28 March 2019.

We were half dead after the long journey from Nairobi, but we were way too early to check in to our hotel in Giza. Nevertheless, we needed to get to our hotel and get rid of our bags. Anine and I don’t need to discuss who owes who money, we just balance things out and trust each other to do so, so getting 1 SIM card for both of us didn’t require much discussion.

As we were making our way out of the airport, I got onto the Uber app and plugged in the destination – Mercure Cairo le Sphinx Hotel, 1 Alexandria Road, Giza. Although it was an hour away, it was shockingly cheap at just over ZAR100. To put things into perspective, I normally pay around that for a 10 minute trip in Johannesburg.

After turning down at least a dozen friendly taxi drivers who constantly asked if we need a ride, we managed to make it out of the enormous terminal and into the carpark where our Uber driver was waiting in his tiny red car. Even finding him was a mission as his numberplate was in half Arabic, so I had to try to awkwardly flag him down and see if he responded based on my uneducated interpretation of the numberplate that displayed on the Uber app. Luckily my first attempt at doing so was successful, and after squeezing our bags into the back, we were ready for the next adventure: Egyptian traffic.

My friend Feriaal had warned me weeks before that I should not look at the roads while travelling in Egypt as people’s driving would give me anxiety. I was glad she warned me, because I knew she made it back in one piece and that all I needed to do was be entertained by the locals’ antics. The funny thing is, it’s order amongst chaos. I’ve witnessed the driving in India before and Egypt is actually far worse, funny enough. The best part is how almost every car has scratches all over, and how chilled out people are about what South African’s consider to be terrible driving.

If you’re on a 3 lane road, there are 5 lanes of cars driving at any angle they find space to travel in, as long as they’re moving in the general direction they want to go in. I’ve never come that close to neighbouring cars before, and even if I did as a driver, it would startle me. Our driver was the first of many that did not even flinch when another car was about to touch him. It was amazing.

Once we got into the heart of Cairo, we were fascinated by the dusty, half-built buildings. It was almost as though we were driving through a war zone that had been washed over with sand. In those 10-15 minutes we were stuck in standstill traffic, and continued to watch in confusion, not saying a word to the driver.  We figured our questions would be answered soon enough.

Although Google maps told me where I was, I was still pleasantly surprised when the pyramids appeared out of nowhere. Our hotel was literally across the road from the pyramids, and before we knew it, we had arrived.

We were pleasantly surprised at the expansive reception. I knew it was a 5 star hotel, but I was still pretty blown away. We left our bags at reception and took a walk to the poolside bar to kill the next 3 hours until checkin. The glare was so extreme that I literally couldn’t see where I was going at all. My eyes were watering and I had to look completely down while blocking my eyes. All I could do was stay close behind Anine and follow her footsteps until we got to some shade. I couldn’t get my sunglasses out of my bag quickly enough, so it was the only thing I could do.

Once we got to the patio, we ordered cappuccinos and chilled while reminiscing (not in a good way) about the experience in Nairobi. It had scarred us. On the bright side, and I’m not talking about the glare, the pyramids were literally behind us.

Since we hadn’t had a decent meal since the night before, we were starving and needed to figure out what to do for dinner. Things fell perfectly into place when we found out from the tour desk in the hotel lobby that we could do the Nile cruise that we wanted and have dinner at the same time. We were told that the cruise would last 2 hours, and that we would have a private driver who would take us anywhere we wanted after that. Score!

Check-in was quick, and when we eventually got to our room, all we wanted to do was flop on our beds and catch 40 winks, but we desperately needed a shower. While one showered, the other ogled at the pyramids. They were in our back yard.

Yes, I did pinch myself a few times.

Our driver Nabeel, who looked just like that guy who sings “Pen pineapple apple pen”, arrived early to pick us up, and off we went back into Cairo. He took us down to the ferry and gave us a tour of it, but since they were still setting up, we had some time to walk around. Nabeel took us to a street vendor who was making tonnes of Egyptian bread for the cruise. She had the most heartwarming face, and did not speak a word of English. Nabeel explained that she was making a  traditional Egyptian flatbread called Aish, or Aish Baladi as I’ve now come to learn.

