“Very disorderly and aggressive.” That’s how one person described the Cairo Airport in a review at virtualtourist.com. It’s a fitting description for Cairo in general, if you throw in hot, dirty and ear-splittingly-noisy.
I’ve been in Cairo two full days, three nights; departing for Istanbul tomorrow. So far, it’s been a bit of a bust. The first night was great, as I was welcomed by Egyptian-born-but-world-traveled Aladdin and his Columbian wife in their home, along with two other visitors: Carmen and Jenny are in town because evidently Cairo has quite the belly-dancing scene and that’s one of their hobbies back home in Columbia.
The next day I gorged on Cairo like a starving man with a gift-card for Old Country Buffet. I began at the Great pyramid of Khufu, and hurried from there to the old central city of Cairo, and then walked, walked, and walked some more, trying to absorb and see as many of the fascinating people-clogged streets and alleys and historic sites as possible. I was so focused I didn’t stop to eat, and neglected to drink the required water to survive in Cairo’s sweltering, polluted heat. Not surprisingly, just like the guy who stuffs himself at Old Country Buffet, I got sick.
Maybe it was just heat illness, or maybe I picked up a bug the day before traveling up to Cairo from Taba Heights on the bus, but I spent most of yesterday with headaches, alternating chills and sweats, dizziness, and an upset stomach. This was exacerbated by the fact that Alan (Aladdin) and his wife experienced a painful personal family event, so I felt that I needed to evacuate ASAP. Thanks to the ‘net, I found a nice hotel – screw authentic experience, I was sick – in Cairo for about half of what its rooms usually cost. Still, I didn’t want to add to Alan’s issues by telling him that I felt lousy, so I took the local mode of transportation from his apartment into town. Which meant taking two buses – not a problem, right? Right. In theory. The problem was lugging my bags around in the holy-cow-dirty-and-hot!-heat as I tried to find the second bus. It was too much heat and unrelenting sun, too many flies, too much feeling like a stupid, out-of-place foreigner, too much dust – just too much Cairo in general. By the time I got to my hotel, it was time to just sleep and rest and stop trying to see the sights, even if my time here is awfully short.
So after almost 15 hours resting in my hotel room, I’m feeling well enough to get back to exploring Cairo, albeit this time at a slower pace and being more careful to keep sucking down the bottled water and some salty foods here and there. As I explore, I’ll hunt out a wi-fi spot and upload this post, along with another, and hopefully get some pictures up at Facebook or Flickr or both.
