Day 1, wednesday 29 november 2017.

Program today: Beni Suef and El-Faiyum.

With Egyptair on tuesday flown from Amsterdam to Caïro, to arrive around 2230 hours at the Aracan Pyramids hotel in Giza after an one and a half hours drive through the hectic traffic of Cairo and Giza . After the check-in we rested a bit in the lounge and then went to sleep right away, because the next day we wanted to have breakfast at 6 o'clock as we had a relatively long car ride ahead of us towards Beni Suef.
The intention is to go and see the Wadi Sannur Cave in the morning and then see a few pyramids in El-Faiyum in the afternoon.

After a decent breakfast we checked-out by the hotel and stepped in the car. After a ride of 3½ hour we arrived in the vicinity of Beni Suef. First we tried to find it ourselves but when that didn't workout so well we decided to ask around. To make a long story short, after one hour we finally came in touch with the guy who could lead us to teh Wadi Sannur Cave, but unfortunally we need to have a written permission to go there, he could arrange that for us but not on the same day anymore, so we agreed to go tomorow to the cave.
Meanwhile we haven't seen anything yet and we decided to go to the pyramids of El-Faiyum te gaan bezoeken.

The first pyramid we encountered was the pyramid by Hawara, this pyramid belonging to pharao Amenemhat III from the 12th dynasty, is the last big pyramid that has been built in Egypt. With a height of approximately 58 meter and sides of approximately 100 m, this pyramid is still impressive, despite the fact that its in danger to fall in disrepair. Urgent maintenance is needed here before everything is lost here.
Judge for yourself by looking at the photos.

Click on the picture to see more of the pyramid.

So after this pyramid, which makes you think and makes you wonder how it is that they do so little to protect their heritage, at least in this region. Later I will come to places where this has been arranged reasonably to well fortunately.
Time for the next pyramid, namely the one by Al-Lahun. The guards at Hawara were kind enough to take us there and that was a good thing too, because if you do not know the way you can go wrong, something that is very easy in these parts.

The pyramid by El-Lahun, is the pyramid of Senusret II, a pharao of the 12th dynasty, he was the grandfather of Amenemhat III. This pyramid is also subject to decay, so also urgent maintenance needed in my opinion.
The pyramid was built around a framework of limestone radial arms, similar to the framework used by Senusret I. Instead of using an infill of stones, mud and mortar, Senusret II used an infill of mud bricks before cladding the structure with a layer of limestone veneer. This explains a bit the state of the pyramid due to erosion.

Click on the picture to see more of the pyramid.

Well the first to pyramids I've had, I'm a glad? Well yes because I've seen them with my own eyes, but not because of the state they where in and I hope they will do something about that very quickly.
After these two visits at two very impressive monuments, we drove to El-Faiyum to search for the Zad-El-Mosafer ecolodge, our next place to sleep and eat, something that did not go without a struggle .....

It turned out that it was a pretty long drive and despite telephone contact between the driver and the owner of the hotel we drove a few times wrong and we arrived around 7 o'clock at the hotel. Then the owner told us that the hotel was full and that we had to go to sleep somewhere else, namely in two apartments near the hotel, and he also sais it is 200 Egyptian pounds more, one apartment was big enough for 4 people and the other even for 6 people, in short we had enough of one apartment. The owner was not happy with that and demanded that we pay for both apartments, which of course we did not agree with. To make a long story short, we finally bought it for 1000 pounds with the announcement that we stayed only 1 night instead of the planned 2 nights, because we did not want to be treated like that.
What the owner did not know is that it also suited us better given the travel distances we still had to travel.

See you tomorrow.