I was chatting with a friend of mine one morning, after our breakfast in our hotel in Cairo. We arrived the day before.
Me : “Where to go today? Any plans?”
Friend : “Err…Pyramids?”
Me : “Let’s go then…”
The journey from my hotel in Ma’adi (dubbed the posh area in Cairo) to the Giza Pyramids is not that long. It takes around 30 minutes when the traffic is at it’s worse. 10 minutes if there’s no traffic jam, but that will almost never happen here. It costs 30LE (RM18) to reach there with an air-conditioned taxi (not those signature black & white Cairo taxis – they are usually cheaper).
I was getting real excited about the seeing the Giza pyramids for the first time ever in my life. I’ve only seen them either on prints or TV. This time I’m seeing them for real.
It was my first time going around Cairo and it was all brown and dusty. The traffic was C-R-A-Z-Y, just crazy. I’ll talk about this next time, in another post. The taxi stopped us at the horse stable.
The stable boss asked, “Camel? or Horse?”
Looks like I either get a horse or camel ride into the desert to go to the Pyramids. It was quite a distance to walk under the sun, and considering it’s 12pm. I must be nuts to go into the desert at noon!
But, it was all windy and chilly. Not that bad after all..
The tour around the Pyramids took 2 hours. Took some pictures here and there with those typical tourist poses. Most of them turn out to be so-so. Maybe I should bring my small digital cam along that day and put it on auto mode for the tour guide instead of giving him my SLR. Then he can click on the shutter however much he wants.
The pyramid tour took about 2 hours and we went back to the horse stable. Back there, this old man, who I suppose is the owner of all the horses asked for 50 EUROs for the 2 hours horse ride. What a rip off! He didn’t mention a single thing earlier on before the horse ride (NOTE : It is a practice in Egypt not to ask the price before hand. After you’ve paid them later on and they are not satisfied, they’ll start complaining). But, finally after 15 minutes of bargaining, we settled to 30 USD per person for the 2 hours horse ride, which I’m still not satisfied.
Later on, I found out from my Lonely Planet guide that it costs only 12LE (RM7) for an hour’s ride, but that has to be done at the tourist office at the other end of the desert. So, I guess I’m gonna go there again before going back to Malaysia.
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