Egypt Day 3-4: the desert

Day 3: so we heard a few times the phrase "Egypt time," which I think is supposed to mean that 5 minutes is actually 30 minutes but really I think it meant to us we have no idea when something will happen. We started off the morning having been told we'd be picked up at 7:30am to be taking to the bus station for a 5-hr bus west to the desert oasis Bahariya. But at 6:45am, just as our alarm was going off, someone was knocking on our room door letting us know that our driver was already there. Okay. At the bus station we tried to find some food but everything was closed but a small store selling junk food. I saw small cartons of banana-flavored milk but decided to stick with chocolate instead. So our tickets said that we were taking a certain bus so it was really confusing when some guy standing next to another guy checking tickets took our ticket and led us to a totally different bus, and of course he doesn't speak English. Luckily it did end up being the right bus but we weren't really sure for quite a few minutes, especially since we thought we were taking a local bus and this bus was pretty plush and had A/C. It was a long, boring ride with really nothing to see out the windows.

When we arrived at Bahariya Oasis, the bus was swarmed with guys asking us if we were staying at their particular hostel. Finally we found the guy asking for Jennifer (oh good, he really did exist). We'd been instructed to say we were from Canada if asked, not sure why but that's the only place it really mattered that we didn't say we were Americans. Otherwise no one minded when we said we were Americans (many would say "Hey! I love Obama!" and a lot would say "I have a brother in Minnesota"). So Bahariya looks very rundown. The houses are all brick and many seem to have no roofs. We'd heard that most buildings in Egypt are unfinished because people don't have to pay property taxes until a building is finished so especially in Cairo there are building with an unfinished second story. But this oasis had so many buildings that I wondered if they were used for storage, or if people actually lived in them. There were lots of date trees. And lots of piles of white bricks piled up on the side of the road, actually we saw that all over Egypt too but especially in Bahariya. Anyhow we were picked up and taken to this pretty cool looking hotel on the outskirts of town where we met another couple that we'd be going on this camping trip with- they were our age, she was from Australia and he was from NY. They served us a tasty lunch of tomato/cucumber salad, dry bread, potatoes in stewed tomatoes, I think hummus, grapes. Everything tasted good but would lead to a very rough night for me later.

So we headed out to the Black Desert.

The deserts we saw were not what I'd pictured of Egypt. No huge sand dunes spreading out as far as the eye could see. In fact the only real dunes we saw were in one small section.

And the "Black Desert" was actually not covered in black sand, as I thought either, but rather tiny black rocks. They felt a little greasy in a way, and looked like they'd be rough based on the jagged shapes but had been smoothed by the wind.
We couldn't figure out how the desert was made black. Our guide, who was supposed to speak English (okay, he did, but not well), said "what?" when we asked how the desert came to be, then "yes, volcano" when asked if it was from volcanic activity. I dunno, maybe.

Surprisingly it wasn't as hot as you'd think either. Southern Egypt later in our trip was much hotter than the desert. We didn't even have the a/c on, just the windows down.

We also noticed that our guide, who spent most of the time talking in Arabic to his buddy who seemed to just be along for the ride, would talk a little lower to his buddy then suddenly turn off the paved road for 5-10 minutes. Was it just to give us a little thrill of off-roading? Did he think we were getting bored? Were they trying to avoid paying park fees (because we did get stopped once for that)? Hard to know.

Then we reached the White Desert.

The rocks were incredible, some kind of calcium deposits shaped by the wind.
I thought it was kinda cool, we stopped to take pictures and our guides took the opportunity to observe their evening prayer, even in the desert with a mountain in the way facing Mecca.


I've seen some cool rock formations in the States (Colorado's Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park, California's Joshua Tree) but these were seriously awesome. I wasn't all that excited when this desert excursion was pitched to us but it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip.

This desert just seemed to go on and on.

And they have some rock formations named; this is "The Chicken," see it?

This is "The Rabbit."

Matt said he only wanted a vile of sand so I collected some for him. :)

The sunset was beautiful.

We had an amazing campsite.

And even saw some desert wildlife as the guides set up camp and started cooking our chicken.

And that's about the time that I started feeling really... unwell. At first, I thought it was just indigestion. Or... I just needed to go #2. But I quickly realized it was much more. I had such bad stomach cramps I couldn't eat much dinner. I skipped the tea. I tried to drink a lot of water and took my Imodium AD apparently too late.
As soon as the sun went down, which is not very late, we were all a bit sleepy and laid down on our mats and sleeping bags the guides brought. They put out the fire and our guide stayed up late(?) talking on his cell phone. Yes, you can get reception in the middle of the Egyptian desert. We could hear other excursions and see their fires in the distance. Someone was playing the bongo drums. There were a million stars and it was really quite beautiful. It was probably around 70' during the night, so comforta Then my private adventure began, shared only with this desert fox who kept hanging around trying to raid our site. Eventually she was not afraid of me, and vice versa. Actually at one point... I got up to go yet again and as soon as I had my pants down, I heard something behind me. Freaked me out! I looked over my shoulder to see Foxy about five feet away. I tried to hiss her (it's weird having to take a food poisoning dump in front of a wild animal), but she didn't move. Well, whatever, I thought, I'm already in process. Then I hear a tickling sound, look back and she's taking a pee. Awesome, pee party with the desert fox. Anyhow, I caught her at daybreak (not like I slept) trying to drink out of our teapot.

Day 4: The next morning we were up relatively early as it started getting hot in the sun. Another breakfast of some dry bread, strawberry jam, tea with sugar but no milk, and a little cheese wedge. But not for me. I'd thrown up twice during the night so stuck with just a little bread. Ugh. We were also supposed to take a noon bus back to Cairo so that Jen and I could make our sleeper train to Aswan.

On the way back to the oasis, they took us to Crystal Mountain, which was impressive. I only got out of the car for a minute, oh so sick.


The others hiked part way up this mountain. You can see them up there. It looks a lot taller than it was in person but it was still pretty steep. They didn't make it to the summit but apparently it was a great view of the desert from there.
We made it back to Bahariya and the hotel where we'd started the day before. Even though it was already 11am, the owner insisted that we had time to shower if we wanted. It was camping-style showering without a curtain in a bathroom. Uhh I'll wait, I didn't even care. We were promised to have lunch provided that day, and since we were about to get on a 5-hr bus ride the others really wanted food, just something small. So the owner got his staff to fire up the kitchen and they prepared us a full meal of pasta with marinara sauce and some other stuff I didn't eat. Ummm, it's minutes until we're supposed to catch our bus and no staff are in sight to take us. Finally the owner shows up again, we're rushed into the car, and we're almost to the bus stop as the bus is already pulling away so the driver drives directly at the bus, forcing it to stop mid-street. The owner, who is obviously a big-wig in town, gives the bus driver a hand shake and we're let aboard to the chagrin of the locals. This bus sucks. It's got no a/c and it is soooo hot now heading back to Cairo. The guy in front of us has an open window and that's the only breeze we can feel, but then he pulls the curtain to keep out the sun and it is absolutely roasting hot plus I have terrible stomach cramps. One of the worst trips of my life. I was so miserable, just praying for it to be over.

We made it onto the sleeper train, through an awful train dinner (so much worse than airplane food! there was like some gross, dry slab of "steak," some buttery rice, a prepackaged roll, and some kind of awful hummus, and finally to bed. Despite the stomach cramps, I slept alright on our 10 or 12hr train ride south to Aswan.