Hello! I am sitting in a small Internet cafe in a backstreet-Luxor bazaar. Egypt so far has been the adventure of adventures. I'm here in Egypt with my good friend Kelly (also in the ancient antiquities business), his wife Michelle, and our guide/friend Abdel. We have climbed several pyramids, visited villagers and walked miles of Sahara desert.
Our hotel in Cairo was great... for mainly Arabic tourists. My windows all looked out upon the Giza pyramids, so I could lie in my bed and see the Great Pyramid.
On the first day, we descended the burial shaft all the way into the heart of the Red Pyramid. There were no lights inside so we found our way with flashlights. It's the first true pyramid built anywhere and we studied the architecture and burial chamber closely. There is graffiti in there from Napoleon's men, written in the smoke of their candles. We walked around the Black Pyramid where Kelly found a Death Stalker scorpion... the most deadly scorpion on earth. He's a huge scorpion lover. I found some Egyptian scarabs and lots of pottery shards as well. The weather has been cool and it actually rained a bit on us that sunset. It was beautiful.
The second day, we visited the mosque of Mohammed Ali and the Egyptian War Museum, where Kelly and I were swarmed with children (particularly the groups of young Arab schoolgirls) wanting to take their picture with us. We walked through a huge Islamic cemetery where 50,000 people LIVE in the tombs. One family let us in and we were able to look around and talk to them for a while. Then, on our way to an Egyptian perfume shop, we were abruptly cut off by a donkey cart. It is utter chaos attempting to drive in any Egyptian city but we have an experienced Egyptian driver all the time. We then closed out the day at the Cairo museum in the King Tutankhamun rooms. We have to go back because there on the next Cairo leg because there is still so much to see.
