Wednesday 23^rd June

Up at 5.00 am to have breakfast and be ready for the 6.00 am departure of the coaches for the two day trip to Cairo. Before we can board the three coaches which are parked next to the boats, we have first to queue up and pass through one of the buildings, putting all our luggage through a scanner and pass through a scanner ourselves, only then are we allowed to walk back and find a seat! The gates to the naval dockyard were then swung open and the three coaches swept out with a full armed escort which was augmented by the police who proceeded to hold up the traffic junctions all the way through the city so that our journey was not impeded in any way. In fact the security arrangements that followed us for the two days were quite extraordinary and they take the threat of terrorists attacking tourists very seriously – or at least they put on a very fine display of doing so. Each coach had a ‘security’ officer on board and these gentlemen wore ill-fitting black suits with machine pistols clumsily stored under their jackets (see photos at www.rhbell.com ).

The drive to Cairo firstly took us along the banks of the Suez Canal and gradually the urban sprawl of Port said gave way to scrub and eventually steppe desert with the only things to see being frequent military barracks of various descriptions set back in the dusty landscape. The road which was a duel carriageway all the way, was busy up to a point with just commercial traffic and very few cars. The two lanes were completely optional and as we were to discover later, are not in any way designated as fast or slow or overtaking. After a couple of hours the outskirts of Cairo loomed and soon we were passing scenes of squalor and poverty and into the inevitable traffic jam where now there were large numbers of cars all of varying vintages.

Egypt is a country with some 79 million people, 22 million of whom live in Cairo which they claim is the second largest city in the world after New Mexico, although I have no idea what criteria they use for this last statistic. More of concern is the 30% rate of unemployment which equates to a frightening number of people struggling to survive here.

Our first stop today was the Cairo Museum in the centre of the city which houses all their antiquities and in particular the treasures found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The guide on our coach was  a very knowledgeable lady who did a wonderful job in taking us round and explaining what everything was and mindful of our thresholds of boredom, kept it all moving along very well.  Next we went to the Mohamed Ali Mosque, but the coach driver needed to make a turn across the streaming traffic to reach the citadel and this involved the assistance of the junction’s traffic policeman who required some cash and a bottle of cold water before he prepared to help. This is the way here with baksheesh which is no more than unregulated corruption when involving the police and tourist police. The mosque was very impressive and its position high above the city afforded us fine views over the sprawl below with just the sound of thousands of car horns blaring away.

From here we went on to Khan Khalili and the souqs where we had an hour to wander through the narrow streets crowded with stalls armed with detailed instructions on how to bargain with the vendors in the event that anything caught our eye. Inevitably we were also besieged by individual street sellers as usual in the part of the world and our armed security guard did disperse a few of the more persistent ones from time to time. This was an interesting experience and perhaps our time in the Istanbul markets last year made this all easier to deal with and certainly we felt under less pressure here generally.

Our busy day continued with a one hour sailing trip in feluccas which are the traditional Egyptian sailing boats. I had rather fondly assumed that this was going to take us on a gentle sail down the River Nile with the  desert either side of us. The reality was a fun sail up and down a section of the Nile, between two road bridges in the centre of Cairo, flanked by large hotels (including the Four Seasons) which we all enjoyed, particularly as the breeze was cool and the sun was going down fast. There was a lot of theoretical competition between the boats although i am quite sure that the Egyptian helmsmen were mostly unaware of what was being urged.  Terry from the yacht ‘Manca’ (Canadian as it happens) called out ‘Starboard’ at one point and seemed quite pleased with himself, until it was pointed out that his boat was on a ‘Port’ tack.  It has been our slight misfortune to arrive in this part of the world in the middle of a heat-wave which we have been assured is due to end at the weekend. Temperatures of nearly 50 degrees have been recorded in the centre of Egypt and certainly we have all found it stifling everywhere we have been, especially last night in the dockyard.

From the feluccas we headed off to the hotel which is very close to the pyramids but sadly they were just out of immediate sight from the hotel itself mainly because of a new concrete flyover, but we did at least get our first sightings of them as we arrived. The hotel was excellent and once the chaos of the room allocations was sorted we went to our room then Sarah had a swim in the huge pool before we wandered down to join all the others in the dining room for a very nice and well presented buffet dinner. Some hardy souls stayed up in the bar afterwards, but Sarah and I retired for a great night’s sleep in an air conditioned, spacious and very quiet room. Sadly Sarah briefly chose to switch on the TV and promptly upset herself by hearing about the floods in Brazil where as far as we are aware, Ewan is currently on a boat trip down the Amazon. She texted Tom to see if he knew anything and his reply said that he had no news, but knowing his brother, he was probably surfing his way to safety or involved in some such improbable escape.