Pyramid scheme.

Cairo, Egypt.

Today was my last full day in Egypt, so I set off to the pyramids.

You all know that they are great, so I’m not going to bother to tell you how great they are, except to say that they are great.

What is less known about the pyramids of Giza is that they sit smack bang in the middle of a Cairo suburb.

There is a metro station there. The romance of visiting the pyramids is kind of lost when you jump on a 7am train, packed with office workers, to get there.

When you do get there the fist thing you notice, except for how huge the things are, is how much damage the revolution in Egypt has done to the local tourism industry.

As I was leaving the site I estimated that 20% of the people there were touts. And they were fierce, you couldn’t turn around with out having a little sphinx or plaster pyramid shoved in you face.

The poor bastards were desperate.

My tour guide wasn’t too worried though; this probably has something to do with the amount of hash he smokes. At one stop of our tour, he rolled a joint the size of my index finger. It couldn’t have been much later than 10 in the morning.

On my way home that afternoon a young guy approached me in the street and asked me if “Tahrir Square was good or bad?” He was talking about the revolution. I told him that I thought it was good, but it had scared off all the tourists.

He wanted to know when the tourists would come back. I told him I had no Idea.

Anyway the pyramids are fantastic, everyone should come and see them.

Yep, they look just like they do on TV. 

Totally amazing.

Tourists pose, holding the sphinx's head.

Tourists; ready for anything.