Port Said, Egypt ... 11/18/2008
We docked early this morning and met up with the rest of our "tour group" of approx 130+ persons in one of the ship's smaller dining areas. This tour group had all been arranged and booked independent of the cruise line. The lady that had coordinated the whole tour was supposed to be sailing with us but had a family emergency that caused her to be unable to make the trip ... several very capable and experienced travelers that had booked as we did agreed to coordinate in her stead and we carried on.
The whole package including the buses from Port Said to Cairo, the various exhibit tours like the pyramids, the museum and such, the overnight stay in Cairo, and the bus trip out of Cairo to the port in Alexandria all were included in our package cost of $295/per person ... this was virtually the same overnight package Princess offered for $799/pp ... so if you are not aware of www.cruisecritic.com and the wonderful and experienced cruisers that hang out there ... be sure to check it out before taking a cruise ... you will save money and have better tours!
Our troop boarded 4 big buses (the kind that have a potty onboard) and motored thru the dirty crowded streets of Port Said towards Cairo. We noticed as we motored along main boulevards in Port Said that the side streets were all blocked off by armed soldiers and police. It turns out that our group of 4 buses were a very small part of over 100 such buses leaving the port all together ... the modern version of a camel caravan I suppose. The people along the route out of town were all smiles and waves as we passed them by.
The journey to Cairo was about 3.5 hours long. All along the way we were escorted by some number of "jeeps" and "pickups" loaded with armed military personnel ... the highway was 4 lane + most of the way and these escorts would zoom along side us or jet past sirens blasting to "clear a path" as the hapless Egyptian "regular" traffic tried to get out of the way ... I guess these folks are used to this sort of thing along the highway but it seemed odd to me to have someone with a gun telling other motorists "we" had the right of way ,,, ALL the way.
The "scenery" along the route was interesting. To our left for a good bit of the way was the Suez Canal. As we zipped along we passed several really huge tankers and cargo vessels in the canal. On the right side we saw a mixture of clearly irrigated farms and very stark desert.
The "farms" were typically only a few acres of neatly cultivated and kept crops. Often we would see people in the fields essentially doing the farming "by hand" and "by donkey". We saw a FEW tractors and such but it was apparent that most of the work was done the very od fashioned way. The farm "houses" themselves were generally VERY small square shaped flat roofed buildings, often with no apparent "doors" just entry ways. Many children were in evidence all doing farm work as well. I asked our guide "Amro" if these farms were privately owned and he said no for the most part the land and farms are owned by the government and the farmers were "renting" which I took to mean much like tenant farmers.
Occasionally we would see very large crop fields and these he said would be privately owned farms by very wealthy people.
As we arrived in Cairo Amro started to tell us a bit about the city ... 25 million people live in Cairo ... that is a LOT of people. As we discovered later, 24 million of them must drive some sort of vehicle ... the traffic in Cairo has to be seen to be believed, I thought that Rome had a traffic problem ... in comparison to Cairo Rome is a well ordered town of very careful and courteous drivers! The "stripes" on the roads of Cairo are only loose "guidelines" and never taken seriously ... the two "must be working" parts of ones vehicle are brakes and a horn and you can get by without brakes.
I can't possibly describe what it was actually like to be in a behemoth of a bus, in a row of now 4 buses (as the other tours went their own way once we reached Cairo) driving down streets that are way too narrow for my Mini-Cooper with 3 sometimes 4 "lanes" of traffic made up of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, scooters, and carts pulled by donkeys ... moving when possible at fairly high speeds en-masse. There were many times when we could easily have reached out the window (but they were thankfully sealed) and patted people on the head shoulder or the top of their vehicles next to us ... well less than three or four inches of separation between sides of the vehicles.
Our first stop was actually in Sacarro at the "Step Pyramid" ... I'll describe that in my next post.
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2 comments:
I know exactly what you mean about Cairo traffic. When Mother and I were there a few years ago we were stopped at an intersection (of course no traffic light)and we looked out the window of our tour bus and saw a poor donkey (with cart attached) resting his head on the back of a tour bus. He looked really tired and skinny. We also saw lots of donkey carts on the freeway! Also, road construction on the freeway was not marked and the only way a hapless tourist would know that it was there would have been to fall into a pit that suddenly opened up in the road. It truly was shocking. I think the only other city that I have seen that comes close to Cairo (minus the donkey carts) was Naples. Those people are crazy too! Worse than Rome I think. Tell my Mom and Dad 'Hi' and the Stones too!
This sounds nothing like west Texas...
;P
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