Aaah, the Pyramids! This is what I’ve been waiting for. Waking up early, without a good nights rest, grabbing a cab with back windows that don’t roll down, traffic along the whole way, a cab driver that doesn’t know how to pass up other cars and buses, traffic with pollution, and tons and tons of sun to burn your skin into some fresh saganaki! Great, right?

Well, it’s all in a days visit to the pyramids. We are staying in Heliopolis, right outside of Cairo, and the Pyramids are in Giza. Our cabbie brought us right to the doorstep…basically. Now, where you see the pyramids, you will be in awe. I saw them the first day I got here, but it was only from a distance. NOW, we all got to see them up close and in your face. The pyramids are colossal. You really don’t know how big they are until you get close to them and realize, damn, these suckers are HUGE!!!

These are the 9 pyramids of Giza…1 large, 1 medium, 1 small, and 3 miniatures next to the large, and 3 more miniatures next to the small…for a total of 9. In some of the shots I will be providing, you will be able to see all 9 in one picture. Quite swell if you think of it.

We were ale to enter the large pyramid. Now, here’s the tricky part. You have to go inside and climb within a passage way to get to the Pharaoh’s Tomb. And of course, you have to pay an entrance fee to see all the pyramids, and another to enter in them all as well. Once you enter into the large pyramid, it’s like walking through a cave, and you’re thinking…is it just cave like inside? Then you realize, it’s not, and that you have to pass through this shaft to get to the tomb. The whole time you’re in the shaft, you’re basically crouching/walking…this is because when you enter the pyramid, it is as if you are bowing down and praising/giving respect to the Pharaoh. At one point, you are crouching up this make shift ladder for like 10 minutes…and you are at a pretty steep angle. You continue for a while, escalating higher, and higher….and the whole time, I was thinking, damn, what the hell is this, where am I going? You just keep climbing, then get to a different opening where, again, you’re escalating, but it’s a bigger open space…you can actually stand while you’re climbing the ladder. After a minute or two, you duck under two big slabs of stone, and wha-la…into the Pharaohs tomb.

Now of course the tomb has already been raided by treasure seekers, tomb robbers, and archaeologists, but you get this feeling like, man, this has been here for over 4,000 yrs. 4,000 yrs! 4 freaking thousand years! And the tomb itself is huge…I couldn’t quite grasp the dimensions, but it is huge…by estimate, it was 30 ft long, by 15-20 ft wide, by 40 ft high.

The whole time you’re in the pyramid, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. They search your bags prior to entering and confiscate your cameras. Shoot. Oh well though, you just gotta take my word for it. It’s great. Just crazy like…you know what I mean.

Afterwards, we came out, and then grabbed a guide…or really, he found us, and we were led on another journey around the 9 pyramids of Giza. You guide explained that he was “working” for the gov’t…which I highly doubt now…because if he was, they would have been taking better care of the pyramids. Who knows? Maybe he was. I can’t say for sure, but it seems the way the pyramids are run, tourists are in a no man’s land, surviving for themselves while being haggled to buy souvenirs, way too expensive bottles of water (and yes, we bought some) and other people trying to sell you all this crap.

Our guide took us to the tombs of the engineer who built the pyramid and his son’s tomb as well. Both were still in tact, fully equipped with statues and hieroglyphics. The tomb’s were great…you’ll see the pictures when I put them up.

Next, our guide offered to take us to all 9 pyramids, plus the Sphinx, and a couple more little places, on horseback or camel...all for the price of 60 Egyptian pounds…a piece. We hesitated at first…but we did it anyway. One thing that’s interesting about the pyramids is that when you see them now, it looks as if they all have steps. Really though, the pyramids used to be covered in stone, some granite, some alabaster, and some marble…but they were all covered in some type of stone and each side was smooth. Very slick like.

Another interesting fact about Egypt is that the upper part of Egypt is called Lower Egypt, and the bottom portion is Upper Egypt. I think this has something to do with the way the landscape is set out, and how the River Nile is within the landscape. For more information on this, look it up on Google or some other search engine, or Encyclopedia….I’m too tired to try and explain it fully.

The sphinx was really cool. It was made to fulfill the imagination of a Pharaoh who had no children. The face represents a MAN (cause he was a man), the hair a WOMAN (for beauty), and the BODY a lion (for courage). The nose was broken off sometime ago when Napoleon came to Egypt and tried to search for gold within the Sphinx. No one knows why he blew it off, maybe he was pissed he didn’t find any treasure. Sorry dude. Better luck...um, never.

The horse back ride was great. I had this funny horse that kept eating his mouth piece and kept trying to nibble on the leather reins. He would continually try to eat it and make these funny chomping noises while he was attempting it. The camel ride was horrible, it sway to and fro with an uneven movement that made my butt and legs sore as heck. Then, as he lowered himself so I could get off, the damn beast falls to one side dropping me from midair. Luckily I landed on some gritty sand. Damn beast!

Throughout the whole ride, our guide and companions kept telling us things like, “You happy mister? With Trip? You give me tip.” Demanding money from us. I kept telling them, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand”, then started praying out loud in Greek to avoid further conversation with them. Afterwards, there was a big commotion with the main guide about how much to “tip”, and he kept asking for more money. I got extremely heated with this conversation and refused to give him anymore than we already did. Mazen and Mono (those good guys them) gave him a bit extra, but I could tell the guide was pissed at me, because I kept telling them not to. Throughout that little episode, tensions flared and conversations grew into arguments between friends, but in the end, everything still worked out well. I guess it was the long exposure in the heat, the constant swindling of money, people constantly begging and trying to get more out of us, and the misunderstanding language barrier we possessed that allowed tensions to grow. It sucked at that point…really bad. But I have great friends that seem to overcome anything.

That’s what made this trip the best. Great friends…that make a difference in life, that makes a difference in you. You can go to different places anytime you want, and meet new people all the time, and see more wonders of the world. But if you don’t have friends to experience them with, what good is this trip? Not much…

I have one more day left of Cairo. Then, back home to Chicago. I’ll miss this place, but it’s time to come back. I’m homesick, and want to get back to things that are normal to me again, like Potbelly’s Sandwiches, my dog Roxy, and getting up by 4:15 to go to work. Damn it…4:15. Oh well…it’s not as fantastic as the pyramids in Egypt, but its life…my life, and I love it.

See ya’ll soon!