August 2017

Before arriving in Egypt, I had no idea that the country was split into two, Southern Egypt, where Cairo is located and Northern Egypt, better known as the Senai Peninsula. It was all a little confusing and in recent years there has been an increase in terrorist attacks and instability, so the situation had gotten even messier. I arrived in Egypt at the Taba border crossing, right on the border with Israel, and was given a 15-day free visa, only applicable to the Sinai Peninsula. I wanted to leave Israel ASAP because I was upset about how badly I was treated a few days beforehand on my arrival in Israel. There was an Egyptian embassy in Eilat, the Israeli city at the border, but I strongly convinced myself that I’d be able to get the correct Egyptian visa in the Sinai Peninsula. I wish I would had known then how difficult it would be to get my hands on the southern Egypt visa.

I left Israel and paid my exit tax and then arrived in Taba, and made my way to my hotel. The Taba border isn’t a safe crossing. There had been a lot of attacks there, most recently a bomb exploded on a bus full of Korean tourists right after they crossed the border from Israel. I stayed in the Hilton and it only cost $50 a night. It just happened that there was a bad terrorist attack a few years before when a truck full of explosives crashed into the hotel and damaged a couple of floors. So I was in no mood to stay in Taba for more than one night and the next day I took the bus to Sharm El Sheihk, a Las Vegas-type city in the middle of the desert. I needed to take the long route to Sharm El Sheihk because of the tension in the area, tourists aren’t allowed anywhere near the dangerous parts, so it was a long route and it was late night by the time I reached Sharm El Sheihk. Sharm El Sheihk had been in the news a lot recently, but sadly for the wrong reasons, someone planted a bomb on a Russian plane departing from Sharm El Sheihk and unfortunately, everyone on board died. There were also several other bad attacks before that, in 2005, almost 100 tourists died after several bomb attacks, so I knew that it wasn’t a safe place to go, but I knew that it was closer to Cairo and convinced myself that it was the right direction.

I found a nice hotel online and it only cost 12 Euro a night, a really big room and swimming pool and took advantage of the amazing offers, ate like a king every night for a cheap price, also did a lot of shopping and got some of the best deals ever in a place that I never even heard of a week earlier.

So I was in a bit of trouble, I was only in Egypt because I wanted to see the Pyramids and I only had a 15-day visa, so I wanted to make my way to Cairo. I began doing my research and asked everybody around if they were able to help me, but they were unsure about my situation. I was unable to take the bus or fly to Cairo because I didn’t have a visa at that time. I went all the way out to Sharm El Sheik airport and inquired about the visa. The staff at the airport were unable to help, they claimed that I needed to fly out of Egypt and then come back in with the Egyptian visa. So my Sinai Peninsula visa was useless. I continued to ask them if there were any other options, but they continued to tell me that I should have known about this pre-departure and that all foreigners had to go to the Egyptian embassy for an interview and extra screening because of the recent attacks. I tried to locate a few travel agencies, not a lot around Sharm El Sheihk because the tourist industry had suffered a lot in recent years. None of them specialized in Cairo tours because it was too far away, most of them just did nearby tours, to places like Mount Sinai, a place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Then one day while I was sitting by the pool a tourist agent approached me. “Do you want to go to the pyramids?” he asked. “Yes, could you get me the visa?” I replied. He claimed that there was a tour to Cairo that night and he knew somebody at the airport that could stamp my passport and give me the Cairo visa. Could I trust him? I thought to myself, continuously saying that this had been the closest that I’d come to getting to Cairo all week. “I’m picking up a group of Ukrainian tourists at the airport tonight, give me 150 Dollars and give me your passport, and then I’ll get the customs official to insert the visa in your passport. Then we will take a trip to Cairo leaving tonight.” “Absolute deal!” I replied. Later that night I had the visa in my passport and I was making my way to Cairo. We passed four checkpoints on the way and then made it to Cairo in the early morning. We went straight to the pyramids and spent the day walking around Giza. Yes, yes, yes I kept telling myself, this was it, the land of the pharaohs. It was all so surreal. We then took a boat ride up and down the Nile River and then jumped on a bus back to Sharm El Sheihk exhausted.