Saturday, December 20, 2008

Siwa Oasis Part 3

The second day at Siwa we woke up mid-morning and headed “downtown” to the local market which was almost over as we arrived. We had to wait until our shoes were almost dry, so we got a bit of a late start.

 
Here is the market as it is ending


We returned to Cleopatra’s Spring to swim and eat, and in the afternoon we took up the offer of the guide at the hotel and joined the expedition out into Bir Wahed, the Great Sand Sea.

 
The interns and our tour guide, Ahmed out in the Great Sand Sea

Basically this trip was just an excuse for Ahmed to do donuts and drive down nearly vertical walls of sand.
I'm putting up a lot of pictures of this trip so I'll mostly let them speak for themselves.

 



 



 



 



 
Our first stop in the desert was this cold (correction: FREEZING) water lake. It was so cold I didn’t want to just wade in, so I ran full speed into the lake. Once my body got numb it wasn’t that bad!

Thankfully, our next stop was the nearby sulfurous hot spring. Then it was off to see fossils in the desert.


 
The interns in the Jeep driving through the desert


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2 comments:

Scott said...

woahhh that looks/sounds really similar to the dunebuggy/sandboarding excursion I took in the Peruvian desert

Jeff said...

yeah the Koreans tried sandboarding but it wasnt that effective