An ambition realised

Like most people I have a list of things I would like to do and places I’d like to see; I’ll not list them all, why would you care? Anyway, I’ve been lucky enough to have completed some of them; the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal to name just two. Very high on my list was to visit the great pyramids of Giza and in May 2005 I realised this ambition….

His nibs and I were in need of a well deserved rest so took a week’s holiday in Egypt. There we spent a couple of days in Giza before heading to the Red Sea for some diving; you can read about our diving in the King One post. Being independent souls we booked flights, hotel etc online, so no airport transfers were included. Once we’d landed at Cairo we followed the signs for taxis; his nibs nearly fainted when he saw them. What a pile of old rust-buckets and that’s being polite! None of them looked very safe, but we had no choice so in we got. That’s when the fun started; the roads are not very good and the driving standards are dreadful. Accelerate hard, sway from lane to lane without indicating, brake even harder, and swerve erratically to avoid traffic from side streets as they don’t give way and never look to see if the road is clear. Now the driving in Dubai is scary, but this was something else; I thought Alain was about to have a stroke – his blood pressure was so high. I on the other-hand was relatively relaxed; you see I’d lived in India for a while, so this was nothing new to me. Alain kept saying “shway, shway” to the driver, which is Arabic for slower, slower. However, this did nothing but elicit a hearty laugh from our kamikaze driver. The 50 minute drive from the airport to our hotel the Mena House in Giza felt like a life-time and with much relief we exited the death-trap cab and checked in.

The Mena House Hotel is right at the base of the great pyramids and we had the most amazing view from your room. The hotel has an illustrious and infamous past, dating back to 1869. It was originally a hunting lodge that has since played host to kings and emperors, heads of state and celebrities. During the First World War it was used as a base for Australian troops and was even a hospital. Again in use during the Second World War in 1943, the Mena House saw one of its most exciting years. Plans for Overlord, the invasion of Europe, had to be discussed by Churchill and Roosevelt and operations in Southeast Asia needed consultation with General Chiang Kai-Shek. It was decided that the Big Three conference should take place at the Mena House Hotel. No famous people were there when we arrived, but it is a wonderful hotel and has been beautifully restored. Sitting for lunch by the pool bar with a cold and surprisingly tasty Egyptian beer with the great Pyramid of Giza as the backdrop is one of those moments I will never forget. We booked a tour of the pyramids for the next day and enjoyed an amazing dinner in the Moghul Room after drinks in the Al Rubayat bar. It was like stepping back in time.

The view from the hotel pool....

The view from our balcony.....





The back in time theme would continue the following day, though much further back, around 4500 years back! Our guide met us with a driver, this time in a clean, new and safe looking vehicle and much the Alains’ delight he did not drive like he was blindfolded. The short drive to the Pyramids entrance took no more than 5 minutes making us think “we could have walked” but hey it was part of the package. Our guide was exceptionally knowledgeable and very enthusiastic about his subject; an Egyptian very proud of his heritage. We spent a couple of hours in awe exploring these amazing feats of engineering, our guide always telling us to look down at the blocks so we could admire the nonexistent gaps between blocks of stone that were in most cases taller than me! How did they cut them so precisely and move them, I was thinking. Our guide knew all the answers. The Sphinx concluded our tour and we headed off to view some local handicrafts, and of course buy them! It was an amazing day – one I will never forget, even though it’s a tourist trap our guide knew all the quiet spots where we could sit and take in the sheer magnitude of the site and its history. One of the ancient Greeks’ Seven Wonders of the World, if you ever have the opportunity to visit - you must.















An finaly.... Eqypts finest snoozing on patrol....