Tag Archives: Egypt

Troubles in Egypt

I made a crucial mistake while going to Egypt, I somehow mixed up the two cards I brought with me on this trip. One card was my primary card and the other was shut off and only turned on for emergencies. Getting to the airport, I knew I had to buy the visa so I opened my wallet and realized my mistake. Now I had to find a way to get my checked bag without going through customs. Should be easy, right? Well, I had to friend a security guard the spoke English and explained the situation. He was more than welcome to take my ticket to my checked bag, told me to wait on a bench and walked off. After a minute or two I started to feel uneasy. I put my trust in a random man in the hopes that he’ll return with my bag with everything in it.

  10 minutes went by and sure enough he returned with my bag on the a cart. He asked me if I needed help getting the visa, which confuses me a bit because I’ve dealt with visa in a few other countries and never had a problem. So I declined his offer, got some money out of an ATM and searched around for the visa window, but there was none to be found. I asked a guy at a bank in the airport and he replied that it was there. Now l’m really confused and also realizing that it was getting later and I had no way of getting ahold of the Couchsurfing host that was picking me up from the airport with the fact I couldn’t connect to the WiFi there. With both of these problems in my mind, that friendly security guard came up and started to speaking in Arabic to the man at the bank and told me that they only except American money for the visa. He went back and forth with that man at the bank and finally talked him into letting me pay with their currency instead. I asked the security guard why he was helping me and he replied that he thought I was a good person and he wanted to help. 

  After going through customs with a little bit of an issue, I was out front of the airport and got some taxi drivers offering me rides to my destination, but I told them that I had a ride that I was looking for. One of the friendly taxi drivers offered his phone so I could get ahold of my host. Luckily he was still waiting for me. 

   I stayed with him for a couple days, unfortunately he lived to far away from the city so I ended moving to a hostel for the remainder of my trip in Egypt. I also accidentally brushed my teeth with the water there and got suck for the majority of the time, but I did get enough good days to ride a camel through the Pyramids of Giza before heading to my next destination.