I told him it was a nice try and walked away

We woke up to our alarm in our Junior Suite of the Hilton Pyramids Golf Hotel. Even though it was 8 AM I got up immediately when I realized this would be the day we would visit the Pyramids of Giza. I had seen pictures of them all my life, seen them in movies, heard and read about them many times. Today would be the day I could actually stand next to them, touch them, climb them, go inside. It is one of the highlights of every trip to Egypt, but being an independent backpacker/traveler did make it a bit more complicated. This is our pyramid story.

Costs

• Taxi both ways: £ 450
• Entrance: £ 80/40
• Entrance Pyramid: £ 40/20
• Camel Ride: £ 100
• Lodging: Triomphe Hostel, Alexandria

Getting to the Pyramids

The Hotel was still a long way from the pyramids, too long to walk anyway. Since we were not coming back to the hotel after our visit to Giza, I informed with the concierge if we could leave our luggage somewhere at the pyramids. He said that was not a good idea, unless we wanted to buy everything back from whoever we left it with afterwards. So we got some options from him to hire a car. Hiring a private car with driver from the hotel was way past our budget.

So after some convincing, he told me he could also arrange a cab. It was less than half the price of the private car. After I assured myself it included him driving us to Giza train station afterwards, I paid him the £ 450 (€ 23) for both of us. A taxi was arranged for us that would stay and guard our luggage while we visited. So I went back up to the room, we packed all our stuff and checked out.

Desperation

The shop owners had to either jump aside or get run over

Our driver turned out to be a very friendly guy, although his English was close to non-existent. After 20 minutes driving, we saw the pyramids appear from far away. Dominating the horizon with their vast triangular silhouettes. We drove through the first gate, which was well guarded by the military. Between the first guard post and the real gate some shops had set up permanently. We were taken by surprise by what happened next: our driver basically had to drive over some of the store owners.

They were standing at the entrance waiting for any tourists to arrive, jumping around the cars once they passed in front of their store. Repeatedly some men blocked the car by jumping in front of it. Our driver however was less surprised, he simply kept driving slowly until eventually the shop owners had to either jump aside or get run over. This was only the first of many signs of the desperation with which to locals wanted to earn some money. We drove through the gate and the madness ended, since they are not allowed through.

First impression

146 meters of huge blocks stacked like a ginormous Lego project

Once inside our driver stopped and showed us where the ticket office was. He then started unloading our luggage, which we did not understand, since he was supposed to keep them in his car. It took us and him a while to understand each other but eventually his intention became clear. We had to scan our luggage going in, so he could drive through the gate and lock it back up in his cab inside the domain. Like we had read in our Lonely Planet before: you have to buy tickets to all the things you want to see or do at the main gate.

We decided not to go into the big pyramid since that one was 4 times the price of the small one, which except for being somewhat bigger looks exactly the same inside. The parking lot is right in front of the pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops in Dutch), the biggest one. When we first stood next to it, it was hard to comprehend. The sheer size of it is incredible, 146 meters of huge blocks stacked like a ginormous Lego project. No pharaoh in Egyptian history ever came close again to this size and perfection. Although most of its original surface is gone, you can still see how smooth the pyramid used to be at some of the bottom blocks. The second biggest pyramid still has some of that smooth cover on its tip.

Our friendly Government Guide

Once we stepped on the path leading to the pyramid, a guy took our tickets and told us he was an official guide working for the government. We got suspicious but he showed us his badge and started explaining some stuff about the pyramids, ignoring our worried expressions. We knew something was fishy and tried to tell him several times we would go further on our own. He was very persistent however and insisted that we did not have to give him any money, his wage was paid the government.

We told him several times that we wouldn’t pay him any tips either. He seemed to ignore the remark and continued to show us how and where to take pictures. Next he went on to bring us to the tomb of one of the architects of the big pyramid (or so he said). He told us he would leave us to go on by ourselves after and gave back our tickets.

Oldest Trick in the Book

I told him it was a nice try and walked away

Inside the tiny tomb another guy offered us to take a picture of both of us. Once outside he conveniently turned over some paper sign in Arabic. On the other side, which was invisible when we went in, it said that personal pictures inside the tomb cost £ 300. I actually laughed out loud and said that that was just too easy? I told him it was a nice try and walked away. Our other insistent friend did not keep his promise and was waiting for us when we came out.

