19 April 2011

19 April 2011

We left the Red Sea resort of Coral Beach Resort and headed up the coast and the half built shells of buildings just got worse and worse, hundreds of half completed buildings with nothing happening and lots of the hotels that are complete and have been operating are closed, there are just not enough tourists coming into Egypt at the moment.  The desert as far as you can see has been used as a builders dumping site.  On the whole not impressed with the area, the sea is fantastic for snorkeling and diving and the resorts are nice inside but no-one has considered any environmental impact on the desert and surrounding areas.  We landed up at a small Motel at a tiny village called Zafarga, very basic and relatively cheap.  They had to clean the room and change sheets before we could even move in and this was at 4.30pm.  Rooms appeared only to be cleaned once they have a booking!

The next morning we were up early to try and cross the desert before heat started but we had to work on African time, the office where some of the biking gear was stored was still locked and they had to find the owner, once that was sorted out we then had to start the whole process again to get the back gate opened so that we could get the bikes out.  So we set off for Cairo, across the desert at about 9.30. 

The freeway was great, huge well maintained, 6 lane highway, and we managed to keep up a nice speed as it was just about empty.  We spent most of the time riding next to each other as there is plenty of room for other cars to pass us.  When we existed the freeway it was a completely different story, roads badly marked, road works and traffic like you won’t believe.  Have always heard that Cairo traffic was the worst in the world and yes it is! 

After making one or two wrong turns we managed to find our way to the Giza Pyramids and because we were out of the ordinary, arriving on two motorbikes and not with a tour bus, they had no idea what or where we must park.  So in the 40 degree heat the tourist police made us move from that parking to the next and when we parked, no we must move again  and the touts all shouting at you and eventually I said to Larry that we had seen the pyramids and that we could leave right now, the whole experience was very unpleasant with prices being quoted for a carriage ride and just getting more and more expensive, eventually they relented and allowed us to park in the parking lot and get a carriage ride around the complex, unfortunately  what was not told to us that we had to pay for the carriage ride(just too hot to walk around in riding gear) entrance fee and then we had to pay the guide who took us around, well I am afraid he was the last in the que and we had paid far too much already and the guide lost out as we had not agreed to pay him.  And it got very unpleasant when he started demanding that we tip him, never again!  Egypt really needs to sort the tourism out as they have so much going for them.  Stop the touts and control the general population to stop shouting at you all the time.

We decided that there was nothing in the whole of Cairo that we really wanted to see and we would head for Alexandria and get our booking done for the ferry.  Unfortunately the freeway between Cairo and Alexandria is still under construction and so the trip was fairly slow and we rode through a sand storm, eventually we arrived in Alexandria at about 4.30pm and rush hour traffic!!  This was the worst traffic that we have been in and one of the worst aspects was that we could not get out of the traffic, the GPS had no idea where we were and we were riding around until about 8pm looking for a hotel, big issue is to get the motorbikes off the street, we just could not leave them outside in a city like this.  At one stage we landed up in a small back street driving on the tram lines (all the traffic drives on the tram lines) with cars on both sides and once or twice both Larry and I were pushed onto the actual track and on two wheels it becomes very dangerous and then the tram came up behind me and didn’t seem to even slow down, luckily the traffic started to move again.  Lots of hooting and sirens and generally a very noisy place.  We eventually found a place, reasonable price and clean and we can park the bikes in the foyer.  The entrance has two large very high wooden doors which needed some gentle persuasion to get them both open and bring the bikes in.

We hope to get the ferry booked and then we have to go to traffic court to get a clearance certificate to say that we have had no fines while in Egypt.  We also have Arabic number plates on the back on front of the bikes!