It really is White!!!!

Just came back from 2 days, 1 night camping in the White Desert...and yes, it really is white.
We left yesterday morning around 7 am, and took us around 6 hours to get there.
We did stop at a Bedouin camp half way there, for some lunch and tea...Aneta really liked it there.

There are many spots we stopped before reaching our final destination. The desert here changes so many times, from pure sand, to sand and rock, to the Black Desert and finally the White Desert.

We did stop at some larges dunes for some sandboarding...it is much harder than snowboarding or wakeboarding, as it is very hard to turn and manoeuvre...plus it's a real beotch to climb back up the dune, in the heat and with the hot sand. After a bunch of times of going down, it got really hard getting back up the dune, as each step you took, your foot went deep into the soft sand, about 2 feet deep!!

We finally got to the White Desert about 1 hour or so before sunset. We took many pics around all these weird white formations. The sunset was amazing...
We set up camp, between all these formations, in an area that was protected from wind and was flat.

It was a full moon which made it incredibly bright at night.
I am not joking when I say my ears were hurting for the first hour at night from the silence...it is something to really experience first hand. Never before have I not heard anything like this. There was no wind, no birds or animals, just nothing but silence. It was one of those experiences, which made you think about how our ears are so accustomed to the noises of cities and urban areas, that when there is no noise at all, it feels weird. The thing is, even in forest up north in Canada, you will always have some type of noise, like birds, animals, trees moving in the wind....here, in the desert, there was nothing....

We ate dinner, and drank tea, while sitting around the campfire on Bedouin mats and sharing stories.

The temperature during the day must have been around 30, and right when at sunset, the temp dropped. It was still comfortable, until the morning when we woke up...it was freezing!!! We had to wear toques!!!



We also stopped at the local village called Bawiti at the Bahariya Oasis. We sat and relaxed while eating dates with the local Bedouin.

On the drive back today, after stopping in the middle of the desert for washroom break and lunch, we heard a loud pop...flat tire... our guide quickly changed the tire, and we were off again. He usually carries 2 or 3 spares, as this is a common occurrence with the abuse of driving up and down dunes, over rocks, etc.

Right now we are relaxing at our hotel in Cairo...technically only 2 more days to go :(

Tomorrow the souk, museum and some mosques!!!

The call to prayer will wake us up early tomorrow.



Talk to you guys tomorrow...and remember today's lesson, never lift rocks in the desert, you may get a surprise viper or cobra attack and never shake peoples left hand in the desert!! ;)