He calmly started his explanations again. On some rocks behind him one of the tourist police was sitting looking at me. Behind our friends back the police officer was just shaking his head to me. That did it and we got rid of him, just walked away from him. He still had to guts to tell us we had promised him tips! After following us for another couple hundred meters he gave up and walked back to the entrance.

Heat and Hawking

Only 500 meters of quiet walking and another dude steered us up some rubble with supposedly a nice view over the plain. Again we repeated that we were not gonna pay him. Again he said that was fine and that he worked for the government. But just like the other guy, when we left he asked for money, so again we told him very nicely to bugger off. By now we were getting annoyed and decided to just ignore everyone. Several more times people told us where and how to take pictures and were very persistent on receiving a tip for their expert knowledge. We never gave them anything but the constant harassment was not a pleasant experience.

You could not walk anywhere without getting harassed. We even got afraid of asking directions, thinking they would try to charge us for it. We walked down to the Sphinx and back up to the second pyramid. The heat was starting to weigh down on us and we were trying hard to stay hydrated. All around the compound dozens of people try to sell you camel rides. So once they saw us sweating and overheated, like vultures they started tailing us up the hill. they were just waiting for us to give up and hire their services. We decided it would be a good idea to talk back to them in Spanish. To our surprise the guy answered in some nicely rehearsed sentences in decent Spanish that he could take us on a tour around the pyramids. Once I switched to Dutch they stayed rather quiet however.

Inside the Pyramids

We finally arrived at the last and smallest pyramid (Menkaure or Mykerinos) after walking past the valley temples. We decided to take a camel ride back to the entrance after going inside the pyramid. The guards searched my backpack for cameras but I had put our Action Camera in my pants pocket already. It was really useful to have a camera inside though. There was nothing much to see except a long narrow descent over some improvised stairs into an antechamber and another smaller descent into the real tomb. No decorations or furniture was left and no hieroglyphs or painting was left on any of the walls. It was a lot like visiting a cave. Only this cave was man-made with a giant stack of granite Lego on top.

Onto the camels

It’s just harder to say no to a kid…

We climbed back out and a camel dude was waiting for us. We asked for his price and he named something like £ 200 per person. I laughed and walked away. He stopped us and told us the negotiation was not over, I told him it was with those prices. He said the normal price was 150 pounds per camel. We walked away again and told him over our shoulder that we would gladly walk to not spend that amount of money. That way we finally got the price down to a £ 100 for the two of us.

We climbed on together with a kid on each of our camels to steer them. We had a very bumpy but exciting ride to the back of the first pyramid. The little boys asked us for tips and we ended up giving them £ 30. It’s just harder to say no to a kid… We met back up with our friendly driver, so glad we did not have to negotiate with him and he took us to Giza train/metro station. He even stopped on the way to go and buy us water, telling us they would charge us too much if we would go to buy it. A very pleasant change of perspective, so we gladly tipped him £ 50.

Farewell Cairo

We rode the subway to the Ramses train station, in the center of the city, where a creepy dude guided us from the metro to the entrance of the station. With some effort, we figured out where to buy tickets and thanks to some nice English-speaking Egyptians we managed to get the tickets we wanted. We went upstairs to get some breakfast, since we had not eaten all day! The service was rather slow and we ended up taking everything to go to catch our train. Another older friendly gentlemen showed us the way to the correct platform and coach and finally we were on our way out of Cairo and towards Alexandria. Proving once more that genuinely friendly Egyptians do exist.

The train was very comfortable but sometimes rather cold. We had booked the slightly more expensive air-conditioned car, but sometimes they did exaggerate. A three and a half hour ride with wonderful views and sunset over the green Nile delta later we arrived in Alexandria. Exhausted we dragged ourselves and our backpacks to the hostel we had booked at the coast. We took the very old-looking elevator up and checked into the Triomphe Hostel. After taking a well needed shower we walked two blocks further down the street to a little square. We had some dinner in a rather fancy place Called La Veranda. Once back in the hostel we both crawled into our rock hard bed and tried to fall asleep despite of the heat. The fan provided little relief but luckily we were both exhausted. Luxury Hilton life was clearly over.