Leaving Cairo

Waving goodbye are two youngsters who had been busily selling postcards to folks getting back on the tour buses. Being cute and smiley is definitely a plus in that line of work.

Our three-hour-plus ride back to the ship felt even longer than it was after a long hot day, so I busied myself collecting images of the only Egyptian sunset I am likely to ever see.

Sphinx

After all these centuries, the Sphinx stands on the desert looking into the future.

Sahara

The outskirts of Cairo to the west are the outskirts of the massive Sahara Desert. The drive after lunch was short; after all, one of the pyramids was in the background of the photo in the last post. But there is no vestige of city here, and the vast feeling of being on that desert on a weekday afternoon in July was daunting, to say the least. Fighting the bright sun to collect the images was a challenge, but I was pleased with these results.

King Tut and Peace Talks

We did see the golden treasures of King Tut at the Egyptian Museum, but they are not pictured here. No photos were allowed, but wonderful full-size replicas were common in several locations. The iconic image above was actually for sale in an interesting souvenir shop. No idea of the price.

Our lunch on the edge of the Sahara was at the location of major peace talks in the 1970s. This is where President Jimmy Carter met with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, generating some of the accords that still help regulate relationships between Egypt and Israel.

Trash

In the aftermath of the Revolution of February, as our guide called it, there is little local government and no effective police force. The first picture is of the median in the highway, where a heron looks for carrion amongst the trash. All along that section we did see garbage trucks collecting some of it, but then we reached the outskirts of that area and found that the trucks moved the trash from where they find it to the roadside where the dump it. Again.

Contrasts of Cairo

Contrasts abound in Cairo. A featured stop on our tour was the Egyptian Museum, near the center of the rioting in the city last February. Directly across the street is the hulking remains of the political building formerly run by Hosni Mubarak. It sits in its burned condition; while some want to rebuild it, others want to preserve it as a symbol of freedom from tyranny. We walked alongside the wreck, stepped aboard our bus, and within five minutes we were alongside the Nile, peaceful with a sailboat soaking up the sun.

Citizens of Cairo

Many citizens of Cairo dress in western garb, including the guard aboard our bus, but we passed many people with strict dress choices, if not a dress code, particularly in Cairo itself.

Count the Lanes & See the Trash

All along the route we saw people throwing trash, garbage, greenery, anything they had at hand along the highway, either in the median or on the shoulders. Perhaps even worse was the traffic. If you look at the pavement, there are three lanes and two shoulders. If you look at the vehicles, there are seven or eight lanes, and this is a still picture of a moving group of lane weavers. Our bus, bigger than any of these vehicles, often crowded out cars and hit the horn to clear our way. Not a restful ride by any means.