Stranded in Cairo?!

Thursday: Day 45
EGYPT: Cairo

We woke up around 9am in our hostel to start another day in Cairo. Did I mention earlier that we stayed at the “American House” Hostel?? Yep. It was pretty entertaining. We slept in the Obama suite!! Hahahahaaaa all the suites on our floor had name plates with president’s names. Of course Clinton was shoved in the back corner by the washrooms :) no joke. After twiddling our thumbs for a little while, we eventually decided to go upstairs and get breakfast.  The breakfast was nothing to write home about (hah!), but I brought a bag of white cheddar popcorn with us and that was DELICIOUS. Haha

We soon discovered we were really unmotivated when it was already 10am and we were still just sitting around.  So we headed back downstairs to get our stuff and head out for the day.  Every time we wanted to go to our suite we had to get the hostel owners to unlock our floor of presidential suites (haha get it? Presidential? :D im so clever.), so we asked him to take us to our room.  We got down there only to discover that the kid had locked the only key to the suites inside last time he went in! After watching them try to break into their own door, we headed back upstairs to wait until they had gotten in.  We think they eventually woke up the other SAS boys that had spent the night in the same hostel because it didn’t look like the had to bust the door down or anything.  Anyways, we eventually got our stuff we needed for the day and headed out in search of the train station to get our tickets back to Alexandria.

Outside of the hostel, we started hailing cabs. The only problem was that we had NO IDEA how to say train station in Arabic! So after the 4th cab looked at us like we were crazy and took off, I started making full out train noises and motions to the 5th cab driver. He full out laughed at me and told us he knew what we were talking about and that it would cost us 20 pounds (4 bucks) so we said ok and hopped in.  A little while down the road he motioned that we were here and told us we had to cross the street to get to the entrance. We took one look at the busy shenanigan of a street and asked him to take us to the other side of the road.  It cost us an extra 10 pounds, but it was totally worth NOT dying crossing the street.

We had to ask people where the actual station was because it was not clearly marked. Eventually we found out that the building with all the construction around it was the train station, and that the only sign for it was in Arabic… and was hidden behind the construction. We felt less silly about not being able to find it after that one. SAS had told us that you could only get tickets for the trains no more than 24 hours in advance and that there were plenty of trains so we could just head there a few hours before we wanted to leave and have no problem… well, we quickly discovered that you could actually get train tickets way in advance, and that the trains were booked for the day and the next day. And that is about when the panic radars started going off in each of our brains.  We started trying to figure out other ways to get back to the ship, and even called the “duty dean” asking if there was any way we could hop on a SAS bus home.  He did not know the SAS trip schedules, so he could not tell us where to meet the buses.  While Kyle was on the phone with the dean, three more SASers showed up with the same problem. I think “help were stranded in cairo” was written across our faces by this point, and after a few minutes of “what are we going to do, what are we going to do” we decided to at least get out of the train station.

We walked down the street and ran into a bus that was headed to Alexandria.  We tried to talk to the driver and found out that it was 25 pounds each, but then he could not tell us exactly where in Alexandria the bus stopped! So we quickly decided that was NOT an option.  The other three girls that we ran into took off in a different direction while we caught a taxi to go back and grab our stuff from the hostel.  We figured that way we would at least be able to just go as soon as we figured something out. Outside our hostel, we decided to go grab some lunch at McDonalds down the street while we tried to figure something out and waited to hear if the dean could get in touch with the field office and let them know what was going on.  Looking at our Green Sheets (information sheets SAS gives us before each country), we realized that another group of SASers were doing the camel and jeep safari that we had done the day before! We got the crazy idea to just take a taxi back to the country club from the day before and see if we could hop on the bus.

So after eating our lunch, we went back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and tried to find more information about the country club we were at the day before.  It was surprisingly hard to find detailed directions.  We eventually found the name of the country club as well as the general area it was in.  The man at the hostel translated our English words into Arabic on a piece of paper to give a taxi.  We found a taxi who said he knew where we wanted to go, and hopped in.  Julie had decided to stay an extra day with a friend on another SAS trip, so we dropped her off at the Egyptian Museum on the way leaving just Kyle, Megan, and I to find a SAS bus!

Traffic was HORRIBLE. I mean, traffic is always horrible in Cairo, but this was ridiculous!! It took us over 2 hours to get back to the area we recognized from the previous day, and then we found out that our taxi driver did not really know where we were headed…. So we began asking locals who would either ignore our driver or just point a finger in a direction with little to no additional information.  As we were beginning to think we were really close, we saw them!!! THE SAS BUSES STARTED PULLING OUT RIGHT DOWN THE STREET FROM US!! Half of me was relieved and the other half was like “oh crap!! Were going to miss them!” we started yelling to the taxi driver “those are them! Those are the buses!!” (we had already explained the situation to him, and he was doing the best he could to help us out).  He quickly realized what we were saying and put the pedal to the metal! He ended up literally cutting off the last bus.  Kyle had his door open and jumped out as soon as the car stopped.  He jumped in front of the bus pointing to the sign in the window signaling that we were SASers.  The bus opened its doors and he further explained the situation.  Meanwhile, Megan and I gathered 100 pounds for the taxi driver (the whole thing was supposed to only cost the 3 of us 60 pounds, but he was so amazingly helpful and went really out of his way, so we tipped him very well.).  Kyle waved us to come on to the bus, so we paid and thanked the taxi driver over and over again and stepped onto the safe SAS bus.

Apparently we picked the right bus! It was actually the back up bus. Which means it had followed the other SAS buses all day just in case one of them broke down so that SASers could quickly jump to the other bus and continue on their way.  That being said, they had not needed it, and we found ourselves on an empty bus with only 3 other people that were working for the tour company.  So the three of us got our own seats and got to relax the entire way back to Alexandria.  One of the guys on the bus simply called the passport people at the port and let them know the three of us were on board.  He gave them our QuickTrip number from Kyle’s passport and they okayed taking us back to the ship.  It was awesome! The guy then talked to us for a good half hour about our adventure.  A few minutes after he stopped talking with us, he came back and told us that he had just gotten off the phone with his brother.  Apparently we were not the only SASers stranded in Cairo! His brother was headed to Cairo to pick up a whole group in his van and drive them back to the ship!

The three of us felt very thankful that we had gotten there just in time.  We talked about how crazy it was that we had managed to pull it off, called the dean and told him we were safe and successfully on our way back, took a short nap, and then listened to music the rest of the way back to Alexandria.  Once in port, we again thanked the guys on the bus for letting us hop on.  By 7:30 we were safe back on the ship and eating dinner!

After dinner, Megan, Jenna, Carmen, Kylie and I had some girl time until Kyle broke up the girl party and joined us to watch Aquamarine on the kids channel.  Was the perfect ending to our CRAZIST day yet on the ship. :)