Cairo / Pyramids

Hello,

Today was great! We woke up early to a surprisingly edible breakfast and then went to the Pyramids. We started with the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza. We had our first (and probably last) experience riding camels. It was a lot of work. Our two were named Ali Baba and Mickey Mouse. When they galloped we felt like we were going to fall off! We were up very high! Its hard to imagine people building the pyramids. It was so hot that we got tired riding a camel for 2hrs and looking around! The pyramids were huge - bigger than we expected. We got some awesome pictures that look like many of the images that we are all familiar with. From Giza we headed to Sakkara Pyramids. These are smaller than Giza (still big though!) and were the first ones built. We spent a long time walking the desert and taking pictures of the pyramids including some of the 74 other pyramids that we could see in the distance. There were also tombs with hieroglyphics - the one tomb had 33 rooms! The other's passage ways were no more than 4 feet tall/wide. We had to crouch half way over to make our way down the 50 foot long initial tunnel. The hieroglyphics and drawings on the wall were amazingly well preserved - many still had their original colouring. We took our time in this area and really enjoyed exploring everything.

By the time that we got back to our hotel we were exhausted! It was 36C today and we went through a total of 6L of water today! After a short rest we hit the city and walked the streets of Cairo. Its very difficult to explain, but Cairo is very interesting. There are people and cars EVERYWHERE. Its very noisy/alive with strange/interesting shops and people. We were getting sick of shish-kebabs and enjoyed an American style, but middle eastern, fast food chain's hamburger and fries tonight. We know, not very cultural but after 4 meals of the same thing you'd want a change too!

We're relaxing the rest of tonight and spending tomorrow exploring Cairo further before departing for Aswan that night.

Bye for now!