My journey to Siwa on April 29th began far too early. I was up and out of the house before the rest of my host family was awake… and my host family fall under that annoying category of “morning people.” Yes, they’re wonderful hosts and all, I just don’t understand how they can be so chipper and smiley before 11 am! Of course they were awake by the time returned to the house to retrieve my forgotten passport. After that minor setback Heidi, Kristi, and I were off to Siwa with our Egyptian driver, George. George was a quirky guy. What do I mean by this? Well, for instance, when we reached the edge of Cairo and began speeding away from the city at a speed of 150 km/h, George pulled out a box of wooden matches. He pulled a match from the box, and proceeded to stick the match (sulfur-end first) into his ear. He fished around in his ear for a bit, then pulled out the match to inspect the crop he harvested. At this point he flicked the earwax off with his fingers and re-inserted the match into his ear. He continued to clean both of his ears in this manner. I watched all of this out of the corner of my eye for a good ten minutes! Yep, that was George our driver. His English wasn’t amazing so we didn’t waste much time in conversation, but by spending time with him throughout our weekend in Siwa I feel I got to know him pretty well.
Siwa is an oasis town in Western Egypt located near the Libya/Egypt border. Much of the bottled water in Egypt comes from bottling plants in this area. We toured around the town of Siwa in a Jeep one day and a donkey cart the next day. I have to say the donkey on Shrek looks a lot better kept than the donkey that pulled us around town. Even if our donkey looked like the donkey on Shrek, it wouldn’t change the fact that we had to stare at its butt all afternoon. Not the best view, in my opinion. Oh well, city-boy George got a kick out of driving our donkey cart for a bit. After checking out a few of the natural springs around the town, we piled into a jeep (joined by two other girls whom we didn’t know) and headed out to the ‘Great Sand Sea’ to do some sandboarding! We happened to find actual snowboards with boots and bindings at one of the shops in Siwa before we headed out to the desert. Most shops only have these ridiculous looking wooden boards with little straps that you slip your shoes into. We were hardcore.
Our trek through the Great Sand Sea was a lively one. In order to keep from getting stuck in the sand the drivers would have to go at a fairly high speed. When you speed up sand dunes, though, you never know which ones are flat at the top, or which ones have a massive drop-off at the top. We encountered both. That’s how George ended up getting stitches. Poor George was sitting in the back of a Jeep that didn’t have any seats and he was launched forward when we careened off of one of those dunes. He sucked it up until after we finished our sandboarding, though. Interestingly enough, Ali, the driver of our Jeep also ended up getting stitches for an entirely unrelated incident. The jeep that George was riding in the back of got a flat tire. While Ali was changing the tire, he somehow cut his wrist open! I have no idea how this happened. We were too busy trying to spell words in the sand with our shadows. It’s not as easy as it sounds! This post is getting quite long, though, so I guess I should finish our adventure off some other time (that and I have to go to the bathroom).
1 comment:
You gotta love that host family of yours ;-) Maybe the chirpiness is caused by the coffee at 8 am..?
give em alla big hug for me!
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