Palm Trees and Seashells in the Desert?

Looking back now, I can't believe I ever even considered skipping the Siwa Oasis, worrying that it was too far away and that we wouldn't have enough time there to make it worth the distance.

I think the day at the Siwa Oasis was probably my favorite day. The previous morning we got an 8:30am bus from Alex that followed the coast of the Mediterranean until Marsa Matruh and then made a left turn South toward Siwa. The landscape between Marsa Matruh and Siwa was not much to speak of until we were quite close, when suddenly mountains of sedimentary rock would appear here and there. Just after sunset, there was no doubting the fact that we were in the middle of the oasis and its 330,000 palm trees. After finding a hotel and dinner with a pair of new Japanese friends, we went quickly to sleep. Up early, we headed first to the tombs at Gebel al Mawta. We hopped on the back of an already-overloaded pick-up truck, greeted by locals trying to discourage us. One of us was quite hesitant in the matter (I’ll let you guess which one!), but we were able to hop off at the tombs without any problems.

Then for the rest of the morning, we hired a donkey cart and the three boys that accompanied it. Enjoying the day off of school, it seems that the father of one them lent them the use of his slowest donkey to earn a little cash. Fortunately, we were in no hurry, as the only time the donkey seemed to move faster than we might have walked ourselves was when the shade was quite close in front of us.

Stop One was the Temple of the Oracle, where Alexander the Great himself had come to consult the oracle and enjoy a little rest and relaxation- not too much left to see at this point.





















Next we headed to what I kept understanding as "Kilbatra." I'm embarrassed to admit that not until I actually saw the sign for "Cleopatra's bath" did I realize what they were saying. The boys quickly jumped in, and J and I were quite content to sip some Karkadee tea and watch.


Finally, we headed up to Gebel Dakrur. The mountain was a what was left of the wind-eroded sedimentary rock, and the most common sight on the way up was the boys shouting down at me, "Come on, Angeli, come on!"

Still, every effort was worth it once we could see the entire oasis from the top. As we made it to the second peak, the smallest boy brought me what looked like a handful of rocks. On closer inspection, they were clearly fossils of seashells, and they could be found all over the top! Who would have guessed that we were climbing up to what had once been on the ocean floor?

The afternoon presented us with a safari in the Great Sand Sea. With nothing but giant sand dunes as far as the eye could see, our driver quite successfully did his best to elicit squeals as he took us up angles I was sure would leave us tumbling backwards (okay, only one of us was squealing...). So much fun! J, always braver than I, rode up on top of the vehicle for a bit. After I saw that it didn't kill him, I joined him for a while and really enjoyed it. We stopped once for a chance to run, leap, scramble, and dive down the dunes and again later to catch the sunset. If I hadn't already covered my pants in tar in Luxor, I might have been more concerned about the large amounts of sand that I just couldn't seem to get rid of...

Other treats on the trip included both a cold and a hot freshwater spring, and another heap of fossils seemingly in the middle of nowhere.












That night we climbed through the ruins of Shali (top photo), an old salt-and-mud built fortress that hadn't held up well to heavy rains in the 1926. Mother Nature accomplished in three days what invadors hadn't in six centuries. In the main square, however, there is a rendition of what it was said to have looked like: