The hell with the tanks lining Cairo’s streets. Forget trying to sleep on the sticky, dirty floor of Cairo Airport. Men with pistols standing in the middle of the highway be damned.
Dan Martel flew 15 hours from his Tronson Road home in Vernon to see the Great Pyramids of Egypt and he was going to make sure he saw the Pyramids.
Martel arrived in Cairo on Jan. 28, four days after a revolution started calling for the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak. On his last day in Cairo, he was determined to see the Pyramids.
“It was quite the experience,” said Martel, who arrived safely home in the North Okanagan Tuesday night. “Tanks were lined up for a mile down the road, just tanks. I said to somebody ‘I’m going to see the Pyramids.’ They said, ‘don’t go, you’re nuts. There’s vigilantes out there.’ I hired this guy, paid him $18 and he took me there.
“It was a 40-minute ride and that was an experience in itself. Government buildings were on fire. Guys were standing on the road with guns and pistols. There were burned-out cars, overturned buses, tanks, army guys.”
Martel’s driver made it to the Pyramids.
“I was the only tourist there,” said Martel. “This was at 10 in the morning and I’m sure I’m the only guy in the world who ever paid to see the Pyramids and be the only tourist. Nobody else was there.”
A retired developer, Martel, 56, is a regular visitor to the Caribbean. But he always had it in the back of his mind to visit Egypt and see the Pyramids, the Sphinx, King Tut’s tomb. On a visit to his travel agent, Martel noticed a pamphlet for an Egyptian tour, and told his agent to book it.
Martel boarded a flight for Cairo, aware that political unrest had broken out in the Egyptian capital. He phoned the tour company to see if the tour was still a go and was told it was. Even when he got to Frankfurt, Germany, Martel placed a call to the tour company and was assured everything was fine. Four hours later, when he landed in Cairo, Martel was told the tour was off.
“I got into Cairo at 11 o’clock at night and everything was shut down,” he said. “All the roads and highways, cell phones and land lines were shut off all over the country. I spent the night on the airport hotel floor. It’s a huge airport and it was packed with people.”
The next day, Martel did what he said was the worst thing he could have done.
He ventured to his hotel, which happened to be right in the middle of “all the action.”
“It was overlooking Tahrir Square,” said Martel. “There was fighting, gunshots started going off. I was watching all of it when the tanks started to come in. I was on my deck and the next thing a bullet came up and ended up about four feet from me, hitting the wall near where I was standing. I moved indoors then.
“All night long, fighter jets were flying right over the hotel, sounded like they were about a foot above the roof.”
The next day, Martel went for a walk near the hotel when he was accosted by two police officers who demanded money of him. When army personnel rolled in with a tank that had a machine gun on top, the police backed off.
Martel made his way back to Cairo Airport, where he said thousands of people had gathered. Trying to sleep there was impossible.
“The floor was so sticky and dirty, you’d roll over and your clothes would stick,” said Martel, who then stood in line for three hours to try and get a flight out of the country. A man approached him, asked him if he was Canadian, and when Martel said he was, the man said to come downstairs as a number of Canadians were already down there making plans to go home.
Asked to pass around a hat to collect $2,000 to guarantee a flight out, Martel chipped in $50. Eight hours later, he was on his way to Frankfurt and then home.
The tour company has promised to reimburse Martel for his tour – he never got to see any of the things promised, only the money he paid his own guide to see the Pyramids, and he did cross a bridge over the Nile River – and gave him a $200 credit towards his next tour.
Since he’s been home, Martel – besides catching up on sleep – has been following the turmoil in Egypt and admits he’d like to go back.
“But maybe in about five or seven years,” he said. “I think Africa now is like Europe was 10-to-15 years ago when they revolted and communism was taken down.”
Still, four days in Cairo has left a lasting impression on Martel.
“The Pyramids were super,” he smiled.
