Alexandria

I swear I have just seen the Russian Kamaz training team for the Dakar rally fly past us, and not the car or bikes. This 12 tonne truck overloaded with stacked timber wider than the truck tray and overhanging the top of the cab just blew past us at over 100 on the semi-flooded highway from Alexandria to Dakar. I mean Cairo. He was weaving between lancers, mercs and other trucks surrounded by a blinding halo of mud spray and rocks. I guess there was an emergency scaffold that needed to go up somewhere. I have had a laugh a few times at the fact that the ancient Egyptian architects were better planners than their modern day counterparts. For example- Pyramids never flood. Egypt (a desert country) national highways do every time it rains. Apparently building concrete walls flanking a highway all the way down a sand dune and not installing drains is tradition- I guess it makes for additional business for the traffic planners tow truck driving brother too with the smashes and dead vehicles after a downpour.

We are slowly getting to grips with the road system here too- on main roads there is no such thing as a left hand turn across traffic- you go right with the traffic, and do U-turns. It took us 65 minutes- No lie- to get out of the main street of Alexandria in peak hour. Running out of a fuel became an issue. The street had its share of entertainment though- just take the bulk taxis. They are like mini-van buses that only go when full and pick people up as they drop them off. "Drop them off" is really what it is- the driver doesn't stop. You slide open the door and bail out when he slows- the same as public buses. The vans are harder to get into though with the sliding door though and only a handle on one side of the door. We saw a lady with her kid barely make it on a minivan, then her baby had to get passed through the window by a friend running alongside the van because they don't stop. On top of that a lady was almost in a van, the driver floored it and she fell out, almost getting dragged along outside as she gripped the only handle, and when someone must have yelled at the driver, he slammed on the brakes then like watching a bad horror movie the sliding door of the van slammed her in the side and head.

Outside of the city of 17 million people, we checked out the Catacombs, Pompey's Pillar and the Egyptian museum. The Pillar was another head scratcher... When Egypt was ruled by Pompey under Caesar, there was an tax for a huge amount of grain and food to be sent to Rome. One year there was drought and the Egyptians kept their harvests to keep themselves alive, but the Romans cracked it and sent an army to clear their granaries leaving the Egyptians to starve to death. Further down the track, the romans gave the smallest portion back and in thanks the locals dragged this 550 tonne granite pillar across the country and stuck it on its ear- Pompeii's columns. Wtf.

Went for lunch today at a street side cafe overlooking 12 lanes of psycho traffic and then the Mediterranean. While there a bloke wouldn't stop bugging me to clean my shoes and forgetting the Em'Shee from previous encounters, I dropped my shoes and kept eating. He returns them stained some shade of pink dye, the once white suede looking like the gay rainbow with running colours and they are now covered in crap that has turned my hands pink. I'm going to slap the next bloke that offers to clean my shoes.

Well the "3 hour no traffic, but so far its taken 2 hours to do 5% of the journey" is underway- I hope we get onto our night sleeper train before it leaves Cairo in a few hours. Actually I hope we live through this soaking highway of psycho truck rally drivers and honking chicken transporters- That would be nice. To pass the time and stay out of the stare-down comps the other drivers keep challenging me to, I have tried my hand at decryption and successfully nutted out the translation of English numbers to Arabic. Without realising it I've become the Rosetta stone for shopping in the markets and ill be selling my skills for pints of the local "Stella" later. Stella we have seen for "7/0." (thats $6.50).