The uncooked Aish was sitting in a trough that was filled with something that looked just like sand, but it turned out to be crushed wheat flour. After the Aish was cooked, the lady took it straight out of the oven and offered it to us. Nabeel took it directly off the pizza peel-like tool and gave it to us. My fingertips were on fire, but how often can you say you ate bread literally straight out of the oven? It was literally an experience one would normally never get as a visitor, especially if you’re travelling with a tourist group.

Not only was the Aish delicious, but it also kept us going until it was time to eat. After witnessing such an amazing sunset, I realised that they don’t call Egypt “The gift of the Nile” for nothing. It was for so many reasons, obviously, and my journey of discovering them had only just begun.

We were one of the first people on the ferry and were guided to our table by one of the staff. We thought it was going to be quite empty, but it wasn’t long before dozens and dozens of people boarded. Anine and I wanted something to drink, and we decided to go for the local beer, Sakara.  Needless to say, we were a bit excited at how big the bottle was. From that day forward, Sakara was our go-to drink.

There was quite a large variety of food at the buffet, but we had to wait for the hoards of people to help themselves first, as the group had come together. The entertainment was great, with a live singer performing in Arabic. Of course, neither Anine or I knew any of the songs, but one particular one stood out and instantly made me smile. I told Anine that this song was going to become the theme song of our trip, and that it was going to stick with me.

After getting back to South Africa, I spent hours trying to identify some words I could recognise from the short video I took, and eventually found out that it was called C’est la Vie by the Algerian musician Khaled. No, not DJ Khaled.

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We tried different things from the buffet, as you can see, but when it came to dessert, we wanted to try everything. Because we were already stuffed, we decided to take one of each thing and share. We were so glad we did, because although everything was delicious, it would have been way too much to eat on our own. We didn’t finish all but were pleased to have sampled everything. We also tried to eat quickly because the ferry was moving and we didn’t want to miss the view outside.

We hadn’t finished our massive beers so we took them to the upper deck with us and found a good spot to sit. It was already dark, but we were dazzled with the lights from all the other boat tours going on on the riverbank.

Both Anine and I had seen belly dancing before, so we had no interest in watching the show on the lower deck. Neither of us were wearing a jacket, but the weather was so perfect and there was barely a hint of a breeze – we truly did choose the best time of year to visit.

As we walked around the deck looking for more photo opportunities, I quickly realised that Anine was going to be the token white girl on this trip, all because of her blonde hair! It was the start of some rather entertaining encounters.

The cruise finished at around 8pm, and although we were super tired, the night was still young.

Nabeel was waiting for us nearby and once we got into the car, he asked what else we wanted to do, since we had technically hired him out for a good few hours. We mentioned our desire to get papyrus at some point and he quickly recommended a good place close to our hotel where we could get the authentic one.

Over 2 decades ago, my penpal Maha from Cairo had sent me a small piece of papyrus which I always treasured, but I always wanted to pick one myself; one where I could say “I got this from Egypt”.

Nabeel took us to the Isis Papyrus Museum in Giza, where we were immediately offered a cold drink as we entered. After our experience with the lady making the Aish and now this, the Egyptian had started to grow on us. It reminded me a little of India, as there were certain shops where it was customary to offer guests a drink upon arrival. Nabeel waited outside and asked us to take as long as we wanted as he was at our disposal, and thank goodness that was the case, because there was way too much to choose from.

Although I had learned how to make papyrus in school, I welcomed the refresher course we were offered by one of the managers. I mean, could the experience have possibly been more authentic?

After the demonstration, Anine and I wandered around the shop in absolute awe of all the choices we had, but we did not at all expect one thing – that some of the artwork was specially made to glow in the dark. We kept asking the guys to turn the lights off and back on again so we could complicate our decision-making process even more. I mean, why wouldn’t you want papyrus that shows more than meets the eye? After all, I’ve always liked seeing things from different perspectives.

We eventually settled on 2 each – one for ourselves and another for our mothers. We negotiated and got about a 15% discount which worked out quite well for both of us, and the guys threw in 2 papyrus bookmarks each with the so-called hieroglyphics alphabet on it. I say ‘so-called’, because we all know there was no such thing as “A, B, C” 5000 years ago, but rather a combination of symbols to represent a sound or whole word.

We got back to our hotel around 9:30pm and we passed out rather quickly. It was such an experience-filled day, but we had another big day ahead – Alexandria. Our trip was about to get epic.