Masato's Egypt Adventure

[Masato]

Hey all

Back from a crazy 2 weeks in Egypt and 1 week in BC. Happy to be back to routines again, head still swimmin.

I took like 1000 pictures but I'll try to cut it down for y'all

Thanks for watchin the place while I was gone

[Masato]

Just before we left (me, wife + 2 kids), we had a 2-night camping with some friends up north in Ontario. So wet, so lush and fresh:


The next day we flew to Cairo, and landed here, where we were told it basically hasn't rained in like 300 years. Don't know if its true but it sure looked that way lol

[Masato]

Arrive in Cairo straight to our hotel.

The Pyramids are SUPER CLOSE and we see glimpses of them behind some buildings on our way. everyone on the bus was pumped.

Here we pass construction for the new Cairo Museum, scheduled to open 2020, they will move all the artifacts here from the current museum. That's good because the museum they currently have for all the Egyptian treasures is super shitty, lol (I'll tell about that later)


The Oasis Hotel!


A decent place I guess, I was more than happy. Not sure quite how they managed to score a 4 star rating lol . Good location.

And they can bring you shisha pipes at night with several flavors though so that was cool

[Masato]

we had 2 full days to kill before our official itinerary started, so the first day we rested cuz sleepin on a plane is getting shittier with age lol

Next day we found a tour to Alexandria. We took it


ALEXANDRIA:


First stop was this underground tomb and catacombs. It wasn't ancient Egyptian but from a time when Egyptian, Greek, and Roman were all blended up here. Above ground you couldn't see anything, it was basically right in the middle of a bustling part of the city, an empty lot with some security dudes at the front.

But inside there was this hole in the ground, and sure enough you go inside and there is this huge maze of tunnels and catacombs. No bodies anymore though lol thank god




Then we went to this old fort from roughly the same era iirc. It would be hard to storm this coast in its day I figure


Taken from up inside the fort. Mediterranean Sea.


I rather like this pic:


Next we went to the Library.

The story goes that Alexander Great had this idea to collect all the world's books and scrolls and knowledge into one place, the greatest library in the whole world ever. Apparently he did it, and created the grandest library in history, but then people started fussing over religion and control and it supposedly got totally burned and destroyed, all those books gone

This library is to honor that idea, and they have some impressive collections from around the world. They also have some massive computer server rooms where it is backing up everything on the internet regularly, storing the biggest library of e-knowledge and data outside of the Pentagon
The architecture was beautiful and modern, which was weird because the rest of Egypt in its entirely as far as I saw in 2 weeks is a goddamn disaster lol

[Masato]

Next day we hit the pyramids right out of the gate.

They are literally 10-15 minutes from our hotel. there is a big wall/division separating them from the encroaching city... on the other side is endless nothing but sand and rocks going to forever into the Sahara desert. We arrive early and there is hardly anyone here. I expected huge crowds but it was super chill


The triangular thing is the actual entrance inside, but for some reason it was blocked off. The smaller entrance below was made by tomb robbers, and carves its way in and then connects to the real tunnels/chambers. Cheap ticket to get in, no waivers or nothing


Tomb-robber entrance, looking back out:


Super cramped, super steep, super claustrophobic. This is my 11 year old son, fully bent over to squeeze up, up, up. It goes like this for maybe 100 feet feet and then opens up a bit more. They didn't tell us that though so everyone is panicking and asking people as they come back down the same shaft how much farther and if it opens up or not cuz its really kinda freaky lol And super hot everyone sweating buckets


It does indeed open up eventually into a different-shaped tunnel. Still hot AF


Then there was another crawl-tunnel but not as long, that took you to this chamber. This room is super mysterious because it does have an empty sarcophagus in it, but other than that the whole room is totally empty, no writing at all. This is weird because every other place I was to visit was COVERED in writing every square inch. This room had nothing. It was perfectly smooth, level, square. Our guide went on a bit about the mathematics of the shape of the room etc had all kinds of baffling perfections and astronomical parallels etc. Status quo uses the sarcophagus/box to write off the pyramids as a mere tomb, but this is not acceptable anymore, our guide had a legit uni degree in Egyptology and admitted that no one takes that theory seriously simply because the pyramids are so strange and perfect and like nothing else in Egyptian culture. Lots of hidden room and places they haven't even opened, the whole thing makes no sense. I was thrilled to hear that our expert guide thought the same way.

