I am entering my third week in Cairo now and I guess, as familiarity grows, I am getting more relaxed with my unusual life – so far mostly spent between my offices and hotel. Although I have so much to learn, I no longer feel so out of place on the streets.

The friendliness of the people continues to impress me. On the streets, I get no favours. It is “a jungle” out there. By that I mean that it is each to his own when it comes to crossing streets and navigating the footpaths and intersections.

Last week I had occasion to travel by car (driven by experts - not by me) to four separate destinations. The first was to the other side of town to a complex that was built by the Brits in the early 1900s and is a delightful combination of old Edwardian-style buildings and beautiful gardens. The two other excursions took me to other Governorates, to the north and east. There are 27 Governorates in Egypt and they form an important decentralised government somewhat between an Australian state and our local government areas.

Al Qalyubiyah (cal-you-bé-ya) is north of Cairo and situated at the southern end of the Nile delta. Cairo is situated on the Nile but is essentially in the desert. The founding fathers clearly wanted to be near to the fertile delta for its agricultural value but not so near that they would be flooded. Most of the delta is low lying with a high water table. Of course, the pharaohs didn’t have the Aswan High Dam to protect them from some of the effects of flooding. Rural Egypt is quite different to Cairo – but still crowded by Australian standards. No sleepy dogs and empty small town streets here.

The villages tend to coalesce so that you need to be told when leaving one and entering another. Each has its weekly market – different days – so when driving about you will run into a market or two. These are a great hubbub with people, cars, trucks and donkey carts coming from everywhere. Of particular interest to me are the women who go to and from with what seems like large loads on their heads. Some make use of a scarf folded into a doughnut to give a solid base on their heads for their loads. Others just balance a carton or bucket directly onto their heads – and walk with ease apparently unaware of their balancing task. I guess if you’ve done this for years it is a snap.

Building is a bit variable here. Timber is in very short supply but cement, bricks, mortar, mud, and render are readily available and form the basic building media. Even the animal houses tend to be solid walled. It is not unusual to see a poultry house, made of bricks, three stories high.

Our thrill was having a flat tyre at speed when re-entering Cairo, on the freeway. Thankfully a rear tyre that was pointed out to us by an obliging overtaking lorry driver. I was sitting in the back seat on that side and thought I felt a vibration but the road was rough at that point and we were driving with that wheel running along the lane marks (these are for decorative purposes only). Changing a tyre is never much fun but on such a busy freeway was an extra challenge – for the driver. His three passengers looked on appreciatively and the two Arabic speakers no doubt offered words of encouragement.

Incidentally the Government has expressed an intention to ban donkey carts from Cairo. That would probably also take them off the nearby freeways.

The second rural trip was towards Port Said on the Mediterranean – in Ash Sharqiyah Governorate (shark-key-a). This was a longer trip of about four hours all told, including a short period being lost. A major canal (the Ismailia Canal) runs towards Suez from the Nile. Built to enable the Suez Canal to be constructed, it now feeds a major irrigation area. An amazing job is being done of reclaiming the desert with large circular paddocks of crops, on desert sands conditioned with manure etc., and watered by large pivot irrigating systems. Peter Cundall from “Gardening Australia” would be impressed. The fields are large but still harvested by hand – or, at least, by lots and lots of hands.

My final excursion was a private one to visit two farms owned by my Egyptian friend, Karim. These are north-west of Cairo, past the Giza Plateau and off the Alexandria Desert Road. He has large areas of citrus trees, mangoes and table grapes growing on one established farm and another that he is building up. He is also having a house constructed on the new farm. I am sure it will be beautiful when finished. It is spacious and tiled and rendered with exposed rocks facing much of the outer walls. The beauty of the climate is that it practically never rains so there is an ill-defined separation between an outdoor and indoor lifestyle. We came away with a supply of delightful oranges.

I also did some dining out this past weekend. On Friday night, I went with Karim and a group, and on Saturday, with a couple of work colleagues from here. Each was very pleasant and the change from routine was just great.

On a very sad note, two other consultants working here were killed in a car accident in a rural area on last Saturday. Travel by road is a real hazard here and terrible events like this bring the reality of that to the fore.

My time away from Australia is already passing quickly with more than 20% gone already. I am in that strange twilight zone where it is difficult to recall how the past days disappeared so quickly and it seems both a blink and an eternity since I travelled to the Brisbane airport.

My week will be a little different this week. But life has a habit of throwing up surprises, particularly in Egypt, so I will leave open all possibilities. Tell you about it next time.