Welcome to the Wandering Drays!

Not all who wander are lost...

Welcome to my blog dedicated to my family and our crazy foreign service life. Never content with staying in one place, we are excited to share our journey. We've survived two unaccompanied tour (Baghdad 2010-2011 and Baghdad again in 2015-2016), multiple TDYs, and enjoyed a two-year family assignment in Cairo, Egypt. The fab hubby is currently learning Turkish for our next assignment...Istanbul, Turkey! We leave for Turkey sometime in summer 2017. I write about what I know. Which is mainly kids, tween drama, gross pets, dealing with lots of government info, our moving adventures, being a nurse, yoga, running, living on too-little sleep, and an addiction to coffee lattes. I hope you'll enjoy this glimpse into our lives.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Photo Journey of Cairo's Crazy Roads

I loooove driving in Cairo.  Super insane, no rules, no lanes.  Doesn't matter if you drive down a one-way street headed in the wrong direction.  Honk all the time for no purpose other than to say "I'm here!"  Don't stop at intersections (if you do, you'll get rear-ended!); just honk and keep rolling through.  No stop lights.  That's right - None.  And never turn on your lights at night.

It's all so crazy.

Especially when I look at it through my ER-RN-trained-eyes.  The streets are full of traumas-waiting-to-happen.  Death traps!  But in Cairo, well, it's just normal.

So I've spent the last week with iPhone in hand, trying to capture as many of these moments as I can.  And while sometimes I was too slow to get the "Oh-my-gawd-did-you-see-that? Only in Cairo!"moments, I did manage to click a few of the goodies.

Enjoy...

Where else would you sit in a moving truck?

Can't fit your kid inside the truck?  No worries.  He can sit
on top of your haul.

Just because I couldn't believe it, I took another photo.

This truck has a light load.  Oh, yeah.  Not tied on.
And we're on the freeway.

They will stack at least 4 - 6 more of these filled bags on top.
And then the guy will ride on top of those bags.

Free air conditioning.

This is a microbus.   It's very scary.
1. It will ALWAYS take the right-of-way.
2.  It doesn't care if it hits your car.
3.  Seating for 11?  Nope.  Seating for 50?  Yes.


This is a black taxi.  Also very scary.
1.  No meter, so you don't know how much
the driver will charge you.
2.  It doesn't care if it hits your car.
3.  It will always take the right-of-way on the road.

Look very carefully up ahead!
See the dude sitting on top of the microbus?  

The best way to enjoy the sunset over the Nile?


Just when I thought it couldn't get any crazier,
this dude on the Moped U-Haul pulls up beside the
packed microbus with roof rider.

Back of truck packed with people.
Hauling a cement mixer.

We can all agree this is NOT the safest way to travel.

Back packs not secured.
But I was so happy to see it was the back packs,
and not the children on top of the roof.
And to be clear - these were not my children or their backpacks.

6 comments:

  1. Wowsers. Makes Brazil look positively American (for lack of a better word?).

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    1. Well, for what you've pointed out elsewhere - I could wear tank tops in Brazil. Very American. ;-) Oh, how I miss tank tops.

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  2. INSANE! Matt and I just laughed out loud at these!
    I love seeing snippets of your daily life out there - so fun!

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    1. Always happy to make people laugh! I'd love to see this stuff in the U.S. - can you imagine the outrage on the roads!?!?

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  3. And I can say, from personal experience, that the day you have your camera out, things tend to be more sane than any other day of the week! No sheep tied onto taxi roofs, no camels in pickup beds, no butchered carcasses heading to market with people laying on top of them, or people hanging off the sides of buses... we always missed catching the really crazy stuff! I loved driving in Cairo too. :) It did have its bad times, I admit, but usually it was just go with the flow, whatev's! I find DC traffic much more stressful.

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    1. I remember seeing two guys on a motorcycle with a live sheep riding side-saddle one day. Did I have my camera? No. Or the time I saw the pick-up with the butchered meat and the dude sitting on top of it smoking. I couldn't get my camera out fast enough! ARG! You are right - the day you have the camera ready, is the day that there's no crazy!

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