The Chronicles of Egypt - The Pyramids

Welcome to the Chronicles of Egypt. This is a series of posts where I will tell just a few of the stories about the escapades (anybody remember the ice-capades from the 80's?) that my friends and I had while they were visiting. As I promised in my last post, today we begin with our journey to the great pyramids of Giza. There were six of us guys making the trip this time around. These men consisted of Andrew Shareski, Frodo, Frodo’s dad, Heagy, Tom Ross, and myself. To get to the Giza pyramids, we needed to take taxis… and since there were six of us, we needed to take two taxis… and since I’m the only person in this group who is familiar with Cairo and Arabic and other such useful things, this was bound to be an interesting venture. Well, I found the first three guys a taxi, negotiated a price with him (taxi drivers don’t use meters here), and explained to him where to take his passengers. So, Andrew Shareski, Ryan Heagy, and Tom Ross hopped into that cab and were on their way! Frodo, Frodo’s dad (I suppose we could call him Goeff for simplicity’s sake, since that’s his name and all), and I stood around for another five minutes while we tried to find another taxi. Eventually we found one and were off to see the pyramids!

Now, logic would suggest that the taxi carrying Andrew, Heagy and Tom would arrive at the pyramids first, right? Well, as our taxi pulled up to the main entrance of the Giza pyramids, it seemed apparent that my logic was flawed. It was fairly evident that Frodo, Geoff, and I were the only white people at the entrance of the pyramid grounds. At that point I nervously thought back to what I said to their taxi driver when I was telling him where to take them. I’m pretty sure that I said “harum,” which means pyramids. But as I thought about it, I remembered that I often get ‘homar’ and ‘harum’ mixed up for some reason. What does ‘homar’ mean, you ask? Well, simply put, ‘homar’ is the Arabic word for donkey. This is a word you use when you want to call somebody a nasty name. But don’t worry, I’m almost certain I didn’t say that!

After we waited in front of the entrance for a good fifteen minutes, a taxi carrying white people slowly worked its way up the hill. Sure enough, there were my Canadian friends sitting inside it, looking slightly shaken up (Especially Tom. Poor little guy wanted his mommy). I think the story, as Ryan Heagy told it, went something like this:
“Apparently the driver knew a ‘short-cut’ that probably went past a shop he wanted to show us. This short cut weaved us through a bunch of tiny alleyways into a remote part of the city. Somewhere along the way, a man jumped up onto the taxi and started shouting at us. Apparently he wanted us to check out his shop or something. Our driver looked a little nervous when the man started jumping up and down on his car. Eventually we got out of there without getting murdered or mugged and our driver took us to the pyramids.”

I wasn’t surprised when I heard this story. It seems that Heagy attracts incidences such as these. I recall a time when he was walking through downtown Calgary with a bunch of girls and some dude came up, stole his hoodie and punched him in the head. Ok, so maybe I don’t have all the details there, but I’m sure he’ll tell his version of the story when he comments on this post. Let’s get back to the pyramids now.

Eventually the six of us tough guys got through the gates and found ourselves standing at the foot of three of the world’s biggest pyramids. Who knew they were so big. Well, I guess I did, cause I’d just seen them a few weeks earlier. But yeah, it was pretty cool being there with my friends from back home. Poor Heagy had another little incident along the way, though. Actually, four of the guys got roped into this particular incident. We were walking along the base of one of the pyramids when some hasslers (people who hassle you to buy junk) pounced on us. It was like a whole swarm of them. They each had these cheap little Arabian headdresses (I don’t know what the real name of them is) that they were trying to pawn off to us. Their method was this: they would pull it out of its wrapper, plop it on your head (the whole time you’re saying “NO NO NO, I DON’T WANT IT”) and then they’d say, “Take it. It’s free!” But then they’d go on to ask you for money… and a picture… and a foot massage (I don’t know, I just tune them out after a while). With hasslers such as these, your best bet of getting rid of them is just to continue walking and to ignore them. This was the method I was employing, and I was expecting the others to follow suit. You can’t really look back, either, cause that just encourages more of them to swarm you. So here was Andrew and I, walking side-by-side, trying to shake off these hasslers, and behind us (we thought) were the rest of the guys doing the same thing. Well, once we got rid of our hasslers we looked behind us and saw that the other guys were gone. They had vanished! We had the boat museum on our left, and a pyramid on our right. There was really nowhere they could’ve gone! Andrew and I rushed back to where we last saw them and noticed an alcove in the rocks. We peeked in there and saw four Canadians wearing Arabian headdresses, posing in pictures with Egyptians. Each of them had their wallets out. Andrew and I laughed when we saw their misfortune (that’s just the kind of friends we are). All we could do at that point was to wait it out. One by one the guys sheepishly hobbled out of that alcove, back into the sunlight.

Heagy said that the hasslers plopped a headdress on his head, took his camera from him, and wouldn’t give it back until he got on a camel and had his picture taken. I think he ended up dropping like 50 pounds on that little incident.

All episodes aside, though, I think we really enjoyed our time at the pyramids (some more than others, heh heh).