Into the Desert... (part 3) - Siwa Oasis

Siwa Oasis was the last town that we stopped at in the Desert. It was also the biggest by far. It was farther north, about an 8-10 hour drive south of Alexandria. It also had about 30,000 people living there (I might have totally made that up...).

We ate at the same restaurant about 3 times a day, it was right across from our hotel and it was awesome. It was the only one our tour guide recommended we eat at (also happened to be in the Lonely Planet book), and they cooked all the food with bottled water. They had amazing curry type dishes, chicken couscous dishes cooked in ceramic pots, and even crepes. yum!

We took a half day bicycle tour of the town on the 2nd day, saw some temples and old tombs. We also stopped at Cleopatra's spring, which she "supposedly" bathed at with Alexander the Great back in the day. The second half of the day, about half of our group took jeeps out into the Great Sand Sea (to see the desert I had always imagined), and to try some sand-boarding. We even got to hit up a natural hot spring after sand-boarding.

You dont have to be very old to drive a donkey here. We saw so many kids driving these around. The town of Siwa from our Hotel room.

The Hotel. We made friends with the desk clerk and he played cards with us on the roof one night.

Bicycle tour day

Matt & Stacey

Moutain of the Dead. We hiked up and saw a ton of old tombs buried into the top of the mountain.

View of the Oasis. There are SO many palm trees and Date Trees. They sell tons of Dates everywhere and apparently this Oasis is one of the largest Date exporters around the world.

Cleopatra's Spring.

In town

The Great Sand Sea.

It was really windy here.... this is kind of a funny picture.

Sandboarding! Having snowboarded really helped, although the sand did not give at all and you can't turn or carve.... so you just have to go straight down. And the hills were steep! I think I took one turn, and crashed at the bottom and that was good for me.

Here is Matt Wiggins, showing his skills.

Stacey, also using her snowboarding skills!

Beautiful.

Matt.

Our tour guide Ahmad in the red hoodie. I really like this picture.

Cold water spring we stopped at for a swim.

Me, Matt... the desert and the sunset.

Into the Desert... (part 2) - Black Desert

After camping in the White desert, the Black desert was a stop during the drive to our next destination... to stay at Bawiti Oasis. We have a ton of pictures from the desert, and they are all just so cool. I loved the scenery and vast landscapes.

Here is a little oasis/gas stop we took a break at.

For some reason I dont have a picture of us climbing this hill. But it was a climb. The rocks were also pretty sharp, and we all of course were wearing sandals (and our bags were strapped to the top of the Jeeps). Oh well, we made it to the top and it was quite the view!

Arrived in Bawiti oasis... so dirty from camping and the sandy desert.

A hotel rooftop celebratory drink with the engaged couple. There is only one shop in the whole town that would sell alcohol, and we gave him a bit of business over the 2 days.

Omar wine! We had to bring a bottle home of course, grapes actually grown in the desert in Egypt. It wasn't amazing wine, but hey it was cool that it was actually from Egypt. =)

The "tourist attraction" our jeep drivers took us to see...an old WWII plane that had crashed in the desert.

At one of the MANY security stops throughout the desert. We had to stop just about every hour. They were posts with young military guys assigned to them, and they had to make sure the tourists got from one check point to the next in time. If you didn't show up at the next one on schedule, I guess they would know something was wrong.

Every single checkpoint had these same pet dogs.

You were not allowed to take pictures at the security checkpoints. Oops. You can see the guy hollering at me behind Matt to stop taking pictures.