The immense joy of touching land and leaving the freighter lasted little. Exactly what two police dogs began to smell our escape tube, Agents began to surround us and they told us very sympatically that we accompanied them to customs. There a very well -dressed type of medium age said the magical words: Do they have the car passport? Vítor looked with incredulous face and said, Forgive? And I understood that the nightmare of the papers began again, No truce, Without time to enjoy our freedom.
It turns out that the Du Passage card is a document that they demand in this part of Africa to cross the border. Our knowledge of him was so extensive that we asked him to teach us one to know. Egypt was not easy from the beginning. I would say that it has been complicated where it was not paid and the cordial was according to the size of the tips and accounts. We have not had luck at this point.
The Du Passage card is a document that they demand in this part of Africa
In the customs of the port of Damietta they forced us to leave the car and went to Cairo in search of our document. To do this we climbed to a taxi that opened between cars while we were understanding that chaos is ruled from indifference. Maybe only in India I have seen driving so crazy. No one obeys any rule or has the slightest courtesy. It goes to where you can as soon as possible. Acojona, At first it welcomes. We saw cars coming from the front, on the sides. They pass to centimeters under the eternal sound of some horn that announce madness.
And Egypt began and my immense surprise began. The opposite happened to me in Türkiye, Here everything was much poorer and miserable than I imagined. The garbage is gathered in the roads of the road, FLOT IN THE RIOS. The country has a layer of dust. Egypt seems to get rid of, back, impression that also gave me in the following days. Army controls and empty buildings, No windows, raised with weak bricks in which no one lives. The country seems in retirement, surrendered. Egypt seemed immensely sad and ungovernable. I think I never heard some laughs instead.
And we arrived at Cairo and an immense jam he received us to tell us that it was not an easy city. We went to the Automobile Club, And despite the sympathy of a woman, They didn't give us any solution. We had to call Portugal and with the help of Vítor's brother, Nuno, From the worker Portuguese embassy of Cairo and the generous car club in Portugal we get the impossible, which was to have that complicated document in 48 hours. Then it was as easy as putting it in DHL and that it would arrive in two days, Something that did not happen because DHL was only punctual in the collection, Then he lost the package in several airports which will cost us another week in this country.
DHL was only punctual in the collection, Then he lost the package at several airports
In that wait we went to see the pyramids of Giza. It was from the road the first time I observed them, Among some abandoned buildings of the great city. It was exciting to do it. Then, That night, We saw them already wish the gate with colors that converted that age in the future by magic. The next morning is when we visit them.
The visit was strange because Egypt has no tourists. Too many tanks near its monuments so that the international traveler troupe comes here. But, The recess is full of a crazy mass of souvenir vendors and soft drinks, Next to those who offer you the Tour on horseback or camel and the dozens of kids who set up their animals and run through the sands. "This is left", an Egyptian told us. And that impression gave us in the midst of a chaos that foreigners were missing and left over local ones that stuck for each piece (we).
We got with some anger to see that calm and we got lost in time and memory of that impressive place. The sphinx that seems to control everything and those geometric shapes that are not right or logical they dwarf you. Those two hours of walks on those stones were a pending account that I will not forget.
We returned to our Cairo hotel, The Golden, One hundred meters from the famous and revolutionary Plaza Tarhir
Two nights later we returned to our Cairo hotel, The Golden, One hundred meters from the famous and revolutionary Plaza Tarhir. We tried to reconcile with a city where we did not find our site. We played a game with her. We won with the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Egyptian Museum and we lost the military machine guns cleaned their tanks at the entrance. Always on alert, always ready to go. We won with a meal in a beautiful part of the imposing Nile and we lost with unpleasant secret police control where they smelled to our portfolios in search of drugs.
We walked and mixed in their markets without finding anything, without winning or losing anything that was not tired. Then, evening, We returned to our refuge from the historic Café Riche, where Naguib Mahfuz warned his ideas and revolutions were cooked, And we spent fun evenings imagining that those adorable old people who were there were spies of World War II that did not know that the conflict was over. Then, When we go, We opened the door slowly so as not to wake up the owner who slept after an old desk full of papers from the middle of the last century. Morning, We did the same in the historic J Groppi, the 1892, Where a coffee and a bun made us the morning thinking about the old ice cream shop that then opened an Italian at the times when this city was one of the co-capital of the world.
But, I felt that Cairo was defeating us. The mythical city that I had read so much and dreamed was foreign to me. And you blame them in these things are always shared. It was the wait for a document that seemed to arrive every morning and never did and that broke the desire. It was being trapped again in a nonsense for those who just want to travel.
The mythical city that I had read so much and dreamed was foreign to me
So a dinner told Vítor and Leandro, Something tired of the city, that we were wrong, that so many people who love this city could not be wrong, that we had to look for more. And they denied, And they said that there was only dirt here, dust and sadness in the streets, Something that I could not deny. So the next morning I looked online and found that we could go by subway to the Copto neighborhood.
We took that tied subway from people where the windows are wooden blinds and there are wagons only for women. We arrive at a walled enclosure, full of churches and remains of the first Christians and we began to raise the day. And the jokes arrived and took the subway back and stopped in the middle of nowhere to return to the walking hotel. And we discover a wonderful Lebanese restaurant by chance, Taboo, And we returned happy after lunch to our rooms. And that night we returned to the riche and the next morning we went to meet Memphis, and the pyramids of Saqqara, Where is the Zoser pyramid, The oldest in Egypt. We visited them alone. We entered their tombs and we even went down the red pyramid, which is the third highest in Egypt with its more than one hundred meters, without anyone there. It was all hooves. That afternoon we also wanted to know the good part of the city and we went to Heliopolis and we entered the largest shopping center that I never saw full of stores equal to that next to my house in Madrid.
And suddenly the Vítor phone rang and with three days late they told us that our car passport arrived on the next morning of London. That night we went to celebrate it drinking a drink at the refined bar of Four Season with the joy not only that the document came that allowed us to follow the route, but we had achieved with determination and desire to enjoy that immense capital of the Arab world that is Cairo. We did it despite his sadness, Despite his conviction.
