Danger is relative to the size of the person

I’m fortunate enough to be a stay at home dad so during the week I get to watch Baby Mojo crawl over obstacles, try to eat the cats’ tail and avoid the sharp angles in the house.    As an almost ten month old toddler he’s navigating the house and keeping an eye out for the closets where we’ll eventually hide his Christmas presents. 

The other day he pulled himself up on the stairs.  It’s an “L” shaped staircase, three stairs up, then a platform, and the rest of the stairs going up.  It was the first time that he’d been able to reach out past the first stair; you could see the look of happiness, curiosity and determination in his wee face.  He knew there was something else up there, but it was probably fraught with danger, given his off sense of balance. 

The perspective of his waist to the object that he was trying to climb took me back to when I was travelling. 

I was in Egypt hanging  for a couple weeks to see the pyramids, meet the locals and avoid coming back to the states to find a job.  One day on my way out of the hostel to the bus station I was approached by this older man who introduced himself as Mr. Fox.  In hindsight, the name “Mr. Fox” seems far too crafty and I’ve since renamed given him the title of Mr. Con.

I told Mr. Fox that I was on my way to see the pyramids and that I didn’t need a guide.  He said no problem; he’s on his way to the pyramids too to see some friends.  The minibus went through the chaotic streets of Cairo, stopping occasionally to pick up folks. 

As the minibus started to get out of the city center the buildings got lower and tighter together.  Suddenly the vehicle turned right down the main thoroughfare and the biggest pyramid was about two miles away.  It was huge.  It stuck out like that big alien ship in Independence Day big, something freakishly large that made you question the scale of things around you. 

As the bus stopped Mr. Fox motioned for me to follow him, so like a naïve tourist I followed the strange man who I just met.  We walked through a narrower passage that was lined with horses, people, vendors and smoky bars that resembled the cantina scene from Star Wars. 

As the passageway opened up a half dozen of Mr. Fox’s’ friends approached us, all with horses.  Mr. Fox motioned for me to get on a horse and follow him.  So I hopped on the horse without a saddle as we rode through the City of the Dead, following the strange man who I had met an hour earlier.   

In reality it was a five minute ride, but it seemed like forever as I literally had to hang onto the horses’ neck.    The pain of falling off the horse, complicated with the medical care I’d receive there, were my motivation for almost strangling the horse. 

Mercifully, we stopped near Menkaure, the smallest of the three pyramids.  Mr. Fox motioned for me to get off the horse and come speak to the police man.  So like the good marionette puppet, I let go of my horses’ neck and walked over the Egyptian police man and the strange man who I met earlier. 

“You want climb”, Mr. Fox said.  Want is relative, but I figured, when would I have the chance to do this again?  “He’ll let you for money”.  So I gave Mr. Fox $10 which he gave to the police man.  Mr. Fox then said “baksheesh for me?”  Any tourist who spends more than one hour in Egypt will learn that “baksheesh” means tip. 

So I gave $10 to the strange man who had made me his mark ever since he saw me.  Oh well, I’m in front of a 5,000 year old monument that I’ve been given carte blanche to climb from a man and a police officer who is open to bribes, so get cracking.

The pyramid blocks are huge; I was like Baby Mojo trying to climb our stairs.  Each block came up to just above my waist, so I had to pull myself up on each block.  Repeat that process about 150 times, with the width of each step getting narrower every time you move up.  I get vertigo just writing this and thinking about how dangerous it was.

When I got to the top I took a couple photos.  It was an amazing site.  I looked down at Mr. Fox and his corrupt police officer and imagined that they were waving me down quickly, lest I end up in some dank Egyptian prison.  While that probably wasn’t the case, I wasn’t too comfortable not having anything around me but open space and limestone blocks, so I carefully climbed down.

When I got to the bottom my endorphins were racing like Ali Baba on a magic carpet.  I decline additional horse rides from Mr. Fox, but did give him five more dollars in baksheesh.  He looked at me rudely said something I couldn’t understand as I walked off to see the other two pyramids in Giza. 

Danger is all relative.  For a ten month old it’s stairs and for adults it’s a con man named Mr. Fox who takes you on private tours of the Giza Pyramids.