Jeremy Kroeker

After moping around Cairo for a week and a half, waiting on paperwork, researching shipping options, worrying about money and wondering how I’m going to get home, someone finally asked me if I had seen the Pyramids. The Pyramids are HERE? Well, as soon as I learned that, I jumped on my motorcycle and rushed out to see them.

This is the classic image of the mysterious structures. Isolation, desert landscape and all that. But, this photo is unrealistic. See the guy in the background? That’s Gav, my new friend and potential travel partner. He ruined my only possible chance to get a shot of the Pyramids on their own. Because, normally, you see them like this…

Every visit to Giza includes tour buses and annoying Egyptians trying to cheat you out of money. As soon as you stand still, someone is beside you trying to sell you something, or telling you that you must have a permit to take photos and they can sell you one. Some of them just plain ask for money.

By way of example, when we stopped for the isolated photo of the Pyramids, a tourist cop soon approached us riding a camel. Dereck, my other new friend and potential travel partner, took a photo of him. Of course, as soon as he did, the cop wanted “baksheesh” – a bribe. Dereck rightly refused to pay, even though the man only wanted a dollar. When he didn’t get it, his friendly tone turned indignant. “No parking,” he said, and insisted we move our bikes.

When we had collected all the photos we wanted (for there is no other reason to visit Giza) and when we could stand the hassle no more, we retreated for a late lunch to discuss our plan.

I have a plan? Well, sort of…

This is our group, so far. Dereck (on the left) is wrapping up a four-year tour of the world on his KTM, hoping to ride through Libya en route to his home in the UK. Gav (on the right) is trying to end a tour of Egypt that has gone horribly wrong several times and he’s getting desperate to return to his home, also in the UK, and also using Libya as a transit route. And you know me.

Our plan? To pool our money (what little is left), hire a guide for Libya (which makes getting a visa much easier) and convoy through to Tunisia.

The problems? Too many to list here. The highlights include the following:

1. Gav’s Land Rover has a broken gear box. He’s waiting on parts from the UK, and he’s optimistic he can have the machine running within a week, but every time he says that I can hear doubt in his voice. (As mentioned, he’s had a rough go. Basically, he’s been trapped in Egypt for nearly two months now. I’ll expand on that later.) Now, this is a big problem for us all, because Gav has a car. That means the guide rides with him and the cost becomes much, much less than if the guide would have to follow Dereck and me in a separate vehicle. Gav is, in fact, the key to this plan coming off. Neither Dereck nor I can afford to go otherwise.

2. My paperwork is set to expire. The other guys have been in Egypt so long that they’ve each gone through the hassle of having it extended, but I refuse. When Dereck came back from the office after extending his carnet, he was a shadow of his former self… a little piece of him died that day.

3. It would be imprudent to put this problem on the internet until we are out of the country. But, suffice it to say, if this thing is not resolved, at least one of our vehicles may be impounded at the Egyptian border. And, no, I am not exaggerating this time. Egyptians LOVE to impound vehicles for the silliest reasons, and it could really happen.

4. The Canadian Embassy will not stamp the Arabic translation in my passport to validate it as the Libyans require.

5. I’m out of money. Actually, I am coming home on credit, now. It should still be cheaper (if our group stays together and successfully gets through Libya) for me to ship home from Tunisia or Europe, but getting there will be a challenge.

So, there’s a breakdown of a few barriers in our way. There are more, but I won’t burden you with them as they are not very interesting.

But, speaking of breakdowns, my bike broke down today. On the way back from Giza, stuck in heavy traffic, the Oscillator gave up on me. It stopped running. At first I thought I had seized the engine, but it’s not that serious. It’s a fuel problem, similar to the one I had before leaving Canada, but different. (If only Quy from Board Brotherz were here to help me, now! How’s that for blatant product placement!)

The bike stalls unless I keep the revs WAY up, and the carburettor is leaking fuel from the float chamber (not from the overflow hose as it should if it were a stuck float). I haven’t found the exact location of the leak, but I’ll try tomorrow.

I had to push the bike the rest of the way to my parking garage. Dereck is pushing his bike out of sympathy… actually, we were stuck in horrible traffic anyway, and it proved faster to take to the sidewalks than sit on the road.

So, this is like the part in the movie where everything goes wrong. Everything is going wrong… but it’s that tension that makes for the best endings!

Oh yeah, I said I’d expand on Gav’s misadventures, didn’t I? (To see the detailed story and the debate it sparked, visit the following link on Horizons Unlimited.) Well, he and four buddies tried to visit an extremely remote part of the Egyptian desert. They succeeded. Then heavily armed Sudanese bandits found them and stole everything… including their vehicles. Why does Gav still have his Land Rover? Because the bandits couldn’t get it started. He limped it back to Cairo only to have it break down completely. His entire trip has gone this way. I’m hoping for his luck to change… for all our sakes.