Happy New Year from Cairo~!
Celebrating the 2070th New Year’s Day at Nile City.
Our flight was scheduled to land in Cairo 5 minutes after midnight. I had imagined coming in on final approach over the Nile with fireworks exploding below. The reality was a bit different. Our flight was early so we were taxiing to the gate at the magic hour. Egypt is seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (GMT +2).
By the time our Viking group of 5 had been loaded into the minivan (Air France left one of our new friend’s bags at CDG) it was 1:30 a.m. I tried to cheer up the poor guy who felt bad about delaying us, even though it was not his fault.
“Well the traffic should be cleared up now, we should have an easy ride to the Hotel.”
Wrong! It was absolute pure chaos, even at 2 a.m! The road was bumper to bumper, with constant honking, motorcycles with 3 and 4 passengers, many riding side saddle, zooming in and out and around and through the traffic. As we tried to take an exit to the Hotel Zone of Nile City there were dozens of cars BACKING down the ramp. Apparently there’s no exit ramp here, so they just back down the ramp! More were backing up at us than were trying to exit! Gestures, horns, yelling. At first I thought the road ahead must be blocked and peopled were trying to avoid the road, but once we got to the end of the ramp I realized this was the Cairo way. It made Mexico look sane!
A few cops tried to take accident reports (there must have been half a dozen crashes between the airport and the hotel), smoking cigarettes and smiling, chatting away on their phones. Pedestrians jumped in front of cars, walking on the “expressway,” crossing six lanes of chaotic traffic.
I thought of the ancients. They feared chaos. Seth was the god of chaos, anger, evil, storms, destruction, and confusion. When the Sun, Ra, went below the horizon, Osiris would accompany him, insuring he made it through the chaos and rose the next day. (Reminder: do a comparison between the Mayan and Egyptian gods; there are some strong similarities!)
As we drove along the Nile hours after midnight, hundreds and hundreds of people still spilled off the crowded sidewalks into the roadway. The right lane was a parking lot. Families with kids, groups of young people, couples; everyone was out it seemed. And I’m not really sure how many lanes there were. When the lanes were marked, our driver seemed to prefer straddling the divider, driving in both lanes at the same time, hedging his bets, swerving here or there as opportunities arose. Seth was having a good night!
We arrived at the Nile City Fairmont about 2:30 am. The party was just beginning! The music thumped loudly. There was a line to get through security into the hotel. Inside it was even louder. Pure chaos.
Our 6th floor room looked out onto the Nile, where dozens of brightly illuminated boats turned in circles, dodging each other in a wild dance, their neon lights flashing.
But our room was quiet, all things considered. We turned off the lights at 3:00 am and fell unconscious into the soft cotton sheets.
This morning there is little trace of the party, other than remnants of what must have been a spectacular fireworks show drifting downstream on the Nile.
The breakfast buffet was top notch. A mall is attached to our hotel here, so after breakfast we found a little store in the mall and bought some charging cables to replace the ones I had forgotten. (Of course I found the cables tucked neatly in my backpack as soon as I had the new ones up and running, along with my hearing aid charger that I had given up for lost.)
We have the rest of today open. Tomorrow the tour begins in earnest, with a visit to the Cairo Citadel and Egyptian Museum.
Today is the 2070th New Year’s Day! In 45 BC Julius Caesar reformed the Roman Calendar and New Years was celebrated on January 1st for the first time in history! Thanks Julius!
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and in 1942 Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill founded the United Nations, all on New Year’s Day.
It’s a beautiful day here, partly cloudy and 20C.
Thanks for traveling along~!
Happy New Year! Congratulations to the Michigan Wolverines!
David, on another note:
I completed my first entry in our draft Morocco SubStack.
Sounding like a curmudgeon here, but I *do* have travel experience to far-off locations:
Observation - Viking made a terrible scheduling decision. Why on earth did Viking pick NYE for a tour arrival day???? Not their first rodeo, just saying, so they should have known better. I find this oversight discouraging.
You are a great traveller to report the interesting aspects, but sheesh, after a looong flight, you are subjected to exhausting transport to your hotel due what I accuse is bad planning on the company’s part.