Atherton Family Notes

Back in the middle of February, I got a chance to leave the midwest deep freezer for a few days and attend a training class in the San Francisco area.  The training ended a couple hours early on the second day, so the group I was travelling with decided to go to Muir Woods, which is located in Marin county, California on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco.

I’ve had the good fortune to visit the woods a couple times in the past, but before February, it had been more than 10 years.  I didn’t even own a digital camera that last time I was there — no wonder the place seemed so distant in my memory!  :)

What makes Muir Woods an interesting place to visit is that is is home to some of California’s famous giant redwoods, the coast variety.  It was pretty dark and dreary the day I visited this time, but I still managed to get a few interesting pictures of the trees.  They are impressively large and it is difficult to get far enough away from one to take a single pictures that shows both the top and bottom, so I stitched together several shots of this tree:

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Tomorrow is the start of our vacation in Egypt.  We are going to try to write about our trip as soon as we can, but we’re not sure when we’ll get Internet access.  I’m probably going to date the articles with the actual date but publish them one a day.  Still, that may mean that a burst of articles appears at one time.

Wish us luck!

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After what seemed like an eternity, we finally made it to Cairo. We didn’t have any delays, the main issue was that we had to make two separate airline reservations to fly to Cairo in order to get the best flights and prices. The first flight was from Indianapolis to LaGuardia and the second was from JFK to Cairo. The painful part was that the first flight arrived 8 hours before we were scheduled to depart on the second.

This wouldn’t have been so bad if we had been able to check our bags in for the second flight as soon as we got to the airport. If we had, we could have spent a few hours in NYC before returning for our flight, but instead, we had to hold onto our bags until about 3 hours before the flight to Cairo.

So we spent about 8 hours at JFK waiting. Let me tell you, there aren’t many interesting things to do there. So we sat. And surfed the internet. And walked around looking for lunch, only to discover that all of the good restaurants were behind security gates for which we didn’t have access. And we sat some more. And surfed the internet. And Carissa got a manicure. And then we sat some more. And so on, until it was finally time to get on the plane.

We had gotten up really early (4AM) in Indianapolis so that we would be tired by the time we got on the plane to Cairo and would be able to sleep. This partially worked, but it also meant we had been very tired while waiting for the plane, but we made ourselves stay awake. Then we got on the plane and it was hard to get comfortable enough to sleep.

By noon Cairo time, 26 hours after we had gotten up in Indianapolis, we picked up our bags and met our tour leader in the Cairo Airport.

This is Carissa and I sitting next to all of the luggage we took with us to Cairo. We put our light-packing skills to the test for this one. All of our clothes are in the silver bag and the black bag with the white stitching. The big black back contains a few electronic accessories, a spare pair of shoes for Sandi and an empty cardboard box that we can jettison in favor of carrying more goodies back from Egypt.

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Our hotel in Cairo is located a fairly long way from the Hotel – it is actually in Giza, part of the the greater Cairo area on the west bank of the Nile. The bad news is that it takes a long time to get from the airport to our hotel (especially on a Sunday, which is a work day in the Islamic world), but the good news is that we got a chance to see some of the sights and sounds of Cairo on the ride.

Where to begin? Well, how about this: the official bus system in Cairo has been augmented by private buses that travel between two points, picking up and dropping off passengers at any location along the way. Literally, any location.

So there we were, driving down the 8-lane ring road that runs around Cairo, and watching small buses come to a complete stop on the right lane without warning and then seeing people sprint across all 8 lanes either once they got off the bus, or occasionally in order to make sure they got on. It was like watching real life, human Frogger.

Once we got off the ring road, Carissa also noticed a large number of elementary-school-aged children walking alone on the streets. It turns out that school had just gotten out for the day, and these kids were on their way home. It quickly became clear that children learn the rules of human Frogger at a young age in Cairo.

Obviously, this isn’t the first time that we’ve been in a big city or seen people doing dangerous things around fast moving vehicles. So what’s different here in Cairo? Well for one thing, it seems like there are only two modes of transportation here: either you ride in a bus or a car, or you walk. There are almost no bikes in Cairo that we’ve seen. This means that you don’t have large numbers of people travelling in the same direction as traffic at medium speed – you end up with a lot more going across traffic at walking speed.

The other big difference from other places we’ve visited is that pedestrians can easily access the highways you wouldn’t normally see pedestrians. Imagine how different the US interstate system would be if everyone not currently in a car decided to cross over from one side of the highway to the other. That’s what Cairo is like.

