Africa Adventures: Part 1 (Egyptian Energy)

The Pyramids have always been something I have desired to see in person. My theory was they are similar to the Grand Canyon in the sense that you just have to be there to be impressed. As we prepared for our journey, we had no idea what to expect.

We had a solid 24 hours to do Egypt. This meant, getting in late, sleeping in the hotel, waking up early to grab our tour and then head to the airport. But first, we decided it would be a good idea to do laundry the morning of our Egypt flight because it was later in the evening. This was a minor mistake because the clothes were not dry at all by the time we had to take our taxi.

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This means they were pretty much soaking wet at the airport. Having no shame, I unloaded all of the clothes on the bench in the hot Italian sun. Within about an hour, everything was dry and we folded them up and went on our way.

Once we landed in Egypt, we found our driver and headed to the hotel on the Nile. What an epic feeling. So much history. As we drove, the driver let us know we were passing “New Cairo” and it is a 120 years old. I just loved that!

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The next morning we got up and met our driver who proclaimed he was an archeologist, hieroglyphics expert, healer, tour guide and taught at the university. He said he had 3 degrees of which I can’t remember. He was really good but I have no idea what was real. He showed us 3 mummies that he found that were in the museum. I just don’t think it makes sense that he found mummies and is a tour guide but whatever, he was knowledgeable and enjoyable.

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The Pyramids are absolutely something to be confounded by. I am highly interested in how the most ancient of them were constructed because the blocks are HUGE and the precision is impeccable. It really ignited me to want to study this.

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If you are claustrophobic, climbing to the kings chamber in the Great Pyramid might not be your best choice. It was HOT, relatively tight, and having more than five humans in there makes it feel like a humid sauna. HOWEVER, it was absolutely worth it. I could not believe we had the privilege of going into such an incredible monument and I would recommend it 1,000%.

This was something I did not expect to ever do in my life and I am so grateful. There is something really magical about being in an environment that definitely had technology that was different and more advanced than we can understand. THERE is NO way, unless someone can show me how, a bunch of people, elephants, whatever just dragged those granite blocks around. NO WAY.

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Also, being in construction, the cuts of the stone are mind-blowingly precise, so they were NOT using a freaking chisel to carve those 2 million blocks. No way. They would still be building that today. We had granite and stone workers, using laser cutting machines who would be off in their measurements or would be slightly out of square. This cuts are spot on, no error. Anyway, so I believe in aliens now.

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The interactions we had with the people overall were excellent. We had the expectation that we were going to be harassed incessantly, but this really wasn’t the case. There of course were folks offering their items, but it was not extreme. Jeff and Owen had one of their best haircuts ever. It was so great. The people were amazing and they did a great job.

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I think we could spend at least a week here. I would feel comfortable and safe. I am really interested in taking cruise down the Nile now and seeing Alexandria.

Some additional highlights, we ate some local cuisine in the middle of two major roads, Jeff’s camel tried to bite my camel after we kissed, and a dude blew smoke in our face to let us smell his essential oils.

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Finally you may be asking, why would you show a picture of airport security on your flight out of Egypt to Namibia?? Well, because there is a story of course. As we separated into our male and female security checkpoints, Andre approached the security guy with a full bottle of water. As we all know, water is one of the most dangerous substances to bring on a plane and one must discard of the evil substance immediately.

The guard looked at Dre and said, “you either drink it right now or throw it away.” So Dre went down the let’s put as much as possible in my mouth route. Then as he held the bottle in his hand, they started to pat him down. Dre then proceeded to do a fun, hip thrusting dance, which made Andre laugh and in the process, spit all the water in his mouth on to the security guard.

I then asked, “what did he do!?!?” Andre’s response was, “well, he stopped touching me and I got to keep my water bottle!”