I haven't written in a long while, since Luxor, which leaves a lot to be covered. So I'm going to do my best to basically skim over what's taken place since then. In Luxor I found three other travelers who also wanted to cover the distance from the city of Luxor, on the Nile in southern Egypt, westward to one of the oases in the western desert of Egypt, called the Dhakla oases. There are about a half dozen major oases in western Egypt, which are simply places where, for one reason or another (mostly because they're low in elevation, in some cases below sea level) springs exist that provide water that otherwise would be non-existent. In most of Egypt it seems, it can go for years without any rain at all. So these few oases are the only sign of greenery and much else in the way of life, including human, in the midst of miles and miles of barren desert.
So the route from Luxor west to the Dhakla oasis, about a 6 hour journey driving directly, wasn't covered by the bus system. Instead you have to pay to hire a private car and driver (just a taxi actually), which was more than a hundred dollars. But split 4 ways it was much more reasonable. So I told the people at my hotel that I wanted to do this and they kept their ears open for other people who also wanted to make the trip. It ended up being myself, Jeffrey also from Portland, Oregon, and Angelique from Canada and Idoia from Spain, the two of whom had been traveling together for a while.
We drove all day through the stark yet beautiful desert, and our driver dropped us off at a desert camp that was a few miles outside of a small village at the edge of the oasis. The desert camp was essentially a collection of small adobe-style mud buildings, built for the purposes of visiting tourists to experience the surrounding desert. It was a gorgeous setting at the base of some cliffs, within view of the nearby oasis but otherwise surrounded completely by desert. There was a hot spring there, which we were all too eager to relax into after our long journey.
The next day Jeffrey headed out to find a somewhat cheaper place to stay in the nearby village, and Angelique, Idoia and I split a room to make it more affordable. We went for a hike out into the desert that day, and otherwise just relaxed back at the hotel room.
The next day we headed out as well, to the nearby village of Al Qasr, in which we toured a now-abandoned section of the town, that was built and lived in during medieval times. It was quite a fascinating look into how people lived hundreds of years ago, as the town was entirely intact, with multi-level mud buildings, narrow, shaded alleys and even a small mill that would have been powered by a horse or donkey.
That evening we caught a bus to another oases, Bahariya, about 5 hours away heading towards Athens, and spent the night at another camp in the desert. The next day we signed up for an overnight jeep excursion out into the desert near there. We got a late start, drove (or rather, our 26-year-old Egyptian guide drove) for an hour or so up a highway and then turned onto a smaller road, and then an even smaller one, driving pretty much right through the sandy desert. We arrived shortly after dark at one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen. It was pure golden sand shaped into undulating dunes, with different rock formations sticking straight up out of the sand. Unfortunately, my camera had locked up me and wasn't working at this point. But Angelique and Idoia took plenty of photos, that I'll be able to share at some point.
We hung out around a campfire as our multi-talented guide cooked up a great dinner; and then slept under the stars. The next morning we enjoyed the surreal scene in daylight for a while; and then headed out and continued through the desert. We stopped at one mini-oasis along the way, that looked like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon, with three or four palm trees sticking up out of the desert. There was a spring there that collected into several different pools that you could go swimming in, so we did just that. Then we started heading back towards town, passing lots more amazing desert landscapes along the way.
That afternoon the three of us caught a bus into Cairo, arriving late that night. Angelique and Idoia got a room, and I got my own in the same hotel. At that point I had about five days before I flew from Cairo back to Greece, and thought that I might leave Cairo to go visit Alexandria or Marsa Matruh, both cities on the northern coast of Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea, west of Cairo and the Nile. But I also knew that I had a bunch of stuff I could take care of in Cairo, and wasn't all that into more extended bus journeys. Angelique and Idoia spent another day in Cairo to view the pyramids; and then took off the following morning, bound for the Sinai peninsula.
As it turned out, I didn't make it out of Cairo at all before my flight. The main thing that I had to do was a lot of shopping. My next destination is Turkey, and it's going to be cold there, especially in the interior near Cappadocia. I figured it would be a lot cheaper to buy clothes and other things there in Egypt rather than in either Greece or Turkey. So I went on a shopping spree and got a new jacket, 3 pairs of pants, shirt, new shoes, belt, socks and underwear, long underwear, gloves, a hat and I forget what else; as well as some assorted gifts.
Also, I needed to book a flight back home, which turned into a bit of a pain as my credit card wasn't working, so I had to make a few phone calls to my bank to get that straightened out. Eventually I got that smoothed out and then booked a flight from Istanbul back to San Francisco for Dec. 16th. Also in Cairo I visited a few areas of the city that I hadn't seen before, and wrote a bunch of postcards. And one evening I watched a soccer match on TV at my hotel, between Egypt and Algeria. Egypt won 2-0, and Cairo went crazy with people pouring into the streets. I'll post a video of that later.
Wrapping things up, I got up early yesterday morning, caught my flight to Athens without incident, Dianna met me at the airport, and now I'm here staying at Dianna's apartment again. We're making plans to head for Turkey, and may actually take a flight instead of going by ferry, since it's almost the same price. We're looking at flying to Istanbul, and then Antalya on the southern coast of Turkey, next Monday or Tuesday. I'll write again sometime between now and then when we get the plans straightened out.
No comments:
Post a Comment