2006 Egypt

16 December 2006, Saturday; Pension Roma, Cairo, LE79 (incl)

The first Egyptian we spoke to, on the flight between Nairobi and Cairo, during our plane-bound stopover in Khartoum, was a woman who worked for Kenyan Air and was on her way back home from a conference in Kenya. Very attractive and modern, she told Charl to… “Look after her, she has a nice face”, and gave us her card in case we needed any help!

We were off the plane and out of the airport virtually first due to our light load. (We were thrilled time and again to be travelling so light. Under 11kg in all combined weight. Packed into one small backpack with some odd sods in my old blue day pack and our cameras permanently slung. And all easily manageable. Especially as the whole lot fitted on the plane as hand luggage!) And found a taxi into town without much ado though at LE65 we undoubtedly paid too much.

Our first impression of Cairo, due to the lateness of the hour, was not entirely accurate. It appeared clean and relatively quiet. We had, however, come prepared to like this city of 16,000,000 – and we did, both on first and second impressions.