Black and White Desert

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The journey began at 6:00am from Cairo. Lauren (my friend and fellow intern) and I traveled south of Cairo to the Western desert's Bahariya Oasis to experience one of Egypt's natural wonders. We arrived at the oasis over an hour ahead of schedule - the drive from Cairo only took 4.5 hours, mostly of which we both slept through. From the town of Bawiti in the oasis, we jumped into a jeep with our Bedouin driver and headed out to the desert. We first visited the Black Desert, which was slightly disappointing. However, the White Desert did not fail to impress. The guide drove us all over to see the interesting rock formations. These included the fish, the chicken, the rabbit, and the mushroom. One funny moment in particular was going to a site and our guide told us flower rock. We got out of the jeep and looked around trying to imagine which rock formation looked like a flower. We couldn't decide, therefore, we just snapped a couple pictures of the surrounding and headed back to the jeep. While we were doing this our driver was picking through rocks on the ground and then hands us several rocks saying, flower rocks. We felt really embarrassed but had a good laugh.

We spent the rest of the day explore the desert and when the sun started setting our driver selected a spot to set up camp and started to prepare dinner. In the mean time Lauren and I wondered around taking pictures and enjoyed the peacefulness of the desert - total opposite of life in Cairo. Our driver had all the equipment needed to set up camp, including cushions to serve as seats and our beds for the night, a dinning table, firewood, pots and pans, etc. He had everying except for a bathroom, which Lauren was not happy about. Dinner was amazing - we had grilled chicken, rice and a potato and tomato mixture. We ate oranges for desert, which the driver bought earlier that day in town. There were the best oranges I have ever tasted. After dinner, we practiced our Arabic speaking skills with the driver and called it a night pretty earlier because we were going to wake up with the sun (around 5:00am). Lauren and I slept in the tiny tent that the driver had in the jeep, our legs were sticking out, and he slept outside. During the middle of the night there was a sandstorm and a good amount of sand ended up in the tent, but we felt bad for our driver who only had blankets to protect himself with. We visited a couple other sites, and then headed back into town to drive back to Cairo. Overall, it was a nice, peaceful and relaxing getaway from the city that never sleeps.

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Comments

[Maple]

I love the shroom!!!

[Maple]

I love the shroom!!!