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| Our Cairo Guide |
When visiting foreign lands, it is
always helpful to have a good guide. They know the way around, they
know what is best to see and understand the local customs. A good
guide can make a huge difference in how good a visit is. Our trip to
Puglia in Italy was made so much more because we discovered Green
Italy Travel, and on the Nile Cruise, we were assigned a great guide,
Michael who spoke almost perfect English, and spent five days showing
us around Luxor and Aswan. By the end of the cruise he was more a
“friend” than a guide, and he added much to the experience. Here
in Cairo we have perhaps the best guides; our Nova Scotia friends who
have lived and experienced Egypt for 10 years, and know not only
where to take us but know us well enough to know what we will enjoy.
Usually our friends have managed to
arrange for their driver to take us around to visit the sites and
experiences here in Cairo, but today they were busy, and we were
feeling adventurous, so we went off on our own. Our friend, knew a
taxi driver who is usually available in the area and she arranged for
him to pick us up, take us the 45 minutes into downtown Cairo to
visit the Gayer-Anderson Museum and the ancient mosque beside the
museum. He offered to wait for us and then bring us home, all for a
set price (Egyptian taxis have no metres).
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| A Cairo Street |
Now going any distance on Cairo streets
is an experience! The average distance between vehicles is perhaps 18
inches and very few cars are scratch and dent free; most have damage
on every body panel. A normal two lane road supports four lanes of
traffic and most drivers ignore the lanes, driving anywhere they want
and swerving and changing lanes constantly, blasting their horns to
warn others of their intentions. Our cab driver today was calm,
consistent and steady. He stayed in his lane, signalled directional
changes and went with the flow of traffic. Regis gets nervous when
being driven in strange places (She likes to be in control), but even
she felt comfortable with this driver.
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| Michael (our guide in Luxor & Aswan) & Regis |
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| Cairo Street |
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| Cars, people, buses, everywhere . . . . |
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| Our Cairo Taxi Driver |
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