Giza

From Sinai to Cairo is a very long trip across a very dry desert, with a lot of very rocky crags and very wide expanses of sand.  But then there comes a point where you break out of the dry and come upon the ocean: or more specifically, the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea.

The hours of compression and the sight of water required an immediate ejection out onto the beach, so we photo-op’d our last stretch before crossing into the continent of Africa—which would my first time there.

A tunnel takes you under the Suez Canal to head toward Cairo.  Our primary destination there, of course, were those fake mountains made by the pharaohs to stash mummies and fill in the Nile-flat landscape.

Giza had the nine pointy points, the only remaining Wonders of the original 7 Wonders of the world.  They’re pretty big.  So when you’re in the photo, you’re pretty small:

 

We hadn’t brushed up on hieroglyph, so we couldn’t read the signs too well.  Hopefully they didn’t say something urgent like Keep Off the Grass.

Actually, there wasn’t any grass, so that wouldn’t have been a problem.

We could read this sign:

 

Passing camels, I think it referred to.

Like this one:

If the signs weren’t bad enough, we couldn’t seem to break through in making conversation with some of the locals:

He just sits there and sphinx about things.  A lot.

 

View Full Album

 

(Almost) All photos by Father Estanislao.