Posted by Laura Gardner in
Travel Blogs on November 19, 2009 |
No Comments Siwa, Egypt
Early start (again!) for a fairly tough 500km by 4WD to Siwa.
We met at the appointed time to form a convoy with 4 other vehicles to Siwa – because of the proximity to the Lybian border travel is by convouy with a military representitive, not for our protection, but to make sure we don’t do anything naughty, like sneaking into Lybia. Of course, in true Egyptian style we waited around for 30min while they tried to find the army guy who was coming with us – about 23 phone calls later we took off to another checkpoint and finally found our man.
The road to Siwa is mostly non existant, there is the remnants of a sealed road but in many cases it is smoother just to drive on the sand, our drivers have disconcerting habit of swerving onto the sand at 120kph when things get a bit too bumpy, and even at that speed we are berated by the army guy for not keeping up.
There are patches of brand new road, they seem to have started in the middle of the desert and are building towards Bahariyya and Siwa.
We stopped at an oasis for lunch – was just like the movies, sand everywhere the a small lake with reeds around it.
We made good time and hit Siwa around 4pm, time to check into the hotel and head up to the top of the old town to watch the sunset.
Headed to Tanta Waa restaurant at Cleopatra’s Spring for dinner, super cool location and great food. Travelled by donkey cart which was ok but the donkey pulling Andrew and my cart was struggling and the driver was beating crap out of it which we weren’t happy about so we told our tour leader we wouldn’t be going back in it.
Back to town and a relax in a coffee shop with Flora, Phil and Callina with a tea and strawberry sheesha.
Next morning was a cruisy late start, 9am brekky then onto bikes to se the sights of Siwa, the main transport in Siwa is donkey cart or bike, so while there are cars, the best way is by bike.
Took our time around the sights, saw the tombs at Mountain of the Dead and then to the Temple of the Oracle, Alexander the Great visited here to consult the oracle.
Getting pretty warm by then so luckily next stop was Cleopatra’s Spring – whether Cleopatra ever swum here – who knows, but we certainly did. It’s an idyllic and peaceful location, when not infested by a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis doing bombs 
After we had cooled off we retreated to Tanta Waa cafe again for fresh mango and pomegranate juice and lunch.
Next adventure was into the desert again. Picked up at 3pm in 4WDs ti head for the Great Sand Sea on the edge of town – this is proper dune desert with massive windblown dunes. As usual our drivers were mad and took us up and down some massive dunes – we stopped for a bit of sandboarding which was fun, but the climb back up the dune wasn’t. On to some hot springs and some tea the back to town for dinner.
Great dinner in a BBQ restaurant, BBQs out in the street – kid sitting turning rotissere chickens by hand. Finally had camel – yummy.
