My Desert Life (or 1001 Hiding Places for Sand)

I spent the last four days in an oasis town named Siwa in the western Egyptian desert. Due to its remote location, Siwa has a unique history. The oasis enjoyed de facto self-autonomy from Egypt until recently when the Egyptian government built a road connecting Siwa to the modern world. The most prevalent form of transportation in Siwa is still donkey cart.

We rode a bus belonging to Alexandria University for the nine hour journey from Alexandria to Siwa. For those of you following at home, to find Siwa on the map, start in Libya, not Egypt. Siwa is not close to anything in Egypt. It was a long nine hours.

Notice anything peculiar in this picture?

Buses in Egypt come equipped with air conditioning and the occasional shower. Those unwillingly bathed, however, were not that amused.

The oases and desert surrounding the town of Siwa are beautiful. One day we got to go swimming in one of the springs near Siwa. It was great.

Here is the road to the spring:

And the spring! Boing!

Someone forgot their bathing suit.

The highlight of the visit to Siwa was the trip we took into the desert. I will probably use this word many more times before this post is over but it is appropriate: the desert is beautiful. We swam in a large spring surrounded by mountains of sand as the sun set. Gorgeous.

We also went sand boarding. Not quite as fast as skiing but still a lot of fun. There are no lifts though so you get some good exercise climbing back up the dunes. We dived our group into teams and had a relay race down a large sand dune. Going down was awesome. Going up was less so.


We also played ping pong (just 'ping' in arabic) with some Siwans. It just so happened that some of them go to Alexandria University and will be living with us in the dorms. Small world (with a really big desert). Matt Groh, for those of you who know and love him, was a dominate force on the Siwan ping pong circuit. He won six matches in a row. The Siwans quickly traded their initial amusement with an American opponent for a more serious approach as Matt took down some talented players. The Siwans were great company and allowed the girls play ping pong with them too.


My family in Egypt


Older than wisdom, blankets of stars, and well, if you're not going to finish that...