Thursday we decided to take a half day tour to Dashour, which has the bent pyramid and red pyramid. These are the pyramids of Cheops' father. This time we booked the tour through the travel agency in the hotel. Dashour is a little more remote, so we got to drive outside Cairo and through some smaller villages and farmland. Before we got out of the city I got a good picture of typical Cairo, garbage, dust and unfinished buildings with satellite dishes.
Soon we got to the red pyramid, so named because it was built with red limestone, although the color is not very distinct now.
We had the place to ourselves. Here is a picture of our tour car in the parking area.
We chose to go inside the red pyramid. We didn't go inside the great pyramid because we figured it would be too crowded and difficult. I'm not very claustrophobic, but being stuck in a hot narrow, passage with other people blocking your way isn't my idea of fun. Here we'd have the whole tomb to ourselves.
There were no pictures allowed inside, but I'm starting to learn how Egypt works, so I bribed the guard. Then I could take pictures and he even took some of us together. The entrance is about halfway up the side (where the wood steps and platform are), then you climb down a steep narrow passageway to the three burial chambers.
After that we went to the bent pyramid, which is visible in the distance from the red pyramid. The bent pyramid is called that because it was built too steep initially, and the architect realized it might collapse so the angle was changed halfway through. The pharaoh didn't like the result so he had the red pyramid built to replace it.
For dinner we booked a Nile cruise. Unfortunately it didn't really live up to the billing. It was a buffet and the guests descended like locusts and all the food was gone after about 20 minutes. Meanwhile we did move away from the dock but other than that we barely moved. Row boats were passing us. Eventually after the meal was finished we started moving some more. There was also a belly dancing performance. Yanmei was pretty shocked. Not at the belly dancer, but at the reaction of the crowd, which seemed like mostly locals. The supposedly conservative, religious people were handing their babies to the belly dancer for photo ops. 🙂
-David
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