House Hunting & Adventures in Downtown – Friday 20 Oct 2006

Yasser (our boss at the E-Learning Competency Centre) picked us up today and took us to look at a couple of apartments. There was a really nice one in City View, but that’s miles from everywhere. It’d mean we’d have to get a driver that could take us into town to go out for dinner, to do anything.

Then we went into Zamalek, a really trendy inner city suburb (actually on an island in the Nile) and checked out another apartment. It was nice, but very small and on a very busy intersection. I think we’re going to keep looking at apartments for a bit longer, see if we can find something in Zamalek or Mohandiseen (both really close to Downtown).

Once we’d looked at a couple of places, Yasser dropped us in Downtown and we wandered round looking for a camera shop (Chris needs a lens for his camera). Downtown was a little confronting… there were people sitting on the footpath wanting to shine shoes… one women had 3 kids sitting around her and a baby on her lap. There is quite a bit of poverty and the streets were dirty.

However, crossing the street was the biggest challenge. The cars just keep coming… even when the green walk sign is flashing the cars just keep driving don the road! I’ve been reading the lonely planet (religiously!) and it suggests using a local as a human shield to cross the street. So… that’s what we did, we just crossed when someone else was crossing. After a few times we started to get the hang of it…

I tell you what – never mind the dysentery and muggings (which by the way I’ve had no problem with) it’ll be the traffic that kills me. There are no road rules - so the cars just drive all over the place. Driving down the road, crossing the road… being anywhere near the roads has risk! But the funny thing is that the cars just go around the people, just swerve around the other cars… Even when they pull out in front of each other, everyone just beeps and keeps on driving!

Once we survived wandering round downtown we hailed a cab and went back to the hotel. I think we’ve decided that we like Zamalek and Mohandiseen as areas, but don’t really want the apartment on the busy intersection that they showed. We’ll keep looking, I’m sure we’ll find a place at some point…