Cairo, Pyramids and Heat

So there is a reason you're not supposed to visit Egypt in August - the heat. I have never been so hot in my life. They say it's a dry heat and that makes it better, but I just don't see it. Add to the heat the fact that it's Ramadan, and you can't find anything to eat, you would think that we're having an awful time. In fact the opposite is true, this place is great. Sure it's a little dirty and run down when you first see it, and the cars on the road seem to be either trying to run you down or honking incessantly at you to get out of the way (think frogger), it does not take long for the place to really grow on you.

Cairo Sunset

The people here are incredibly nice. I think that even the ones who don't speak english all learn to say welcome, because we can't go more than 5 minutes on the street without someone coming up to us and saying "welcome, welcome". It is Ramadan, so the combination of heat and lack of food or drink makes everyone a little lethargic during the day, but boy do they come out at night. Iftar, or breakfast is at sundown, so all the shops that were closed during the day open afterward, and the entire city, energized by their meals come out for the night. We were out last night until 2 am and the action wasn't even slightly letting up. Then they go home to sleep through the heat of the day and avoid the discomfort of starving themselves all afternoon so they can do it all over again the next night.

Egyptian Tea at  Streetside Cafe

The food and drink here are great as well. There aren't any great restaurants, but the street food is amazing. Fuul (bean paste on pita), Tamiya (Egyptial falafel) and Koshari (a sort of hodge podge of beans, rice and macaroni with a spicy tomato sauce) have been the highlights for me. However, our best experience to date was smoking sheesha (water pipe) and drinking tea in an back alley behind the Al Azhar mosque (google it for some images, amazing) in the Islamic quarter near the Kahn al Khalili square. The coffe shop had live music, the Ramadan festivities were in full swing, amd the breeze (or the surroundings ) almost made the heat bearable.

Oh, and we saw the pyramids too.

We're off to Dar es Salaam tonight. Sorry for not writing more, but the keyboard and the web interface is in arabic, so typing and navigating is a bit of a chore. I did manage to upload a few pictures to snapfish. We'll try to post something from Arusha / Kilimanjaro


Salaam Alekum
Michael

Cairo, Egypt