Trip to Cairo

Two years ago I spent a holiday in Egypt. The general neighborhood was in Hurghada. From that location, in one of the days, we went in an extra trip to Cairo – the main goal was visiting the famous Egyptology Museum. As it is costumed in Egypt we went in a caravan of buses, 20 from what I remember. This is the only way you could travel in Egypt. Is a form of giving a sense of trust to the tourists after a few years ago was a terrorist attack. From what I know if it was to happen again there will be no effect, but however as a tourist it gives you an extraordinary safety feeling. For how many times in life did ever happen to you to be escorted by several army cars and police and everybody and everyone to stop whenever you want to pass?

Coming back to my trip … I left in the morning from the hotel, when it was nearly light, with the breakfast at package (2 oranges, 2 small bananas and 2 boiled eggs and some croissants with nuts and cream and a box of juice) and after we gathered other tourists from their hotels we entered on the highway which goes to Cairo. They call it a highway but actually is a wide road with only two lanes, but it was very good. On the right side of the road there was the Red Sea (we had the luck to see the dolphins a few times) and on the left side there were hotel near another hotel and so on. At that time the area was in touristic development and it was building without stop. Let me say again, they were building during night, when it was cool… During day there was no worker on the streets or somewhere else. I was looking surprised at the countless hotels, one bigger than the other one, and I was asking myself from where would they get all the tourists to populate them? The guide told me not to worry… demand and supply.

As we went further on, getting closer to Cairo, the guide started telling us all kind of histories and she started presenting us the life Egypt behind the hotels… actually something that a tourist never gets to see. Cairo is the largest capital from the Arab world, the biggest city in Africa and nobody knows how large the population is. Some say there is around 16 million people, others say 20 million. However it would be the number, add another 3-4 million of tourists annually and the result just terrifies you. In the city the buses cannot stay together so they plan to meet at a point at the edge of the city for the road to Hurghada.

For more read the next post: Life in Egypt