Failed. %@$*! Bedouins!

So this morning I woke up, groggily walked out of my hostel to buy an overpriced SIM card for my phone, and literally walked into a camel.

Fear and some embarrasment combined in me to create outrage. Why in God's name is a camel tied to a post in a back alley in downtown Cairo?!?

And no, it did not spit on me.

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Hitchhiking across Sinai would have been amazing. It didn't happen-- though not for lack of effort. I blame the Bedouins.

Usually with hitchiking the problem is that no one stops. In Dahab, the exact opposite problem happened: everyone stopped. That's because all the Sinai Bendouin nomads have the same battered, off-white pickup truck (with the same leopard-skin interior), and all double as makeshift taxis.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that three out of every four vehichles passing by pulled over without my beckoning (the other quarter were already full). And they'll all take you, but only for a fee.

So after two hours of laboriously explaining that I had no money, I decided that if I wanted to get to Cairo before November, I'd best take the bus.

Which turned out to be good, because the Suez military checkpoint was slow, and included the usual interrogation and dog-sniffing. Syria has made me emotionally immune to this, but it would have taken a long, long time to explain why I was hitchiking with a random trucker across the Canal.

Now I'm in Cairo, which I really like, despite only being here 12 hours. It has a similair vibe as Syria, and to a lesser extent, Jordan. I'll admit that it is much more African than I had anticipated, and it is also the most socially conservative Islamic country I will visit on my trip.

I think I'll stay here a bit longer than I usually stay at cities, though I do have to be at Luxor for my flight to India on the 14th.