Egypt - fiinally!

After years of dreaming and months of planning - I am finally in Cairo for the Tour D'Afrique 2011!

Packing your bags with all your spare parts, cycle clothing, baby wipes, tent etc and the bike is very stressful with  a weight limit of 46kg per rider on the trip and a 20kg weight allowance for the flight. I ended up with 55kg (including my bike) and 10kg handluggage.

The fees on Egypt Air for excess luggage is $25 per kg! I was very lucky and on booking in my luggage a very kind man  let me pay for only 10kg.

Our bicycles arrived  in Cairo and unharmed, which was a great relieve! As I learned later on - one of tshe riders' new bicycle has "vanished" in transit.. He had to order a brand new one - which he will only get in Ethiopia.

We took a white taxi to the pyramids. It was so great the first time I saw them - and never thought I would actually come back and see them again.. The renovation of the sphinx is still not completed and they are building a highway or something right between the 2 big pyramids. The locals are still very persistent. It is still amazing
Then we visited the Khan el-Khalili market in Downtown Cairo and had lunch at a small local place

Finally meeting all the riders at the hotel was just so surreal after seeing all the profiles on the TDA website. Here are 62 riders from all over the world. Today we had a bike workshop to see that all the bikes are ready and then a rider meeting to again learn how to cover poop.. ;) And what a typical day will be like on tour, meet the staff and briefed on other technicallities. Our support trucks will only meet us in Sudan, as they were waiting to see what would happen after the Referendum before taking the chance of riding through the country. On the moment we will cycle through Sudan and the trucks will meet up with us at the border. In the meantime the tour hired support trucks from Egypt on which we will not have individual lockers.

In the afternoon we went on a warmer up - funride to the pyramids, but had to turn around halfway there. The traffic was just to hectic. Taxis, trucks, busses and cars on the left and then people, donkey carts, holes on the right. Then the "you are beautiful" from the very "friendly" egyptian men to us girls in latex cycling pants.


Today I feel very excited and more at ease, as now I feel the rest of the riders are also only human and not all super racer heroes. It looks like a great group of people from all sorts and it is going to be a very exciting tour!!!

not a photo you see on National Geographic

  

koshary - very nice local meal - for only 10 Egypt pounds