It’s Just Poison…

I thought that the flight to Cairo would never come. I was so tired and the gate kept changing. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the only monitor that was listing the gates was about a quarter mile away, near the entrance of the terminal. On top of that, they would never actually tell you that it was changed. I would be sitting at the gate and then see an Air Itallia plane pull up. Ok, I guess it was changed again. So I would have to walk back to see what the new gate was. Royal pain.

 

Right before we were to board, I met up with a guy that looked like a Russian version of Dimebag Darryl mixed with a little bit of Rob Zombie. Thankfully he spoke English, so we hung out on the bus ride to the plane. He was heading to Cairo for work. His job was to see what chemicals he could get into the country. It was explained in broken English, and I didn’t press for more details.

 

I will call this flight, the flight of the babies. The first baby incident was as we were boarding the plane. The bus dropped us off in front of the plane and we had to climb up a staircase to get onto the plane. There were two older Arabic ladies in front of me, full head to toe garb, burkas and all. With them was a little boy, maybe two. Just old enough to barely walk. So these two ladies (probably mom and grandmother) started walking up the steps with the kid left at the bottom. I yelled up at them, “hey!” and then pointed at the kid. The older lady yelled something at me in Arabic and then turned around and got on the plane. “What the fuck?” The little kid is now just sitting on the ground staring at me. So I grabbed him and carried him up the stairs and set him down once in the plane. The flight attendant lady smiled at me and started talking to the little boy and then to me. I’m not sure what she was saying exactly, but the gestures said, “what a cute little boy you have”. I corrected her immediately saying, “oh…no. He’s not mine. He belongs to them,” and pointed to the two ladies already at the back of the plane. The flight attendant looked at me confused and took the boy to the parents. What’s with people?

 

Next baby incident: To the left of me, across the aisle, a couple were seated with a baby that REALLY didn’t want to be on the plane. Awesome. All I want to do is sleep. Oh well, I had my headphones and could drown the baby out with a little High on Fire.

 

Then the couple that had the seats next to me sat down, and THEY had a baby. She was calm, and seemed actually happy to be on the plane. Nice, no problem here. Once we were airborne, the flight attendant showed up with a bassinet that hooked onto the wall in front of us. How cool. They plopped the baby in there so it could sleep and so did I.

 

Towards the end of the flight, some heavy turbulence woke me up, and the baby in box in front of me. She didn’t cry or anything, but was probably thinking the same thing as me, “Where the hell are the parents?!” They were gone. Both of them! Then, in a split second, the baby decided to get out. Well, get out is a three foot drop to the ground with a definite ricochet off the armrest of a chair. I sprung forward and caught her about a second from certain disaster. I put her back in the crib and we played high five. The flight attendant came by and noticed me playing with the baby and no parents. She asked me if I really liked babies. I told her, “No, their parents just keep disappearing and I’m left with a baby. Where the hell are the parents!” It was a full flight, so where the hell did they go? Five minutes later, the mom showed up and apologized for leaving the baby with me (I was friggen asleep!).

 

We landed somewhere around 10pm (Friday). Before going through customs, we were subjected to something new. We were all given a piece of paper asking about our personal health and travel locations. Then we had to give them to a doctor that was there. He would check us out (just visually), and then allow us to proceed. Looks like swine flu is serious over here.

 

I paid for my visa ($15), went through customs, and then outside to where I as greeted by a mass of people all waiting for friends and family. About half of that mass were taxi drivers all yelling and screaming at me about how they wanted to take me to a hotel. I had made plans earlier to have a driver pick me up at the airport. The question was how the hell was I to find him. I started reading all the signs people were holding with names on them, hoping to see my name. One of them stood out, “Mr. Karen”. I was thinking…hmmm, if someone was telling a driver my name over the phone, and perhaps in Arabic, it would sound like it would be “Karen”. I gave the crowd a once-over again, just in case and I saw a really happy man with a sign that said, “Mr. Adam Callen”. Bingo!

 

We drove back to the hostel and he pointed out a lot of the landmarks to me along the way. The total drive took about 30 minutes or so. I entered the building that he pointed out was my hostel, and I was terrified. It looked like a bombed out shell of a building that time had forgotten about. No way was my hostel in there. Then I saw the sign for the hostel. Crap. It was in there.

 

I went to the elevators and got inside the first one, hit 7, and waited. Nothing. I hit it a couple more times…nothing. OK. Fuck this. I’m taking the stairs. If you could see the elevator, you would understand. Most of the parts were ripped out, and it looked like it was installed sometime in 1950 and hasn’t been touched since. Then a nice man ran up to me, open the door to the other elevator and smiled while waving me in. Ok, I’ll give it a shot. It worked! I’m not sure how, but it was going up. Bumpy as hell, but I made it. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough.

 

I checked into the hostel, met a guy from Buenos Aires, and then dropped off all my things. I then hung out in the common room with the guy from Argentina, and one of the guys that works there. He was explaining to us how to get to the Pyramids and other places. (By this point I was already into my Jager =)

 

After that, the guy took us out to get some food and beers at a place around the corner. We were walking down streets, where if we were in the US, I wouldn’t be caught dead on. Skeeviest place I have ever seen. Dirty as all hell, and just creepy feeling. Way worse than the Favelas in Rio. The main difference is that it was pretty safe here, and totally not save in the Favelas.