Bahariya Oasis: An Overnight Stay in a Desert

Cate and I battling the wind at the rest stop on the way to Bahariya.
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Hi Guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but like I predicted, schoolwork has gotten in the way.  Plus, until this past weekend I hadn't done anything too interesting.  School is still kind of boring, and crew's the same.  And by the same, I mean that in the past couple of practices the following has occurred: Hye Won almost fell in while getting into the boat a couple of practices ago and we managed to hit 2 boats in the matter of 10 minutes last practice...  Whatever.  I think we're making slow and steady improvement though.

Cate, Megan, and the other Katie ("Irish") at one of the small villages.
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This past weekend 6 of us made our first independent weekend trip.  We went to Bahariya Oasis, which is about a 5 hour bus ride from Cairo.  We took off from Cairo on the 8 o'clock bus on Friday morning.  Besides the bus station in Cairo looking slightly decrepid, all went according to plan and we were on the right bus and taking off from the bus station at exactly 8 am (an amazing feat, really).

The bus ride down to the oasis was really nice.  We got a bit of a break at a rest stop about half way there.  After using the washrooms (and for this, think Japan (aka: hole in the ground), but throw in about a billion flies), we took some pictures while we waited for the bus to get going again.  It was so windy there, but also really warm and that was really nice.  After we got back onto the bus, we noticed that the flies had managed to sneak their way on as well.  We spend most of the rest of the trip swatting at them.  We had to make several stops in small towns along the way.  It was neat to see.  There were always a lot of kids outside the bus stops and they would be waving at us.  We got into Bahariya at about 1:00 and were greeted by a bunch of tour guides and hotel employees.  We decided on one of the places that some other AUC kids had gone to the weekend before.  We were driven to the place in two different cars.  Ours smelled like gasoline, so I think everyone in our car had a headache by the time were got to Ahmed's Safari Camp.  The place was really nice.  After being presented with the different tour options, we decided to do the 2 day/1 night desert tour.  The tour included 3 meals and the promise of us seen about 8 different places.  In total it cost us about $60 Canadian, so it was a really great deal.

Megan and Cate in front of the jeep as we got ready to leave for our overnight campout in the White Desert.
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After getting our lunch of cheese and a rather suspicious looking bowl of tuna fish (which I picked at- I see the Nile up close and personal 4 times a week, and I'm not keen on eating anything that comes out of it), we got into our jeep.  We stopped a couple of times to pick up some firewood and food for dinner.  Our first main stop though was at the White Desert.  I'm not sure exactly what the desert is made up (possibly a limestone?), but whatever it is, it's definitely white.  Adding to the uniqueness are these huge, strangly shaped rocks.  We wandered around and climbed on the rocks, getting extremely dusty in the process.  After we got back into the jeep, our drivers took us further into the White Desert, but to an area that was called the "New White Desert," apparently called this because it's cleaner.  I didn't really notice much of a difference though.

Me with one of the huge, white rocks in the White Desert.
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The guys got our camp set up for us and made us dinner of rice and veggies.  It was really good, but I was starving after not having much of the tuna fish for lunch, so I think that almost anything would have been great.  At this point it was pitch black out, so we all went to sleep pretty quickly.  It was really great though because we got to sleep under the stars.  Mind you, the desert was so dusty that we couldn't see any stars.  The tour group even supplied all of the bedding for us, so we didn't have to bring much along.

Megan and I running along a sand dune.
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I woke up the next morning to hear the other Katie ("Irish") say "No, that's not it."  I think it woke up most of us.  Cate was beside me and went to go and investigate.  Irish wasn't in her bed, so we were both concerned, but figured that she had gone to sleep inside the jeep.  Cate came back and we were both kind of lying there, wondering what was going on.  The next thing we know, Irish come walking around the jeep.  Apparently, she had gone to the washroom in the middle of the night and had gotten lost and had spend the past 4 hours lost in the desert.  She wandered around for a while before giving up and sitting on one of the huge rocks for the rest of the night.  Anyways, we were all very thankful to have her back and that nothing horrible had happened to her, but we still felt bad for not noticing that she was gone half the night.

Our second day was sight-seeing filled.  After a breakfast that we shared with the flies, we went to the Rose Mountain, the Crystal Mountain, the Black Desert, climbed Black Mountain, played on a sand dune (Cate and I rolled down it) and saw a village and the surrounding hot springs.  By the time that we were done, we were so dirty and grimy.  Keep in mind that all that we had a some hand sanitizer.  Notice how everyone's wearing glasses in the pictures.  No one wanted to risk an eye infection by attempting to get contacts in.  We were back at the hotel by 1 and had to wait around until we finally took off at 3 pm.  Unfortunately, when we went to book our return tickets, the buses back to Cairo were full.  The hotel though arranged a microbus (think big van) to take us back to Cairo.  It was super squishy and we were stopped by police a couple of times.  Instead of being dropped off at the bus terminal, we were dropped off at Giza and had to pay more for the ride back to the dorms.  Other than the bad trip home, the rest of the weekend was amazing.

More later!

Katie