Is Your Crazy President Bush Still Alive?

Preface: Before I begin my story, let me inform you as to a few things.

Firstly, Monday was the beginning of Ramadan, the month of fasting for the Muslims, which essentially entails not eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset for the entire [lunar] month. Being that Egypt is an Islamic state, one will find that many stores and restaurants are closed during the daytime, only opening after Maghrib, which is the prayer between sunset and dusk. Due to the absence of food in people's stomachs, after the sun is gone over the horizon, they descend in droves on the unsuspecting streets of wherever and gorge themselves on whatever they can get their hands on (which is understandable given that we are in the desert, and food and water are kind of necessary to live). Additionally, during the night it is far cooler, so their normally slightly shifted day is shifted even further, so that bed before one o'clock is rather early. Us non-believers have been affected by Ramadan greatly, considering we have no obligation to fast, nor do we feel particularly compelled to do so, but find ourselves without a whole lot of options during the day other than processed chip packages or Twinkies, assuming we can find a store that is open.

Another point is that most food is exceptionally cheap here in Egypt. I just want to say that now, so that every time I mention a meal you can assume I paid less than $5 for it, and understanding the quantities of food you must know I consume, this is quite a feat of inexpensivity.

Despite everything being pretty cheap, I can't afford any of it. I lost my debit card, and have had to mooch off of my roommates until a replacement can be acquired, which should be any day now.

Finally, 20% of the world's unexploded land mines are located here, in the deserts somewhere. Slightly frightening.

Chapter One: On Sunday, Andy, Jonah, Mark, Justine, Allegra and I woke up at sevenish in the morning and hopped into taxis to the bus station. We'd already purchased tickets for the 8:15 AM bus, and made our way to the waiting area in quite good time, leaving ourselves plenty of leeway. While we were milling about one of the guards sketched a picture of me, which I thought was rather sweet. Being that it was a smidgen earlier than we were used to waking up, we were slightly tired and restless, thusly when our bus arrived--a measly half of an hour late--, we were thrilled.

We drove for something nearing eight hours, with a few stops for praying and facility usage, before we arrived in Marsa Matruh, where we found the next bus and jumped on, ready for another long trip towards our final destination. However, after a relatively shorter time, only four hours, we arrived in the darkness of the Siwan Oasis, a hop skip and a jump away from the Great Sand Sea and Egypt's Western neighbor, Libya.

We were inundated with little boys advertising their donkey carts, and we chose a couple and rode them to Yousef Hotel, our place of residence for our time in Siwa. We unloaded our stuff and set out into the night, gravitating towards a very well lit area of ruins in the center of the city. We climbed about and danced merrily for a bit, during which time I found the mantis whose picture I posted earlier. At the bottom of the melted city, so called because after three days of rain in 1926 it literally melted, there were quite a few less-melted dwellings still in use by various tenants, including a donkey and two girls running a handcrafted goods shop. There we bought a few souvenirs and chatted in halting Arabic, asking their names and how many siblings they had and such, and then started off towards food. Before we could get very far we were chased down and given presents, which I thought was rather cute. I was given a brush-thing, while others received: more brush things, a basket, and maybe a scarf or two. All-in-all, I'd say it was a good deal.

The restaurant across from our hotel, Abdu's, became our location of choice. We ordered one plate from about every type of food they served and talked to the servers and petted the stray cats. We learned that they offered safaris into the desert, which was convenient, given that was the main thing I was looking forward to in our trek out there. Mark bargained the price of an overnight down from 130 pounds per person to 100, and we made plans to return the next day around four in the afternoon. We were all pretty beat, so we crashed in our rooms, which, by the way, only set us back $2 a night per person.

Chapter 2: The next day we woke up early and rented bikes, making our way towards various sites of interest to keep us busy until our safari. We: swam in Cleopatra's Bath, a well of fresh water in the middle of a road about 10 meters wide; had a diving contest with the locals, in which--despite what Andy may have said--I was the clear winner; visited what was left of the ancient temple of Umm Bayd, on which I climbed; explored the temple of the Oracle for a good while before being discovered by some ticket-sellers who weren't there earlier, who tried to make us pay (we gave them enough to cover half-price and then left); and finally made our way back to town (me with a flat tire) to see what else we could get away with.

Our time had mostly run out, so we returned the bikes and killed a little bit of time in front of Abdu's, talking to people and making sure we were packed for our desert adventure. We were introduced to our guide, Mohamed, who then loaded us up into his 4x4 and sped off into the desert.

Essentially, driving through the sand is like riding a roller coaster. For some periods, you are going sort of slow, climbing the humongous dunes located pretty haphazardly throughout, while during other periods, you shoot down the top of the dunes at insane angles, fearing for your life and the life of your co-travelers. After about a half hour of zooming about, the car started making terrible noises and couldn't seem to accelerate. We unloaded and climbed the sand (much harder than you would expect), waiting for our guide to tell us we were ready to go. His method of repair consisted of slamming his tools inside the hood, accrediting the loss in power to some sort of dirty filter or something.

