Siwa - One of the Most Beautiful Places on Earth

The family I am staying with this week is great! The two oldest girls are engaged, and my sister Sarah's fiancee lives in Dubai, so she spends a good amount of time at an Internet cafe talking to him, so I've had ample time to be on the web and update you all. So that's exciting.

So about Siwa.....

We went to Siwa as a weekend trip (weekends here are on Friday and Saturday, school starts each Sunday) from Feb 1 -3. It was a 10 hour bus ride out there, which was pretty intense. The desert immediately surrounding Cairo reminded me of New Mexico and Arizona, so it felt normal. The farther we got into the desert, though, the less vegetation there was, and eventually there was only sand and sky. I slept quite a bit as I typically don't get enough sleep here, and unfortunately I missed the sight of a herd of about 75 camels next to the road. :( We got to Siwa around 11 pm, and our hotel/hostel was about 5 minutes outside the main town, and we took up all the beds! The center of it was open, and we could hang out on the roof with chairs and such. To look out and see nothing but darkness was pretty intense. The people who live there apparently adopted one of the millions of stray cats because she was hanging out in one of our beds, and adopted us for the weekend. I think I'll post a picture of her.

The next morning we went into town around 11 am and had lunch at a great little restaurant, sitting on floor in a tent made of quilts. Egyptians seem to think that anything hot tastes better after 15 teaspoons of sugar, because all the tea I've had here has been extremely sweet (even sweet for me, Will!!) I had some special "Siwa tea." The Egyptian government has subsidized many things for the people, and bread and tea are some of them. Bread is pronounced "Eye-E-sh" (ayiish) and it can be found very cheap all over Egypt. It's very good, and I enjoyed some here for lunch a-la-sand, just like the rest of the meal. After that we left for our desert safari.

We took 3 jeeps, and there were 8 people in mine. We drove out into the open desert for several hours and had a great time driving down steep sand dunes , although the first one was pretty scary because we weren't prepared for it. Our driver thought we were pretty funny when we screamed, and took it upon himself to do all the crazy driving stunts necessary to evoke this often. It's very much a non-liability culture here, so that thought scared me a little. The views definitely consumed most of my thoughts, though. The beauty of the desert sand is indescribable and pictures cannot do it justice. Feeling the wind on one's face driving in the desert is better therapy than any physciatrist could do.

We stopped at a hot spring and several people got in, while the rest of us just stuck our feet in. It felt excellent! Then we went to a lake (amazing that these are in the desert! I guess that's why it's called an oasis...) that I jumped in, and I don't think I've ever been in colder water in my life! I literally couldn't breathe after I jumped in and got out. It was like a kick in your face... (by a tire!) The second time I stayed in longer and then my limbs went numb.... so I felt less cold. But it was an amazing refresher. After this we went farther out in the desert to a sand dune where we went sandboarding. I'd never really thought about it before I guess, but I was surprised that we actually used snowboards. I'll try and upload a video of me taking a pretty nice spill.

I don't know how many of you know me well enough, but if you did, you would know that I have a pretty intense sand phobia (Rachel Funke!). Needless to say, falling and rolling fast down 20 feet of a sand dune pretty much makes one confront this problem! Luckily it was coarse sand, not like the fine kind that sticks everywhere. So I was ok and it was a lot of fun. I explored a hill across from where we were boarding down, and found thousands of fossils.... SAND DOLLARS!!!!! Everywhere, it was crazy. I didn't know that parts of the Sahara Desert used to be under water?? Someone enlighten me..... So looking through those was fun, although pretty painful on my bare feet.

We watched the sun go down over a desert world, and I sat in utter contentment. "Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise, His greatness no one can fathom!" This verse kept echoing in my mind as I thought about how big our Creator is and how little we are in comparison. Who is man, that God should take notice of us? We are like the dust of the earth, and yet look at the lilies of the valley, how beautifully God clothes them, how much more does He love us, those He sent His Son down to die for? We have much to be thankful for and worship God for!

As we watched the sunset, our drivers made a small fire and we had tea (with more than a touch of sand). Then we drove to a camp where some Siwa men made us dinner. See the pictures I attach of the way our chicken was cooked, it was awesome! We ate in the tent we eventually slept in, and afterwards I had the time of my life hanging out with a group of Egyptian college students from Alexandria. We all hung out around a campfire and sang songs, us in English (although the only songs we could come up with were 90's pop music and worship songs.. :(, them in Arabic, and the Siwa men in the Siwi language.

