A long time ago (somewhen between Kenya and India), in a land far, far away (9 hours by bus), our heroes discovered a magical land of sun, sand, and stone. A land with only three colors - blue, white, and tan. A land where the finest dates on earth dangle over salt-lit rootops, forgotten in the midst of many more. A land of history, mystery, oracles, and the never-ending desert. I speak, of course, of Siwa.
Lyricism zhalas. Siwa is grade-A magic, and you should drop whatever you're doing and head for the bus station. Beauty like this won't last.
Siwa's a fascinating place. It's basically the last stop before Libya by slow camel, and it takes a whopping 9 hours to get there from Cairo - 12 hours returning due to traffic. We took a West Delta bus through Marsa Matruh and left first thing in the morning, so we could arrive in Siwa in the late afternoon. The bus ride was fine (the bus as far as MM was a VIP model, and the rest of the way could've been worse, especially for the price) but we were glad to alight in the square next to the tourist office and the bus stop ...
Where we immediately accosted by the donkey mafia. That's right. There's nothing more terrifying than a gang of 8-yr-old boys with whips, all of whom want you in their donkey cart. We shrugged them off (various imprecations followed) and walked clear across town to our hotel, which took all of about 7 minutes. We stayed at the Shali Lodge, a sustainable property in town owned by the same people who run the incomparable Adrere Amellal. Of course, we couldn't afford to stay at Adrere Amellal - $400 per person, per night (full board and all activities, granted) is a bit out of our price range. But the Shali Lodge was $60 a night, it was right in town, and the food was as good as it gets in Siwa.
The Shali is the mud fortress in the center of town. It's a sprawling structure, and it's amazing to realize it's ruined because ... it rained. For a few days in the 1920s. This country never ceases to astound me.
Our first morning in Siwa we woke up, bought some oranges, hiked around the Shali for a bit, and then rented some bikes.
I know what you're thinking. No, you're on the right blog. I actually agreed to ride a bike. It was that or the damned donkey mafia.
We decided to do the full loop east of town, taking in Siwa's historical sites - a few springs, a ruined temple, the famous Temple of Amun (where Alexander came to see the Oracle, reasons unknown, picture below), and miles and miles of date groves. It was quite pleasant, actually, almost no traffic, a reasonable road, bright sunshine, a soft breeze.
We missed the turn. By a long shot. The locals must've thought we were completely nuts. Every time I asked for directions, I got a puzzled stare (that's always when I replay my recent Arabic) and then a broad sweeping gesture, pointing waaaaay back. My legs and my back were becoming more and more tired, my ass was killing me, and the wind was picking up. I was not amused. And when I'm not happy, KC's not happy.
Eventually we found the place, and KC offered to buy me a consolation shisha. There were a few other guests - not many - and we parked ourselves at the edge of the lake to smoke our shisha in peace.
This was where things started to get weird.
An Egyptian man stumbled over to our table, seated himself, introduced himself as Mostafa Ibrahim Mostafa, and started talking, stopping only long enough to take the shisha pipe out of my hand and smoke it himself. He was speaking English, but it was a very strange conversation. Either the guy was a flaming liar - or he owns homes in Alex and Cairo, farms in the Delta, a shipping business, and various travel agencies. I dunno. He was either a loon or a millionaire. We were a bit irritated by his presumption - smoking our pipe! - and we were trying to beat the sunset back into town. We started giving the guy false information, wrong phone numbers, incorrect travel plans. I slipped up and gave our real hotel name, but he didn't seem to be listening anyway.
Eventually we'd had enough. KC stood up, thanked our "guest," and walked off to pay for the shisha. Mr. Mostafa tried to pressure me into accepting a ride into town in his tok-tok, but I begged off, explaining we had bicycles. I hustled out to the clearing where we'd left the bikes - we were trying to get the hell out of there before Mostafa caught up. I noticed a rusted-up tok-tok by our bikes.
And then a dwarf with outward pointing eyes ambled past me.
Oh my God, I thought, that has got to be the tok-tok driver. I was right, of course.
We pedaled furiously down the causeway (broken ass, broken ass) trying to put some distance between us and the danger zone. All too soon we heard the tok-tok approaching from behind. Mostafa was lying in the back of the tok-tok, shouting into his cell phone. He stopped long enough to give us some candy and to tell us that he eats at Abdu's every day. Then he took off, and we completed our (much shorter) journey back to town.
We climbed the Shali again to watch a lovely sunset, then took a walk to do some shopping. I was yammering away at KC about something as we turned a corner. To my total shock, KC grabbed my arm and roughly pushed me back behind him. I opened my mouth to let out an indignant squawk when KC murmured, "Mostafa." Il'hamdu'illeh, KC had spotted the man - sure enough, in Abdu's - before he spotted us. We beat a hasty retreat to the Shali Lodge, where we had another delicious dinner next to the fire. We hid for the rest of the evening in our room.
The next morning we pulled ourselves out of bed and hiked over to the Gebel Al-Mawta, the Mountain of the Dead. The mountain is peppered with tombs all the way up to the summit. Four of the tombs can be entered, but otherwise it's just scrambling around and exploring - our favorite way to travel. Human bones - including skull fragments - littered the ground. The view was extraordinary, and for awhile we had the place to ourselves.
In the afternoon we left town for a desert safari. We'd manage to badger the management of the Shali Lodge into getting permission for us to go out to Adrere Amellal - although no amount of pleading could get us a meal there. Our light-eyed Berber guide showed up smack on time, and we decided to go to the ecolodge first. The place is breathtaking. The property is nestled between a towering sandstone/limestone outcrop and a shimmering lake. Everything is beautifully designed and perfectly proportioned. The building materials are all local, salt and mud and fossils. Can you imagine an entire room with walls made of salt? And what that looks like, when the sunlight shines through? Stunning. There were (foreign) wine bottles everywhere, and we could smell pizza. I recently met a guy who stayed there, and he said it was worth every cent. Hard to imagine, I know, but I was blown away by this place.
Then it was off to the Sahara! Finally I laid eyes on the Great Sand Sea - just the beginning of it, mind you, but there it was, the desert to end all deserts. Our sadistic driver decided what the khawagas really, really wanted was four hours of mortal terror. And so our afternoon went, racing up dunes hundreds of feet high, so steep you could only see the sky in front of you; then killing the engine just at the crest, so the jeep dangled on the edge, slowly teetering forward; and finally, the impact of the wheels on the forward incline and the roar of the engine, your stomach somewhere between your feet and the sand flying everywhere. I can't even begin to tell you how fucking terrified I was ... check out the video. It was outstanding.
Eventually we took a terror break and stopped to check out some really great fossils. It's all marine sediments, of course - limestone - and our guide took us to some beds of fossilized sand dollars. The place has been pretty well mined out, but it's easy to picture what else could be lurking under the sands. We came away with a few nice specimens.
We drove out to Bir Wahed, a lovely well/spring out in the sand where KC took a swim while I went for a little walk. Everything was fine until the place was invaded by about 30 Italians in Range Rovers - the same Italians who'd driven us out of Gebel El Mawta in the morning, oddly. We crossed a set of dunes to put some distance between us, and then KC and I hiked up a dune and horsed around, balancing on the crest, shouting into the sky, and finally we raced down the dune face, spraying sand everywhere. KC picked up about 6 pounds of sand in his boots.
Finally our guide took us back toward town up to a lone crest. He left us on the ridge to watch the sunset, while he went back to the jeep to pray. We watched the colors change from white to gold to rose to bronze to violet. We felt the wind pick up. All was silent.
And absolutely perfect. Go. Go now. Before it's too late.
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