It must be something about us and Viking Cruises (marketing tag line “Spend less time getting there and more time being there”). Our experience with the company seems to be exactly the opposite. A year ago we were 30 hours late arriving in China for a Yangtze River cruise; this time, we’re delayed 2 hours leaving Los Angeles for London and then another 3 hours leaving London for Cairo. We finally arrive at our Cairo hotel (the historic Nile Hilton recently re-born as a Ritz Carlton) at 4am on Saturday morning, just four hours before our day out to the Pyramids gets underway! So a rather short night - but then we are on vacation!!
After two revolutions in short order and the presumed threat of terrorist attacks, tourism in Egypt has all but collapsed. We’re here at what used to be the height of the tourist season but even the most prominent attractions - the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the mind-boggling Cairo Museum - are almost empty. I spotted a few Chinese tourists at the Pyramids and Sphinx striking the usual daft poses, but compared to other places we’ve been to of late, there aren’t even many of them. It’s hard not to feel sorry for the aggressively hustling hawkers who descend on anybody looking vaguely like a tourist, trying to push their wares (always priced at “$1”) and mostly with little success.
Sadder still is Cairo’s incredibly atmospheric medieval quarter, including the maze-like Khan el-Khalili Souk and Mouez Street (the jewelry district) where many of the shops and stalls are shuttered, a consequence of the collapse of the tourist industry and the generally depressed Egyptian economy. Nevertheless, on a Sunday evening the quarter is buzzing with locals and does indeed have the feel of what similar districts in Istanbul and Marrakech were before the massive influx of tourists.
At all tourist sites and hotels frequented by foreigners, there is very prominent security. Hotel entrances are barricaded off and all vehicles entering are thoroughly searched including by bomb-sniffing dogs. There are heavily armed police everywhere most prominently at tourist sites. Vast Tahrir Square, the focal point of both the 2011 and 2013 revolutions, bounded on one side by our hotel and on another by the Cairo Museum is surrounded by police and military check-points. We even have one or two armed plain-clothed policemen traveling with us on our tour bus and who accompany us everywhere. Our tour guide explains that the US government requires that American tourists are to be accompanied by armed guards although this seems a little far-fetched to me!!
What a shame! Nowhere is safe these days (not least the United States - as we leave our hotel this morning, we hear of yet another mass shooting back home...) and we don’t feel any more threatened or unsafe here than anywhere else. Cairo is massively congested and the infrastructure and many of its buildings are in a dire state. But seeing its World Heritage sites including the Great Pyramid, the only one remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence and the mind-blowing Cairo Museum with its staggering collection of Egyptian antiquities, not least the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb should be on every tourist’s bucket list! The museum is in a particularly parlous state (it was attacked during the 2011 revolution) but a new museum is under construction (with help from Belgium) close to the Pyramids and many artifacts have already been moved
Our time in Cairo is all too brief. Monday morning and we’re up again at 4am for an early flight south to Luxor. You’ve got to love being on vacation.....