Maybe the title of this story is a tad misleading. I haven’t been to the pyramids (yet) and I certainly haven’t seen aliens there. But I’ve met someone who has…
When you travel you meet all kinds of people from different walks of life. Maybe today you hang out with an 18-year-old whose parents have funded their gap year trip, maybe tomorrow you meet a seventy-year-old who has finally found the time and inclination to explore. In Australia, I met a surprising amount of middle-aged men and women who were living long-term in a hostel.
One such man, I forget his name, asked if I minded if he sat beside me as I ate my pesto pasta one evening in Coffs Harbour. It was winter and the hostel was quiet, so I was keen for some company. He sat beside me and fired up his laptop to ‘work’.
His work, he explained, was very important research that would change the history of the world. He was struggling to get this work officially recognised, but he explained that he just needed to present more evidence. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what are you working on?’
He opened up photoshop and showed me a picture of the pyramids in Egypt. He zoomed in. And zoomed in again. And then some more. He moved the image around for a while and then exclaimed ‘Look! You see! There!’.
….errrrrmmm?
I wasn’t getting it, so he bagan to plot the points on the image. The eyes, mouth, and outline of an alien face in the side of the pyramid.
….errrrrmmm?
At 23, and far too polite for my own good, I made the mistake of playing along. So he showed me more photos.
Alien faces alongside the presidents on Mount Rushmore. Alien faces in the rock at Machu Picchu. Alien faces on the side of Mount Everest.
After an awkward hour of nodding and smiling, I eventually made my excuses and left. I was leaving the next morning and hid in my female-only dorm room until it was time to catch my bus to Byron Bay.
Ten minutes before my pick-up time, I decided it would be safe to wait in the reception. I almost made it. With just two minutes to go, my alien-investigator friend appeared and asked to take a photo of me.
Terrified he’d find aliens in the freckles on my nose, I politely declined.