Cairo Zoo

We asked our driver to pick us up at 8:30am on Friday so we could take the boys out somewhere before it got too hot. Friday is a great day to do things that would otherwise be crowded because many people stay home or go to mosque. On the car ride over we saw the pyramids, several donkey carts hauling fruits and veggies and very bad air pollution.

As soon as we entered the zoo, we were suckered in by photo guide man. He took us on 'behind the scenes' tours to see and hold a 3 month old lion cub, feed hippos, hold a baby nile crocodile and two snakes. We decided to skip holding a 3 year old chimpanzee (concerned about face ripping). All of this in exchange for baksheesh (tips) for him and the various zoo keepers. He also took our photos, and we bought several from him. The five lovely keepsake photos are at the end of the post. They look bad quality because (1) the photos are bad quality and (2) I took a photo of the photos with my iPhone. This tour was fun and scary at the same time. It was strange because we (the caucasian non-Egyptians) were the only ones offered this kind of stuff.

I was relieved to be done with the tour after the reptile house, but then we were way at the other end of the zoo with hot and hungry kids. So we sat and had snacks and water. By late morning it was in the 90's and very hot. Many women wore long black robes which seemed unbearable. There are four main styles of dress for women: 1) no veil and normal clothes (very few of these), 2) veil and normal clothes (long sleeves and pants/skirts, sometimes very tight fitting, usually young women), 3) veil and robes (mostly middle aged women), and 4) complete head veil with only eyes showing and robes (usually also wearing pants, socks and sometimes gloves).

Of course at some point we had to use the public toilets. At almost every toilet you have to pay someone some baksheesh to use it. These were porceline holes in the ground for squatting over. Not great, but not that bad. Good thing we had lots of hand sanitizer during this trip.

Later on one of the zoo keepers let H&N feed camels pieces of bread.

An important thing to note is that cats were in every exhibit except the lions and baboons. These are some wiley Egyptian cats. You can even see one in the hippo video at the end! You can also hear me talking to some young Egyptian fellows who wanted to practice their English.