Egyptian Mosquitoes

Also, in today's Cooter's History Thing Blog, I wrote about ten myths of Ancient Egypt.  That brought to mind Egyptian mosquitoes, which my group found to be one of the worst things we encountered when visiting there several years back.

And, I am not talking about the insect variety.  I refer to the human variety.  They see a cruise ship pull up in Alexandria or a bus or van full of westerners pull in...THEY DESCEND with an anger and vengeance worthy of the seven or however many plagues that so bothered Pharoah.

From adults to some of the cutest kids you'll ever see (shouldn't they be in school?), they go into attack mode.  There is tourist money to be got.  And they intend to suck every bit out they can.  Everywhere you look, you see a tourist surrounded by these mosquitoes pushing all sorts of "authentic" Egyptian stuff in their faces.

Now, I usually do not have problems with real mosquitoes, but these were a different story.  They'd hit you getting off the ship, then making your way to whatever conveyance you sought.  As a matter of fact there would be an instant bazaar built at the dock.  The absolute worst place of all was out by the pyramids and Sphinx.

I sure "scored" a lot of things that I "wanted."  So, if you go to Egypt, beware.

Beware the Mosquitoes.  --RoadDog