Holiday disasters and how to avoid them - 'Our Great Cairo Catastrophe'.

Travelling the world, seeing the sights and visiting foreign countries, sounds like a lot of fun - and it is. But it is not all plain sailing. Sometimes things go wrong and when they do it can be downright frightening. There is nothing like being thousands of miles from home to make any problem seem a lot worse than it is.

Fortunately we have never had an irrecoverable holiday catastrophe but that doesn't mean we haven't had our share of  mishaps.  Next time you are away from home and things go wrong just remember you aren't alone - chances are someone, probably lots of someones, have been in the same situation before you and got out alive.


Today, I want to share some of our own holiday mishaps, along with a few tips on how we might have avoided them. This started out as a single post but even my most loyal readers can only take so much in one go so I have turned it into a series. Next week will be ' Escaping the clutches of the Czech Republic' - click here to read it now.

Our Great Cairo Catastrophe

This experience has pride of place at the top of our personal holiday disaster list. It will take a debacle of monumental proportions to knock it off - one I hope we never suffer. Our 'Great Cairo Catastrophe' occurred eight years ago and it still smarts. I NEVER want to go through that again. 

Regular readers will know that David hates tours. He refuses to take them - which is how we found ourselves travelling independently in a country where any sane tourist would leave the organisation and stress to the professionals.

To be fair, we almost made it. We spent two weeks in Egypt. During that time every reservation was honoured and every connection made - until Aswan. In Aswan, David came down with a serious bout of gastroenteritis and his usual superb organisation floundered. I suspect the tea on board our Nile River Cruise had been made from river water.

The view from our hotel in Aswan.

Aswan was our final port of call. We were due to fly from there to Cairo, where we had a six hour layover, and then on to Rome. There should have been plenty of time to make the connection - except Egypt Air cancelled our flight and didn't tell us. We had confirmed it before arriving in Aswan. We even walked past Egypt Air's offices in Aswan the day before we were due to leave. David was recovering but still weak.

"Maybe we should call in and check our flight", he said.

"No, we've already confirmed it and they know where we are staying. What's the point" I stupidly replied.

We arrived at the airport next morning to find our flight had been cancelled. We were only a few minutes too late to catch the earlier flight to Cairo. The next flight was several hours away. It would touch down with about a half hour to spare before our Alitalia flight left. If we were lucky we would make it. We weren't lucky. Our plane was delayed by about twenty minutes. We arrived literally as the Alitalia plane took off.

It was Thursday afternoon and NOTHING opens in Cairo on Fridays. The staff at Egypt Air wanted to help. They promised to find us a hotel and make sure we could get seats on the next flight to Rome. They talked and talked and talked. We were passed from one customer service person to another. We went up the chain of command, or down or sideways - we really weren't sure. It got later and later.

Finally we realised that despite all their promises Egypt Air were not going to help us. The cancelled Egypt Air flight and the Alitalia flight were on two separate tickets - our problems were not their responsibility. They cut us loose just as it was getting dark. David left me and our son with the luggage and went off in search of a hotel.

The day had taken its toll and my stress levels were off the graph. It didn't help that the Haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, was on.  The airport was teaming with men, very few women, all dressed only in what appeared to be white towels.  Finally David returned. He had found an airport hotel  - where we paid a small fortune for their worst room.

At this stage we had no idea when the next flight to Rome was. It seemed very likely we would have to buy new tickets. The Alitalia service counter had long since closed and our phone calls to their city office went unanswered, so we took a shuttle to the hotel and hit the internet. The first good news of the day was to discover an Alitalia flight to Rome the next afternoon.

No story about Cairo would be complete with a pyramid.

Early the next morning we left our son with our luggage at the hotel and returned to the airport. At the Alitalia counter we were helped by a lovely lady. She confirmed there were available seats on that day's flight and she transferred our tickets without charge. I could have fainted with relief.

Re-entering the airport with our luggage that afternoon was a nightmare. We couldn't get in without putting our bags through the x-ray machines. There are seven million people in Cairo and every single one of them was trying to enter the airport at the same time as us. The system was completely overwhelmed with nothing which even remotely resembled a queue. Everyone was just fighting their way to the front of the crowd and throwing their bags into huge piles on top of the x-ray machine belts while a couple of baggage handlers tried vainly to feed them into the machines. Most of the bags seemed to be toppling off and piling up on the footpath.

We got there in the end though and settled down for a long wait for our flight. There was no way we were missing this one.

Lessons we learnt from the experience: How you can avoid making the same mistakes: - 

• Don't drink tea made from Nile River water - ever.
• When your spouse suggests you re-confirm a reservation, just do it - don't argue.
• Confirm and re-confirm airline tickets right up to the day you depart.
• Don't assume that because an airline has your contact details they will actually contact you with  cancellations or schedule changes.
• Never transit through Cairo airport during the Haj. On second thoughts, never transit through Cairo airport at all.
• click here for tips on booking airline tickets and how to avoid the separate ticket nightmare.

Click here to read about our arrival (24 hours late and a travelling nightmare in its own right) in Rome.

One of the temples next to the Nile - I have no idea which one.

Come back next week for 'Escaping the clutches of the Czech Republic'. In the meantime if anyone has a holiday disaster of their own that they would like to share and maybe a few tips to help others avoid the same pitfalls I would love to hear about them.