Traffic aside, there were lots of other things to see on our trip, including our first glimpses of some of the famous mosques and the trademarks of Cairo, the Giza Pyramids.

This was the first good view that we got of the pyramids after arriving in Cairo. I love this picture because it gives a good impression of what suburban Cairo is like: tons of unfinished buildings (more on this later), the bright green of the fields where agriculture is practiced in small scale using manual labor, and the magnificent back drop that the pyramids provide to all of this.

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Our first night in Cairo was supposed to be quiet. There were no events planned in order to give us a chance to catch up on our sleep. But as anyone who has ever traveled with us can tell you, there was no way we were going to not do something.

We had realized before arriving in Cairo that Carrefour had at least one location there. (For the uninitiated, Carrefour is the second largest retailer in the world, behind Walmart, and operates a large chain of super centers throughout the world with a noticeable exception of the USA.)

So our first thought had been to get a taxi to take us to the Carrefour. We guessed that we would be able to get drinks and snacks to take with us for the rest of the trip, and at reasonable prices. Plus, I love to go to stores like this in any new country I visit because it is always instructive to understand what people eat.

The concierge at the hotel talked us out of this plan by telling us that while we could get a taxi to take us to the Carrefour, it might be difficult to get a taxi to bring us back. So instead, we hired a driver to take us to a nearby store locally, show us some of the sights, and take us to a decent restaurant for dinner.

He took us to a tiny store organized like a convenience store and carrying most of the same kinds of goods. It was completely dark, and the shopkeeper turned on a small light so that we could see the contents of the store (sort of). We bought bottled water, several small bags of potato chips, and a little bit of candy.

The potato chips were the biggest challenge, since we had to identify the flavors by guessing what the pictures on the front actually represented. Some were easy (cheese), but some were more difficult: “So what is that clear liquid being poured on chips???” Vinegar, as it turns out.

Next, he drove us over to the area just around the pyramids. It was close to sun set and the site was already closed (not that it matters because we are going back tomorrow), but Sandi hopped out of the van just long enough to snap this picture:

Next, our driver took us to a perfume shop without really asking us if we wanted to go. This was our introduction to the Egyptian Shopping Experience™, and we were only partly ready for it. The shopkeeper worked very hard to ingratiate himself to us at the beginning, offering us a free drink (peppermint tea, which actually was very good), talking up the uniqueness of Egyptian oil perfumes, giving us samples, and so on.

Several of the samples we tried did actually smell very good. Carissa was quite taken with one called “Secret of the Desert”, which among other things, is made from palm extract which gave it a distant, sweet smell.

But then we got down to talking price, and it was clear he was going to ask us to spend money we didn’t want to spend. At first, he showed us his “small”, “medium” and “large” bottles along with the prices. When it became clear to him that we weren’t going to buy at those prices, suddenly another even smaller bottle emerged at a lower price, and then another! After that he tried to sweeten the deal by adding a “buy 2, get 1 as a gift from us” offer. Even then, the tiny bottles were priced at more than $16 each.

We did finally buy something from him though: a small, fancy perfume bottle that Carissa can display at home. But no perfume oil. We got out of the shop for about $10 (LE 50), and felt pretty good about it.

We’re going to have to be better prepared for the next shop we enter.

Our final stop of the evening was at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that our driver recommended. It was a shish kebab place and was actually quite good. We had both chicken and beef as wellas all of the various Mediterranean side dishes you would expect, like hummus, pita bread, rice, babaganoush, stuffed eggplant, and some other things we didn’t recognize. We noticed that our driver managed to eat for free, probably due to some arrangement he had with the restaurant, because we suspect we paid more than most Egyptians would have for the same food. We weren’t particularly surprised by this as we had heard that it was customary to pay for your guide’s food in Egypt, but we thought we would at least be asked.

Reading back over what I’ve just written, it makes the evening seem a little negative, but it really was fun overall. We are definitely experiencing a little culture shock, but we did actually see a lot in a few hours and learn some interesting tidbits from Meemo (short for Mohammed), our driver.

