Egypt

Flying in from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I was on Egypt Air on approach into Cairo International Airport. When we started descending into final, the first thing I noticed was the incredible amount of smog in the air. Combined with sand from the desert, the visibility window only had to be a few miles. Despite the limited visibility, I'll never forget looking out of the left side of the plane and out at the great pyramids in the short distance. I remember thinking "holy shit, that's the pyramids." Sure, I've seen them on TV and in history books and what not but this time, it was really right there in my eye sight. Yeah, I've been all over the world and seen a lot of major attractions but nothing like this, I mean, it was the PYRAMIDS.

Was it slaves? Aliens? Both? There's always been so much mystery built up around it because it was such an incredible feat accomplished in a time where there was no advanced technology, or at least that's what we say. I still am on the side of how Rogan put it when he said the tools and technology existed but there's a thought that it all got erased by a major event whether it a local human involved event or something weather related.

Cairo airport was an absolute shit show, no order, no streamlined process, just people shouting and running about while the suitcases literally piled up on the belts and were spilling over on the floor. I got my passport stamped, got my bags, and got the hell out of there. Being a white man, everyone wanted to help me, want to help with bags and transportation so they can make a living. I respect the hustle but its tiresome to deal with as most of them don't take no for an answer until they do after you set the tone respectfully.

Uber was there but it wasn't like you'd expect however, a friendly guy had picked me up and was taking me to the St. Regis in Cairo with my luggage, beautiful hotel by the way, I'll talk more about it in the travelers quarters section.

The next day, I hired a private guide to take me through the city and to the pyramids. I got a lot of history in lang the way about the old and new Cairo, the culture and way of life, etc. The first stop was actually the sphinx, an interesting sculpture carefully detailed but withered from the elements for so long, just like the pyramids. My guide took me on over to the pyramids and took some pictures for me. He gave me some more facts and then took me to the tomb entrance of one of the largest pyramids. I'll never forget crouching low and entering the stairway that led all the way to the bottom of the pyramid. Its a long walk down the stone and wood "stairs" all while being hunched over due to the limited hight, and once at the bottom, you'll see an empty tomb that once hosted a king. It was pretty incredible to be standing there to say the least. I actually stood inside the tomb of one of the pyramids. How many people can say that? I have a picture below of me inside the pyramid and visibly uncomfortable, it was roughly 110F outside and inside it was even hotter.

The pyramids themselves were an astonishing sight, the individual blocks were massive with a lot of them being larger than the size of an American SUV. Want to know something interesting? The blocks that make up the pyramids have shells from shellfish, urchins, corals, etc because they were quarried from a limestone plateau at Giza and around 50 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch, it wasn't a desert. It was a warm, shallow, tropical sea. After time, all those shells accumulated in thick layers and compressed into limestone. I do show some pictures of this below and remember touching one of the stones. It's a pretty incredible feeling to touch something that old.

After the pyramids, we went on back towards Cairo to the hotel so I can be dropped off but first we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. They had everything set out like family style, communal tables and the like. I had an assortment of grilled meats, veggies, rice, pasta, and potatoes. Pretty typical cuisine. 

At the hotel, the Nile River was just outside my view there, it was also cool to see but I wouldn't swim in it for many obvious reasons. Overall, I was only in Cairo for about 4 days I think it was, I would have liked to have seen Alexandria to the north on the coast and some other towns further south but the air quality was so bad, transportation was a logistical nightmare, and the food wasn't really all that great and so I was ready to get out of there to be honest. It was a great experience and I'm glad I went but it's a location I wouldn't really be in a hurry to return to.