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Giza Plateau:Welcome to the Jungle - Drooling Over My Favorite Pyramids While Dodging Camel Hagglers

Giza Travel Blog › entry 2 of 30 › view all entries

I spent 5 months living, breathing, eating and dreaming ancient Egypt. I visited everything from the Great Pyramids to the remote and desolate tombs of Tell-el Amarna to the awe-inspiring statues of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. Here are my stories and adventures - the good the bad and the archaeological.

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Giza Plateau:Welcome to the Jungle - Drooling Over My Favorite Pyramids While Dodging Camel Hagglers

August 29, 2003

Giza at sunset.

There aren't words adequate enough to describe the Giza pyramids. Spectacular, breath-taking, majestic, architectural feat, spiritual, powerful - all fall short. The Giza plateau is a place that everyone should visit in their lifetime. To stand before these massive structures, one sees how the Pharaohs who built them achieved immortality. Climbing around inside the Great Pyramid I felt as though I was transported back hundreds of years. Back to the days of the early explorers. The torches no longer burn inside, but the dim lighting and few people who venture inside coupled with the piercing silence and stillness brings out the unearthly power of the Great Pyramid.

On a sad note, there are a bunch of nasty words to describe the horrible little men on camels who spend the entire time harassing you to ride their stupid camels! The Giza plateau is swarming with hagglers who want you to pay them exhorbant amounts of money to ride their rickity, old camels.

The Great Pyramid

They follow you around, dragging their camels behind, shouting, "Good camel. Nice camel. You ride camel." No matter how emphatically you explain that you want nothing to do with their flea-ridden beasts, they hassel you at least 15 times before finally vacating your space in search of their next prey. Then you hear the cries of "Good camel. Nice camel. . . ." And so, the whole cycle begins again. Or as Kurt Vonegut wrote "And so it goes . . . " Aaaah, the pleasures of Dashshur where you only have to worry about the antiquities guards who serenade you with the 4 lines of 'Oh Canada' that they know.

My Giza Plateau Check List of Tombs I Visited and Objects I saw:

- Great Pyramid: Got up close and personal inside is labyrinth of shafts and passageways.

The Sphinx with Khafre's Pyramid in the background.

- Khafre's Pyramid: Currently closed, so I have to raincheck this one.
- Menkaure's Pyramid: Climbed around inside. A much more simple system of passageways than the Great Pyramid.
- Khafre's Valley Temple
- Sphinx
- Mastaba Tombs Visited: Seshemnufere IV, Senegemid Inti, Akhetmehut, Khenementi
- Hetephere's Pyramid: I got to climb around inside Khufu's mum's pyramid. Her burial was found intact minus the mummy.
- Hetephere's burial shaft
- Boat Museum and boat pits
- Giza Sound and Light Show
- Sunset horseback ride around the pyramids
- Riding Arabians in the desert around Giza