Cairo

Day 1 has been incredibly stunning.

I arrived in Cairo last night after a... who knows.. a long time flying. Nanaimo to Vancouver to Frankfurt to Cairo. The flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt was the longest (about 10 hours), and the guy next to me and I chatted the entire way (well we also watched Harry Potter 6!!), which was really great! As soon as I boarded the flight the Cairo I couldnt wipe the smile off my face! I'm here, this is finally real!! It is so good to follow your dreams, I feel complete (which I think I told to every girl I met in the bathroom in the club... which is the next story.)

Once in the airport, I got my visa no problem, and found my luggage. There were 3 bike boxes, the two others belonged to two other TDA riders, so I met them :). My friend Lynne who rickshawed with me in Ottawa is also doing the Tour and she had arrived a few days earlier and was staying with a friend who lives in Cairo now. They were both there to pick me up. Jana, her friend, is so friendly, the three of us get along great. We went back to Jana's, got ready to go out and met Jana's friends in a club. We danced and danced and danced with one local boy each to a live cover artist (if you can believe it, the song Yellow by Coldplay was played! I couldn't believe it! This is possibly my favorite song.) We found our way back home around 2 and fell right asleep, probably mid-sentence.

This morning I got up feeling really well and had my first look of Egypt in daylight out of the window. Shimmering yellow desert-like stretch of land surrounded with city. The light here has a shimmery softness to it. Lynne was ready to sleep some more (Jana was at work - she is a teacher in an international school here), so after some breakfast I headed out to explore on my own! I walked around different roads, most dont have sidewalks, but the traffic is remarkably... flowing. The lines of the road don't matter much, and there are cars going every which way, very close to each other... but they all talk with each other. There is a whole code of honks and high-beam flashes and no one panics, it's like a stream that adjusts itself, it flows. A bit of a microcosm for everything here... go with the flow. "Don't worry, be happy" an egyptian man told me. Along my walk, I walked past a shop and the owner invited me in, showed me his merchandise ( I didnt have any local currency yet) and prepared some tea for me and him to have, which we did. I eventually came back to the apartment, woke Lynne up and brought her some water... and found out it was only 11 am! I was sure it was at least 2... I must have been up at 8! Good news for me... the Tour is all about early mornings, which I'm so looking forward to... living with the sun :).

We made some lunch, got ourselves ready, studied some maps and made our way to the Giza Pyramids! The way there was an adventure in itself. We walked to the subway station, discovering more of the city and wonderful flow of chaos along the way. I found somewhere where I could exchange US bills I brought into Egyptian pounds.

The subway have separate cars for men and women. It was quite a memorable experience in the subway to be surrounded by beautiful women wearing colourful headdresses. I would watch someone and she would catch me looking at her. I would smile and she would smile back, as if we were friends for a moment.

Now the adventure really begins! As we got out of the subway at the stop that said "El Giza", a man offered us a ride to the pyramids in his taxi (we really stand out as tourists! As it turns out this is not the closest stop to the pyramids after all). We told him we would walk at first, then he told us it was 10 kilometers and he would take us for 5 pounds (about a dollar canadian). Along the way he told us tons of information about the pyramids and Egypt, and when we could see the pyramids in the distance, he pulled over and took a picture of us with the pyramids in the distance! The service here is exceptional and people are so honest ( I forgot my water bottle in the car at the end and he drove back to give it to me!) He asked us if we wanted to go to the tourist entrance or the "student/traveler/egyptian" entrance. We opted for the second choice. He took us to a company close to the pyramids that offered horseback and camel rides around the pyramids (I think he got commission from the company for everyone he took there who got a tour ... everyone gets a cut here, Jana's friend went with her to a shop and the seller called him back after they left and gave him commission... the seller thought he was a guide). The man at the company took us inside, sat us down and told us everything we needed to know (small tour, medium tour, and long tour and all the prices). We decided to go for it and were soon on the back of two camels, Mauser and Mickey-Mouse. The tour guide was on a horse and a young boy was leading the camels or egging them on if we were leading them ourselves. At first, I felt a little guilty and touristy about the whole thing - but then I remembered my days as a rickshaw runner and how it was almost an insult or a let down when people felt guilty - I chose and loved rickshaw running and wanted my customers to have the best time ever! So I let go and enjoyed! The whole of it was really special in each respective regard. I really loved learning to ride a camel - going along with the motion of the camel's gait ("straight back and hips like a belly dancer!" said my guide). The guide stayed beside me most of the 2 hours we were out there on the camels and really invested in teaching me how to ride well. He said he was very proud and happy for me because I was doing so well and he would now add canada to the top 6 camel riders he had come across in his 25 years in the business on my behalf - what an absolute honor! It was great to ride alongside him for those two hours. He told me all about his 3 wives and answered my questions about how they had come to be his wives. He told me it's hard work to have several wives, and you must do certain things like have dinner everyone together twice a week to ensure everyone is friendly and everyone can see that they were all equal to him. He said you must be a man of good character to be a good husband to several wives. He said there is a saying that men with only one wife are either boring or lazy. And, he said that egyptian men are capable of having several wives because of... camel milk! He very very much believed in camel milk (it makes hard and last very long!!!) and mentioned it often! Because of camel milk, men needed more than 1 wife! I asked him what would happen if a woman wanted more than one man and he said it was illegal but somewhat accepted and did happen once in a while. He said that when he was younger he was with a young woman who was married to a much older man and this woman had several men. After talking about camel milk a little bit, he would correct my posture or get me to try some new technique or style or riding, and then commend me on my riding, and then offer to give my boyfriend camel milk as a prize for my good riding!

