Whew! A very full day. We collapse.