Cairo Arrival

Well, I have arrived to Cairo.  I'm always amazed at how easy it can be to get into some countries and others are more inquisitive about how long your stay is, where you are staying and why are you here.  This is not the case for Egypt.  What is always the case with entering into a new country is the waiting.  The passport line was moving along ok and it comes up to my turn and the man sends me away because I didn't pay the other booth for the $15 Visa.  I would think signage would be of some use here but got the visa and moved back to the back of the line to wait again.  Pretty uneventful.  Get to airport, get on plane, sleep a little, get off plane, stamp passport.  Move along.  Next in line please.  There were lots of people holding signs waiting for their guests with their names nicely printed and readable from afar to drive them off to their destinations except mine.  Once out of the baggage area, I find mine.  I wonder if he knew that my favorite sharpie color is light blue.

This is, after all, budget travel I suppose.  At lease he was there.  

On the walk to his car he hands me his cell phone and motions it to my ear.  I'm told that there are other people being picked up so "5 minutes ok? ok?"  (which became 25 minutes)  So the driver doesn't speak English, well, a car is a car and at least he was holding my name right side up!

Met a couple from Brazil in the taxi that are doing Cairo in 3 days who are also staying in my hostel. I'm not big on tours but we did manage to get a cheaper rate for the tour of the Pyramids and the Sphinx tomorrow since there were 3 of us so starting off with the big daddy of the sights right off the bat.  Not much else to say at the moment.  It's 8pm here and for me it's still 1pm with little sleep.  Going to fight the urge to sleep now and see if I can make up the 7 hour difference.  Wish me luck.