CAIRO OR BUST

Since we first talked about Chelsea and then Caroline coming to visit me in Israel, we also talked about taking a trip to Cairo and seeing the pyramids. Although Chelsea and Caroline had managed to get visas in New York (Americans need visas to Egypt when traveling over land) I had as of yet not acquired one, after a disastrously failing attempt to do so a few weeks previously at the embassy in Tel Aviv (the post is only open from 9am-11, Sunday through Thursday, and it takes 24-48 hours to process, meaning I need to surrender my passport to them). I had read that it could be gotten at the consulate in Eilat easily, but was still concerned that I wouldn’t be able to, and then no one would be able to go (I had tried to convince them that, should I not be able to get the visa, they ought to go without me).
We caught the last bus from TA to Eilat, which left at midnight and would arrive very early the next morning. Egged buses are not necessarily comfortable places to sleep. They also aren’t exactly warm places.
We arrived to Eilat around 4:45 am, and schlepped into the bus station, where we haphazardly went back to sleep until around 7:30, at which time we would head out to the consulate. When we eventually get there—a there that is not the same there that is listed in the maps in tourist books—I handed in my form, my photos, and my 65 shekels and less than an hour later, poof, a visa. The Tel Aviv Embassy is so much less helpful. While waiting, the three of us started to chat with the four others—two girls and two guys—who were also waiting on their visas. We found out that these four, who studied together at a university in Ramallah in the West Bank, were also going to Cairo. Because they were studying at a West Bank university, they were unable to acquire student visas from Israel and therefore needed to leave the country every few months, and then hope to be able to get back in.
Because we were all going to the same place, and these four all spoke some level of Arabic, we decided to stick with them and travel to Taba (the border point) together. After getting through, the now seven of us hired a minibus to take us to Cairo—it cost an extra $4 a person than the standard bus would have, but made the trip 2 hours shorter, and infinitely more comfortable. It was also convenient, because even though the Egyptians would mainly only be speaking in Arabic, two of our new friends—a Moroccan-French girl and a guy from Germany—spoke German, and so I was able to covertly find out what was going on in Arabic from them by speaking in German. Multilingualism is helpful.
Seven hours later, we arrived to Cairo, hailed a taxi to take us to our hostel with the help of one of our new Arabic-speaking friends, and parted ways with the other four (after exchanging contact information).