the desert is awesome

i just got back from an oasis called siwa. we left cairo early in the morning on sunday and basically rode a bus all day; we went through matruh (a little city on the med coast) and arrived in siwa at about 10 pm. this oasis is about the most relaxed place on earth; im told that until december of last year they didnt even have cars on the road. as it was, there were more donkey carts and bicycles than automobiles, and the town was so tiny that you could walk most places anyway. so we walked into the hostel and got three rooms (there were 6 of us; my 3 roommates, 2 random chicks and me) for a grand total of 70 pounds a night. that is, in case you havent caught on to the exchange rate math yet, about 2 dollars per person per night. 60 dollars to stay at this place for a month. unbelievable, i know.
we dropped our stuff and set out a-wandering; about 50 yards from our front door was something called the "melting city;" this fortress is, im told, almost 2000 years old, and people still live inside and keep animals in the rooms. unfortunately it is made mostly of mud, plus a little bone and a little palm wood. this isnt usually a problem in the desert, but sometime in the 50's it rained for like 3 days straight in siwa, hence the name "melted city." most of the roofs are gone, the sidewalks and stairs run together, and the place is altogether a picturesque ruin. but even so, several families have just slapped roofs back on to buildings in the lower levels, and during our exploration we accidentally walked in to what ended up being a shop filled with these beautiful scarves and dresses handmade by these two girls who just ... live in ruins in the middle of the desert and sew, i guess. it was weird. but they were really nice; we bought some stuff from them and then as we were walking away they chased us down and gave us presents. they gave me this cute little hand-woven bowl- very nifty.
anyhoo, we left the ruins and the random shop and went to the restaurant across from our hostel; this turned out to be an utterly incredible restaurant starring these weird crepe-pancake thingies filled with whatever you want. that night we had them filled with veggies and cheese, but later we had them filled with bananas and chocolate and jam and lemon stuff and powdered sugar... (not all at the same time) ...they were delicious. add in hummus and pizza and variously cooked eggs and tahini and couscous and make everything cost less than 3 dollars and you will start to understand the awesomeness of this place. plus it was filled (just like the entire town) with extraordinarily friendly people who were all at least proficient, if not fluent, in english. then after dinner we talked to a guy about a safari into the desert and we haggled him down to about 40 pounds less than anything listed in my guidebook, so that was exciting. and then we went to sleep.
we were out by about 10 the next morning; we headed straight to a rental shop and got bikes and then rode out to what was listed on the map as "cleopatra's well." i didnt know whether this was really a well or if it was a spring or a river or what, but we had swimming stuff just in case. when we got there we saw that it really did look like a well except for the fact that it was about 30 feet across and filled with little swimming siwan boys. so we changed and jumped in; the water (which did, in fact, come from an underground spring) was so amazingly cool after riding through the desert. then, in spite of language barriers, this 20-something siwan guy started a diving contest. he and i and luke got giant running starts and dove and flipped into the well and jumped over branches held by other little boys (actually luke mostly just crashed into the branches and fell into the well, but whatever). and then the guy taught me how to do a backflip which i was psyched about. terrified, but psyched. so we chilled at the well for a while, and we would have eaten lunch at the restaurant there, which reputedly serves camel upon special request, but it was the first day of ramadan and all the restaurants were closed during the day (which sucked, by the way). so we just rode on to some more ruins. we saw what was left of a busted temple that one of the girls said was 2400 years old, and then we went to the temple of the siwan oracle, or what is left of it, which is also more than 2000 years old. they were really interesting, but they were ruins so im not going to spend words describing them. use your imagination.
