We land at Cairo airport at dusk

All the Arabs in the Royal Air Jordan plane that we are on, clap when the plane lands at Cairo airport at night. Noel and I think this is very amusing.

Cairo airport is crowded.

We meet Nabil our tour arranger

Nabil meets us at the airport. Nabil is our young Egyptian tour arranger for this leg of our trip. He is single, short, well dressed, polite and a Coptic Christian.

Nabil our Egyptian tour arranger and Noel in Cairo.

The driver of our white tourist van/bus is Mohamed. He is Moslem. Nabil tells us he has three wives and is now thinking of taking a fourth. Mohamed turns around and gives us a big grin when Nabil says this. Four wives are the maximum a Moslem is allowed.

We were to discover that most men in Egypt are called Mohamed, or Ahmed, after the Moslem prophet.

Crazy driving

The night drive from the airport to our hotel is unforgettable. I’ve never seen anything like it. Five lanes of fast moving traffic. All drivers completely ignoring the road lane markings. Honking, swerving, flashing headlights, cutting each other off, just inches away from each other. Reminds me of the dodgems. Everybody’s going way too fast. Dented cars everywhere.

Apart from the crazy driving, Cairo looks highly exotic at night. Date palms, ancient stone buildings.

Large flash hotel

It’s a long drive from the airport to our Cataract Pyramids Resort Hotel. The hotel is large and flash from the outside, but our rooms are only so so.

The first room assigned to us has not been cleaned. The porter apologises profusely and asks us to wait outside by the lights near the swimming pool, while he arranges another room. The swimming pool is huge, about half an acre in size.

The huge hotel pool.

It’s a warm night, but no insects anywhere that we can see.

We are then shown to our new room. Rather small, but at ground level, like most of the rooms in this sprawled out hotel. There are no windows that open in our room at all. At least the air conditioner works.

Next day Thursday 7th July

Back to beginning of Middle East trip