We Are Uber Converts

In spite of encouragement by friends here, we had not yet begun using Uber as an alternative to the local taxis.  Part of the reason was that without a local smart phone, it was hard to do.  Today we were headed across the river to New Cairo, on the eastern edge of town, about 23 miles away.  I downloaded the Uber App on the smart phone brought from the US.

We were headed to the Point 90 Cinema shopping center which popped up almost immediately as I keyed in "poin..."  Of course, the app knew exactly where we were and it estimated that our driver would be here in six minutes.  Taxis are getting hard to find here on weekends so that worked out well.


Our Uber ride was much newer and more comfortable than the usual taxi.  The driver was right on schedule and we headed east on the Ring Road, the six lane freeway that encircles greater Cairo.

We hadn't gotten too far beyond our usual City Center exit in Maadi when the driver began slowing to a halt.

"Is there a problem?" I inquired?

"No, I missed the turn," he replied as he began backing up. - he was about a half mile past the exit ramp onto the access road.

Now you might think backing up on the shoulder of the freeway is unusual.  I know the Minnesota State Patrol does - I know from personal experience that they don't even like you driving forward on the shoulder.  Here, we have a more relaxed attitude toward many things.

In this picture, you can see our driver is backing up quite smoothly.  Ahead in the distance, note the red car who has also missed his exit and is backing up too.


It was only a few minutes until we reached the exit ramp onto the parallel access road.  Note that the red car has been backing faster and has caught up to us.  Clearly, we have the more cautious driver.


When we arrived at our destination, we had covered the 23 miles in about 40 minutes.  The bill for the trip was $6.29  Better yet, there was no argument about needing additional money because of the traffic or the size of the driver's family.  (Bargaining with Cairo's taxi drivers is quite an art!)

Later in the evening we made the return trip in heavier traffic in about 50 minutes for $5.75  Our waiting time for a driver was only 1 minute.  We will be Uber customers regularly now.