| Security increased for Egypt pyramids |
| Katarina Kratovac - The Associated Press | |
|
ed. Looks like the good old days of getting up at 5am and heading out to the plateau to ride your horse around the Pyramids at sunrise are gone for good.. CAIRO, Egypt -- Tourists have long been awed by Egypt's famed Giza Pyramids and irritated by having to fend off peddlers relentlessly offering camel rides and trinkets. But the hustlers were gone Monday as Egypt started an elaborate project to modernize the area and make it friendlier to tourists. Security is also improving, with a 12-mile chain-link fence featuring cameras, alarms and motion detectors. "It was a zoo," said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, recalling the past free-for-all. "Now we are protecting both the tourists and the ancient monuments." The three Giza Pyramids have been unusually open for a 5,000-year-old Wonder of the World. The desert plateau on which they stand was once isolated. But as the capital has expanded, slums have been built right to the edge of the site, separated in places by only a low stone wall. The rest of the area has been wide open to the desert. Tourists undergo a constant barrage from peddlers selling souvenir statues, T-shirts and other trinkets. Visitors are sometimes followed by men on camels selling rides or photos -- and rarely taking no for an answer. Young men even try to force their way into taxi cabs carrying foreigners toward the pyramids, looking to steer them to nearby horse stables for a ride around the site. But tourists have taken their own liberties. Climbing the Pyramid of Khufu, the biggest of the three monuments, was a favorite challenge for visitors beginning in the 19th century and continuing into the 1970s, despite the occasional fatal fall of an inebriated tourist. Since then, authorities have cracked down on climbing the giant 2.5-ton blocks, though visitors can still ramble freely around the pyramid grounds, where many tombs and other archaeological sites remain only partially excavated and vulnerable to damage. Security concerns were highlighted in 1997, when Islamic militant gunmen attacked tourists at a desert temple in the southern city of Luxor, killing more than 60. Most attacks ended in the late 1990s, but bombings in Sinai beach resorts in the past four years have kept officials wary. The new technology aims to curb shenanigans by both tourists and peddlers. The long chain-link fence around the plateau reaches a height of 13 feet at some points, and it is dotted with infrared sensors and motion detectors that set off alarms at a control room on the plateau. "Intruders can't jump over this," said Kamal Wahid, the site's general director. Tourists enter through a new brick entrance building, with half a dozen gates equipped with metal detectors and X-ray machines. Once inside, their every step is closely watched by 199 closed-circuit cameras covering every corner of the sprawling plateau. The footage goes back to the control room, where guards monitor a bank of 24 screens around the clock. "It looks clean and beautiful," said Michael Schmidt, 43, a real estate agent from New York City, as he visited the site Monday. "They did a good job." As Hawass and antiquity authorities showed off the changes Monday, trinket sellers were nowhere to be seen, apparently ordered off the plateau. Three lone camel riders in male Arab headscarf and the traditional galabeyah robes were standing at the edge of the plateau. Instead of chasing customers, they waited for the tourists to come to them for a photo opportunity. As a reporter walked up, one of them said: "Go away, the police told us not to talk to you." "I've been working here for 25 years," said a second one who would not give his name for fear he could lose his permit. "Now I don't know if I will be here tomorrow. I have five children, a wife. What will happen to us?" It was not clear whether the trinket dealers were pushed out just for the day or whether they would return in a more controlled fashion. Wahid said phasing out the hawkers will not be sudden or "unkind." "Two years from now, you won't see them inside the site," he said, adding that an area nearby will be designated for horse and camel rides -- with the pyramids serving as a dramatic backdrop for photos. The changes are part of a $26 million improvement project that began seven years ago, Hawass said. Still to come are a new lighting system, a cafeteria, and a visitors center and book shop that will give better information on the pyramids, where tourist guidance is sparse. Once the project is complete, golf carts will drive tourists around the site, similar to systems in Luxor and other ancient sites in Egypt. Exactly how much a future visitor will be able to roam around freely is unclear, but on Monday, Ramish Bissoon, a 59-year-old teacher from Trinidad, felt unrestricted as he explored the plateau with his wife, Molly. "I don't know what it was like before, but I feel very comfortable and secure," he said. "There are a lot of policemen around." Hawass insisted none of the innovations will diminish the experience of the visit. "We are giving back the magic of the pyramids," Hawass said. |
Thanks Diane for the screenshot captures....
July 23rd - Many of our Cairo crew are on vacation, but apart from some network downtime not amounting to more than about 24 hours at a time, we keep on truckin'. It's a hot slow time this part of the year in Cairo and the 'cool' places to be will include, Sharm, Alex, Hurhgada, Matruh and Al Arish. Our weather station continues to show freezing temperatures in the evening, but normal daytime readings - we'll sort that out on the next overhaul.
