CAVE CHURCH OF SAINT SIMON AND GARBAGE CITY

At 8:00 am you need to be ready at the lobby area of your hotel in Cairo. you will find your expert tour guide holding a sign of your name. At the first you will visit to the Cave Church in Egypt which is one of the largest churches in the country, a place where 70,000-plus Christians gather every week to worship and praise Jesus -- a place that's home to one of the world's oldest Christian communities. The cave, also known as the Monastery of Saint Simon, is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo, in an area known as "Garbage City" due to the large population of garbage collectors, or Zabbaleen, that live there.

The Zabbaleen are descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo in the 1940s. Fleeing poor harvests and poverty they came to the city looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city. Initially, they stuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats, chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting of waste produced by the city residents more profitable. The Zabbaleen sort through household garbage, salvaging and selling things of value, while the organic waste provides an excellent source of food for their animals. In fact, this arrangement worked so well, that successive waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly founded garbage villages of Cairo.
 

At the end of the Tour, you will be transferred back to your Hotel.