We flew on Egypt Air which was an experience to say the least. There is no rhyme or reason to the boarding regime - a bus picked us (and all the other passengers) up from the gate and took us to the stairs onto the plane. As it got closer, everyone was pushing and shoving for prime position near the door because, as we saw seconds later, once the doors open its a mad free-for-all of scrambling to get on the plane and find your seat. Then, mid flight some guy just lights up a cigarettte and puffs away til the steward comes and politely asks him to put it out.
The flight was only three hours but was over miles of real dessert, the view out the window looked like an ocean with wave after wave of sand.
We were picked up at Cairo Airport by a rep from G Adventures, the company running our tour. Ben and I aren't usually big on tours but with Egypt as it is we thought it better to be on the safe side, plus it included a lot of cool things we'd never be able to organize on our own. Considering the political situation that exploded nation wide through Egypt the day we arrived, we were especially glad we had!
The first thing we noticed on arrival to Cairo was the traffic! You think Canberra drivers are bad... come to Cairo and you'll get a whole new meaning to the concept. The traffic is a mixture of automobiles, scooters, horse drawn wagons and donkeys. Their main roads can be up to four lanes wide, however there aren't any lanes - no white lines, no cats eyes, nothing. To make things more interesting, speed limits are just a suggestion and everyone drives like rally drivers and uses their horns rather than their indicators when changing lanes and not bothering to give way when turning corners across traffic, just a beep of the horn means "I'm coming through" . Funnily enough though there's no road rage as such, everyone just accepts that's how it is and gets on with it despite being cut off left right and centre!
We were dropped at the hotel where we met the rest of a our tour group - a couple from Denmark, two Sydney girls, and a couple from the UK, as well our tour guide, then checked in for an early night.
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