{"id":8260,"date":"2019-12-02T06:38:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T11:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8260"},"modified":"2020-01-21T09:07:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T14:07:13","slug":"egypt-adventure-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8260","title":{"rendered":"Egypt Adventure: Security"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Close
Close quarters in the temple at Sakkara<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first question almost everyone asked when they learned I\nwas traveling to Egypt had to do with safety. So let me tell you what has been\ndone to protect tourists\u2014vitally important to the country, as tourism is a\nmultibillion-dollar source of revenue and a huge employer. Tourism is on the\nrise again in Egypt, and our guide estimated it\u2019s reached about 80 percent of\npre-2011 levels. It\u2019s an odd balancing act, really, with concerns about safety\non one hand and wanting to see these popular monuments sans crowds on the other.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends who visited Egypt shortly after the Arab spring had\nthe Valley of the Kings almost to themselves. By contrast, we visited it on the\nsame 95-degree day as the vice-premiere of China and his many perspiring,\nblack-suited minions, big video cameras, and hangers-on. That was a special\ncase, but you could see how a crowd affects the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a big police presence in Egypt, and wherever you\ndrive, as you enter a new jurisdiction, there are knots of police, road\nbarriers that must be negotiated\u2014drivers cannot just barrel through\u2014and\nelevated sentry posts, most of which have six or eight inches of a rifle barrel\nsticking out of them. If the young man inside sees you driving by in your bus,\nhe smiles and waves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I understand it, whenever 10 or more tourists travel anywhere, they must be accompanied by the Tourist Police, and several times our three buses had to await the arrival of our police escort. Usually that escort consists of a police car in front or behind. In one rural area, the accompanying officer was so energized by this assignment that he gave us lights and sirens\u2014charming and embarrassing in equal measure. Traveling to some sites, our security detail also involved a plainclothes policeman (always a man) traveling with us inside each bus. Yes, they were armed. Once when I lagged behind the group to take a picture, I noticed one of our accompanying officers discreetly hanging back to make sure I got back with the group. The tour company also had staff keeping track of us, especially in crowds, watching out for turned ankles, falls, over-insistent hawkers, and the like. Probably the right word here is teamwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the boat there were police, but they were invisible to\nus, and a guy whom we\u2019d occasionally see coming in from deck patrol carrying an\nAK-47. Our itinerary did not include the Red Sea or the Sinai Peninsula, where\nsecurity is likely much tighter, as that\u2019s where most of the trouble has\noccurred. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this is separate from the well-armed security personnel\nworking at the monuments themselves and not specifically for our tour. When we\nwere at the pyramids, I even saw a policeman on a camel! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Semiramis Hotel in Cairo has two public entrances, each guarded by a clutch of uniformed police and a sniffer dog that walks around every car, even checking the trunk. It\u2019s next door to the British Embassy and adjacent to the US Embassy, and security around those blocks is extreme\u2014piles of big, ugly concrete block the streets, police everywhere. The US embassy is capped by something that looks like a rural water tower\u2014stuffed with listening gear, I suppose\u2014and has asked the hotel to confiscate guests\u2019 binoculars. Our guide advised us of this in advance and suggested simply, don\u2019t bring them. They are returned on check-out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any well organized, reputable tour company and hotel probably provides these levels of security. Was it oppressive? Not at all. I viewed it as a preventive measure. I was never made uneasy by anything or anyone I encountered, even on a post-tour day-trip to Alexandria with only a guide and a driver. And, at the major sites we always had generous \u201cfree time\u201d to wander where we wanted to, take pictures, soak in the atmosphere. Probably when we were on group outings our escorts kept an eye on us, but it wasn\u2019t obvious. When we struck out on our own from the hotel or boat, we were unaccompanied (and the hawkers knew it!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egypt Adventure: The Nile<\/a>
Egypt Adventure: Muslim Dress<\/a>
Egypt Adventure: Cairo’s Ancient Sights\/Sites<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Vicki Weisfeld. I did not take pix of any of the security or police!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first question almost everyone asked when they learned I was traveling to Egypt had to do with safety. So let me tell you what has been done to protect tourists\u2014vitally important to the country, as tourism is a multibillion-dollar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Egypt Adventure: Security - the question everyone wanted to know: is it safe?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[632,104,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-police","category-the-morgue","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/2019-11-11-10.50.16-scaled-e1575286368215.jpg?fit=650%2C867&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-29e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8308,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8260\/revisions\/8308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}