Egypt 2.0

EGYPT.

I'm not really sure how to start, other than to say that so far, this country has been the most insane and intense (both heat,sun, and people wise) country I have visited. That's not saying a lot I guess, as it's not like I've done a ton of traveling...
But wow. I began my adventure by arriving on a 10hour flight that got in 3 hours late (Egyptian Time I'm told...). Erika and her boyfriend James picked me up from the airport, where we went straight to a restaurant named 'Sequoia', situated on a corner of the Nile. It was amazing, watching the sun set over this historic river from our crisp, white, cotton-draped chairs, the crosswinds blowing clean through my jet lagged hair, eating vine leaves and babaghanou. That nite, after meeting up with Jessica (a co-worker of Erika's), driving through the mess that is Cairo traffic, getting my hand caught in the car window and needing to give it a push start due to a run-down battery, we were off into the Desert. At 11pm Cairo time.
We drove through the nite, until 6am, when we finally made it to Baharaya - our first oasis. It's a small town south west of Cairo. I woke up as we were pulling into town; donkeys roaming the streets and piles of garbage burning in amidst the abandoned rubble of buildings.
We slept until 3pm the next day.

Our first 'official' desert day was spent touring around outside the town in the car James had rented - a little 2-wheel drive Chevrolet. It didn't take long before we were stuck in the sand - which is basically the equivalent of what snow drifts would be in Canada. But, thankfully, soon we had an entire posse of Egyptian farmers, their sons, nephews, and friends, helping us dig ourselves out! The ordeal ended with a tractor, and a tow-rope (or bridle) borrowed from a nearby donkey...


We also went on an overnite Desert Safari, where the four of us packed into a 4-wheel drive land cruiser with our Beduin guide to tour the Black and White Deserts for a day and a half. We climbed a massive sand dune (like the ones you see in movies, all golden and wind swept. It was tough going, I'm not gonna lie!! Half way up I was pretty sure I was going to pass out due to heat exhaustion. It was so windy, and so, soo hot! Just think about how it feels when you put on ALL your winter clothes, and then run to the school bus, only to find the heat pumping inside. It's kind of a helpless feeling...completely surrounded by heat, and nothing you can do about it...


We carried on into the Black Desert, with it's anthill-esque mountains looming in the distance. Our guide stopped and basically made us climb one of those: "Time for some sport". Nice guy.
One of the most amazing sights was when we got to the White Desert, which is even farther south. These white, almost chalk-like, wind carved monuments loomed above us. We drove to the base of one rock formation and our guide set up our camp. A couple sheets and some mats laid out on the sand. He started a campfire over which he cooked vegetables and rice, and grilled some chicken for our supper. The stars had come out by the time it was ready to eat, and we even had a visit paid to us by a desert fox, who was probably just interested in the smell of our chicken...

We spent time after supper drinking mint tea (so amazingly sweet), and singing ourselves to sleep with as many Disney songs as we could remember!
The desert does get cold at nite, but when the sun rises at 7am it gets hot fast. It was crazy...I'm so used to either trees, or fields, or snow(!), that to see so much space filled with sand was strange. But beautiful.

However, along with all this wonderful food and action, comes a dark side of Egyptian traveling...Egyptian Tummy. Not pleasant. When your guts aren't used to certain spices and cooking, it takes awhile for it to get used to. Some pills James gave me helped out quite a bit, and I can happily state that I am no longer suffering from Egyptian Gut Rot. Yeah.

We made our way to another oasis, this one was called Fayoum and is directly south of Cairo. It was here that us girls got to ride horses on the beach of this great, salty, lake. We even rode out into the water on horseback, and swam around for a bit. By the time we got back to Cairo, we were all pretty bagged. It was a full few days...



More adventures to come...