Sunday, May 25, 2003 (Boeing 737, Khartoum International Airport -
Sudan)
Our man Henry awaits us again. Killing time with
a killer. Passing back and forth through passport control. Touching down in a
new country is all the excuse needed to add another one to the list. My god,
what hit us! Nothing could have prepared us for this. Egyptians are just as warm
and friendly too.
Day 74. We departed Nairobi and Kenya this
afternoon and for the first time since reaching Africa, we are now North of the
Equator. With great sadness, we leave the wildlife of Africa behind us and move
on to more adventures. Our flight this evening takes us through to Cairo via a
brief stopover in Khartoum in the Sudan. We are just sitting here on the tarmac,
waiting to pick up some more passengers before completing the final leg of the
journey. An excellent opportunity to compose my daily log entry as we will
probably be too tired when we arrive in Cairo later on tonight, close to
midnight.
With no particular rush, we
got up this morning after a restless night. There were a couple of mosquitoes
that had somehow found their way into our room and every half an hour or so, one
would buzz around my ear and I would wake up, switch on the light and sit there
hoping to catch sight of the little bugger. Sometime around three or four
o’clock, I managed to catch one of the little blighters. Mosquitoes are
not just a nuisance, here; they are bad news and represent a potential Malaria
risk. This gives me all the excuse I need to hunt down and destroy the little
winged parasites – from which I derive far too much
enjoyment.
With our flight out of
Nairobi not departing until five thirty in the evening, this left a pretty big
gap in our day which we had no plans for filling. Worse still was the fact that
we had to check out of the hotel by ten thirty and lugging forty kilograms of
backpacks around the half deserted streets of Nairobi on a Sunday was not a good
idea.
After breakfast, we decided to
have Henry, whom by now was already eagerly waiting for us outside of the hotel,
to drive us to the airport where we would check our bags in and just hang around
for the rest of the day.
At the
airport, we sat and ate for a while and just mulled around in general for
several hours. We almost got a $150 per person upgrade to first class but it
turned out to be a miscalculation on the part of the novice, ticketing clerk.
Even despite my best protestations, I couldn’t get him, his supervisor, or
her manager to budge and we ended up stuck with economy class as originally
planned.
I walked around and chatted
for a while with several people, including and armed guard, a couple of
different taxi drivers, a restaurant employee, the woman at the travel agency
desk, the man behind the glass at the bureau de change office and a couple of
airport handling employees. We even got to know the guy working the passport
desk who was nice enough to let us back out of the airport to get something to
eat, even after we had gone through and had our passports stamped. Technically,
this meant that we have now visited Kenya twice. As was the case with the people
we met and befriended at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, I have found the people of
Kenya to be very warm and friendly. It doesn’t take much to strike up a
friendly conversation with a complete stranger and get to know them a bit. The
people of Africa have been one of the highlights of the entire trip to date and
many of the most precious memories that I will take back home with me will be of
the people I met here and got to know a
little.
After we passed through
passport control and went into the departure lounge, again, Sandy did a little
bit of shopping for a couple of small items, really just to get rid of the
remaining few Kenyan bank notes that we had over and we soon boarded the flight
bound for Cairo via
Khartoum.
It’s now later in the
evening, we just finished loading the new passengers and the engines are
starting to growl again so I must now switch off the laptop and draw this log
entry to a close. Next stop will be Cairo and the treasures of Egypt. More
adventures await us ahead and it will all kick off with a rather auspicious
start since we will arrive close to midnight and we have no accommodation plans
yet. Nothing like flying by the seat of your
pants!
Well, even thought it’s
now gone two o’clock in the morning, we’ve arrived here in Cairo at
our hotel and I just have to put a few thoughts down before nodding
off.
Crash! We’ve arrived in
Cairo! If ever there was a place where culture shock is going to hit us, this
must surely be it. It’s absolutely bedlam in this place and once again I
feel like I’m in the middle of a controlled crash that doesn’t want
to end. The procedures at the airport were straight forward enough although
there were a couple of women wearing surgical face masks that were pointing
little ray guns into our ears (apparently to measure our temperature) and
subsequently handing out anti-biotic tablets for pretty much every newly
arriving visitor to take. They muttered something about arriving from countries
with endemic diseases such as Cholera and SARS. We obliged by taking the tablets
from them, as did everyone else, but I doubt we will bother with them as the
whole thing seemed very unscientific and
non-clinical.
After receiving our
tablets, the next obstacle to overcome was a line of bureau de change windows.
Someone at each of these windows was frantically waving at all the new arrivals
coming down the corridor, begging them to change their money at their window.
These little cubicles also served as the place to get the mandatory $15 entry
visa and we needed to change some traveller’s checks anyway so we eyed
each and every one of them for the best exchange rate going and eventually
settled on one of them. The money exchange was handled quite efficiently and we
were soon on our way to the immigration cubicles with our visa stamps (they look
like postage stamps) now stuck into our
passports.
