The wake up call for the five and a half hour trip to Cairo was one thirty a.m., the bus leaving an hour later. It was going to be one long-ass day, but well worth it to be sure.
It would be a heinous crime, committed by me, your narrator, if some attention was not paid to the resort. By and large it was a pleasant place, large and grand complete with a heated pool and several places to eat. On their first day they dined at the international buffet where Jackson found the food to be mostly bland. A fact that their tour guide Matt would later confirm.
"They don't season anything, yet put sugar in everything instead. Oddly enough diabetes is unheard of hear." Delivered with a sardonic smile.
Otherwise they could not have been more pleased and the things they disliked were easily rectified. The fact that there was only wifi in reception was solved by renting a modem for the week, the last one and it gave Jsckson immense joy to hear other guests ask about it, only to be told that it was unavailable. Deriving pleasure from other people's misfortune was another one of his flaws. The other drawback was the lack of coffee. He and Denise were slow starters, they needed at least two cups of joe before they could even consider greeting the day. When they stayed at hotels one of them would wander down to the lobby and bring coffee back to the room, then again. It might be a good two hours before they sauntered downstairs to eat breakfast. The caffeine affair was handled by the reception for a small fee and a tray of instant coffee, creamer and a water cooker was brought to the room
As was the case with the food, the coffee was weak, but it did the job. They were used to it though.
They hung by the pool on the warm sun, partook in free drinks and wondered at the various other guests. There were Germans in way too revealing speedos, rude Russians and a British 30-something woman who by twelve p.m. puked on Denise's foot, after first ordering five tequila bombers. She merrily continued to drink as if all was well with the world.
"There is something with resort life" Denise told him over dinner. "It's as if rules no longer apply. Social codes go out the window."
"Do people become assholes at resorts?" He replied as he cut into his medium rare steak.
"I think they are assholes to begin with." She blinked at him and raised her glass of Egyptian wine.
Luckily none of the offending nationalities happened to be travelling on their bus to Cairo. Instead they were part of a small group of very mild mannered Scandinavians, lead by three competent guides. Two from the resort and one local. Thet were informed that one was only allowed to guide in Egypt if one had completed four years of Egyptology at the university. So Mohammed would be their guide at the museum, the pyramids and the Sphinx.
They had to wait through a checkpoint before they could hit the road proper. A precautionary measure to make sure no unregistered bedouins were not trying to use the infrastructure they had not paid for. Jackson quickly fell asleep after, leaning his seat back and pulling the hood over his face.
He woke up once to the smell of sulphur on the wind. He stared out into the inky black of early morning and found that the bus was driving straight through the desert, Red Sea to his right. A solitary flame was burning in the distance creating an eerie magical feel to his journey.
They stopped at, what looked like, a last chance in. It was complete with loud music and gaudy neon signs. It reminded him of The Titty Twister from the movie From Dusk Til Dawn. They saw the sun rise above the desert in an amazing pageantry of color. Denise came close to him and slipped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his shoulder. They waited for the world to wake up before them, feeling the juxtaposition of the quite solitude of the desert on one side and the loud neon madness of sn Egyptian truck stop on the other.
There was another two and a half hour drive from yet another check point. They passed an oddly littered landscape of half finished resorts, their empty windows staring at them like sad empty eyes begging for someone to complete them. Interspersed among the ruins of broken all inclusive promises stood, what appeared to be, hated communities that reminded him of the condominium estates back home, sporting names like Lake View, Moon View and Santa Claus. Here and there piles of garbage had been collected together, either by the wind or human hands. It would be a common enough sight as they entered Cairo.
Cairo, with its 22 million inhabitants was like nothing they had ever seen before. Here people lived on top of people in high rise buildings stretching ever upward, as it was tradition to add an extra floor for children and their families. This must have been what the early medieval cities were like. Rapidly expanding, people on top of people, garbage everywhere.
The bus driver expectedly zipped through the three lane road, where cars were driving six or seven wide. The lines on the road appeared to be for decorative purposes more than guidelines. Egyptians walked out into the street without regard, confident that they would not be run over by the vehicles that honked just so that others knew they were there. Old women sold tissues to drivers, businessmen jumped on and off buses mid perambulation and children rode off the back of speeding trucks. Here and there various men worked on various things. Picking litter, building something. No one seemed to wear uniforms while working, making him think that one could just pick up a shovel at any building site and get to work.
"If there would be a zombie attack, the Egyptians are the ones who survive" Denise said as she waved to a teenage girl from her seat, bringing endless joy to the youth's face. "They possess the true survival skills."
They turned a corner and arrived at the museum.
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