When it comes down to it, the Grand Canyon is just a very big hole in the ground. And the is just a massive barrier. OK, it’s over 13,000 miles long and cost hundreds of thousands of lives – many bodies are interred in its walls – but still, when you visit, it’s like a great big castle wall.
Maybe you need to see it from space, from where it is visible, to truly appreciate it? I’ve seen both – the Big Ditch and the Long Graveyard (I refer to that death toll) – and I sound a little flippant. But the point is, neither of these wonders come anywhere near to inspiring the kind of awe that seeing the Pyramids of Giza does. As we drove towards them from the desert they rose up in an almost unearthly manner.
So monumentally huge, so unique, they look alien. No wonder there are so many wacky theories about how they were built. We had lunch at 9 Pyramids Lounge, on the plateau overlooking the last surviving of the original seven wonders of the world and it seemed a crime to look at the food instead of the wondrous sights.
Up close they’re equally overwhelming, huge blocks each almost the size of a person, stepped and soaring upwards. How on earth were they made then? Still nobody knows. There are three pyramids at Giza, the biggest being the Great Pyramid and tomb of Pharaoh Khufu.
The pyramid where his father Sneferu is believed to have been buried is visible in the distance, and much smaller, in a clear act of one-upmanship. We had flown to Cairo with easyJet from Lu.