Some interesting things Meemo told us:

• He is studying to be a licensed Egyptologist so that he can lead tours and not just drive. This is a four-year degree on top of a teaching degree he already has. He seems to enjoy talking about ancient Egypt, but he’s primarily doing it for the money – Egypt is highly dependent on the tourism industry, and “tour guide” is one of the better paying jobs in the economy.
• We asked him about the traffic situation, and he said that it was just part of their way of life. Egyptians, he said, use their horns more than they use their mouths – and the use their mouths a lot.
• The lane markers painted on streets are just for decoration. Nobody pays any attention to them at all.
• Buses in Cairo are not full until there are people hanging out of the doors.

Today has been a good start to our trip. It will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes. I’m excited.

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I want to post some details about what we did today, but it’s very late and we have another early day tomorrow.  So instead, I’ll post a few pictures from our first full day in Cairo.  We spent the morning at the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx, which is the most famous tourist attractions in all of Egypt.  They definitely live up to their hype — it was amazing to be at this place, even with thousands of other tourists.

Here’s Carissa on the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

One of our “Ships of the Desert” that we rode around the pyramids.  It cost a bloody fortune, but it is one of those things you just have to do if you get a chance.

Here’s our tour group atop our unruly beasts.

One of the most famous views in all of Egypt, the Sphinx and Kefra’s Pyramid.

Touché, Mr. Sphinx.

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Our first day in Egypt was the “Day of Pyramids.” In all we saw at least 18 pyramids out of the 107 pyramids known to exist in Egypt.

The second stop on day 1 was at Dahshur, a relatively obscure site south of Cairo. Compared to the Giza Pyramids, this place makes it onto very few tour itineraries, so it was a nice place to see without having to deal with a large crowd.

Dahshur served sort of a test bed for pyramid research and development. There are three main pyramids at the site, and each represents an attempt at finding the right way to build a pyramid.

The oldest pyramid at Dahshur is the so-called Bent Pyramid. This is the oldest surviving pyramid at the site, and represents a transition from the earlier step-sided pyramids to the more famous smooth pyramids.
Researchers believe that the angle of the pyramid was altered after some near-catastrophe during the construction. It is also possible that the construction of the pyramid was only completed using the new angle only after the red pyramid was finished.

This view is the closest you can get to the pyramid because it is located inside the boundary of a military base.

This is the red pyramid, which our guide also referred to as the “Perfect Pyramid.” This is believed to be the second pyramid started at Dahshur, but possibly the first one completed. It is very much like the Giza pyramids.
We all made the trek to go inside the burial chamber of this pyramid, which by this time of day was starting to get physically taxing. Entering the chamber requires a 70 meter trek up the side of the pyramid, followed by a 70 meter trek down a ramp with a very low ceiling ( I had to do it hunched over, so it felt like climbing down stairs while doing lunges.) Then, we still had to climb back up 70 meters of wooden stairs to get to the actual burial chamber from an area that seems to be designed as a false chamber. Of course, whatever you do to get in, you have to do in reverse to get out. We were all very tired by the time we finished this obstacle course.

The stairs leading up to the entrance of the Red Pyramid.

This is the false chamber.  The structure of the roof is designed to prevent the collapse of the chamber.

We have a picture of the actual chamber, but the chamber is so small that we couldn’t fit it all in one shot, so it is difficult to look at and get any sense of what it is like.

This is the ruins of the Black Pyramid. It was built much later than the Bent and Red pyramids. One of the main reasons this pyramid has collapsed is that the interior is made from mud brick, unlike the others where the interior is sandstone.  There is speculation that the builders either didn’t know how the older pyramids had been built, or that these changes represent a “cost reduction” (the rock used for the stone pyramids had to be shipped from Aswan, hundreds of miles away).

The mud brick was covered by granite at one time, but this outer layer was removed long ago to use for other structures. Mud brick will last for a long time in the desert, but over time, the Black Pyramid is wasting away.

The Black Pyramid is also located on the military base, so there is no general access to it.

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Here is another view of the Red Pyramid created by a simple change to the original.  I like how it turned out.

The picture was taken in very bright mid-day sunlight plus there isn’t a lot of variation of intensity between the sand, structure and sky anyway, so the dynamic  range is very narrow.  I’ve altered this picture so that the levels map to the entire dynamic range supported by the JPEG format.  The result is this somewhat eerie, sunset-like view that highlights the natural redness of the pyramid.

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Sandi gave me the gift of this trip to Egypt for my 40th birthday, but can you guess which one of us got to actually spend their birthday in Egypt?

On the other hand, instead of a birthday cake, she had to “settle” for an eclair to eat by the hotel pool.

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