July 3rd - Our Photo Album is back. We have a new Photo Album that presently contains all the images from the old PhotoBlog, but without captions or comments. I'll add those as we go, meanwhile it's going to be a challenge for those of you who have not seen these images before to figure some of them out. LOL. Once we are up and running a bit, we'll allow viewer uploads of Pyramid Pics and the Photo Albums will be directly linked (bridged) to our Forums so members there can upload also. Our first goal will be to collect Pyramid Pics from as many different countries as possible - an ambitious first target is 50, and we'll put them on a map for you.
June 15th - Finally got around to updating the Archives Section. If you go there you will find an image for each hour of the day going back to at least Jan 1. Don't forget to bookmark us and tell your friends and family about our website. Thanks...
BirdCam - While we wait for some more hardware to extend the network at home so Stoker the Cat can have her webcam back, we will feature in the meantime our bird feeder at home in Saxonburg, PA. We put on quite a feed for the birdies of the area - 50 lb bag of stripped sunflower seeds a week. Sometimes we see some rare ones.
PyramidCam on Google Earth - Here you should find our placemarks that locate the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Sound and Light Show and our camera position. You will have to have Google Earth installed to view.
Weather - Go here to have a look at the latest weather activity in Egypt.
Best Images Slideshow - a Google Image Album of some of our best images captured over the past two years at PyramidCam.
Welcome to PyramidCam. I've carried out a minor redesign to allow the page to load faster and to make it possible to better organize our content. The image gallery needs a total overhaul and I'm working on that. We capture an image every 30 seconds and have been doing so 24/7 for the past 30 months - do the math and you'll see what we're faced with.
The Forum is back up and there you will find a number of friends checking in who are deeply interested in Egypt and the Pyramids. We also have a rolling news feed that ferrets out and posts articles about Egypt, the Pyramids and Egypt archaeology. The Forum is a good place to check in before you begin your plans to visit as many of our members have made more than one trip to Cairo and can help you with most any of your questions about what to expect and what to do after you arrive.
Background - PyramidCam was started in 2005 by Jim Sorenson and Vance Kozik with the indispensable support and assistance of Rami Siag of Siag Hotel and Travel. Our camera is deployed from the top of the Siag Hotel in Giza, the best possible vantage point to view the entire Pyramids Plateau. StarDot Technologies provides our IP webcams, which produce the highest quality images possible - and which are so reliable that we have not had a single minute of down time due to camera failure over the past two and a half years.
Support - Our site is entirely "not for profit" and therefore we very much appreciate it when you check out the ads and the websites of our partners - The ads go some way to support the project, but not nearly far enough to prevent us from going out of pocket from time to time to keep things running. Donations via PayPal are also very much welcome, indeed.
Purpose - PyramidCam was conceived principally to provide a unique high quality view over time of the Pyramids at Giza for those around the world who might never have the opportunity to visit - we meant for it to be the next best thing. We also wish to encourage Egypt tourism and judging from the millions of viewers we are reaching and the many many emails that we have received praising the site, wondering at the unique power and beauty of the Pyramids and (the writers) promising to make a visit at the first opportunity, we know we have succeeded, at least in some small degree.
Weather - the NetCamXL IP webcam that we are running features an external weather station and you can read the real time temperature, humidity and barometric pressure directly from the station's sensors if you check just under the date and time in the upper left hand corner of every live image. Each image will give you the actual date, time and weather conditions in Cairo as well as a live view of those weather conditions.
PyramidCam Items and Features - In the past we have posted images, stories, reviews of local trips, movies and other items of interest concerning Egypt and the Pyramids here on the home page. We will continue to do so, but in brief. The main body of these features will accessible through a link to another page on the site. To see what we have covered over the past six months, go here. This is still very much a work in progress.
Odds and Ends - We try to be "live" on a 24/7 basis, but there will be times when the system goes down. At those times we will substitute a recent static image in the frame until things are working properly again. Like everybody else in Cairo, we were affected by the recent cable cuts. We sometimes have issues with power and have to shut down until power is restored. The Giza Governorate has been upgrading telephone lines and we may temporarily loose our line from time to time. Despite these problems, the camera has reminded live over 98% of the time since it first went on the air in 2005. Also, you may hit the site when it's pitch dark here in Cairo and there does not seem to be a lot happening on our black screen. However, we've had many interesting image captures of meteors, setting planets, the moon, satellites, airplane lights and even fires during the nightime period. Watching the Pyramids Plateau at any hour of the day and night can have its surprises - check out our image galleries to see what I mean.
I'm way behind on emails - I've just recently deployed from Cairo to Saxonburg, PA and am just beginning to catch up with my correspondence. The only difference it will make for PyramidCam is that I'll be living here and visiting there for a change. We've got a great crew at the Siag Hotel, so not a lot will change.
Please support us by bookmarking www.Pyramidcam.com, visiting our Google ads; and by checking out the websites of our partners.... Please also tell friends and family about us. If you want to put us on the 6 O'clock news, that would be great also.....
Many thanks
Jim
