Got to Alexandria in the late afternoon and found a cheap hotel along the sea front by the time the sun had set. The room was clean enough if you didn’t mind the odd cockroach but the shared toilet down the hall was straight out of trainspoting. With my stomach still not fully mended, I would recreate the famous scene ( less search for suppositories) a few times during that evening…..bad times! I decided the best thing for it may be to have a proper meal for the first time in a few days and replace some nutrients…found a clean looking restaurant…not bad: starters ,soup and main course + drink for about £3.50. (uk)
At first glance I wasn’t too blown away by Alexandria…. seemed pretty much the same as much of Cairo apart from having a sea front. I wandered around town for a while looking for something to do but it was pretty quiet in the streets, so had an early night.( again )
Next day started with breakfast in the same place I ate the evening before….( kebabs were the only thing on the breakfast menu….. Bigdogitus ensued ). Next a trip to one of the local coffee houses to plan my day. The coffee here was amazing , black and incredibly flavoured, the bottom 3rd of the cup contained the grounds so also strong as you like. A couple of cups of this stuff was like rocket fuel, and I set of at speed to check out the Greco-Roman sites the city was famous for.
My first destination was the Roman Catacombs which I decided, to my folly, to try and find on foot using the incredibly imprecise map in my guide book. After 30 mins walking down a dirty main road in town I came to the canal that the map indicated the site was adjacent too. Following the map I walked around the canal for another 15 minutes until it was clear that the position of the Catacombs on the map was inaccurate.
I found myself walking through an industrial area along side a stream that was clogged with refuse. No one around seemed to speak great English and didn’t seem to know where or what the Catacombs were. Annoyed and now roasting in the mid day sun I begrudgingly retraced my steps all the way back to the train station to try and find directions at the tourist info point…Along the way I found myself in some strange sheep market part of town where I seemed to be annoying all of the Sheppard’s by asking for directions. Got a sick feeling the locals were about to turn on me on mass (probably totally unfounded) and got the hell out of there quick sharp.
Walking around the Egyptian side streets on your own in a state of semi lost observation seems safe enough, and I do get a kick out off it ,imagining myself sometimes as a mist moving through the chaos…in reality, with no local knowledge on the ground, its impossible to know whether your presence is more like an annoying odour that will only be tolerated for so long…..generally though, I have felt really safe everywhere in the country. ( although constantly aware of the length of my hair)
When I got back to the centre of town the tourist info point turned out to be marked incorrectly on the map so I ended up hiring a taxi to take me to the entrance. This could be a risky business in terms of value as you could easily be overcharged and dropped at the wrong location. After some price negotiations and my refusal to get out of the car at a different historical destination ( Pompey’s pillar, only half way to the catacombs) I made it into the site.
The catacombs themselves were awesome, a subterranean Roman burial complex from the 2nd century AD, they were like something straight out of the last crusade. Spent a while exploring them along with some Japanese tourists. Next I made my way up to Pompey’s Pillar which was another impressive Roman site.
I then decided to get a taxi back to the train station in order to make it the town museum before it closed .( the mornings hike to “garbage canal” had put me way behind schedule for the day)
The taxi driver was a happy dude called Ali…( if anyone from Cardiff remembers Tom the Barman from Hannah Evans’ birthday camping weekend a few years ago, Ali was the Egyptian equivalent )
However due to an unfortunate misunderstanding he took me to totally the wrong place. When I said as a destination “Main railway station” he had answered (with what I thought was understanding ) “ yes important Station”
20 minutes of rush hour side streets later we arrived at the City Port Gate……Turns out “important station” was actually “In The Port Station“….ah well shit like this happens….the traffic was so bad by this point there was no way I would make the museum so I jumped out close to my hotel after having a broken conversation about Egyptian footballers “ Zakki, Mido etc “ with my driver…was refreshing to have a decent conversation ( or attempt of one ) with a taxi driver without worrying about being ripped off for a change.
That night I ate at McDonalds again after deciding to stick to western food until my stomach had recovered. The traffic jam was just as solid as it had been in the afternoon and the constant fumes and horn beeping were beginning to get the better of me for the first time since I got to Egypt…another quiet night was had once I had reached breaking point after 30mins or so of trying to walk the streets through the gridlock.
The next morning I had to get the train back to Cairo to get a night bus to Taba and the Israeli border, all the way back in Sinai close to Dahab. I arrived back in Cairo to more gridlock and a hellish attempt to find the bus station I needed without attracting tourist touts, who would offer to help me to the station and offer to get my ticket for me, only to then tell me that the bus was full and then offer me a tour of Cairo’s Egyptian markets. One such offer came straight away but I made it clear to the guy that I was only interested in directions to the bus station and nothing more ….later gave him a tip for providing exactly that service….( tipping or “baksheesh “ is a way of life here and I had started handing out small bits of change when I felt it had been earned through service. For example in depth directions and services of porters etc …not because I was being hustled but because it was the expected thing to do)
I bought my ticket from the bus station, which had an air conditioned Western style shopping mall above it , around 2pm and then walked out into the impoverished streets to kill some time before the bus left at 10pm.
This instant transition from western style comfort to surrounding poverty is always a surreal and moving occurrence for me. The difference between have and have-nots in the developing world becomes strikingly obvious…crazy (I wish I had time to devote more words to the subject but that’s not the aim of this blog.) .
Spent the next few hours wandering around some areas of Cairo that I had missed earlier in the week. Before long the noise of gridlock was doing my head in again and I went back towards the centre of town via the metro at the busiest time of the day. Okay on first impression I thought the metro had seemed efficient ( must have been in a quiet spell) but during rush hour it was crazy busy….. like a massive rugby maul, people pushing hard in all directions to get on and off trains…just had to go with the flow and hope like hell that no one fell down and caused a mass trampling……having survived one such powerful heave I had to laugh out loud at the madness of it all……..
Eventually made it back to the bus station/shopping mall and spent a few hours in quiet solitude before the night bus….had to admit I was feeling a bit Egypt-ed out by this point. The people had on the whole been fantastic hosts, but the claustrophobic feel of the inner streets could be hard to endure at times and I hadn’t really met any other travels to share to ordeal with. Was looking forward to getting into Israel the following day and finding a change of pace………
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