He beckoned us back to the truck and we sped off over another dune, only to find that our problem was only temporarily fixed, and we came to a stop again. For the next hour or so, our tired, hungry guide made the best of the journey as he could, popping out to hit the engine with his wrench whenever the issue flared up to unignorable heights. We eventually came to an oasis, which was just a surprisingly large lake with a few reeds around it. We all jumped in and started swimming while Mohamed attempted his hand at a more solid fix for the filter.

A few other travelers joined us in the oasis, and we talked with them while tiny fish bit at our skin, which was felt rather odd, but being as they were harmless and supposedly were cleaning us, we let them do their thing. The sun was beginning to sink lower, so we loaded up and headed off to the next destination, another oasis.

This one was rather different than what one might think of as a conventional spring, considering it was discovered by the Russians when they were looking for petroleum, and because it was a hot spring. We sat in the sulfur-smelling, slightly slimy water for a bit before heading off to some vantage point to better experience the sunset.

I danced to some music on my iPhone while the others meandered about, doing their things. Once the sun was over the horizon our guide shuffled us back into the car and slammed his foot on the pedal, taking us on another merry ride. He guzzled nearly two liters of water and stuffed some dates in his mouth, which was a rather funny sight (he was driving rather fast and erratically at the time).

We arrived at the camp with no problems, and then sat about for a few hours, eating and being waited on by another guy, whose name I forget. After a time we decided to take a walk in the desert, with our new friend silently following close behind. We came to a hill and laid about, some of being buried in the sand, and I got a massively awesome massage that cracked every joint I think I have (as well as being tickled a few times, which I thought was rather strange).

We set up some beds and drifted into philosophical conversations and whatnot, with a few of the girls claiming they could see UFOs. They were probably just really dehydrated, I imagine. The flies were slightly annoying, but I fell asleep for spurts with my blanket over my head, which suited me fine, although it was a little hot.

Chapter III: We ate breakfast the next morning and then were taken back to town by Mohamed, who had returned sometime during the night. We crashed for a few hours, taking a desperately needed nap. During the nap Mark struck up a conversation with two guys, Muniir and Zach, who were also blasting through the locations of interest in the area. Our nap ended at around noonish, and we hopped into the back of a pickup with our new friends and set out to see some stuff.

There were/was: a few holes in the side of a cliff that were supposedly Roman encampments, but Muniir exclaimed his doubt at that assertion's veracity, so I don't know if it was true; a partially excavated tomb said to be the last resting place of Alexander the Great, whose body was apparently never discovered; and finally, a very out-of-the-way well, similar to--but smaller than--Cleopatra's Bath, with date trees all around, so we ate our lunch lounging in the refreshing, salinated water.

Muniir and Zach had their own safari to experience (though not an overnight one), so we made plans to meet for dinner and set out on our own. Nothing much exciting happened; we simply wandered in and out of the stores, and made sure we knew where the bus station was for our departure the next morning. Around seven, the guys returned and we sat down for our Iftar (even though we hadn't really fasted, we were pretty hungry) at Abdu's. Once again, we ordered a crap-ton of food, and then got to know our co-adventurers.

Once we were sufficiently stuffed, Mohamed (our and Muniir and Zach's guide) wanted us to come see something that he called "Magic", so I took it as magic tricks or the like, but it turned out to be the name of his souvenir shop, where we drank tea and learned about each other. Someday I'll recount his story of rags to [relative] riches, but for now you should just know that he started with his family's donkey cart and ended with a 4x4, a shop, his own house, and a nice reputation with rich European tourists, a few of which he will be taking on a 16 day excursion deep into the Sahara desert (which means "desert desert", as "sahara" means desert) costing 150 Euros a day. Wowzers!

After we made plans to smoke shisha on a roof with him, we went to buy a blanket Allegra really wanted, and then got invited for another round of tea with another shopkeeper named Mohamed. He said some hilarious things, including the title of this particular entry. We waved goodbye and headed back to meet up with the other Mohamed, found him, walked to three shisha joints (which were all closed), and then settled in the middle of the park in the middle of town, which I thought was rather refreshing. After a long night of karkade and shisha, we retired and slept for a few hours before our bus departed.

Chapter The End: The ride back to Cairo was shorter, but slightly more eventful: in Matruh we tried to walk towards the Mediterranean but were thwarted by an unconventional route which, while scenic, was not direct at all, which ended in us turning around and getting lost again, only to be saved by a nice old man driving a plastic recycling donkey cart; while sitting on the bus waiting to leave, some sort of scuffle broke out between one man and various other parties, which delayed our exit quite excitingly; on the bus they played an extremely old WWF championship match, which featured the NWO and Hulk Hogan, which I thought was completely crazy; and in culmination, we made it back to our hotels in one piece.

The rest of my life will come later, I'm tired.