First Pyramids

April 23rd
We have a breakfast of a hardboiled egg, some bread, cheese and coffee and then we are off to the pyramids. There is a choice when you get to the pyramids, you can walk, take a horse or a camel. We are thinking, “Hey, we are in Egypt why not do the whole camel thing? How fun would that be? Well, yes, for the first while it is fun. You are 2 stories above the ground. The camel is very different from anything. He has on a special outfit and everything. But really...camels are uncomfortable. You are doing this belly dancing move the entire time the camel is walking so it works out your entire midsection which is great if you are expecting it, but whew! It is work. By the time we stop the camel is complaining and I am thinking...no kidding dude, I can’t imagine having to do this every day. I give him a good patting and thank him for doing such a good job and I tell him he is working so hard and he deserves a rest. (They say that camels are mean, but I think that no body ever really takes the time to have compassion for these animals who do such hard work in such hot weather. I guess horses work hard too, but camels are just more dramatic about it...hmm now that I think about it, I guess camels are sort of drama queens of the animal world, but I think they are entitled...it’s hot out there man!
After riding around and seeing the pyramids we get to go into one. We go into the second pyramid because our guide says that it is less money and just as good. So we pay our money and go in. At this time I am overheating...it is 115 degrees and although I have my sun hat on, amazingly enough I am still really hot. Our water, which we have been carrying with us is now the temperature of a hot tub and feels like we could make tea in it. As we get ready to go into the pyramid our guide tells us that it is even hotter inside of the tomb...Now I am thinking...hmmm shouldn’t it be cooler? You’d think that underground would be cooler, but no...not so much....
We go down these steep steps to get to a stopping half way point. So I rest against the stone wall which is cool on my back and neck. I close my eyes for a moment to take in the coolness and pray to whatever God is available at the temple to please help me make it through this place. I feel my body start to resonate with the energy of this place and I start to get my energy back. We make it to a second set of stairs and this time we are going up. We make it up into an open square stone room with a stone casket at the end. I sit for a while to catch my breath, because I am thinking that there is somewhere else to go in this place, but....no. This is it. We are kind of bummed out. I think we expected to see pictures, paintings, hieroglyphics or something, but what we found was pretty anti-climactic. Maybe we thought we’d feel more...maybe we expected there to be less trash all over the place, maybe we expected the people there to care more about their land. But for whatever reason we left the pyramids feeling like we missed out on something. (Well the one thing we didn’t miss out on is a sore bottom...it took about 3 days to recover from that camel ride...)
We got back to the hostel and were hungry for dinner so we went wandering around the streets for a Doner Kabab. This is a Turkish wrap that is found in Australia and evidently in Turkey, but sometimes you can find them in other places like in Cairo. We have seen a few places and the one down the street looks promising so we stop in. It is about 1/4th the size of what we would have gotten in Australia, but it tastes really great! On the way back we buy some pita bread from a woman selling them in the street. We get a good night sleep in our air conditioned room.