Desert camping adventure: Joe's summary

[Reference map located here.]


We took a big 8 day, 7 night desert camping trip recently and drove 2000km (1,200 miles) over rocks, dirt and dunes. It was a marathon driving session, but we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed the trip. It was the best we have felt since arriving in Egypt, as the air was pure, there was no traffic and no people.

It was warm in the day, probably 75F in the sun and it got cold at night. We had to wear hats, gloves and fleeces to stay warm (maybe it was 45 or 50F at night). We saw several oases, Berber people who are the nomadic tribes that used to move around Northern Africa and lots of geological marvels. In Siwa Oasis we saw the ruins of a temple where Alexander the Great was declared a pharaoh (remember he invaded and conquered Egypt) by the Oracle who was kind of a famous swami at the time.

We toured the town via Donkey Cart which made Henry and Nathan very excited. Except when the cart driver beat the donkey with a stick. That wasn't so good. Even worse was that the donkey had calluses on his flanks from so many beatings and he ignored most of them. In which case, things got worse and the driver then whacked him on the Achilles tendons. But donkey's are notoriously stubborn, so sometimes the driver leaned way down and gave him a special whacking that I suspect utilized the scrotum as a focused target. THAT would get his attention! Ouch! Poor, poor donkey. I now think that I will try to be extra good in this life so that I am not reincarnated as an Egyptian donkey. Food for thought.

The Great Sand Sea was amazing. It spans the Egypt/Libyan border and is the stuff Hollywood portrays - hundreds of miles of perfect dunes. No rocks, no plants, devoid of life (except one white lizard, two butterflies and a dragonfly), no roads and no people. Absolutely beautiful and pristine. It reminded me of Thomson Pass in Alaska in the winter - you can see forever and the dunes make shapes just like snow drifts. We slept out under the stars one night and the moon was so bright I could read the ingredients on a box of graham crackers while making smores over a campfire. For fun we sand boarded which is like snow boarding but 10 times harder. The boards are short like a skateboard, they have no edges for turning, and the wax wears off half way down the slope at which point I would do a face plant. Jessie dominated the dunes with lots of good board runs and by high marking and jumping them with our 4X4 truck. She is a desert goddess and is not to be trifled with out there. She was the only woman driver on the trip and intimidated the macho Egyptian males.

We also played cricket, boche ball, threw my boomerangs, flew a kite (I taught the boys how to do this - it was a precious father moment for me) and climbed and slid down dunes on our butts or sleds. Driving through the dunes was great and we got to surf down their slip-faces in an avalanche of sand! Sometimes people got stuck, but we dug them out, towed them out or used sand mats to drive on and get out of soft spots.

We saw the Western White Desert with strange chalk formations, found skulls and tombs in a mountain (which looked like grave robbers had found a long time ago), saw the Golden Mummies in Baharia that were basically Greco-Roman mummies painted in gold and discovered by a donkey in 1997. Hopefully that donkey didn't get a scrotum whipping for a couple of days as a reward for being good. They have just begun excavation and experts think there may be up to 10,000 mummies.

The boys did very well driving for 8 days in the car and there were only 2 or 3 fights per day in the back of the car. Some kicking, punching and clawing but no biting because the seat belts restrain them very well. Thank Allah.