A funny thing happened on the way to the Pyramids...

After spending most of yesterday morning fuming over more of the trials OSA has put me through (such as the fact that my tuition money has still not been paid by MSU to AUC), I headed back over to campus to sit in the gardens and read for a bit before dinner. When I got there, I called my friends Caprill and Stephanie, who were at a cafe across the street from AUC's main campus, and Caprill told me that a bunch of people were planning to go to the Pyramids for a sunset horseback ride, and was I interested in going?

Ten minutes later we were in a cab heading out to meet Stephanie's friend Jai, along with approximately a dozen other AUC students at Zamalek (the main AUC dormitory on one of the Nile islands). Caprill and I ended up in a cab with these two guys named Sam and Tripp, which in and of itself was an adventure. It was probably fortunate for us that our cab driver didn't speak much English, and Sam didn't speak much Arabic, because if not for the language barrier, I think we would have been booted out of the cab before we even crossed the river on the way to Giza. The cabbie was trying to convey his frustration with the heavy late afternoon traffic (we ended up leaving smack in the middle of rush hour) and kept throwing up his hands and yelling "Cairo, no good! America, very good! Cairo, no good!" Later, he attempted to learn what our religions were (I really have no idea how we got onto that track), and when Sam said that he had no religion (which in Egypt is the wrong answer; 90% of the country is Muslim and the concept of atheism doesn't sit well even with those who don't practice their religion), the cabbie said to him, "You Osama bin Laden!"

After some deeply frustrating adventures attempting to locate the other 3 cabs (the short version involves Caprill and I walking around Giza with very little idea of where we were, or where we were going, or what we were supposed to find when/if we got there), we finally met up with some of Jai's Egyptian friends who were going to get us a deal on horses (in the end, it was an amazing deal - LE40 for about 2.5-3 hours of riding). About half of us rode horses, and the others, assisted by little kids, rode camels. Having seen just how tall a camel is while we waited for our mounts to arrive, I elected for a horse instead. Those of you who know me are well aware of my...discomfort...around horses and my near total lack of equestrian skills; perhaps sensing that this was the case, they put me on a horse that I firmly believe may have been stupid.

Some of the other horses were straining to go while we waited for the camel-riders to saddle up; mine was not one of these, which I took to be a sign that it would be a calm horse. Once out of the parking lot, it moved at a decent pace to keep up with the front of the pack, and we enjoyed a nice mellow ride through the neighborhoods of Giza. Although the pyramids are such a popular site for tourists in Egypt - understandably so - the surrounding area is fairly run-down. The main streets featured small restaurants and shops, most selling tacky pyramid-related souvenirs, but it was clear from the condition of the streets and the houses that the people living in that vicinity really relied heavily on tourist traffic to make a living - and even with the volume of Pyramid tourism, that this wasn't nearly as lucrative a business as one might suppose.

When we finally got to the desert, my horse just stopped. I kicked it in the way that I am given to understand that one kicks a horse in order to make it go. It would not go. One of the kids who had been assisting us made some clicking noise at it. Then he tried swatting it with a crop. Then he took the reins from me and tried to physically pull the horse off the road and onto the sand. Still, it would not go. (If you see those people/camel-shaped specks in the middle of the photo at right, that is the slow part of my group. Then there was me.) It probably took us an hour to get from there to our destination, a plateau just beyond the view of this photo where we could take pictures and walk around. Luckily, on the way back they gave me a different horse (probably because I told Jai's friends flat out that I was not only not going to pay for that terrible horse, but if there wasn't an alternate way for me to get back to town, I was going to walk), which I'd like to think I handled pretty well.

Luckily, while my first horse lacked mobility, its constant stopping made for some excellent photos, which you can view here. After we returned to town and settled our bills with the stables and paid our ba'sheesh (tips), Mango and Zeke (who organized the trip for us) took us out for kosheri down the street. While we regrouped and planned our next excursions after dinner, a wedding party made several passes down the street, honking and blasting Egyptian music. About 2/3 of us (all 6 girls plus 2 guys, Josiah and CJ) elected to head to Khan el-Khalili, the major marketplace in Islamic Cairo, while the rest of the guys decided now (read: past closing time) would be a great time to sneak into the Pyramids. I suppose I'll have heard by the time everyone gets back to campus on Monday whether they were successful or are currently in the custody of the no-nonsense Egyptian police. Maybe I should have lent them my transferred Egyptian bail bond...

I took some photos at Khan el-Khalili; unfortunately, the dust from the desert and the roads had obscured the lens (just the outer part, alhamduliila) on my camera, and so all of the photos have these gray orbs all over them. I'll almost certainly return, though, and take some better photos then. We ended up spending a lot of time at one shop selling mother-of-pearl inlay tables, gaming boards, and boxes, where the proprietor taught us the difference between the price classes of products (pure mother-of-pearl vs. decorated wood), then heading to a nearby cafe for tea, where we stayed until after midnight. I was exhausted when I got home and fell asleep immediately.

This morning Caprill and I got up reasonably early (everyone else has left for the study abroad orientation at the Red Sea), and went to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. But that's another story for another day...