Modern country lines do not mean that the people inside the boundary are of similar culture, as applies with the Siwa people (as well as Iraq!!) The people in Siwa are of different ethnic background, speak a different language, and dress completely differently than the rest of Egypt. They have been relatively isolated from the rest of the world until recent times, and therefore much of their culture and way of life has been preserved. It was fascinating to see Siwa women... actually I didn't see them at all because they are completely covered from head to toe in exactly the same outfit. They all wear a blue embroidered cloth covering their entire bodies with a black cloth covering their faces. They never walk anywhere but are taxied around by young boys (presumably their sons) on donkey carts. I felt rude staring until I realized they were all staring at us more :)

Anyway, in regard to Siwa culture, we had a great time watching male Siwa dancing, which is basically regular belly dancing with a cloth tied around their waists under their behinds. It was pretty entertaining. We also played "Steal the Bacon" with the people from Alex, which is apparently a very popular game in Egypt. I spent a lot of time talking with one of the girls, and we eventually got her and the rest of the girls to come into our tent (veiled woman are not allowed to dance in front of men) and show us Egyptian belly dancing. It was fantastic and entertaining. After that, we hung out around the camp fire until about 2 am when I decided I should get some sleep. (Haha, funny thought looking back now!) I think I slept about 40 minutes all night. They had run out of blankets and another girl (Jamie) and I slept together under one. Several things prevented my blissful, desperately wanted sleep: 1) the Siwa men were up playing the tabla (drum) until about 5 am 2) I couldn't feel my feet I was so cold 3) the ground was not so comfortable 4) the dogs around took upon themselves personally to keep me up barking. I don't think I've ever cuddled so close to another person in my life - Jamie and I were completely snuggled up next to each other, our legs intertwined, etc. Unfortunately, I still couldn't get warm, and around 3:30 am we went out to join some of the boys sleeping next to our campfire. Lo and behold, I still couldn't sleep and then the fire started dying, which prompted a great search for firewood. We ended up breaking branches off a nearby palm tree. I think I slept for about 30 minutes then curled up next to it before it was light and most people got up (around 6:30am). Realizing there was a hot spring next to the camp, some of the boys and I went over there, where I put my legs in, laid back on the ground, and promptly fell asleep for about an hour. I woke up to Korean voices and faces, which scared me a little until I sat up and realized where I was :) We then took our jeeps back to our hotel, which was about a mile away. I was pretty upset when I found that out, as I would have definitely walked back in the middle of the night for the warmth of blankets! Oh well... Jamie and I bonded ;)

The rest of the day several others and I rented bikes (10 pounds ($1.30) for the day) and toured the historic sites of the town. We went to a massive temple of an Oracle that Alexander the Great apparently visited. The views from up there were simply breathtaking and Justin and I felt as though we could easily be in the second century AD... you could hear donkeys braying, see people harvesting dates, the houses look like Jesus could have been born in them, people walked around with baskets on their heads, and other such things. (We just had to erase the one or two Nissan trucks we could see) We could see thousands of thousands of palm trees, open desert, the massive oasis water, and the Siwa town. What a beautiful sight. We watched the sunset on top of an old fortress made out of salt, mud and water, that stood for centuries until 3 days of heavy rain in 1973 that basically destroyed the entire thing. We also spent some time looking at the Mountain of the Dead, tombs from the Roman era that weren't discovered until the Italians and Germans bombed Siwa in WWII. The earth shook many of the tombs open, and many of the European soldiers took many of the mummies and wall carvings home as souvenirs (!!!!) The care takers showed us some of the well preserved tombs and actual mummies, which was really intense.

Several friends and I were searching for a place to eat when we ran into one of the young Siwa men we had hung out with at the campfire the night before, and he invited us to have tea with him in the shop he was working at. That was a great time, and we also had dinner with him. A 'band' was there, and we had a great time playing the tabla and singing whatever English songs we could think of (which ended up being the Little Mermaid.... haha) They also taught us how to correctly do a turban, and some of the men put liquid eyeliner IN MY EYE (which hurt like crazy) to make me look like a beautiful Arabian woman. All in all, it was a great time hanging out with local Siwa men.

Well, I think that about covers my time in Siwa. Hope you all enjoyed hearing about it! I'm off to go with my family to their grandmother's house. Should be fun!

Love you all, please let me know how you're doing!

Sarah

Click on the following picture to see all 80 pictures I posted for my trip to Siwa :)
PS. If you click on "slide show", you can see all of them with the full captions.

1.31.07 - 2.3.07 Siwa Oasis