|
The tour started with a pickup from the Juliana Hostel at about 6am and then to the Cairo bus station for bus to the Oasis. To minimise cost, all of the tour organisers put you on a scheduled local bus for the five hour journey to the Oasis, it is from the Oasis that you start the safari. The bus station was fairly nice and the bus was ok as well; it was nothing like the local busses which you see in the streets. During the 5 hour journey to the Oasis the bus made one long stop at some sort of service station where a lot of the local guys got off to pray. One thing which really annoyed me was that after we had stopped for a while the bus driver beeped the horn to get everyone back but most of the local people didn't come. He beeped again and again, moved the bus a bit but still nothing. Eventually the locals strolled out of the building in dribs and drabs and didn't make any effort to get to the bus fast with all of the people waiting on them. I think the issue is that they were praying and think that everything and everyone else is secondary to that. The bus driver was obviously afraid to leave them behind probably because of the trouble these religious people would cause if he did. When we finally arrived at the Oasis we got our bags off the bus and were taken in a jeep to our "Hotel" for the next few days. The hotel was very basic and we were served a very minimalistic lunch, some chopped up vegetables and some tuna. After our small meal we were taken on a short tour of the area around the oasis in a jeep. The only problem we had was that our driver didn't speak any English, so he would just take us to different places and point. He was just following the itinerary.. Just a shame we didn't have a copy of it : - ) After our tour we went back to the hotel for some dinner and then to bed. There wasn't very much to do in the Oasis where we were staying although a random English guy had just booked himself on the bus journey from Cairo to Bahariya and he ended up staying with us at the hotel. He had opted for the high risk approach of just getting to the Oasis and then trying to join a tour group. The next day we had breakfast and left the Hotel at about 11am for our safari. Our jeep was loaded with sleeping bags, mats, wood, a windbreak and some food. Steven and I set off and the other English guy followed by himself in a separate jeep; we ended up in a convoy and did everything together anyway. We made numerous stops at different points in the desert and ended up at the "White Desert National Park". A couple of the pictures below show the map of the park and a summary of the things in it. The most memorable of the things we saw were the Mushrooms and after challenging Steven to climb one, he ended up trying to climb a small one but got a small cut on his chest with the first jump upwards to climb it : - ) Just before the sun was about to set our drivers let us walk off and they started setting up camp and cook the food. Just after the sun set we made our way back to the camp and our driver was cooking some chicken on the fire and had cooked some potatoes and spices in a pot on a gas stove. The food was some of the best we had in our whole time in Egypt! After dinner we had some tea and a fox made its way to our camp to drink some water and eat the leftover food. The fox was a bit of a chicken and ran away before I managed to take a picture of it. |
