All 32 Alki Tours passengers and their tour guide Tyson Verse arrived back from Cairo via Athens and then Germany Tuesday Feb. 1 at 11:40 AM on Lufthansa flight 490. They all arrived safely, many exhausted after evacuating the Cairo International Airport through a U.S. diplomatic arranged flight. (Three of the 36 total returned prior to the group of 32.)

Here is our previous, related story.

http://www.westseattleherald.com/2011/01/31/news/update-4-west-seattle-…

We just spoke with Tyson Verse. We realize he is very tired and appreciate his time. Here is his account of the group's ordeal:

We had a really nice tour, saw everything in Cairo, the Sphynx, Pyramids, Cairo Museum, flew to Luxor. That's where we see the Luxor Temple and embark on our Nile cruise to Aswan. There was talk of protests coming. We saw one small protest in town. Tensions started building. We were transfered to the train station to have our overnight train to Cairo. The tourist police were very concerned and didn't want us to go there.

We boarded the train, but before it left I think they were surpressing protesters near the station with tear gas. It left on time, and arrived on time in Cairo. It was business as usual at the train station. Lots of tourist police looked out after the group in plain clothes, just hanging out making sure we were OK.

We paid off a transit bus to Giza, no trouble, a few minutes from the pyramids. About 8:00 p.m. that night gunfire started going off. Who knows what it was? It sounded like home made bombs at the hotel compound to scare looters.

Our tour uses a local Egyptologist guide named Mohammad Ghander. We also have a tour leader named Mohammad Hamdy. They were very helpful, and with us the whole tour. We made a couple of runs to the airport. We could see burned out cars, damaged buildings, but not everywhere, and lots of military checkpoints which was very comforting.

The airport services were slim. No food, just candy and soft drinks, and a little bit of water for sale. I was able to find food for the group at a staff cafeteria behind the main building where all the workers would go. We had stopped beforehand and bought water.

Our flight was canceled then rebooked. We basically didn't have a flight. I made phone calls to the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and basically demanded that I speak to someone in the United States to assist us because we had no scheduled flight. I finally got through to the "Task Force" handling evacuations. They told me it was for sure everybody would go on the (Jan.) 31st, that they'd be taken to a major European capital city. This was going to happen at a private terminal. I had to make a deal with another bus to get a ride out there.

We were basically the first people there at about 8:00 a.m. (yesterday) and I became acquainted with the embassy staff that just arrived. All of our group was together to got to Athens. One guest got onto the diplomatic flight with the embassy staff because she got light-headed. She was in very good hands.

The flight to Athens is about two and a half hours. The key for us was rebooking our tickets in Athens. In Athens I had 15 minutes to reach the Lufthansa desk and ran there. I got there just before they were closing. I was able to rebook everybody from Athens to Frankfurt to Seattle today. In Athens Lufthansa gave everyone dinner, hotel, and a shuttle back to the airport. They accepted our existing booking.

One third of the group went on the Lufthansa flight. I took the other two thirds on Czech Airlines this morning, Athens to Prague to Frankfurt to Seattle, but we were all on the same flight to Seattle from Frankfurt.

They had 15,000 Americans and Egyptian Americans at the Cairo Airport. You have to almost demand to the U.S. Embassy, "I'm an American. I have no way out. I am in a difficult situation and we need to go." Only at that time do they connect you to the Task Force for evacuation.

Our two Egyptian guides are great guys. I just can't wait until the situation calms down so that we can take people back there. They had enough hunger in the country before having to face reduced tourism. I personally don't know enough about the politics of Egypt. One local person in tourism said obviously people are not satisfied with Mubarak for 30 years, but are concerned if the United States government continues to support President Mubarak they feel this will generate anti-American feelings.

I've taken five or trips to Egypt. I can give you a happy smiley photo of the group at the Pyramids now. If you want to see people acting wild on the streets or sleeping at the airport, CNN has plenty of those kinds of shots."