La, Shukran! (no, thanks)

Egypt is still great, but we've had our fill of hawkers! For the last two days, we've been constantly hounded to buy things and go on tours...I feel like a baby who can't make any of my own decisions. It's the worst for sociable Kim, who buys right into the "Hello, where are you from? I have a cousin from there. You look Egyptian....line that inevitably leads to a plea for cash from us. I think he's learning that we're not in Eritrea any more and that friendliness from strangers is usually an attempt to sell something.

But it's not all bad. Most people have been very kind to us. I thought I'd be scared to walk on the streets alone here, but it feels very safe, and many people are eager to help us out when we're lost (which is easy, the city is huge and has many roundabouts with 5 or 6 streets leading out of them, so it's easy to get disorientated.)

Some of the things we've enjoyed over the past few days:

1. the food: new on our list are huge pretzels that remind us of real Montreal bagels, a stuffed pizza made of filo pastry, and kushari, a mixture of lentils, pasta and hot sauce that is much more delicious than it sounds. You can get any kind of tropical juice here. Yesterday, the kids had their first sugar cane juice.

2. the sights: We saw a part of Islamic Cairo yesterday. It was incredible walking through streets with modern buildings built into the sides of very ancient ones. There were lots of incredible, old mosques and a house built on top of a tomb stone.

Today, we went to Giza to see the pyramids and the Sphinx. It was incredible. The city and its highrise goes right up to beside the pyramids, which are built in the desert. The Sphinx is smaller than we had thought it would be, but it was beautiful. We didn't get into the pyramids, but walking around these huge structures was overwhelming. Maya, Lukas and Kim took a camel ride around the site, but Simon and I were happy exploring it on foot.

Tomorrow we head to the Southern part of the Nile, to Aswan, where we'll see some temples and then take a boat ride down the Nile to Luxor, the site of the Valley of the Kings.

3. Watching people smoke sweet, fruit flavoured tobacco through water pipes. This is a social activity done in cafes here. I remember seeing a family doing this at Barnet Beach just before we left. They seemed like a very conservative, Muslim family and I was amazed that they were smoking an illegal drug out in the open. Now I get what it was!

Guess that's all for now,

Barb

from Kimbalito and/or Barbarita
Ma esalama