then we went back and met up with the guy who was driving us on our safari. i thought this was a really misleading term, actually, because there arent really any spectacular animals in the great sand sea (aka the western desert). but it turns out that "safari" in arabic just means "desert trip," or something close to that, so its actually remarkably appropriate. anyway, the six of us piled into muhammad's four wheel drive jeep and headed off for the dunes. our guide, in addition to being really friendly, was very experienced at freaking people out while driving in the desert; it was literally like a roller coaster in a car. and when youre coming up to the top of a dune, you cant tell whether it shoots straight down 150 meters or just sort of coasts down a few feet, so flying over these things was pretty exhilarating. some of the dunes that we drove (or slid, as it were) down were so steep that i, sitting sideways in the very back, was literally falling over the seats in front of me onto the backs of my friends. muhammad would just stop at the top, which is why we slid, which was extra scary. and then our jeep broke down. seriously. in the middle of the desert, it just died. so he yelled and hit it with a wrench for a while, but he couldnt get it to start, so he sent us out to play in the dunes while he checked the engine. you might not think it, but running to the top of a dune is about the most exhausting thing ever. screw rowing or cross country skiing- dune sprinting takes the cake. eventually he got the truck going long enough to make it to an oasis, so we got out and swam in this moderately sized lake in the middle of the desert while he fixed the car. a couple of brits were doing the same safari thing that we were doing, so we chatted with them while we swam, and then muhammad called us to pile back in the jeep to head off to the hot spring. you might be wondering why anyone would want to sit in a hot spring in the desert, and... thats a good question. but it was there and i got in and it was lovely and smelled like sulfur. and then we got back into the jeep to go to muhammad's favorite spot to watch the sunset and we jammed to techno music from luke's iphone while we watched. i will try to describe, but you might just have to wait for me to steal pictures from jonah and the girls. the entire horizon was covered with huge, graceful dunes, but directly ahead, just under the sun, was the cold oasis where we first swam, a random patch of green in the middle of enormous yellow waves. eh, i cant even do it justice. it was nice, though. and as soon as we got back into the car muhammad started eating dates and chugging water because he had been awake since 5 am without food. and then we went to this hut place (did i mention that the safari was overnight?) and ate dinner with another random siwan, and then we wandered in the dark, cold desert for a while. muhammad went back to town so his friend followed us around wherever we went, which i thought was weird until i turned to go back to camp and realized that it was pitch black and everything was sand. so i guess technically he was useful to have since he kept us from being lost in the desert for who knows how long. and he also dug holes and buried people (sand baths are supposed to be very healthy) and he gave luke a massage. then we went back to the hut place and the six of us crashed on blankets in the sand and watched the stars and told stories. there are so many stars in the desert. and of course we saw, literally, dozens of shooting ones, plus what one girl swore was a ufo. questionable, but splendid nonetheless. then i didnt sleep all night because the flies in the desert are horrible and bite all of your exposed skin, but i wont dwell on that because it was pretty much the only bad thing that happened during the entire trip. i got up at like 530 in the morning and just sat in a chair and killed flies for 2 straight hours, though, to exact revenge. gradually the others woke up and we ate and muhammad drove us back to town.
rereading that i realize that i am overusing the word "literally," but i fear that some of this stuff sounds exaggerated. it usually isnt; exaggeration isnt even necessary.
so back at the hostel we met a couple of other travelers and made plans to hang out with them later, and then i took a shower and went to sleep. we were all up and about at about 1 and we met up with the other guys, zach and muniir (from michigan and jerusalem, respectively), who had conveniently hired a truck and driver, so we tagged along with them to some other fun ruins. true to tradition, i climed a mountain barefoot, only this time there was a huge plain on the top that was covered with, believe it or not, shells. apparently most of the great sand sea was at one time an actual sea; some parts house huge shark and whale fossils, and the mountains are covered with shells. i figure that walking on broken shells isnt as bad as walking on broken glass, but it still hurt a lot so i climbed down and we went to another well. this one was salty but just as cold, which was vastly refreshing, and it was surrounded by date trees, so we spent about half an hour swimming in the middle of a palm forest eating dates just picked off of the trees. best day ever? it actually gets better.
we went back to town and zach and muniir went off on a safari of their own, but we made dinner plans (theirs wasnt overnight). then we just chilled and shopped until sunset, and at dark we went to the restaurant across from the hostel again. we met the other guys and had another amazing dinner of pancakes, etc. and it turned out that our new friends had the same driver for their safari, so muhammad invited all of us to his shop to drink tea and look at amazing pictures of the desert. then we had a dance party in his scarf room, and then he invited us to come smoke sheesha with him. but first i had to buy some dates, because siwan dates are amazing, so i went to a shop and got a couple of boxes of fresh dates plus a liter of olive oil (siwan olive oil is famous, too, actually) for like 45 pounds. then the girls and i went to this tapestry shop and one of them bought a really nice wall hanging, and the shop owner was really friendly and invited us to have tea with him too, so we did. and then the other guys came up and we were all like, ah, we have to smoke with muhammad, so we ran to this garden in the middle of the city and smoked and talked and drank hibiscus extract juice (most delicious drink ever) until about 1 in the morning. the town was hopping the whole time, too, because everyone works at night there because its so flipping hot during the day, and plus you cant eat during ramadan... it was like the whole town was at our party.
so this guy who we met, muniir, is a professor in jerusalem, and he is really one of the most interesting people i have ever talked to. first off, he speaks about 6 languages, plus at least 4 dialects of arabic, so that was really impressive to all of us aspiring linguists (especially luke, who is, in reality, a linguistics major). we spent the evening talking about linguistics and learning fun phrases in arabic and hebrew and french and swahili and german and listening to muniir tell amazing stories about stuff that he has done. and he invited us to crash with him when we go to jerusalem, so huzzah, free place to stay.
then we went to bed, got up at 630 and came back to cairo.
as you can tell, 2 of the longest days of my life :)