[Masato]

Sphinx was rad but we didn't have much time to ponder it. Tour groups are wonderful but sometimes their timing sucks. I could have sat and tripped on this thing for a good hour at least


Robert Schoch and co. Have found via sonar tech that there is an empty space under the feet, but no one will let them dig to see what it is. Edgar Cayce predicted that a room would be found under the Sphinx's feet that would be a huge treasure to the world and explain a ton of history or something, if you believe in that stuff.

The head does look like its too small, for sure it is not the original head. Was talking to this Irish guy who understood more about the theories of visible water-erosion on and around it, which would set the Sphinx back no 5000 years, but 10/12,000 years. A wild theory in contrast with conventional egyptology, but that oldschool lost civilization stuff continues to hook my fancy



Upon leaving you can see the odd proximity of the pyramids to everyday life:

[Masato]

Next we went to even older pyramids, this is Saqqara, they say the oldest around. 5-6000 years or something. So crazy.

Strangely, this in retrospect was maybe my most memorable place on the whole trip. I really got mindblown here, its further from town so in most directions you are staring out into the wasteland of the Sahara. really cool and freaky


I don't think you can go inside this one, but nearby was another one with an underground tomb. You'd never know it from above ground unless you had the right eyes because it basically looks like just a big heap of rock and sand. Barely recognizable as anything manmade. But sure enough, there is the hole in the ground and the tunnel that starts boring into the earth

This one was also super tight and claustrophobic but by now we were experts






Also nearby, inexplicably, was the remains of a temple that was in strikingly good condition. I asked clearly if it had been re-done or restored but kept getting the same answer that it was not, and the original remains from 5000+ years ago. It made no sense because everything else was so weathered and trashed. If its true it makes this place maybe the trippiest place I visited in all of 2 weeks to come.




snakes!


Look at this masonry


One passage the walls were so smooth and flat that they shone like a mirror. Mind blown.


All around is pure Sahara wasteland. Apparently if you keep going in this direction you will eventually come to Libya:

[Masato]

The shittiest part of the whole trip was the long bus rides.

The best part of the whole trip was the long bus rides.

They were super tough to endure physically, but watching the scenery go by was never-endingly entertaining, just amazing things every mile of the way. My eyes were peeled out the window most of the time, pure wonder. I felt like I was really in another time, another world.


This particular bus ride was 15 hours long. We left Cairo around 7pm, and did not arrive until almost noon the next day. Only 2 stops for stretching, no dinner.

And the driver got fucking LOST, lol

I saw him about 1 hour out of Cairo stopping at a fork in the road and asking directions from a dude on a motorcycle.

Then I watched it get dark, the moon shining out the right side of the bus.

Then I saw the moon on the left side of the bus for a while.

Then I saw the moon out the right side again, and started to wonder lol

Turns out the Bus Driver took a wrong turn somewhere and got fucking lost, lol

We stopped and I guess they called someone and got it figured out, but we lost about 2 hours of driving in the wrong direction, with 14+ hours still to go. Tried to sleep but was hellish. My son also couldn't sleep so we layed down somehow with our feet across the aisle (the bus was only maybe 1/3 full, the rest of the group were smart enough to dish out the extra $$ for a plane ticket lol)... and in this position with the lights off we could see the desert stars out the window. Crazy full, so many stars. We layed there look upside down out the window and tripped on what this world is, a good memory


Here are a few taken from my seat on the 15+ hour bus ride from Cairo to Upper Egypt:


Everywhere the buildings are literally falling apart. Here you can see some spaces occupied, while others the floors are actually collapsing right next to or under them, lol so crazy. This stuff went on for miles.


Traffic has no real lanes or order, they are just avenues of chaos you can navigate through if you dare:


lol

[Masato]

Next day we went to this island on the Nile with an old temple called Philae.

Apparently this temple is the root of the name Philadelphia

We had to take this quaint little ferry to get to the site:








Apparently the temple was discovered underwater, and they cut it up piece by piece and moved it/re-constructed it to nearby dry ground. So its been re-made and restored, but is made with mostly the same actual blocks and statues, and the location is pretty much right next to its original place. Here is a pic of where it used to be, you can see a few columns still poking out:

[Masato]

Then the itinerary had us booked for 3 nights on a river cruise up the Nile.

I had never been on a cruise. Was expecting those big white ships but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was much quainter, more character for the adventure. It was not even crowded, maybe 50 people max on the whole ship

^^ the dude with the hat was this kid from Malaysia and was a fuckin boss, lol was currently working in London UK, super smart and super funny and well-travelled. A pleasure to travel with we LOL'd lots