Day 14 Thursday, January 25 Last Night in Cairo

by Henry

Our last day in Egypt. High temperature 18° C. We forayed to Decathlon, a French-based sporting goods chain. Probably the most similar chain in the US would be Dick's. There was a miscommunication, and the group of 10 ended up at 2 different Decathlon stores at 2 different malls. They carried camping supplies, and Linda and I each bought an extra foam mat to protect our inflatable sleeping mats from possible thorn punctures further down the road in Africa.

Egyptians have honorable nomenclature for handicapped parking. The most elite parking slot that is closest to the entry is reserved for expectant mothers.


The mall was extremely upscale and modern, rivaling anything in the USA, and there were many people shopping there, unlike in most American malls.

Our next destination was Cave Church. To get there, our driver had to wind through a very narrow street in the Cairo's Moqattam Garbage City, which is inhabited by up to 150,000 marginalized Coptic Christians. 60% of Cairo's trash for 22 million passes through here. It is like nothing I have ever seen. Innumerable bags of trash are piled high on trucks and spilling out of buildings. People, including families with children, are sitting on the mountains of trash and sorting. They apparently manage to recycle 85% of the trash. Despite the filth, there are restaurants, shops, and people living here as in any other neighborhood. The residents receive a small stipend from the government for their labor. The juxtaposition of poor vs rich (at the mall) was not lost on us.

One of the smaller trucks. Many bigger trucks were piled four times as high.


Trash is collected in the city into reusable bags, which look like they're made from recycled plastic.








At the end of the road, on top of the hill, is the Coptic Cave Church.


The larger sanctuary can seat up to 20,000.


I noticed several of these rugged-looking, yet cute, Suzuki minivans in the neighborhood.


A smaller sanctuary with seating for 2,000 in the Cave Church complex.


This is a pilgrimage site for Coptic Christians, yet there is the strange proximity of zip lines and a climbing wall to entertain the youth.


There is only one road leading away from the Cave Church, so we had to drive through Garbage City again. We arrived in the Zamalek neighborhood and tried to get into the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art, but it was closed because it was National Police Day. The infrastructure and plaza surrounding the museum was not in terribly good condition, although the museum was in a nice park with other cultural buildings, including the Cairo Opera House.


Back to Le Passage Hotel, the Cleopatra ballroom was set up for a Coptic Christian wedding that day.


The bright and groom made a grand entrance into the lobby at about 10 PM.


Hotel lobby where we were waiting for our bus, which picked us up at 10:45 PM to go to the Cairo airport. Because EgyptAir could not handle all the bikes on one flight to Kigali as previously promised, we had been separated into two groups. An earlier group had left four hours earlier and would enjoy a nonstop flight from Cairo to Kigali. Fortunately, Linda and I did not have to check out of the hotel until 10 PM. Unfortunately, our itinerary was a distant second choice. We would be flying Ethiopian Airlines from Cairo to Addis Ababa, endure a four hour layover, and then take a second flight from Addis Ababa to Kigali. We would arrive in Kigali 12+ hours after the first group. As we walked outside, it had briefly rained for the first time since our arrival in Africa.


We were reunited at the airport with our bike boxes (which had been trucked up from Aswan), our permanent bags, and daily bags.


The check-in process for each person's bike and two bags took a long time, but went about a smoothly as could be expected. Our flight departure time was 2:20 AM on January 26, so we would have to cool our heels at the boarding gate for a very late night flight.