The Giza Pyramids are on the edge of Cairo, where the city meets the desert. A feeling of magnitude and awe-inspiration comes about there. Looking one way I saw an incredibly dense city, looking another way I saw impressive pyramids and looking yet another way I saw never ending, shimmery yellow... almost magestic dunes bathing in the huge soft hazy sun above. We went up and down the dunes to different view points of the pyramids and then we went right up to the middle pyramid (which... may not have been completely allowed... there was a little bit of arabic yelling between our guide and a security guard.. which ended well... although there was an exchange of money between our guide and another security guard a little earlier. Also to note is that we didnt pay for any entrance to the site, we came from the opposite direction and were told that it was included in our price.) We climbed up two blocks and posed for pictures according to our guides directions. He's a pro! One block of stone is about as tall as me, and from where I was at the base, I could not see the tip of the pyramid! There is enough stone in one of these pyramids to made a one meter high wall around the whole of France! It's remarkeable to be in the smell and energy and light of this all. The dunes are what impressed me most... I could imagine how a project like the pyramids could be dreamed up looking at these shimmery, not demanding attention but aware that they are drawing it in nonetheless, dunes.

We eventually made our way back to where we started, but not without riding the camels with our legs to the side and facing backwards. And also, he insisted we try the slow, medium and ... the crazy trot!! I think my camel was getting a little old, he faired well but seemed to be a bit slower and was... coughing, I believe. These camels are remarkably laid back beings. There was a long row of them at the fence where we started, they were hardly moving or making any noise. I guess being a creature of the desert demands for low energy expenditure.

Back in the tent we met a man named Abdul who comes out here to ride horses every once in a while. To him, it feels like flying! (I told him I got that feeling from a bicycle :D). Apart from riding a horse, he also loves coming out to the desert and just relaxing for 2 hours every once in a while to get away from the stress of the city. This is what life is about, he says, not about doing this and this and this and this. He was very intent on having us join him at his house for dinner and tea. He really wanted to show us that egyptians are friendly, nice people and that the real egypt is not in the tourist sites, you have to live like the egyptians to know it. Egyptians seem to be active, outspoken, friendly, chaotic, intrigued, a little shy, and lively people all at once... I do not doubt their hospitality and friendlyness. Anyone I smiled to on the street smiled back and said "Welcome!". We were meeting Jana at a restaurant for dinner, so we declined Abdul's offer. He made sure we had his number and told us to call him if we felt up to it another time.

I have no idea what time it is now, but it's dark out and I am pretty sleepy. Tomorrow we meet up with the all the TDA riders and staff at the resort where most riders are currently staying, put our bikes back together, have our first Rider Meeting, and head out on a fun short convoy ride to the step pyramids (which apparently aren't true pyramids, but more like a series of tombs built over each other). Saturday we're off for real!

One last thing... one of my favorite parts so far is the language. I am slowly but surely falling in love with the arabic language. To me, it is beautiful, in a entirely new sense of the word.

Hoping you are all well!

Shartom! ("Thank you", most important word to learn so far! I'm not sure of the spelling yet).