It's the Pyramids, Geezer

Well, I suppose it would be very remiss of me to come all this way and not manage to see the Pyramids, so last night I dedicated to seeing the laser show they put on, with a tour of the three Pyramids and the Sphinx this morning/afternoon.

The laser (aka sound and light) show is something that I find difficult to describe in words. "Cheesy" would be the one that sums it up best. You arrive at the Pyramids after sunset and they are beautifully lit, showing off their magnificence. You take your seat and wait for the fun to start. Straight away I knew this was going to be bad because as soon as the entry barrier opened, you had fully grown adults behaving like children and sprinting so they could get to the front seats! Still I found a seat in the third row, which was perfectly fine, and I settled down to watch.

Nice lighting, shame about the narration

BOOM!!!BOOM!!!BOOM!!!

An unnecessarily thunderous noise bellowed out of the speakers, followed by an over the top fanfare that would not have been out of place in Ben-Hur. Then, Omar Sharif's voice (I think) booms out a welcome from the Sphinx. For the remainder of the show the impression is given to the audience that it is the Sphinx that is the narrator of the story of Egypt. Interspersed with the BOOMing was a haunting xylophone/chime tune, which was reminiscent of the theme to Tales of the Unexpected. They really need to update their music to something more contemporary, like Eminem (will the Real Slim Sphinx-y please stand up?).

The Sphinx informs us the even Alexander the Great bowed before him (no actual
evidence of this), but forgets to mention that Napoleon's troops used his nose (now
in the British Museum) as target practice...they have no respect those Frenchies;)

Lots of cheesy lines ensue, one classic I can remember is "man fears time, but time fears the Pyramids"[fanfare]. To add a bit of drama to the proceedings, they change the colours of the lighting so that at some points the Sphinx is blue, others he is green, or maybe even red. This was quite a nice series of effects, but my camera is not up to taking meaningful photos in the dark like that, so out of the many I took, only a handful are worth keeping. Personally, I was thankful when the show was over and the noise had stopped, then I could go to the front and take a couple of tasteful shots of the Pyramids and Sphinx at night. Still on the plus side, it is something I can say I have done.

Man fears time, but time fears a piece of crafted limestone
that's been slowly weathering away over the ages (i.e. time)

So, today I arranged a day trip to the Pyramids and Sphinx. Getting there was an ordeal in itself. I got into the tour bus, which stops off at a variety of hotels to pick up people, and we seemed to keep going around in circles for almost an hour. First of all we went back to one hotel to drop a couple off who got on the wrong tour, then we had to cross the city to get back to my hotel and pick someone else up who belatedly decided to go on the tour. Then I found out he was not going on our tour, but we were handing him over to another tour, and just dropping him off. Then we had to switch buses as the bus I was on was for a different tour. Nothing in Egypt is ever straightforward, but as long as you just sit back and go with it, you will be fine.

Finally we got there, and I was not disappointed with what I saw. To see the only remaining wonder of the ancient world is quite a humbling experience if i am honest. The Pyramids as viewed from the sound and light show seemed very small, but that was down to two factors; firstly, there is a large bank of sand between the seats at the sound and light show and the Pyramids, making them look stunted, and secondly, the distance of the seats from the Pyramids must be close to 1km. Now though, up close and personal, these monuments were, well, monumental. Each brick weighs between 10 and 50 tonnes, and most of them were almost as tall as me.

The Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) stands 143 metres high

A view looking straight up Khufu - to give you a sense of scale, I
would estimate that each one of those bricks is almost as tall me!!

Ok, factoid time. for the largest Pyramid (Cheops) it is estimated that 2.3 million of these bricks were used, and the tour guide delighted in telling us that Napoleon had his mathematicians work out that if all the bricks were laid out end-to-end, it would be long enough to completely surround France with a three metre high, half a metre thick wall (seems like a more productive use of the bricks to me ;) )

The second Pyramid, which is known as Khafre (or sometimes Chephren) is one that you can enter, for an additional fee of course. I am not the sort of person that is going to turn down that sort of opportunity, and so I excitedly entered the Pharaoh’s inner sanctum (if you will excuse the term). Once again, no photography is allowed in there, although there is not much to snap in there anyway, it is very bland and could just be any stone room.

The Pyramid of Khafre stands at 138 metres

The entrance into the Pyramid of Khafre

The side of the Pyramid of Khafre with the Pyramid
of Menkaure (which is the smallest) in the distance.

What was noticeable though was a blast of hot stagnant air as you enter the tunnel leading down into the Pyramid. It smells like a 4000 year old mummy's laundry basket, and the further you go into the pyramid, the more stiflingly hot it becomes. This is probably due to a combination of the lighting and the amount of tourist traffic it seems to get. The tunnel itself is not for someone with claustrophobic tendencies (think of all those millions of tonnes of rock that could come crashing down on you at any moment!), or for people with back problems as you have to hunch for a most of the journey. I am suspecting that ancient Egyptians were midgets.

The Pyramid of Menkaure with satellite pyramids (so that
the Pharaoh could watch Sky Sports in the afterlife.....)

After this, we kept moving around the Giza plateau for a variety of different photographic opportunities. At this point, I should mention that I seemed to get paired with some French chap who looked a bit like a young Gerard Depardieu and could speak very little English. He was nice enough, but the language barrier was a bit of an obstacle, and I don’t think he fully understood that I did not want to go out with him later to pick up girls at the nightclub across the river from the hotel (I am honestly not making up this stereotype at all, that is what he wanted to do!).

The Sphinx (in case you had not guessed) with the Pyramid of Khafre

Close up of the Sphinx

After an afternoon snapping, I was looking forward to getting home when, all of a sudden, the tour guide started telling us about how papyrus was made. Regular readers will recognise these classic warning signs, and true enough we were soon parked up outside a shop which was going to show how papyrus is made. The lesson was conducted by a young man who clearly did not have the heart in demonstrating this ancient art to us, as the whole thing lasted under a minute and we were left to browse the shop while the tour-guide was given a Pepsi for her skills in getting us into the shop.

We all left without making a purchase, and got back in the car. Then she mentioned the most evil word in the English language to me at the moment, "aromatherapy", and I quickly piped up with "I have seen that already, so I will wait in the car". Fortunately a couple of others on the tour had seen this too, and so the visit to have a variety of unguents smeared on your body was cancelled (something which I think the guide and the driver had a mini-argument about, as they did not speak to each other on the way back).

So that was today’s adventure. Tomorrow I think I will visit some of the other Pyramids in the area (there are 109 Pyramids in total, the 3 at Giza being the most famous of them), notably at Memphis (not the US one) and Darshur (not Darfur, which is in the Sudan).