We are in Africa!

We're here! We arrived without incident, after two flights, many meals and several inflight movies, we landed in Cairo. We were met at the airport by the pre-arranged pickup man holding a sign with "Tour d'Afrique" on it...that was us!" The rest of the process went smoothly, ALL the luggage arrived almost instantaneously, including our bikes - hurray! Yesterday we had a leisurely start, a huge breakfast, then we tackled the task of reassembling the bikes. It took some time but we got it done in the end. Then it was time for a visit to the pyramids. It was an exciting drive there which makes me glad we will be leaving very early Friday morning and following more or less the same route, I hope with much less traffic than midday. The pyramids were surreal through the haze, and it was very apparent from the vast expanses of empty parking lots and vacant vendor tables that tourism has fallen on hard times here. Our guide told us quite plainly to ignore the aggressive souvenir sellers or to tell them "no thanks" in Arabic (she taught us how but of course I have forgotten now). However, we almost lost Wayne to an especially persistent seller of pyramid models and postcards. The man would put a pyramid in Wayne's hand, Wayne would try to put it back in the guy's backpack and the guy would put another pyramid into Wayne's other hand. This seemed to go on for some time; eventually the guy gave up but he sure put up a spirited effort. The pyramids and the Sphinx were worth all that though, amazing us with their size and grandeur! Who knows what other treasures might be buried under all that sand? We have met almost all the staff and participants and it will be interesting in the days to come seeing how we all do once on the road. It is a varied group of nationalities, although Canadians outnumber all the others; and everyone is friendly and seems to be the kind of people I will like getting to know. I'm a bit surprised at the weather here, very cool and rainy off and on, with a chilly wind. I did not foresee wearing my wool jacket AND my little down jacket at the same time, but I am very glad to have them both and were not even camping yet! I don't think it will be long before we are wishing for some of this coolness though!