CAPE TO CAIRO - 20
Opposite the entrance to Egypt's famous Great Pyrmids at Giza is a sign that reads: "Dr Zahira - Heart Disease Clinic". As I force my way through the crowds of souvenir sellers, donkey, horse and camel drivers, I try to figure out how many tourists between Cheops Pyramid and the Sphinx have been struck down by cardiac arrest - or a fit of anger at the very least. "Camel ride, very cheap", Give me one pound, Mister, "Taxi, Mister, Taxi" "You speak German?", "Original papyrus rolls" The only thing they didn't offer me was cannabis, as happened to me one evening on the banks of the Nile. "You smoke, grass, Mister, very good quality"
View of Cheops compensates
Perhaps I am just feeling irritable and worn out by the long journey, but the clamour of police, the piles of rubbish, and the teenagers who walk deliberately in front of the lens when I try to take a photo, get on my nerves and so after the obligatory pose in front of the Sphinx (right) I retreat to the calm of my hotel room. My irritable mood vanishes on seeing the view from the balcony of the Cheops pyramid (below). How did the ancient Egyptian builders and thirty thousand slaves manage to pack 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each weighing two and a half tonnes, on top of each other at an angle of 51 degrees without the whole lot simply falling into a heap? (Napoleon calculated that a wall could be built around France with the quantity of stone used at Cheops -- not that anybody would wish to do such a thing!) Who was it who installed the shafts that lead from the Pharaoh's burial chamber to the open air and are aligned in the direction of Orion and the Little Bear in order to show his soul the way to Heaven. Who built the royal boat which is 43 meters long and made of 1224 individual parts of Lebanese cedar ?
Wonder of the world
A few hundred meters further on is the Sphinx, half human, half lion, a huge 74 meters long, even without its nose which lies in a London museum. The Giza pyramids are the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world to survive. Would that not be reason enough to pick up the rubbish! And ban cheeky children from riding on horseback! I am almost tempted to go from Mosambique to Morocco next time, instead of Cape to Cairo - just to keep away from the pyramids!