Desert!

On the bus back to Cairo.

Woke up, had a decent breakfast, had a class about deserts, and got into the land rovers. It wasn't far to the black desert, an area that was volcanic ages and ages ago. The “black” comes from basalt thrusting up through the earth left over from the volcanoes. Really stark pillars and mountains, though it's covered by sand some places. We also saw a few attempts at cultivation, some more successful than others.

We got to see a sand dune, what they call a “whale dune” here because it's so big. We also got to climb up it, an adventure in itself, and get a group photo at the top. Wow, the view was beautiful. Sliding down it, well, sliding worked less well than expected, though rolling was fun. Seeing scarab beetle tracks in the sand was really, really cool.

The White Desert has a lot of calcium carbonate on the ground, limestone, hence the white. We started at a Crystal Mountain of mica and quartz, as well as a dog's head of stone, but it was near our campsite that the place really got impressive. There are these mounds and pillars of stone all over the place, carved by wind erosion (and the sand the wind carries). Because the sand doesn't fly very high, the bottoms are affected more than the tops, and it makes all kinds of weird shapes. A lot of mushroom shapes, some that look like various heads, it's awesome. We set up camp, used the toiletrocks (one for men, one for women), sat around the fire. A lot of stargazing, some idiotic conversation (mostly Matt and I). Everyone kept seeing shooting stars, I had no such luck, though I did make out Orion (he's been there everywhere we go), the Milky Way, and the Big Dipper. Dinner was soup, chicken, rice and potatoes, with oranges for dessert. After dinner our guide and the drivers played some drums and sang, lots of call-and-response stuff. We did... okay with the responses. Then they got people dancing, Anh was freaking amazing (we joked that she might have agreed to marry one guy via dance), it was pretty fun. They asked us to sing an American song and we took so long to decide they eventually gave up, though if someone had mentioned Fresh Prince of Bel-air sooner it would have worked great. (“All-star” was later suggested as something that would have worked too.) I got a couple pictures of the sky, nothing too impressive but eh. The moon came out REALLY late, but it was absolutely beautiful. As I was lying down, I finally saw a shooting star, thankfully. No sleeping bag, but the blanket they provided was pretty good, even if it was freaking cold out.

Woke up, had a breakfast of bread, honey, delicious cake. We packed up, saw some more of the white desert including a rabbit stone, a “fossil whale,” a mushroom with a chicken next to it (seriously, it looks exactly like a chicken, even if Allen didn't get why it was the chicken stone and told us he couldn't see it at all until he realized he was looking at the wrong rock the whole time), very cool. Got a beautiful panorama view of the area on top of a hill. Drove back to Bahariiya, I slept almost the entire way, and here we are. Lunch has been whatever Denny bought in the store, biscuits, bananas, oranges, chips, that sort of thing. Dates with almonds in them are pretty good. Back in Cairo tonight, hopefully a little more shopping, turning in a paper or two, and off to Turkey tomorrow afternoon.

Friday, March 5th, roughly 12:40-12:50 PM local time