Passing through
immigration was also a breeze and the most hassle-free that we’ve
experienced in the whole of Africa. Our two checked backpacks were already
waiting for us and had already been removed from the now stationary luggage
belt. The luggage handlers were clearly looking for a handout but since none of
them had actually performed any service for us over and above what they were
there to be paid for, we immediately left with our luggage strapped to our backs
to navigate the gauntlet of taxi drivers and touts that were inevitably awaiting
our exit from the customs hall and into their path. Hounds to the hunters, we
were. A taxi driver latched onto us in record time and stuck with us fairly
persistently for the next fifteen minutes or so. We were not planning on getting
an expensive taxi into town anyway so we pretty much ignored him. This
wasn’t difficult to do since he spoke very little
English.
Our plan was to either sleep
somewhere in the airport terminal building (which we later learned was not
allowed at Cairo International Airport – although it is allowed at some
airports), or to call one of the recommended budget hotels listed in my newly
purchased Lonely Planet guidebook for Egypt. We bought a phone card and, with
the help from a semi-reluctantly helpful information desk clerk, called the
Mayfair hotel to negotiate a rate. The best we could get was ten percent off the
E£70 ($12) nightly fee due to the fact that we had a guidebook that listed
them in it. As the room has air-conditioning, an on-suite bathroom and comes
with breakfast included, we can’t
complain.
So, after agreeing on a
rate with the hotel manager over the phone, the next logistical problem was to
figure out a way to get from the airport to the hotel. The hotel manager seemed
to think that the buses were still running, even though our guidebook says that
they stop running after eleven o’clock in the evening. We finally figured
out where the bus stop was and walked the short distance over to it from the
terminal building and sat down. I was a little concerned about the fact that it
was a poorly lit place out in the middle of a car park and that there was nobody
else around but someone else soon arrived and he was apparently also waiting for
a bus. It’s almost second nature now for us to automatically strike up a
friendly conversation with the locals and this was no exception. He turned out
to be a police office with the immigration department at the airport and had
just finished his shift. We chatted for about thirty minutes about our travels
and ourselves, and he was extremely helpful with lots of useful information for
us. After seeing several buses stop just outside of the car park where we were
sitting, without coming through, we all eventually decided to relocate to nearer
the main road where the buses were passing. Not only was this young police
officer, that was dressed in civilian clothing, very welcoming and friendly, he
also insisted in paying our bus fare for us and taking us most of the way to
where we needed to go before getting off himself. He wrote several titbits of
useful information down in my guidebook and even left us his home phone number
just in case we ever found ourselves in a predicament where he might be able to
help us out. I don’t know if it has just been good luck or what it is, but
we always seem to meet the nicest people that want to go out of their way to
help and assist us. There were even several people on the buses that we
navigated into town that sat down next to us and started chatting and offering
helpful pointers such as where we needed to get out and what the landmarks were
that we were passing. Accordingly, our first impressions of the people of Cairo
are very good indeed. The bus ride itself was an adventure all of its own. I
don’t think the driver actually brought the bus to a complete standstill
once to let any one of the dozens of passengers on or off during the forty-five
minute ride to the centre of town. People were lunging themselves onto and off
of the bus in mid flight and I did my best not to look completely horrified and
some of the manoeuvres that he and the other vehicles around him was
making.
After reaching the
termination point for our bus journey in the main square in downtown Cairo (the
name of which I will simply never be able to correctly pronounce – even
after a bit of elocution lessons from our friendly police office), we gratefully
got off and flagged down a taxi to take us the remaining little distance to the
hotel. I had a horrific premonition that the taxi ride would be worse than the
bus ride but gave in to the situation and tried to think of all the fun stories
I would have to tell at the end of our trip – if we were still alive. Of
course, we managed to find the only taxi driver in Cairo that doesn’t know
where he’s going – or perhaps none of them do. As was the case with
the bus journey, the taxi ride was a hellish nightmare of a rollercoaster ride
with the exception that I was now sitting in the front seat with a full, forward
facing position and could see the Ladas and Skodas hurtling themselves around
the roads at us. There are very few rules of the road in Cairo other than barely
trying not to hit anything either moving or stationary. Anything and everything
else goes. Even after midnight, there are plenty of people walking about the
place and they use the roads just as happily as the pavements to navigate from A
to B. As far as I can tell, the trick seems to be to try to move around without
giving any indication that you’ve even noticed that there is anything else
on the road. This applies equally to the motorized and pedestrian traffic.
Traffic lights are there purely to decorate the city, it seems, as the
particular colour being displayed at any point in time seems to have no
significance whatsoever. Lines on the road are similarly there for some purpose
other than guiding traffic in any given direction. If it is tarmac, it’s
pretty much up for grabs as far as Cairo traffic is concerned and everybody
drives in whatever direction they please. Just about every object we passed,
both moving and stationary, was the very near result of a collision and I could
barely watch or even move a
muscle.
After stopping several times
for directions, we finally made it to the hotel and we were glad to get out of
the taxi – even more so than with the bus – shaken, but at least
with our lives still in tact. We paid the man more than the going rate for the
journey, although the amount we gave him was still barely the equivalent of a
couple of dollars.
After a few
formalities at the front desk of the hotel, we have now settled in and will
sleep well tonight. Tomorrow, we formulate our plan of attack for tackling Cairo
and the pyramids.
Posted: Sun - May 25, 2003 at 08:23 AM