In the land of the pharoahs

I write to you from a steamy Cairo. We arrived this morning after an exhausting day and a bit of travel and very little sleep.

All I have seen so far of Cairo has been from the plane - a lot of desert and a city stretching for miles; the taxi ride to our hostel - some beautiful old mosques, enormous minarets and fabulous ancient looking museums; and on the short walk to get dinner - grey apartment blocks, people sitting around cafes cheering madly at the football (I think local club Zamalek are playing) and two shops selling only wheelchairs, crutches and prosthetic limbs.

Even though we have hardly seen anything yet, its so exciting to think that we are in the land of the pharoahs, pyramids, ancient civilisations and thousands of years of history. Just the little taste in the cab ride was fantastic.

It was nice that we finished our Moroccan trip back where we started, in Casablanca. We were up early on Friday to catch the 7am bus from Chefchauen to Casa. We arrived at lunch time and spent the next few hours sitting at cafes, drinking an assortment of mint teas, coffees and fruit juices. One thing the Moroccans have learnt from the French is taking the time to linger over a coffee or tea, particurlarly the men who seem to have hours to spare for this pastime. The other thing they may have learnt from the French is nonchalantly strolling in front of oncoming buses and other transport. Even a blast of the hooter hardly speeds them along.

It took us about 90 minutes to get to the airport from the city and then we had to wait until nearly 1am to catch our Egyptair flight to Cairo. When we did finally board we had these awful people behind us who insisted that Larna keep her chair upright and got up and down seemingly non-stop. We were bitching about them in English and we are certain they were doing the same about us in Arabic. Aah....the language barrier!

Anyway, here we are! Our hostel is called The Nubian and we are surrounded by friendly Egyptians.

What a game, it finished 4-3! If only I could read Arabic I could tell you who won.