Battleground Pyramids
Posted Sunday, June 24, 2007, 8:28 PM by Lonely Planet
"The street is closed ahead! The best way to get there is on a horse - which I have, for a good price..."
So goes the latest scheme for ripping Pyramid visitors of their money. It's unique only because tourists are accosted while they're still in their taxis, waiting for the traffic to ease on the way to these megaton monuments.
Dr Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has tried to improve the situation at the Pyramids. Whereas visitors used to have to run a gauntlet of postcard vendors, horse touts and men offering camels for photo ops, now only a handful of people are allowed onto the plateau. The rest are kept at bay by a giant concrete wall topped with barbed wire, as well as police standing sentry on camelback. The day I visited, I saw a brief but exciting chase between them and a rogue horse tout who'd been making a beeline for a crowd of tourists.
But Dr Hawass hasn't actually solved the problem. The residents of the village at the base of the pyramids have been making their living off visitors for hundreds of years, so physically blocking them from tourists has only forced them into more creative solutions. The line of scrimmage has simply been moved a few kilometers away. Moreover, the tourism police admit they don't have any control over the horse touts - yes, the official rate is LE35 per hour, "but you're still expected to bargain".
Moreover, the experience on the Pyramids plateau itself is not friendly to the independent traveler. Visiting on your own, you're still prey to the occasional guard who asks for baksheesh for showing you an alleged "ruin" - the abandoned neo-Egyptian concrete police station - and you may also be squashed flat by a tour bus careening down one of the new paved roads. Trudging through the sand, away from the buses that are the antiquities council's bread and butter, you just might start to think a horseback ride is just what you need. If only you'd listened to the guy who jumped in your taxi...
Zora O'Neill is updating the Cairo chapter of Lonely Planet's Egypt guide, and enjoying her visit to her old home.
Labels: Africa
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3 Comments:
This totally reminded me of my attempt to see the Pyramids in greater Cairo. And I say attempt to see them, because that is what it was. It never went beyond an attempt. I never saw them. That's right. Saw them on plenty of postcards, but couldn't even get to the entrance for all the scamsters blocking my path. So I didn't go. I just got back in a taxi and went back to the excellent Sun backpacker hotel in the city where I watched life navigate the roundabout below. That proved way more entertaining than an afternoon of dealing with camel drivers. Ah Egypt. Gotta love that place.
Ha. That's so typical. The Egyptian Tourist Board should be reading this. Unfortunately I don't think they have any good ideas as to how to deal with the problem.
I wonder--what's a good example of a major tourist attraction in a developing country? Is there one that's relatively easy and hassle-free to visit? And how have the locals been integrated into the economy? Petra, maybe? But I haven't visited myself...
Now I cannot attach a pic here, but much to my amusement, we could've been visiting the plateau the exact same day, but from the date of your post, I know we did not - I have an almost identical pic, the colourful buses in front of the pyramid of Chefren. Anyway, I am also a guidebook-writer and I have also lived in Cairo, and my next deadline for the new edition of the guide book is just around the corner. Anyway, just thought it was funny. I write for a Danish company http://www.politikensforlag.dk/index.jsp?main_menu=Rejseb%F8ger&prodkey=543&action=showproduct
LOUISE
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