Day 67 – Cairo
Egypt
05.03.2012
Jules writes:
After our ridiculously inactive day yesterday, today was a day for exploring. We would be going tomorrow to pack the bikes, we had a flight booked for 4:00 PM, and I would be spending my birthday in Istanbul. What more could we ask for.
The area we were staying in was called Heliopolis, and it turns out it is one of the wealthiest areas in Cairo. C
onsidering that we hadn’t really walked much further than the supermarket at the end of the road, Shan and Dad were quite keen to have a walkabout and explore the place. It is a fascinating mix of grand old buildings and expensive modern mansions. At one point they walked past a palace, surrounded on all sides by small concrete guard houses, with just the faces of the guards peeping out, although they never did work out exactly why the palace was so important. Other than that, though, it was a fairly typical wealthy suburb.
I was excited about finally getting to explore the city after all the days cooped up in the hotel. Jumping onto a bike, I headed down into the city. I have realised something interesting about the city. I reckon that at some point in the past, Cairo’s municipal government decided that as traffic was already reaching near-legendary proportions, why not make it a proper feature of the city, and hence employed vast herds of civil engineers to ensure that the road system was as convoluted as possible, in order to keep cars on the roads as long as possible. All major roads have islands, but the gaps between them to turn around are sometimes spaced as far as 10 km apart, meaning that getting to a destination 100 m further up the road on the left could end up being a 20,1 km journey. Obviously, sign-posts would only make traffic flow faster, so those are largely done away with. One-way streets are also great, and so those were laid down wherever possible. Which is why I was especially proud when I arrived at the Khan El Khalil souq a mere 45 minutes later, the same market that the others had visited a couple of days earlier. It was fantastic. With my dark features, it seems that almost everyone decided that I must be a local, and so was able to walk around without getting hassled at all. I should have ditched this lot ages ago, it seems. Many of the sights I already wrote about a couple of days ago, so I won’t go into too much detail, although seeing the craftsman at work was really fantastic. I was shown some of the decorated boxes, and the level of detail was exquisite, almost impossible to believe that they are able to make intricate patterns using pieces of bone and shell less than a millimetre wide. I also had a brief tour of the Blue Mosque in Cairo, one of three Blue Mosques in the world, the other two being in Istanbul and Iran. Walking around the place, one is immediately struck by the complete absence of blue anywhere in the building. Maybe the “Sand coloured Mosque” was rejected by the marketing department. Nevertheless, it was quite an impressive building, with a large central courtyard that managed to completely shut out the noise from the city. Up on the walls, one could walk around and get a feel for the layout of the city, and I spent a while just snapping some great photos. All of which proved a waste of time when I realised that the SD card hadn’t been replaced after uploading the photos to the computer back at the hotel. But trust me, the photos were amazing. Perhaps the best you’ve never seen.
John, it seemed, had not quite gotten enough from our visit to the Pyramids of Giza a few days before and so off he went, on the hunt for a few mo
re. Following the Nile south for about 25 km (along with some interesting navigational “detours”) he managed to spot what looked like a good bunch and as it turns out, hit the jackpot. Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for the Ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis, is now a vast, ancient burial ground and home to a number of pyramids. Most famous of these is the Step pyramid of Djoser, which, erected in 2800 BC, makes it the oldest complete stone complex ever built. Needless to say, he was absolutely spell-bound by the monuments, tombs and other sights this ancient necropolis had to offer.
Braving the traffic, which was in full late afternoon swing, I eventually made it back to the hotel, just a few minutes after Shan and Dad had got back. As it was my birthday the next day, we decided to go to the massive mall that Dad and John had been to a few days before for a nice meal at a restaurant. It was the first time that we had been near anything like it, and it was a real shock to the system. Everywhere, neon signs promised instant happiness
if we would only buy this jacket/phone/burger. We tried to find an Egyptian restaurant, but twenty minutes of walking around produced nothing but American franchises: McDonalds, Burger King, Chili’s. Eventually we managed to find the only restaurant in the entire place that was not a foreign franchise. The place itself was lovely, and within half an hour we each had in front of us a genuine Egyptian meal, although extra props must go to Shan, who ordered the stuffed pigeon. [PROTIP: don’t order the pigeon]
Tomorrow was going to be a good day, so we waded through the evening one last time to our hotel, and were soon asleep.
