Let me just say this. I really like Cairo. I think there’s an energy about the city that’s a lot of fun. I love walking along the street while cars whiz by. I love random people screaming out, “Welcome to Cairo!” I love the closeness of everything. And, in the future, I might blog at length about all that.
But after what I’m about to write, you might think I detest the city. You’ve been warned …
In our introductory meeting, our tour guide told us that he grew up close to our hotel — about 45 minutes walking distance … or 1.5 hours driving. No joke.Would YOU want to drive through that?
Traffic in Cairo is a problem. A big problem. A few years ago, our guide told us that the government made it much easier to make payments on cars. All of a sudden, people who previously couldn’t afford cars … well, they took to the streets en masse. Considering that Cairo’s population is 18 million strong, that’s a lot of cars.
And traffic, as you can imagine, is on the wrong side of chaotic. A few notes.
• For the most part, there are no lane dividers. And whatever dividers there are serve as mere suggestions. Cars routinely straddle two lanes, only taking up one lane when someone honks.
And honk they do. You know how, in the states, we honk as a last resort? You’ll almost never go two seconds in Cairo without hearing a honking horn. It’s constant.
• Get out of the way of an ambulance? It’s a nice thought, but don’t bet on it.
• Signals and even headlights? Those are pretty much optional. You haven’t lived until you’re riding shotgun with no headlights through downtown Cairo with a cabbie on his cell phone. After dark.
• Tailgating is the rule, not the exception. I can’t count how many times I said a silent prayer just as the cabbie braked in time to avoid a collision that would send me through the windshield and into the car in front of us. (Most seat belts didn’t work, so this scenario never seemed implausible.)
• If there’s an opening small enough to putt a golf ball through, you better believe a cabbie will gun for it. And he’ll probably succeed.
• Every single car has dents, scratches, dings, scuffs, broken bumpers … you name it. Even the nicer BMWs and Mercades.
• Traffic is so packed throughout much of Cairo, speed limits seem like “ideal world” suggestions. Traffic is rarely light enough to get through the streets without stopping and starting several times.• The sidewalks in Cairo are very crowded. Because their shops are small and without air conditioning, many shopkeepers pull up a chair on the sidewalk and chill in the shade. So the sidewalks can be quite cumbersome.So mostly, as demonstrated in the above photo, you walk in the street. You stay close to the parked cars (and sometimes, there are two lanes of parked cars), and if you veer too far into the street, a car will honk its horn at you as it passes.
• Traffic signals? What are traffic signals? Cars don’t pay attention to them; neither do pedestrians. I asked our guide how to make sense of lights and signals. He said, “Do me a favor. If you can cross, cross.”
Many times, this means walking out while cars are still whizzing by. Sometimes you walk out far enough to let a car go behind you, and you stop to let another car go in front of you.Yes, standing in the middle of the street as cars fly by at speeds of up to 40 mph is a sensible solution. Sometimes, on busy streets, it’s the only solution to get from one side to the other.
• One final story about Cairo traffic. Coming back from the mall on one of our final nights, a cabbie cut off a bus to pass another bus in our lane. I looked back at the crew in the back seat, and figuring the cabbie knew no English (most of them didn’t), I said, “I hate you guys so much” for making me sit up front. I mean, I didn’t want a front row seat for the carnage and chaos of Cairo traffic.
But the cabbie laughed and said, “You need this?,” pointing to his seat belt. “It actually works?” I asked. “It never works!” He laughed as I put it on. He waved his hand and arm back and forth above the steering wheel, saying, “Cairo traffic is like a cobra.” The point was, you have to slither back and forth, in and out of traffic, just to get through. What a pleasant thought!
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