The hostel managed to outdo themselves with breakfast this morning. Today the rolls had been microwaved to such a degree that they could be used as weapons! Giving up we went back to the room, fed ourselves up on bananas and set off for the British embassy to get our letters of invitation for Sudan.
Obtaining the letters took about an hour and cost £30 each! There is a possibility that we could have got away with one letter between us, but we didn't want to risk having to come back. There are no names on the letter and we can see no reason why they couldn't have issued them two days ago when we only had a photocopy of our passports. The letter basically states that the British passport should be good enough for us to travel anywhere and that the UK government does not issue letters of invitation. If it wasn't for the comedy value you would probably cry at the expense, still you can't get a Sudanese visa without one!
From the embassy we walked back to Tahrir square and caught the metro two stops to Ataba. From there we walked back to Khan El Khalili bazaar to have a better look round.
Khan El Khalili Bazaar is filled with tourist trap stalls, all selling almost entirely the same things. It didn't take us very long to tire of wandering through the narrow streets and we soon found ourselves once again having a tea and shisha at Fishawi's coffee shop. We would have tried one of the other coffee shops, but it appeared that we had to haggle for the price of tea in them. At one shop the guy showed us a menu that said 15LE (£1.60), which we laughed at and began walking away, only to hear the price drop to 10LE and then 5LE as we left. The attempts to part tourists with stupid amounts of money for what should be cheap goods and services is crazy. We can understand that they are getting desperate with the lack of tourists, but if they had been sensible before, perhaps their livelihoods would be more sustainable.
Leaving the tourist bazaar behind we had a walk along one of the outer streets and found ourselves entering a more genuine bazaar area. Here Egyptians buy and sell clothes, household goods, fabrics and all manner of useful items.
Once again the press of people was staggering and by the time we made it to the end of the street it was nice to be able to get some free space.
Any chance of remaining there ended when what seemed to be a serious fire broke out in one of the buildings. Smoke billowed through the narrow streets and people ran shouting from all directions. Fire engines soon arrived with people running in front leading the way to the fire. We took it as a sign to retreat back to our hostel. We are sure that Cairo has many sights to offer, but we have both lacked a certain amount of enthusiasm for sightseeing. We have visited the pyramids and the museum on a previous trip so the purpose of our visit this time has always been about getting visas.
Our time in Cairo has certainly been eventful, but we will be glad to get back to Dahab. Hopefully the day bus will prove to be a better way of travelling than its night time counterpart.
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