We arrived in Egypt a few hours ago after nearly 24 hours of travel. Time for a rest before we venture out.
Along the way here, we took the sea-plane back from Velidhu to Male after making the milk-run and stopping at a few other small islands to pick up more passengers. After that we had to wait in the Male airport for nearly 9 hours until our 2:20 am flight which didn't actually leave until 3:00.
While waiting at the airport, we happened to catch CNN and saw all the air strikes that have been gong on between Israel and Lebanon. Great, we're heading into that part of the world just when everything is going to hell! Egypt is usually pretty good about staying out of these things from what we hear, so this shouldn't affect us, but we will try to be especially cautious and use our best Canadian accents while we're there:)
We arrived in Dubai, UAE for a 4 hour layover that turned out to be closer to 5. Dubai is famous for it's duty free shopping and the airport didn't disappoint in the quantity and quality of the merchandise. However, for a budget traveler, spending over $1,000 for a cell phone is a bit much. Even if it is made of pure titanium and guaranteed for life, we all know it will get lost or stolen before you ever get your money's worth out of it:)
We finally arrived at the airport in Cairo around noon. We made it through the passport control after we purchased our Visa stamps (a process that has no signs or anything to alert you to it) and proceeded to pick up our bags and head out to find our hotel driver. This turned out to be easy, as Saed was holding a sign with our names on it. We took the airport shuttle bus to the parking lot and got in his cab. A beat up old sedan that was missing most of the knobs to control doors and windows, and sounded like it was going to die on the ride from the airport.
We got checked in to our hovel, er, hotel, and are now getting ready to take a well-deserved nap before setting out to explore the city a bit.
That's it for now.
Eric
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