On the Road with Brent & Erika

To fill our last few days in Egypt, we decided to get away from the Nile and the Red Sea and any water at all and head to the Western Desert. The desert in western Egypt is spotted with several oasis towns, and we based ourselves out of one named Bahariya to reach what is called the White Desert. So we booked a jeep tour along with a few other travellers to spend the night out there.


Girls strolling the dusty streets of Bahariya


This curious little boy checked out our group as we swam in a local spring


Erika and our driver on the long desert roads


The bizarre shapes of the stark white rocks looked other-worldly


Us as our guides made camp during the setting sun


The jeeps circled around to create a little shelter for us to eat and sleep


The last moments of sunlight


Erika walking past the campfire


There were several of these hungry little foxes darting around looking for discarded food


A little snippet of the music that our Bedouin drivers/guides/cooks/entertainers played

We all danced to the Bedouin music by the campfire


The fairy-tale, whipped cream shapes of the rocks were just incredible as the sun rose the next morning


We were amidst a thick landscape of them


Leaving the White Desert satisfied and ready for a shower

That left us just one more full day in Cairo before we left for home. So we game-planned and decided to check out a couple more mosques and do some last minute souvenir shopping. Reaching a resting point after walking amid the suffocating heat and traffic, we found ourselves entering a random mosque just to sit down in peace for awhile and cool off. It was there that we met two antiquity restorers named Akmed that took a fancy to us and showed us Egyptian hospitality. It turned out to be a great afternoon as the Akmeds accompanied us to view other great sites and even waited patiently as we shopped.  Little did we know at the time that this was just the beginning of our time with one of these fellows.  


Cool little flowers outside of the Citadel


Us in front of the Mohammed Ali mosque which sits inside of the castle-walled Citadel


Man sitting inside of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo's oldest functioning Islamic monument, dating from the 9th century.


Erika drinking sugar-cane juice with the Akmeds


One of the places we visited was an expansive cemetery complex that people have made into a make-shift city. Tombs around here are built with rooms for the living to return to pay respects, and for tens of thousands this "City of the Dead" has become their permanent living space. This woman showed us her home as well as the attached tombs of her ancestors.

The final event of our time in Egypt was one of the most special.  One of the Akmeds, as he accompanied us to the above mentioned City of the Dead, invited us over to his home to have dinner with his family.  We jumped at the chance to share in this cultural experience, and later that night we were served a delicious meal of some sort of Nile fish over rice with all of the Egyptian fixings.  The family entertained us with a show-and-tell of photo albums and artwork. We were overwhelmed by their hospitality.  They even gave us a gift on top of it all!  After exchanging addresses and photos and saying our goodbyes, we were on our way to the airport to fly home late that night. Ending our trip with a little taste of Egyptian hospitality couldn't have left us with a better last impression!

This little guy we saw in a restaurant was getting an early start at sheesha (don't worry - he wasn't really smoking it, just playing with the pipe)


At the risk of losing all comedic credibility...ice cream, anyone? (for the record, I posted this against Erika's wishes)

Well, that's it, folks!  We're safely back home now.  From the shores of the North Sea to the Red Sea, our month in Holland and Egypt (with a little Belgium, Jordan and Israel thrown in) was one to remember!  Thanks for coming along to share in the fun!  

Next stop...the real world!

--Brent