DAY 52 – CAIRO STILL
Up at 6am to go to the camel market at Birqash which, according to the Lonely Planet, is at it’s most frantic on Friday mornings. I’m guessing the Lonely Planet was not far wrong. There were several hundred camels, stinking, braying and hopping around on three legs. The fourth leg is tied up to prevent them making a get away. This is like the camel handbrake. This doesn’t stop them trying though and it quite common to have to make way for a frantic camel hopping past on three legs with a screaming Berber guy giving chance with a big stick. The whole experience was not short on humour and was extremely memorable.
Best of all I met a great finish couple. The girl works at the finish embassy and I was invited to a house warming party later that night.
Spent the afternoon exploring kooky Coptic Cairo (just like regular Christianity only with more black) and cruising the Nile with the fins.
The party turned out to be eight people hell bent on getting drunk in an apartment 22 floors above the Nile. The view was spectacular. When the drinking was done we headed out to the Africana nightclub in Giza. The Africana caters to the large African community in Cairo and specialises in playing African and r’n'b music. I had heard that the club was full of beautiful Namibian prostitutes and one of the guys who worked at my hostel tried to tell me not to go, as it is quite dangerous for tourists. Obviously this made me even keener to have a look. In the end I had a good time but I don’t think that it really lived up to the hype. I hit the wall around 2am and was pretty much just filling in time waiting for the others to leave. I blame this failure on my part on a combination of excessive alcohol consumption and the shortage of sleep the night before.
Made it in at 5am and was gutted to find out that the cute Russian girl staying in my four bed dorm had had a shag and the other two boys got to watch. Gutted. Again.
