The Sahara!

I spent last night in the deep desert. Picture this: a canvas tent, a lumpy mattress, two blankets that smell like they were likely on the back of a donkey recently, possibly the most amazing night sky ever. It was great!!!

I went off on an exploration of the desert with an extremely awkward German guy living in Australia, two French girls, Mary Christine and Victoria, and an Argentinian living in London . Our driver, Abdi, arrived on Siwan time 45 minutes late in a questionable 4x4 to take us into the Great Sand Sea. It is truly amazing and I appologize that my description will fall FAR short of the true beauty and wonder of the area which in Arabic translates to ´the land that God forgot´.

As we leave town we see the beginnings of humongous dunes (something like 300 feet above Siwa). We head straight in, Abdi navigating excellently the shifting sands as we slide around in our boat along the sea of sand.

We delve directly into the desert and soon all trace of mankind is absent, save the occasional piece of litter or the cairn or stick pointing up which serves as some sort of road map if only you could read it.

At one point, Abdi, who hadnt´yet spoken a word of English turns to the two ladies and says "you have baby?". After a short beat, we all crack into laughter at what appears to be a very bold question. Victoria says no and Abdi replies: "No baby, no problem" and quickly turns the wheel hard to head straight up a dune. We reach the top and after the most infintessimal pause to be sure we´ll survive, we fly over the top. Now we are hurtling downward and Abdi is spewing a stream of the clichéd gasps that he's heard a million times: mama mia!, oh no!, dear me! all the while cackling up a storm. It was a blast. We went farther and faster and did a number of more dune cresting drops, each progressively more steep and wild. Stopped at one point to take these pictures.

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We then went to a hot spring oasis in the middle of nothing. Gloriously hot water spewing up quite fast into a pool. I put my sore and tired feet in and soaked up the soothing warmth.

I don´t know if Ive mentioned it yet, but it is COLD in the desert right now. We are bundled up for warmth and wrapped in scarves to keep out the swirling sands. So this was a very welcome retreat. I'm also fighting off my first real sickness of the trip: a nasty headcold exacerbated by lack of sleep and dehydration.

We visited another large spring, this one cold and then went to our final destination: a high dune where we could watch the sun set across the sand. Watched some kids sand surfing down a dune and then nestled into the side of the hill to watch the sun turn orange and then red and drop into the hills of Libya. The sands turned golden and then all was blue and night set quickly.

So the last part of the desert safari was an option to stay the night in a Beduin Camp in the desert. I, of course, elected to do this without pause but I wasnt able to convince the others to join me. So Abdi dropped me off in the camp: a one-room mudbrick building with two small thatch buildings and a few canvas tents. The campfires were lit and I was quickly welcomed. Alternately, ´gosh´ or ´gee-osh´ I was made completely comfortable. Even as the other 30 guests (all Egyptian) arrived.

The Egyptian people are truly the most hospitable people. I sat at the fire and listened to the Arabic chatter in the background. Turns out that all the othes were med students at Alexandria University. A number of them spoke excellent English which was, of course, a blessing to me. And we talked of many things, music, travel, Alexandria. There is a recent movement in Arabic language hip-hop in Egypt right now that I will have to check out when I get back to the city. Amr and Omed had both been to the US on a work-study program in Jersey - I feel terrible for their introduction to the US which was Jersey and a NYC subway at 2am.

So we ate a fantastic dinner of fried chicken, salsa, some other meat which was amazing, and rice and then the girls started singing. I really love that everyone knows the same songs. We have really lost the folk tradition in the US and knowing full well that I might be asked to sing, I tried to think of any songs I actually know. Apart from a very few camp songs and my current Karaoke song of "Every Rose has its Thorn", what else do I know? Any suggestions? Thankfully no singing was required though I did, of course, get up and dance with everyone.

I then wandered away from camp for a bit to really see the sky. Just BILLIONS of stars across the southern sky with no light in the Sahara to mar the view. The milky way was a solid stripe of bright and Orion has never been so real.

Finally it was time for bed. I managed to grab a two person tent apart from the main camp - a blessing as I'm sure that the festivities went on until 3am. Thanks to my illness and exhaustion I was able to sleep almost 11 hours (actually waking up 25 minutes after Abdi was to pick me up). He showed up 10 minutes later after I had risen and packed. Perfect!

I hope that everyone is well at home. I have a terrible dial-up connection here so I'll try to post these three blog entries today but the pictures may have to wait until I get back to an urban area.