Day 58 – Ras Gharib to Cairo (331 km)
Egypt
25.02.2012
Jules writes:
With a mere 250 km to go, we were eager to get going, and by 6:30, the bikes were packed. What we had not counted on was that the Universe is a capricious bitc… creature, and when I put my bike into gear from neutral, it 
would lurch forward and stall, with the clutch still in, a clear sign that the clutch wasn’t disengaging. Bags off, tools out, but even with adjusting all the relevant cables, nothing changed. We tried running the bike in neutral to warm up the engine, and miraculously, that seemed to work, a mixed joy, as we still had no idea what had gone wrong in the first place. But not wanting to look a gift bike in the radiator, we took off, glad to be on our way.
About 80 km from Ras Gharib was the 4th century monastery of St Paul, just a few 
km off the main road. A curious fact about Egyptian highways is that traffic in opposite directions is separated by a distance that ranges between 100 m and 500 m , which means that any traffic circle is large enough for athletics teams to practice their long distance races by just running around a couple of times. In addition, if there is a turn on the opposite side of the road, there is never a linking road between the two directions of traffic, meaning that one frequently has to drive several kilometres past a road that one is wanting to turn into before finding a linking road between the two directions of traffic.
Upon arriving at the monastery, we were welcomed by one of the monks there, and while we were waiting, we started chatting to Martin, an Australian whose parents had left Egypt decades earlier. He was now working in the area, and was able to give us a lot of valuable information about the security situation in Syria, and none of the news was good. It seems like we seriously need to avoid Syria, which adds major complications for our trip, but that we would deal with once we were in Cairo.
After a delicious meal of foul, (a bean dish, not foul in the least), Brother (or father, not sure) Benoir gave us a tour of the monastery, including an old mil
l that donkeys are hitched to, an underground cave where St Paul is claimed to have spent ninety years, his food brought to him every day by birds, and getting his water from a spring that still runs to this day, and the monks have been unable to trace its source. The monks themselves are generally very well educated, and their ranks include doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. And they are constantly turning applicants away. It would be an amazing experience to come and spend a month here.
We were so close to Cairo now, and it seemed almost surreal to be seeing road signs promising that it was now 245, 237, 224 km to Cairo. With the signs showing a mere 100 km, we made the final turn Westwards to Cairo. We had organized to meet Mom and Carol at one of the toll plazas, and it was all now so close. The Cape to Cairo route is one of the most iconic overland trips in the world, and we have done it, each kilometre bringing us closer to our 
halfway point, and the end of the African leg of our Journey. Our heads where in a whirl as we finally arrived at the plaza. We were a bit early, and so we waited on the side of the road for the taxi that would bring the ladies. And finally, there it was, hooting and waving from the other side of the road. In typical fashion, they were not allowed to turn at the toll plaza and h
ad to drive another ten kilometres up the road before they could find a spot to turn around. And then the car was pulling up, and Mom and Carol piled out. Cultural sensitivity was thrown to the wind as we hugged and kissed. It’s been almost two months since we saw them last, and it was really unreal to think that we were all meeting up in Cairo. With the reunion complete, we followed the taxi back into some of the most insane traffic that I have ever seen in my life, and that includes driving in India. After driving through burst water mains, hooting taxis and scooters nipping through the traffic as though they they had a death-wish, we arrived at the hotel that the ladies had booked us into, a really nice place called the Oasis hotel. The next couple of hours was just a blur of stories about our trip, stories from home, presents that my mom and sister had organized from home, until it was supper time, when we headed down to the hotel restaurant. It was just so wonderful to be seeing people from home again, and family in particular. Over a delicious supper, the stories continued, and we just couldn’t get enough. Since we left South Africa, the trip seems to absorb every waking thought, and we were just soaking up the chance to get something of an outside perspective, to hear about what was going on in the lives of people back home. Eventually, the yawns could not be kept back, and it was time for bed.
4 BIKES 4 SINGAPORE 