cairock and cairolling

What do jamaican phone psychics, Bernie Madoff, confederate plantation owners, and your local mortician have in common? Why, Egypt of course. Miss Cleo(patra), pyramid schemes, slave labor, and body preservation are all inextricably linked to this buried land of sun and sand. Still unbelievably jetlagged from my flight to Copenhagen, I headed back to the airport to tackle my third continent in as many days.

Copenhagen to Frankfurt? Typical. Frankfurt to Cairo? Atypical. I checked my ticket four times to make certain I wasn't on a flight to south Florida. Herds of obese American geriatrics conversed in loud English seasoned with various regional dialects: "Oh Maatha, I love ya new hair, did you daaken it?" I'd take unintelligible German dribble over that any day.

I slept the entirety of the flight, but struck up a conversation with the three middle-aged women seated in my row as the plane touched down. I'm such a charmer, I know. It turns out they all live in Texas, and one of them was an arabic-speaking Egypt native visiting family in Cairo. She was able to write my hostel address in arabic for a cab driver, and offered to let me tag along in their car to go to the pyramids at Giza tomorrow. Mommy always said not to get in cars with strangers, but when they can translate arabic for you (and have a hot niece), exceptions must be made.

My cab ride from the airport was absolutely ridiculous. The entire Egypitan traffic system ignores any sensical rules of the road in favor of gesticulations, honks, and tacit understandings. A three lane highway routinely supports traffic 5 cars abreast, and the number of near-misses we endured during my half-hour tenure is staggering. Collecting fares is apparently a very competitive endeavor here, so cabbies "bling out" their 3-cylinder, $4,000 ultra-compacts with everything from spinning hubcaps to fuzzy dice to neon underglow. Who needs useless frivolities like rear seat belts when you have a DVD player built into the passenger's seat sun visor? I'm totally sold on the concept. From now on, if your taxi doesn't look like it jumped straight out of a Hot Wheels catalogue, I'm not riding in it.

T-minus 7 hours until the pyramids...can you sense my enthusiasm?