Stuck in a rut

You can't be an amazing adventurer like me if you don't go on adventures, so I decided to skip the train to Cairo and try the microbus instead. Not all of my adventures are as dangerous or fun as the midnight body-surfing, or the midnight horseback-riding-camping-hiking-dog-landfill-pyramids adventures. Sometimes they're adventures because nine-year-old children are more competent on the street here than I am. Sometimes to have an adventure you just need to come to Egypt and not know anything. Which isn't that hard to do.

So I asked around to find the bus to get to the big bus stop. Only after waiting for forty minutes I found out that it was the only bus that didn't stop as it came by, so I had to wave it down. Ok.

I get off at the big bus stop and get onto the larger bus after crowding the ticket "line" (there are no lines here, just pushing people). So far so good. So good, that is, until we hit Cairo city limits. Of course my adventure couldn't have gone without a hitch, so the bus broke down. We waited and another bus came, just in time for us to find out that a lady's bag was missing. So that was nice, because she spent the next half hour or so yelling about it. Very pleasant.

I jump off after awhile where a kind man tells me to and walk for twenty minutes to the train station. Everybody knows where it is so they all help me get there. And boy did I need the help. Here's a map of downtown Cairo:



Of course several people gave me wrong directions, but that's normal. If you don't know when someone asks you, you can't leave them hanging, so just make something up. That seems to be the attitude.

After I get to the station I hop on the metro and make it down to the Maadi stop, where I get off and find a taxi. We argue the entire way over the difference in price of about eighteen cents, but I was thinking in Egyptian pounds at the time. It was a lively, good-natured argument with lots of references to Allah and each of our gentlemanliness.

I get to my destination, and instead of the normal 37LE and three or four hours, it took 33LE and five and a half hours. So, you know, I saved a little money. Like seventy-two cents. To take an hour and a half longer. I think there's a better way. I'll find it next time. Better than a microbus, big bus, another big bus, metro, and cab.

Coming back was a little easier, just a cab, the metro, a microbus, then another cab. It was a little difficult getting off the last microbus since about twenty men wanted to get on it. They rushed it and I heard audible thumps as they hit it and held on. Getting through that crowd was a trip. It was in all 31LE on the way back, instead of the normal 35LE. Another seventy-two cents saved.

Gavin would be so proud.