Where are they??: enero 2008

Due to the surprise that was waiting for us in Cairo; as normal people, we took a night bus which run up by the coast of the Suez Gulf, to the Egyptian capital. The first, we contacted with Mostafa of CS, who lives in Giza, officially another city, nowadays totally joined to the huge city of Cairo. We have arrived on holidays, the second "Eid" of the year, three festival days in which animals are sacrifice to share the meat in three parts, one to the neighbors, other to the family, and the last one for the poor people. Animals are seen on the streets, where they will be sacrifice; but what is noticed more, are the crowds of people on the streets, and with the traffic of Cairo is a great madness.

Undoubtedly the most expected moment here for us, and already during some time ago, it was the arrival of part of our family; we went by bus to the airport (more than 1 hour), and this was what we found....

From this moment, Vicky, Marian and Jose, joined to "where are they" for a few but intense days. The family arrived with a lot of gifts and provisions, as some Spanish food, new boots, and a great change in our equipment, a laptop.

After four days in Cairo, we decided to see the Wonder of the World, which is in Giza, the pyramids of Keops, Kefren and Micerinos. When we arrived the people cheated us trying to convince us that we only can enter by camel or donkey, but from the Egyptians, we only should believe a tenth part of what they say. The three mass of stones are impressive and stand out of the small pyramids of the women (usual in these countries); the men of the camels harassed us constantly, saying that they don’t charge us for take a photo; of course for saying that, in the end we had troubles for don’t pay the photo which he said before that was free of charge…

Nearby is the sphinx, used in the past for practices of shot, and which has an illness in its interior, if it doesn’t cease will ended up destroying it.

Another place to don’t miss, is the Egyptian museum; it must be taken with a lot of patience because it is enormous and can end up being tiring; anyway it’s very impressive what the ancient dynasties as Tutankhamen, Ramses II, Tuthmosis III...etc, lent us…
The museum is in Taharir Square, the heart of Cairo, where we have passed most of the time; for us it was a sort of holidays, everything had been more relaxed, visiting some bars, restaurants, or smoking the Shisha, something very traditional in the Egyptian life.

We were very lucky to have found Mostafa; on Christmas Eve we could prepare a dinner in his house, and make a nice party with special food that we didn’t taste since a long time ago.

We went towards north by train, Alexandria, an ancient Greek capital; here we entered the catacombs and visited the big mosque. But the most interesting thing was to see the authentic part of the city; small streets full of shops, people who stared us, and mountains of rubbles and rubbish.

We decided to return to the paradise that we discovered in Sinai to enjoy it with the family; we took a bus from Alexandria to Nuweiba with a stop in Cairo, 13 hours in total up to the village of the Red Sea, where we had more surprises, we met again recent friends... Pavel and Maria…

During these days of party and cold in Spain, we were a couple of days under the subtropical sun and making snorkeling seeing the coral reefs.

Back in Cairo, we didn’t do a lot, we dedicated the time to enjoy the few days that we had with the family. Mostafa gave us again the opportunity to pass a special New Year’s Eve inviting us to the house of his mother with his family and friends of different countries, with a menu prepared by all the guests, an excellent and tasty buffet of food of different countries.
Here, is not very important this day, simply around midnight they did a countdown and then hugs. Keeping the tradition, at the Spanish midnight, we ate the 12 grapes with the sound of two bottles of beer. (Spanish tradition)

The 2008 doesn’t start very nice; first the farewells that never are good, and second to have to stay in Cairo to do paperwork, something that usually takes time; visas and the visa extension of Egypt... We change house for some days, Taki lives a little nearer to the city centre, although we couldn’t do anything of paperwork because was on weekend. So, we did some tourism in the city, getting a new vision and different views.

The neighborhood where we are, is on the high class people; but only two streets behind, crossing the railway, it is like to go to another world; very, very narrow streets full of stall, rubbish, tuk-tuk… and among that, the noise of the whistles of the ramshackle cars and the shouts of the sellers…

We used the subway to go to the Citadel, in the subway we must go separate, the first two coaches are only for women; the rest, for souls without taming that when they see a foreigner woman they think they can do and touch whatever they want of her…
The Citadel is found on the top of a hill, and it has a big central mosque; it is too touristic, because of that, the best was to pass through the markets and the daily Egyptian life. Real markets, which doesn’t receive foreigners and people are honest and don’t cheat us; very different from the day by day in the city where we have to fight with all the sellers to be cheated as less as possible.