Day 12: The Great Pyramids (and not so great scam artists)

Tianna's corresponding blog: (click here)

If you don't remember from an earlier post when I realized that Egypt was not going to be the cheapest part of my trip then let me reiterate that fact. In fact little did I know all that I was getting myself into. I did splurge for a nicer hotel to try and avoid the dreaded Ramses Revenge. What I didn't realize was that the hotel came complete with its own complimentary conman to aid with keeping tourism dollars in Egypt. The conman in question seemed so nice, obviously. He went and purchased our bus tickets for the following morning for us, he arranged for a private driver instead of taking cabs all for only $40. I thought it was too good to be true, first red flag. I even went and asked a random hotel employee if the guy was legitimate and was ensured that he was. It may have worked out ok but we ended up waiting and waiting and waiting while the precious moments I had in Egypt were ticking away. Our little tour began with being whisked away to a papyrus store (apparently our drivers first commission destination) I was OK picking up a papyrus souvenir but it was taking forever and I was starting to get anxious. We eventually got to the camel place only to find out that the ride out to the pyramids was going to cost over $200 and of course our private driver had already taken off so at this point if I wanted to see the pyramids I basically had to fork out the money. They still found other opportunities to squeeze more money out of me before all was said and done. This is the Readers Digest condensed version of the story, Tianna's blog does a very good job recounting our adventures. It is recommended reading to go along with the pictures.

And I thought my drive-by-shooting was at an end. Luckily this time I didn't have to photograph through windows.

The guy riding the horse is the 'scumbag dirtface' that Tianna mentions often in her blog.

I had no idea how close Cairo was to the pyramids. You only ever see the desert around them but Cairo is built right up to the edge of them and past that it is all sand.

This is the little boy also mentioned in the other blog just before Tianna's rodeo moment. Unfortunately it caught me off guard and I have no action shots for our bemusement.

This is also one of those days that I photographed with my large format camera much more than I did with my digital camera. So more pyramid pictures will be coming later.